Food for 80 - Cheap and Cheerful ideas please!

[MummyJules]

Our local choir are hosting a concert at the community hall for friends and family to come. We are charging £6.00 for a glass of wine and food and would like some opinions please on what to give and also quantitys as I keep on having nightmares that there wont be enough food! The general idea was that each member of the choir would bring a dish to share but I know that won't be enough! We do have a small kitchen so there are two choices really - soups and rolls or party food?

TIA,

Jules

£6 is a lot for a glass of wine. I would have thought £2.50 at the most. Food wise cheap would be sausage rolls, crisps, sandwiches etc

It's paying for the concert as well compo!

Is it just supposed to be finger food?
In that case, sandwiches, as suggested sausage rolls, mini quiche type stuff.
Warm mince pies if you've got the facility to do that?
Maybe a glass of mulled wine as an alternative?

I would go for plain and simple.

Sausage rolls
Crisps
Cheese
Sandwiches
Quiches

£6 for concert and wine and nibbles sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I'd definitely go for nibbles rather than a 'proper' meal like soup that's hard to eat unless you sit down.

Thanks waswondering - Have you any idea of prices/quantitys - I have one about 40 mins away but want to work out if its worth the effort. We are a gospel choir...

what about something like pies and mushy peas or chilli and jacket potatoes. Buying these ingredients in bulk are much cheaper and always go down well. Also makes people think they have got something for their money.

also look in the reduced to clear parts in supermarkets for bread and other party items for freezing, it is suprising what you can find
I found our tescos was selling oriental express egg fried rice for 6p each a few weeks back.

get the dinner lady by jeanette orrey out of the library (or i got it from the book people for £6.99). has lots of recipes for mass catering and gives quantities to use when catering for 96

Do you or anyone else have a copy of it? and would it be possible for you to type out the quantities for 96? I would be ever so grateful!

bump! Any more advice?!

Making sandwiches for 96 is no joke and not very substantial.- my advice to you would be to do two very large vats of food. One vegetarian one with meat - I'm thinking a really fab vegetable jambalaya and a meat one with spicy sausage and ham. These are really cheap to make, very filling and easy to serve which is important when dealing with so many people. Also it's very nice to have a hot dish in this weather! I would serve nice bread rolls with it and the mulled wine idea I think is great.

Trouble with costco gigantic pizzas is they don't fit in most domestic ovens in one piece!

Here's what I did for my husband's 40th last Jan. Copied from an email I sent to a friend who was hostng a party.

Food - Catered for 30 people. Did two trays of sarnies using two slices loaves - one white, one brown. Roughly two rounds of each type of sarnie. Beef and horseradish; ham and mustard; tuna and cucumber; egg mayo; sliced egg and tomato; smoked salmon and cream cheese; smoked salmon pinwheels; cucumber. Garnished with scattered pomodorino tomatoes and watercress.

Hit Costco for catering packs of snacks -

70? chinese (wontons, mini spring rolls)
72 indian (samosas, pakoras, bhajis)
80 puff pastry bites
80 sausage rolls
48 mini quiches
50 satays

Used half of all the above but all the Indian snacks and 3/4 of satays

One six pack mini Pork Pies, halved
18 cocktail sausages

One bottle sweet chilli dipping sauce

Garlic and onion dip
Tzatziki
Crudites (celery, cucumber, red, orange, yellow peppers, carrot sticks) served on two large plates, each with a bowl of dip in the middle.

1 pack Walkers sweet chilli sensations crisps
1 pack sea salt and cracked black pepper kettle chips

1 pack of 56 cream cake minis - strawberry millefeuille, mini eclairs, hazelnut puffs. Not many people ate these but they looked good and those that ate them had 3/4/5!!! I also had some grapes to put out but forgot.

I've just done my mum's 60th too but I haven't got the details of what I bought for that here. Will try to remember to email them from work tomorrow.