Post a Comment On: A Beautifully Messy Mass of Contradictions

[Image]Debi's Opinion of the 120 servings of Chickpea Salad

After services on Shabbat, my synagogue has kiddush. Essentially, it's an after-services lunch. Either, someone sponsors it in honor of an event (wedding, bat mitzvah, the Mariners made it to the World Series) or because they wanna. When that doesn't happen, the Shabbos Chefs get together and prep a nice little lunch.

All I wanted to do was make some bread. A specific bread. A 4-foot-long loaf of challah, specifically. For practice. For later. Not withstanding.

So, I was TRYING to coordinate with the person in charge that week so I wouldn't be stepping on her toes while I was trying to bake the challah that ate Cincinnati. She didn't realize it was her week. She'll be out of town. No worries, says I. I've been meaning to do kiddush for a while. I'll do it.

No one who knows me is surprised that I'd just randomly offer to cook for 180 people. What didn't occur to me is that planning during Passover (when you're also having 20 people over for 1st Seder)...well, it never happened. So Tuesday night, I'm busily trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to fix for 180 people so that the lovely head of the chef's committee can do all my bloody shopping for me. It's harder than it sounds to scale up a recipe from 6 servings to 180. No really.

One of my favorite side dishes is a little chickpea salad I like to make. Some chickpeas, green onion and a nice little vinaigrette. Uses hot sauce, so it's got a nice little kick.

Well, with 10 pounds of chickpeas, we made it in turns: flavorless, not quite so flavorless, too spicy for public consumption, better but not saying much. My last opinion was the title of this post. We decided soon after that to quit, let it marinate until Saturday morning, and then add 15 pounds of tomatoes. I actually think it will be quite nice after that. If not, lubricated is good after the season of our constipation.