Years and years ago I used to go to Tai Chi...and loved it. One weekend there was an international meeting some miles from here and it was expensive, so Caroline and I offered to make the lunches so we could still attend, but for free...we fondly thought we'd have plenty of time to do sets while doling out fresh salads.
Everyone had brought food...lentil soups and onion breads and lettuces and concoctions of brown rice...there were packages clearly marked 'gluten free' and bowls of salad stuff wrapped up in cling film which said proudly they were organic...the kitchen in the hall we were using was vast...and every surface was crowded with pots and bowls and plates all full of different food.
We looked askance at the task awaiting us and Caroline put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.
Without the faintest idea of where to begin we found the plates and began to assemble a selection of pretty much everything on each and every plate...then someone popped their head round the door and pointed out there were now one hundred and twenty people in the hall and did we have enough plates and not to forget the strict vegans who wouldn't be wanting a hard boiled egg on their plate, even if it was free-range.
How many vegans are there? Dunno, he replied...quite a few I expect.
So we whipped the hard boiled eggs off the plates and put them in a bowl for people to help themselves if they wanted one...
There were catering sized jars of pickles and mayonnaise that neither of us could take the tops off and evil looking pickled onions someone had brought in...
The breads needed to be reheated but we seriously struggled to work out how to turn the ovens on and off again and then there was a break and everyone crowded to the hatch wanting mugs of herbal tea and de-caffeinated coffee and a slice of cake...Caroline is a woman of size and was dripping with perspiration as we boiled up kettles and poured hot water onto raspberry tea bags and sliced cake and tried to understand all the different languages we were being assailed with...
Eventually they all drank their tea and ate their cake and went back to doing another set and we washed up and found knives and forks and put the nut roasts into the ovens to cook and washed the organic lettuce after Caroline found a huge grey slug that she pushed down the plug hole in one of the sinks and then we sprinkled water on the tomatoes to make them look nice and trimmed the scallions and cut and buttered garlic bread...
Lunch time was totally horrendous.
We were pushing plates of food through the hatch while Chinese men wanted to know where the noodles were and we hadn't even thought of cooking them and a drop dead handsome man of indeterminate racial origin passed his tomatoes back through the hatch with a haughty expression...'I do not eat'...fair enough, said Caroline and whipped them off his plate...plonked them on the next person in the queue who said plaintively...'I do not eat'...
By the end of the day our feet ached...our legs ached...we'd managed to totally buggar up the dishwasher...the kitchen worktops were covered in clean but empty containers from plastic tubs to old biscuit tins ready for collection by their rightful owners...we'd each eaten one slice of garlic bread and one hardboiled egg and we'd not managed even one set of Tai Chi...
Neither Caroline nor myself ever volunteered to take charge of the food ever again.
xx
too hot to cook and my friend lefteri just brought me food 
