A Barn Dance

Three of us were in charge of cooking for a get-together not long ago. It was quite an undertaking but lots of fun. :)

We started gathering supplies early to make sure we had all we needed. Filled my freezers with shrimp, crawdads, crab legs and smoked sausage. Bought the potatoes, corn, onions, garlic, lemons and bread fresh.
For the crawdad boil we had
 lemons, onions, garlic, crawdad boil seasoning, coarse salt, cayenne pepper. (to season the pot).
75lb crawdads
75lb smoked sausage
75lb shrimp
65lb crab legs
65lb potatoes
300 ears corn on the cob
420 slices grilled garlic bread
cocktail sauce
garlic butter

some of the crab legs getting ready to take to the party...

some of the smoked sausage, cut into bite sized pieces...

some of the shrimp.....

did not get pics of the crawdads or corn...

the potatoes. We cut the larger ones in half for even cooking time...

more tatoes...

onions...

tons of garlic for the pots and for garlic butter.... took forever to peel! lol

I think I ended up with 32lbs of cocktail sauce. I poured it back into ketchup containers after mixing.

lemons to season the pots, I just cut them in half and squeezed the fresh juice into the pots.

grilled 30 loaves of garlic bread. I was able to get 14 slices of garlic bread from each loaf so I ended up with 420 slices.

Setting up the food tent.....at friend's ranch...

Day of the party.....loading up the beer, whiskey, tequila, rum, Jack, Crown, vodka, and others....

....and the ice...

"Beer Meets Ice"  :)
Started layering beer and ice into 5 foot stock tanks....

setting up the bar on the work bench in the barn...

music...

Used 7 cooking pots, refilled them when each batch was cooked..

When the cooking started, things got hectic. I didn't get to take as many pics as I wanted.
Put the seasonings in the pots first, onions, garlic, salt, lemon juice, cayenne, crawdad seasoning, smoked sausage.   Then the potatoes.
Next the corn then the shrimp and lastly the crawdads.
Had one pot dedicated to warm garlic butter.

The crab leg pot...

the pot was big enough to hold all 65 pounds of legs with room to spare...

One thing I didn't count on.....more help than was needed showed up.  I spent a lot of time avoiding answering questions and trying to reach the food and pots without running into "helpers".  The three of us have cooked large parties with no problems, we have a "system" and know what needs to be done and when to do it. It was a bit of a struggle working around some of the extra bodies. lol
 I do want to thank Wichita and Dallas, couldn't have pulled it off without you! 


The table was about 24 ft long. (three 8ft tables end to end) We placed plates, forks, napkins and dips on one end and poured the cooked food down the rest of the newspaper covered tables...

people filled their plates and we just kept the table full. 

Didn't get many pics of the dancing. I was either cooking, dancing or talking with friends.  :)

We had expected around 75 people when first planning this, then it grew to maybe 100....then more people said they were coming so we figured to get enough food for 150. The more we talked to folks, the more said that they were coming......it sort of snowballed into 250 people.  Everyone had fun and there was plenty of food and drink. :)

People danced and made several trips to the food tent. I stayed until around 3 a.m., there was still a bit of food left and people dancing. I left baggies on the tables for people to take leftovers home.

A couple of days later, after resting up, it was time to take the food tent down.

Didn't take long for me to realize I was better off taking pictures than helping. :)

All is quiet and back to normal. :)

I'm ready to do it again! :)