Blue and Gold Banquet

Whew! Blue and Gold Banquet was the highlight of the week. I am the primary counselor over Cub Scouts and so I helped plan and prepare for Blue and Gold. This year we just had a change with our Cub Master so I was a little more involved. I was put in charge of the food.

I thought this would be easy because I was going to pay someone to make the food. No problem, right? Wrong. The problem is I am just too cheap and we have too many Cub Scouts. All told, we have 27 cub scouts in our pack and each of them has a family of an average 4 people and it costs at least $6 lb to have someone make you meat. It was adding up and I was having visions of busting the Cub Scout budget before the year even began.

I was ready to go order a bunch of fried chicken (our standard ward activity fare) and walk away when the presidency met. Andrea had a easy recipe for pulled pork that was cheap and fed alot of people. The others pledged to help. So I went to the store and bought about 35 - 40 lbs of pork. Then, being the brilliant person I am I decided that one smelly house was better than 4. So I just gathered everyone's crockpot, six in all, and started cooking. The meat had to cook for 12 hrs. I decided over night would be the best option. Wow! Have you ever tried to sleep in a smokehouse? It was not a restful night. The meat and liquid smoke combination was overpowering. We closed the doors to the other rooms but still Grace didn't sleep well, so neither did Steve and I. When Steve stepped out of the room into the hall in the morning, he almost retched. In the morning, I had yummy delicious pork that just melted in your mouth but a house that was hard to live in. Fortunately, it was a nice windy winter day at a balmy 25 degrees. So I just opened all the windows and let the breeze fly through. I let the house get down to about 58 degrees before I buttoned it all up again.

The tradition in our ward is to have the Dad and cub scout make a cake. (I know that Moms helped quite a bit and some cakes the boy helped with the theory of the cake only) Steve and Seth made a cooler complete with mini popcans. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture!! It was so cute I promise and not just because I helped a little...or alot.

Friday was the big day and we had quite a turnout. I panicked a little when I saw the line of people waiting for the food, but in the end I had a full crockpot of meat leftover. I think it went over well. Thankfully, there were even enough chips for all those boys. I estimate that we fed about 125 people.

Dinner was finished up with some funny skits and lots of cake. We had a picnic blanket, ant, rainbow, angry bird, watermelon and cub scout hat cake plus many more. The only sad part is there was so much dessert that the boys don't get to give away as much cake as they would like.

After the last dish was washed and the last bit of frosting scrubbed out of the carpet we stepped out into the snowstorm with these parting words, "Pinewood derby... four weeks from tonight!"