Ten Tips On Catering

Ten Top Tips On Catering
First, I must reveal my interests. I'm allergic to shellfish. I also do not eat pork. Let me teach about how non-pork eaters feel about pork before I move on to the less likely event of my accidentally eating shellfish and vomiting over my silk blouse, the floor and bystanders who wish to seem saintly and sympathetic whilst standing out of range.

I used to get challenged about tucking into lunch containing pork at school. Between the ages of five and seven I learned several distressing facts, that you should not eat food which had fallen on the floor, that Santa Claus was a fairytale and I was supposed to be Jewish and therefore I was not supposed to eat pork at school dinners because although mother didn't mind, the kiddie police would tell me. The kiddie police would whisper to the teachers that I was being naughty so the teachers would take away my dinner plate, including the vegetables!

At around the age of 11, the age of enlightenment, I'd had bacon and ham many times and grown to like them, then discovered to my embarrassment that bacon and ham were pork. I developed a lifelong anxiety about the meaning of words and became an English teacher.

I hadn't realised and that I had been merrily eating the dreaded cheap and nasty pork. Generally associated by my middle-class family with wartime spam from rusty tins dug out of tunnels. And cheap pork sausages eaten by unfortunate people from council estates who never had a proper meal on a plate but ate with their dirty fingers in pubs.

A boy in the family once worked in the school holidays in a sausage factory and described how the pig's innards, cheeks, and bristles all went in. Neither he, nor his parents, nor anybody else who heard, ate sausages for years.

Yes, pork was pub fare, food which had never seen a chef or cook, all brought in wrapped in plastic from dirty lorries. Including two-day-old Scotch eggs made of gristly meat, hiding eggs with worrying black rings round them. Not what a respectable person any faith or none would spend money on or be seen eating when they could enjoy a sensible, undisguised piece of tasty, healthy, juicy freshly-cooked chicken.

Then at my girls' grammar school, when I was about the age of twelve, we were in biology class, or domestic science, or both - always good for teachers to find a shocking fact to keep atttention - we were warned that pigs had tapeworms. The more you heard about tapeworms, the less you liked the thought.

At lunchtime everybody looked at each other's plates and said, 'I think yours had got a tapeworm. That stringy bit. I wouldn't eat it, if I were you.' A minute later they would say, 'If you don't want it, I'll have it.' If I didn't co-operate, the clinching line was, 'You can't eat it anyway. You're Jewish.'
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Before a regional meeting Sandra thoughtfully asked us to mention any diet problems so I thought I'd tell you about mine and those of other people. I'm on the committees of two groups, as secretary of HOD and PR for Harrovians.

Shellfish:
I normally try to avoid making a fuss. I can spot most shellfish in shells, crustaceans, though not bits which are scattered in rice dishes or sauces, nor molluscs. Shrimp crackers I avoid just in case.
I'm fine with all normal white or pink fish (eg plaice, cod, trout, salmon, smoked salmon, cod roe) but allergic to shellfish such as shrimp, pacific prawns, crab, mussels and oyster sauce. This is a common allergy so it would help if the venue clearly marks dishes containing shellfish or fish sauces with shellfish were clearly marked.
So it would help if there were a dish of other meat such as chicken or plain fish.

Other common allergies are nuts, milk, eggs and gluten.
A few comments on catering.

Vegetarian food
At HOD we've had some Jewish members who do not eat pork or shellfish. If they are strictly kosher they eat vegetarian.
At recent group division meeting there was nothing they could eat. Those with cars and cash on them can shrug and laugh and dash off to another venue. Those who can't, might overdose on chocolate, get hyper and happy or aggressive, then sag, turn silent, sleepy and pale from low blood sugar, and look like they are about to have a heart attack.
Harrovians has several members who are Jews or Muslims who do not eat pork. Also Sikhs who are vegetarian. And some vegetarians.
A vegetarian dish or two is handy for the vegetarians plus those trying to eat 5 portions a day of fruit vegetables.
If you are self-catering at a meeting, a tub of hummus (a paste of chickpeas) is easy to organise.

Sugar
People on a reducing diet and diabetics would welcome an alternative to sugary cakes and chocolate biscuits.
Fruit pies are popular, better still fruit salad - not in sugar syrup but in juice, and fresh fruit.
As an alternative to sugared drinks, fruit juices are appreciated.

Water
To prevent dehydration (occasionally drunken-ness) tap water on arrival (if the budget allows, also caffeinated and decaff coffee, tea and juice) to revive for speakers and judges is appreciated by those who've driven a long way and need to be alert.

Labels
At Harrovians we've found people standing around not eating.
We improvised labels using black felt pens on white card and stuck them in front of sandwich trays. Suddenly everybody who'd been hanging back not daring to ask, or not getting answers, descended on the food enthusiastically.If sandwiches, meat balls, in fact all dishes are labelled clearly that solves everybody's problems and keeps them happy.
Hope this helps.
I plan to send these suggestions to organisers at future meetings so any additional comments would be welcome. Thanks.

News and Creativity and Songwriting
I replied to an email from a newsreader:
You wrote: I wish I was creative like you.
Do you have a book of grammar and style for writers or newsreaders?
A BBC presenter once told me the difference between the last newspaper edition (no more published) and the past newspaper edition (yesterday's).
Are you newsreading on BBC radio - ideal for those who have attractive voices but lost their last tie in the tumbler drier in Notting Hill. Or are you on ITV (illiterate TV?).
If you are regional, here's how to get ahead of all the others. Be capable of becoming an editor in charge of bulletins written by others.
I would say: I wish I were.
If I were you.
Yesterday I was, past tense.
If I were - indicates a future possible event which hasn't yet happened and probably never will. Or does future possible only follow 'if'?
No.
I wish I were.
I admit that I wish I were creative sounds as awkward as I wish I was.
'I wish I was' sounds right to you because you sing 'I wish I was in Dixie'. So you might think that is good grammar.
But - 'it ain't necessarily so'. ROFL.

(He replied that radio stations had style books.)

Here cometh the begging letter. ROFL. Please send me the titles of house style books if they are available to the public. (I think that, although I am not gainfully employed by the BBC, or anybody else, I consider myself in the media, and I am not a very private person but extremely outspoken and may therefore be classified as public.)
If you ever see a house style guide being chucked out because the cover is torn (tear it a bit more, accidentally spill coffee on it) or a new one has been issued, pick the old one off the shelf or out of the bin and save it for me.
(Or send it to me in a brown envelope for disguise so that the postman thinks I'm getting pornography. It always boosts morale to have others thinking you are having a much more exciting sex life than is possible mid-morning in remote suburbs on a wet Wednesday.)
Alternatively, just email the title to me so I can order off the net.
I'm sure I can charge it as a business expense if I become an overnight success in ten years time.
Your devoted correspondent, keen keyboard player, and midnight songwriter.

Speakers and Toastmasters clubs

To find your nearest club go onto the internet. Type in Toastmasters and then Find a Club. The first club I attended was Harrovians in Harrow & Wealdstone. It meets on the first, third and fifth Monday of each month at 7.15 pm.
Central London clubs include Holborn, above the Rugby Tavern, London Athenians Speakers near Hammersmith, and London Olympians, above the Hoop & Toy pub conveniently close to South Kensington tube station.

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Humour at Harrovians
Catholic Priests should be allowed to get married, by Anthony McGuigan, past president of Harrovians, was the winning subject amongst the five prepared speeches. This speech comes from the advanced manual of Persuasive speeches, in which you are invited to pick a controversial subject. A controversial subject is rather unusual at Toastmasters where most manuals suggest that you avoid religion, politics and sex, the three subjects most likely to excite your audience in one way or another.
Anthony said that he came from a small village in Ireland where the single priest lived in a five-bedroom house, 'with a housekeeper - but that's another story!' His speech told us many well-researched surprising facts about how Jesus's first priest or pope, 'the rock', Peter, was married, as indeed were priests and popes for several centuries. Moving to modern times he described how many priests left the church to get married - sometimes to their housekeepers!
This speech ends with question time from the audience - such a pity we don't have one minute of questions at the end of every speech. A question-minute would more accurately reflect what happens in a real one-hour after-dinner speech. Another advantage is that the audience would be kept alert thinking up a question.
My favourite question was from Shirley, who asked, 'If a single priest has a five-bedroom house, how many bedrooms will you give to a married priest?'
She also produced the best punning heckle, about nuns, 'Nuns they don't count'. Yes, there are none.
That was from the meeting on Monday October 16th. Harrovians Toastmasters meetings are held fortnightly on the first, third and fifth Monday of the month. Visitors are welcome. The venue is the Weald Stone Inn, which has a car park round the back. Arrive at 7.15 for socialising and networking, ready for the 7.30 rompt start.
For more details see the Toastmasters International website and click on the page Find A Club. There are 21 clubs in London, plus several thousand more in Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Europe, the USA, and around the world, wherever you are living, working or on holiday.
Harrovians meetings are free except once or twice a year when there is catering. Most big cities have a dinner club which meets in a hotel or restaurant and you pay for a meal. So check the costs and catering. Put the dinner venues and pubs serving meals at the end of your list of clubs if your budget and appetite are small, or at the top of your list if your budget, eyes and belly are bigger.

A Little Advice on Writing A Big Speech
Somebody I spoke to came up with some interesting advice. He said each evening he makes a list of things to do next day starting with the most difficult. Then when he gets up and is wide awake he deals with that one first. Having got it out of the way he feels really good and can relax and clear up all the lesser problems.