Chicken Salad

This weekend, I helped with a luncheon for the stake Relief Society. I was in charge of the food. We decided to do chicken salad on croissants, a green salad, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

So, this is what I did on Friday:
-- Deboned 23 rotisserie chickens
-- chopped up 108 cups of chicken
-- Diced 32 cups of celery
-- Chopped up 32 cups of grapes
-- Opened 32 cans of water chestnuts using a really crummy can opener. (I'm grateful my mom taught me that you have to have good tools in the kitchen)
-- Opened 25 cans of pineapple using the same crummy can opener.
-- Slept for 3 hours

I need to acknowledge that I did have a wonderful neighbor that helped me debone all those chickens, and some friends that helped me chop the grapes -- but I really think my knife is permanently attached to my hand.

This is what I learned:
-- It feels really good to be doing something for other people.
-- Wal-mart has the best price on water chestnuts.
-- Wal-mart sells out of pineapple tidbits, so if that's what you want, shop ahead of time, otherwise you'll be chopping up pineapple rings at 1am.
-- Dole pineapple tastes much better than the store brand. It's worth the extra $0.14 per can to get the Dole brand
-- Crummy can openers should be outlawed
-- No matter how good of a knife you are using, if you chop up that much stuff, your hand is going to hurt at the end
-- It's really fun to hear lots of people compliment the food, especially when they don't know you are the one that made it.
-- I don't want to go into catering

The food turned out delicious, but I don't want to eat chicken salad for a really, really long time...