Carry the charity taco bar torch?

Who wants to carry the torch?  We raised $600 for a charity that I really believe in this year with our taco bar during the concours.

Ed Malle and I were talking at breakfast and he said he thinks it should become tradition as it's one of those things that we came up with on the fly and it made the sense of community even stronger.  It brought more faces to us as we prepared food that we normally would not get the chance to talk to even though i try and get to as many people as possible. 

Carli and I stepped up this year to take the lead and had an awesome group of people knock it out of the park by procuring foods, bringing tables and grills, cooking, and otherwise kicking ass for a great cause.  I have zero regrets about the time I put in.  I can't thank everyone enough for helping us pull it off.  

What I would like to see is a different team step up and take the lead every year, it does not have to be tacos, and get a community meal together for a charity of their choosing.  I'm down to share my experience in planning with the next group, and we can make it even better.

Nothing brings people closer together than food in my opinion.  It's the universal language that we all speak no matter what color, religion, political preference, sexual orientation we are.  Food makes community and community makes food.  I'm not asking someone to raise their hand and say yes today, we're 363 days away, but think about it.  

Let's keep building the strength of the Challenge community.  We're here to prop each other up.  Individually we're all pretty darn good, but together we have a great group that can come together to do amazing things if we're willing to.

This type of community building is important, and we'll figure out how to do it again. High likelihood that someone is going to ask you for your advice next year Patrick. 

It'll happen. 

Nicely done, everybody!

Corporately we cannot acknowledge any potential taco bar presence, and would like to thank the Gainesville Raceway snack bar for providing the finest food available at the event for the duration of the weekend.

What we can acknowledge, though, is that charity. We'd like to make a corporate donation of $250. What's the best way to do so?

Noodling on how to best contribute to this effort without overcommitting. I got some ideas....

In certain circles, I'm known as "Lord of the Wings/King of the Greens."

"Charity Chicken-wing Challenge" has a nice ring to it.

In reply to Tom Suddard :

http://www.rakenow.org/donate

thanks!!!

from the challenge site, we're just working in the "grills are allowed and welcome at concours, the judges get hungry" line.  Unofficially of course.  

If I actually make it to challenge next year, I am planning on something similar. Still a big IF I can swing the flight and hotel, because I know I can't get a car ready by then too. 

I'm down for helping with logistics. I've done enough menu planning that I have a pretty good idea of what what we need- and I know where to get most of it locally so no one has to drag chicken from Ohio or whatever. I got into it this year because....I like tacos. 

In reply to poopshovel again :

Mmmmmmmmmm, wings.  I'm hungry now 

Just to let everyone know, the $ from our little unofficial deal went to provide over 2000 pairs of socks to the homeless in Cleveland, just in time for the cold weather to hit and one not cool councilwoman telling the churches in her ward that they're not allowed to be warming centers for the homeless anymore.  
 

thank you!  

Dude, that councilwoman needs mailed a bag of dicks. Our church won't let anyone other than our church decide what we do and dont do. 

I can't cook to save my life, and cant commit to run it. But, i want to support however i can. 

We are interested in taking up the taco bar for next year. I would like to suggest a charity, sunshine state super kids

My son did his eagle project with them, he built two of the dual seat soapbox derby cars. They basically organize soapbox derby races for disabled and disadvantaged kids. The two seat cars allow other kids to drive those that can't and let's them participate in racing. There is never any charge to the parents or kids. This is a small organization that is just trying to make a difference in kids lives. Let me know if this sounds good or if we should look somewhere else.

I'm cool with whoever wants to step up for whatever cause is important to them.  If multiple people want to work together and split the charity up, that sounds cool too.  I'm not the lone voice here, but anything helping kids with disabilities is rad by me.  

 

Im pretty sure it's in another thread, but do we have a recap from this year on number of people served and how much food went out?

I'm very unsure if I'll be able to do more than make a donation or suggest some recipes,but it could help other people get an idea of what they would need.

We used approximately 200 tortillas and 35ish pounds of chicken, 5 pounds of onions, about 16 ounces of crema, 5 pounds cheese, unknown amount of lettuce and sauces.  

lessons learned:  only use flour tortillas because people don't know to double up the soft corn ones so there was some falling apart.  If possible prep the meat and vegetables at home beforehand so you can unbag and grill versus unbag, cut the fat, fillet the meat, season, then grill.  Less cleanup that way, but we were 1000 miles from home.

Info make it I’m in for gopher duties. It’s my forte. 

In reply to Patrick :

maybe 2lbs of lettuce, a lb or so of jalepenos. At least 5 lbs of cheese, most of a gallon of queso. 

In reply to RevRico :

I menu planned for around 200 people. Logistically we had just about the right amount of food. This was with 57? Entered cars and the associated people, staff, and whoever felt like having a taco. I was busy slinging chicken across my board like my ass was on fire, so I didn't really look up to see who or what was being done. It worked out that I was in on this because I can get literally everything within 30min of me between gfs and two Costco's. The thing I learned was- we need a pop up. No shade was murder until shade was brought for us. Having 3 grills was nice, though I'm still mad I forgot my burner- it would have made more room on the grill for chicken and veg. Additionally a full flat top griddle would be banging. I'm looking into one for my own use, but I may or may not be much more than prep and logistics at this point- my lease is up precisely 9 days before challenge and we are looking at buying a house. All my money might be tied up. 

Our scout troop does spaghetti dinners about 5 times per year that serve between 600 to 800 plates in 4 hours, so we do have some experience and gear to use. The planning for 200 was about my guess so that is good to confirm. 

I know we have a large flat top we could bring, we were also thinking of doing some slow cooked pork as well as chicken.

In reply to Fladiver64 :

Think speed. We were up and running for 200 people in roughly 20min from grill firing to filling tacos. Slow cook anything is a logistical nightmare. That's why spaghetti dinners are so popular, you can make stupid amounts of spaghetti on no notice with little to nothing. Slow cooked pork is awesome- but you're talking about crock pots and pork for 200 people. I've done about 25% of that volume in slow cooked before, and that took all the pots I had and then some. I had 3 crock pots. Chicken worked well because it needed little prep and we had grills ready to rock and roll. A butterfly, a sprinkle of sazon, and drop it on the heat. Tacos work good, as do things like burgers, dogs, etc. Anything you can get out of a fast food window or in a wonderfully accomodating and friendly Gainesville raceway snackbar ( seriously. The cheese fries are doooope)  is a good call. Anything that can be cooked on a fire or in a single pot is awesome. Trackside is nothing like having a kitchen. 

My thought on the pork, was to cook it in advance . Then use my electric smoker as a hot box to re heat so that the cooking has already been done. With the electric smoker you basically have a low temp oven that is portable. We do have a year to test ideas and recipes.

I just like the overall idea and thought we have a large team to start with an looks like plenty of help. We also like the idea of giving back to some less fortunate kids, so win/win all the way around.

Fladiver64 said:

My thought on the pork, was to cook it in advance . Then use my electric smoker as a hot box to re heat so that the cooking has already been done. With the electric smoker you basically have a low temp oven that is portable. We do have a year to test ideas and recipes.

I just like the overall idea and thought we have a large team to start with an looks like plenty of help. We also like the idea of giving back to some less fortunate kids, so win/win all the way around.

That would be one way to do it- what sort of capacity is your smoker capable of? We cooked 40lbs of chicken- and that took up about 70% of a 50qt cooler. 

My thought for doing pork was to do all the big cooking the day before during the parking lot build then store and transfer in those big electric roasters that they always have dogs and kraut in at church functions. I figured I would need 8 to 10 butts, and hearing about prepping for 200 that sounds about right. I can fit 4, maybe 5 if I cut one in half, into my smoker at a time, so I'd need 12 to 13 hours to get everything cooked. Parking lot build seems to be the perfect time to do that. 

Before this thread came around, I had been thinking about flying down for challenge, buying a smoker in town for the event, then raffling it off or donating it as prize or something. Barring a good business year, I don't think I can swing this trip, but I've already done a lot of the paperwork and will be trying to do it for the next year. 

RevRico said:

My thought for doing pork was to do all the big cooking the day before during the parking lot build then store and transfer in those big electric roasters that they always have dogs and kraut in at church functions. Might drive the hotel guests nuts smelling pulled pork all night though. 

I'll leave a bottle of bourbon for poopshovel and stampie. The goods will be safe, 

One of my Twitter follower racer guys had dropped $20 into my paypal for the taco bar and I didn't realize it.  Since today is giving Tuesday, an anonymous donor is matching every RAKE donation today up to 5k, so I forwarded the $20, it got matched to $40, and it put us up to $890 total from our little taco venture that cost me around $85 to put on.  
 

berkeley yeah.  
 

excited to see what we can do for someone else's cause next year!