Sahuaro’s very own culinary arts program provided catering service at the Cougar Foundation’s Hall of Fame event this past Saturday. Students prepped and cooked breakfast items to serve to the members who attended.

For an event this big, a plethora of planning needs to be done to make everything run smoothly. So what did the planning consist of? “We started preparing a week before for what was going to be on the menu… Day of, we prepared all of the food we needed,” says culinary instructor Ms.Thomas. The day before, students did all of the preparations for the ingredients needed to cook the next morning. This consists of chopping fruit, panning bacon, and organizing everything that would be needed in the morning. The students dedicated their whole day the day before to make sure everything was ready. All of the preparations took a total of five class periods (give or take 5 hours). On the morning of the catering, students arrived at school at 5 a.m. to be able to have everything set in time. Between set up and cooking time, it took 3 hours to prepare everything for the big event. When 8:30 a.m. came around, the students were excited and ready to serve the people.

“It was amazing… people liked the food and we got lots of good feedback…” Senior Kyle Arnold said, a participant in the event catering. “We had to come up with a list of food…there was a lot of prep we had to do as well.” They made items such as muffins, pancakes, fruit salad, and even a build-your-own-omelet bar. To contribute to the event, Kyle came in early to help prep meats and move the kitchen items they needed down to the gym. When the event started, he poured drinks for guests.
Junior Everest Giuffre is a culinary student that decided to participate as well. “I was the lead. I was floating and making sure everything was set up… I just generally worked around everywhere.” His favorite thing about working the catering was “…all the cooking we did…I made a lot of muffins that day.”

How did the foundation members feel and react to the food? “People liked the food… there were a lot of generous compliments and everyone was very polite,” says Kyle. Everest and Kyle expressed that the event was very successful. Both of them had positive things to say about the reactions from the foundation members. The catering was so successful that students ended up on the local news station, KGUN 9, and they were interviewed about the experience.

Overall, the catering event was a great learning experience. Participants said they had fun participating and would love to do it again. Culinary plans to do more catering events in the future, and they plan to serve a variety of foods. Does culinary excite you? The class is always looking for new people who are interested! If you would like to join culinary, visit room 130 during conference period for more information.

Thank you to all the Culinary students who participanted: