Welcome back everyone!

One of the first things I learned in the EBM program, was the importance of good food on film sets.  A happy crew is a productive crew and on the few shoots I’ve been on so far, it’s made a world of difference to have great food!  So when we found out we had a budget for feeding our crew, we decided that we should try and make it count.

Most of our classmates were planning on ordering various meals from Subway to Pizza, and we decided that since I live across the street that we would offer our crew a hot, fresh and healthy meal.  So with that in our minds, and Sandra’s Mexican background, we thought, why not make Tacos!

The night before the shoot, I took a trip to Superstore with my friend, and staircase builder, Mike.   We stood in the ground beef section for a good 10 minutes trying to establish what the right portion was for each person, our first thought was a quarter pound, but after thinking of McDonald’s quarter ponder, we figured we must be wrong.  We settled on a half a pound and bought 10 pounds of ground beef… big mistake!

We got home and started to cook the beef, it took 3 large frying pans going at once, each producing 2 batches of ground beef!  I poured everything in with the taco mix into a big roaster pan and stirred it all together and baked it before going to bed.

The next morning I brought the pan with me to the set, but to my surprise there was no oven!  After setting up my craft services table I walked it back home and put it in the fridge with instructions for Mike to throw it in the oven before his interview…but he forgot.

I got home with a good 30 minutes to spare before lunch, thinking I have all the time in the world, and to my surprise the ground beef was nearly frozen in the fridge! I whipped it out of there, threw on my apron and got some big mixing bowls together.  I took all of the ground beef out of the pan and spread it throughout the mixing bowls, and started re-frying it in the frying pans, dumping it back into the roaster that was warming in the oven!  I got ground beef on the floor, all over the stove top and in the oven, with no time to clean it up I figured my cats could take care of it!

I rushed back to the studio with 5 minutes to spare before we broke for lunch.  Sandra grated our huge brick of cheese while I cooked the tortillas and set up the table.

In the end the last minute scramble was worth it, our crew was incredibly happy with their lunch, and we had more than enough food to last the day……..and the rest of the week.  After lunch was over and we were cleaning up, I took the tin foil off the taco pan and saw that more than half of the meat was left!!  The EBM floor was treated to tacos for the rest of the week, and although they were thankful for that,…I’ll know better for next time!

..And for the record, kitties tummies don’t do so well with the spicy taco meat.