Chronicles of a Coach's Wife: Simple Math

I know what you're thinking. Math? What does that have to do with being a football coach's wife?  Well, when you cook for 20 people, math is a necessity.  For example, we cooked for the offensive scout team Thursday night.  Here are a couple of math problems I had to think through:

• Number of people: 17 players + Brett + me = 19 people. I rounded to 20 to make the math easier :) 
• Number of tacos: 4 tacos per person x 20 people= 80 tacos
• Taco shells came in boxes of 12 so 80 tacos/12 tacos per box = 6.67 (7 boxes)
• Amount of chicken: I made chicken tacos for Brett, Trey, and me a couple of weeks ago. 2 chicken breasts made 10 tacos.  6 chicken breasts = 30 tacos
• Amount of beef:  Quanza said she made 20 pound of meat for 16 defensive linemen.  Now that was more than I needed because we were serving all positions since it was the scout team. I cooked 8 pounds of spaghetti for 17 linebackers so I just went with that since I had chicken tacos as well.

I also made brownies and had chips and salsa and ice cream.

Tacos were much easier to make than spaghetti because all I really had to do was cook the meat, rather than cooking meat and spaghetti and trying not to let the spaghetti get cold.  Here are a few lessons I learned:

• Do not buy more than 1 4-cup bag of cheddar cheese.  I bought a lot more and will be taking it back.
• Chicken tacos are much, much more popular than beef tacos.
• Guys like queso. Buy LOTS of queso.
• Brownies and ice cream are better than cookies and ice cream.
• Cookies and cream is more popular than vanilla (Brett's told me this but I keep thinking vanilla goes better with the brownies or cookies).
• I really need to make a database to log how much of everything I bought, what I bought too much of, and what I need to buy more of in the future.

 

I was exhausted after cooking for that many people, but seeing the smile on these players faces is completely worth it.  Home-cooked meals were so good when I was in college that I'm sure they taste even better to them (being boys and bottomless pits and all).  I enjoy watching Brett interact with them.  The guys are so appreciative and polite to me too.  Makes all the math and hours of labor and cleaning seem like nothing.