March 29th

So, hello there. After barely recovering from the first week, and grocery shopping like a madwoman, it was time to prepare for week two. How to quickly and easily feed a crowd? I seem to fall back on lasagna often, it's almost universally loved, and it's easy to liven it up with some vegetables or nice cheeses and so on. So, armed with lasagna noodles, I prepared and assembled 2 trays of it to go in the fridge the night before, so all I had to do was bake it off the next day. There is no way to underestimate the value of having something prepared way ahead of time, especially since it was beginning to look like completely insane, last minute schedule changes are a way of life on film sets. I was even feeling extra charitable and managed to put away some cookie dough in the freezer so I could bake off cookies at a moment's notice. But after assembling 2 lasagnas loaded with 3 kinds of cheese, beef and of course lasagna noodles, what on earth could I do for the people who can't (or won't) eat dairy products, meat, or gluten? Vegetarian lasagna is do-able, you could maybe concoct something without cheese and still pretend it's lasagna, but you can't take out the lasagna noodles. Better instead to put together a ratatouille, which can go in the oven with the lasagnas. It is much better to have ratatouille in late summer of course, with local vegetables, but it is still quite nice if you just avoid the pale tomatoes and use canned ones instead, which are actually picked and canned at a ripe stage. Did I mention how much fun it is to buy the enormous cans you see sometimes at the bottom of the grocery shelves?

Ratatouille is a natural paired with quinoa to soak up the juices, and then it is a complete meal including protein, since quinoa is very high in that. I made a larger batch of quinoa because my lesson from the first week, when we had the donated food from Hibiscus, is that it is very helpful to have a variety of already prepared salads on hand for the people with dietary restrictions, because it takes longer to make food that way. And people with severe dietary restrictions really, really appreciate seeing some variety, and having a choice of a few different things they can eat. I have been around film sets prior to this one, so I know that the craft services that are normally provided offer people little to no choice or variety, which is just plain depressing whether you have dietary restrictions or not. As the lasagna was baking, Iris' old friend Mary came by to help on set, and she had picked up some items donated for us by the Niagara Falls Bulk Barn. I don't even know where to start on how useful Mary was in the kitchen, it is such a pleasure to be around someone who is such a hard worker and has such a great sense of humour about everything. In the box she brought there was some candy and peppermints that got devoured nearly instantly, and I was very happy to see some corn chips, another snack that the gluten-free people can go to town on. I had managed to make it to Bulk Barn on the weekend, it is so much easier to tackle the problem of feeding people adequately when you have a pantry that includes regular and gluten-free flours, dried fruits, nuts, spices, grains and other dry goods. Bulk Barn also saved me a heap of money for covering the snack problem. I have also learned that people who work on film crews are inveterate snackers, endlessly nibbling at food both healthy and unhealthy. It took me a little while to catch on to this, since I am the type of person who would just prefer to concentrate on the big meal (and didn't I have enough to do in this regard?). Thankfully, at the start of week 2 I was ready for this with huge bags of candy, crackers, corn nuts, chocolate, and chips. My plan was also to balance this out by making sure there were also trays of fresh fruit available, and to my great satisfaction the fruit was a big hit, and not difficult to prepare.