Come Dine With Me!

Gloomtastic!

Trying to get the fundraising committee of my kids' school interested in running a Come Dine With Me competition. Still working out the rules but basically 5 parents go to a host parent's house where they get fed 3 courses.

The host pays for the food while the guests pay €20 each. So €100 per meal is raised for the school.

It's been knocked back due to the belief that cost of hosting the meal will be exhorbitant. I beg to differ.

What would you cook/serve if you are trying to impress people but keep cost to a minimum?

Jezek

I did this, and it was expensive. To combat this we double-hosted .

To cut down costs - home made ravioli with mushroom filling and walnut sauce.
main course we did lamb, it was expensive in the end. Your protein is usually what costs you. I would maybe go for a cheap cut of beef, for example you could make a neapolitan ragu with housekeepers cut or other cheap cut, or beef cheeks, etc.
DEssert - I made chocolate lava cake. Not pricey at all, some cocoa, sugar, butter, flour...

The wine or a nice craft beer, again here the costs creep up.

Oranage2

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Trying to get the fundraising committee of my kids' school interested in running a Come Dine With Me competition. Still working out the rules but basically 5 parents go to a host parent's house where they get fed 3 courses.

The host pays for the food while the guests pay €20 each. So €100 per meal is raised for the school.

It's been knocked back due to the belief that cost of hosting the meal will be exhorbitant. I beg to differ.

What would you cook/serve if you are trying to impress people but keep cost to a minimum?

so somebody has to say 100 euro plus the price of a meal in a week? sounds very expensive.

MissFlitworth

If I wanted to do this and bring the costs down I'd probably stick to 2 courses and make it BYO, so the host doesn't have to buy wine or beers for 6 as well as the food. Then I'd make something slow cooked that people might not necessarily have had before, pulled pork, carnitas, braised beef. Ooh - or a pie or something. Or I'd have a theme, my particular thing that I can cook tends to be Mexican food of some description and people haven't often had non Old El Paso Mexican food so it goes down well. And I'd go all out on the presentation to hide the fact that people aren't sitting down to slap of ribeye each.

Gloomtastic!

Oranage2 wrote: »

so somebody has to say 100 euro plus the price of a meal in a week? sounds very expensive.

No. Each guest pays €20 each to attend. The host pays for food.

Faith

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

No. Each guest pays €20 each to attend. The host pays for food.

But is it a rotation, like on come dine with me? Because then that would be 5 x €20, and cost of food the night you host the night you host.

Gloomtastic!

Faith wrote: »

But is it a rotation, like on come dine with me? Because then that would be 5 x €20, and cost of food the night you host the night you host.

Ah now I get you, sorry! No it's a one-off night.

There's enough school gate politics already without making it worse!!! :rolleyes:

Faith

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Ah now I get you, sorry! No it's a one-off night.

There's enough school gate politics already without making it worse!!! :rolleyes:

Ah okay. Maybe you'd overcome the resistance a bit better if you relabelled it a dinner party? People might assume there's 5 or so nights of it involved if it's being labelled CDWM. There's also a winner involved with CDWM, which wouldn't apply here.

Cost definitely doesn't have to be high, but the problem is that impressive food typically costs more. If I were doing CDWM, my menu would have a lot of luxury food on it. I wouldn't make a cottage pie that costs €10 for ingredients, for instance.

Maybe if it were a vegetarian dinner, that would save substantially on costs. But you'd need a willing chef and guests and many people (myself included!) would be less enticed by a vegetarian evening.

Oranage2

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Ah now I get you, sorry! No it's a one-off night.

There's enough school gate politics already without making it worse!!! :rolleyes:

Oh I get you now, it's just a dinner party and not really a come dine with you type scenario.

personally I don't get it but I'm sure some people would be interested.

What about asking 10 plus people, all donate 15e and each person must bring a large dish and have it as an all you can eat buffet style. Have it in the school hall and make it a theme night like Debs, or cowboy and Indians.

or you could make it a cdwm type thing and have your 5 people bring a large dish, everyone tries everything and then they pick the best one.

Melendez

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Gloomtastic!

Melendez wrote: »

In my opinion, it would cost the host at least €100 plus a lot of hard work in preparation of food and lodgings. Maybe the hosts should just donate that €100 and sod the dinner party?

And miss out on the opportunity to get pissed with some of my fellow parents, make a complete fool of myself and have to see them everyday for the next 8 years? Ah shure it'll be grand!

Melendez

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The Hill Billy

Melendez wrote: »

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Good idea. A bit more Can't Cook, Won't Cook than CDWM, format-wise.