I hope LindaC sees this as she does a good number of church function meals for her community and can give you some great advice.

Are you talking 50 or 500? I usually make the cornbread for thousands!! Dessert for a crowd could be apple crisp (lots of apples, whole wheat flour mixed with butter or whatever, cinnamon and sugar, cover the top of the apples and baked). The work is peeling all those apples, the rest is simplicity and speed. Any amount of cooked, somewhat warm pasta (not spaghetti!)goes with Newman's Own Caesar Salad Dressing, in the fridge overnight and presto - cold summer pasta salad. Put some frozen peas in there, even better. No using the oven in this weather, even better. This is not gourmet, you understand, just huge amounts of fairly cheap to prepare food and most everybody will eat it. this is just off the top of my head, as I'm taking a beak when I should be working..........batya

My favorite standby is black beans,corn.mango and salsa served with chips. Filling and healthy and best of all easy and fast.

Thanks for the ideas, batya! (Is that your name? It reminds me of the Ukrainian name for grandmother: babtsya) I don't think I should try for gourmet -- just really tasty.

You can make a tasty pasta salad by just substituting pasta for potatoes in a potato salad. Not your fanciest, but it's common enough ingredients that you will not 'scare off' people who might not be expecting gourmet food. Simple and tasty is the key for institutional style cooking.

A typical Sunday meal at my house for family is ten or more. LOL. What I have problems with is cutting it down to two people who eat like they're four.

Most of the better online cooking sites give the serving numbers for all their dishes, and I think you'll find that the typical sheet cake will accomodate ten people.

Well....I am probably too late, but in the interests that you or someone may do it again, I will second the pasta salad...in fact I will be making a pasta salad for about 60 on Tuesday.
I make a vinaigrette dressing. It's easy, cheap and I have found that a lot of people don't want "mayonnais-ey things"...go figure.
I chop veggies while the pasta is boiling, add dressing to the veggies, drain and rinse the pasta and throw it all together.
The veggies always include some onion, cucumber and blanched carrot buttons and can include peppers of all colors, broccoli, fresh green beans, zucchini chunks, fresh mushrooms, frozen peas, asparagus, pea pods etc etc.
The dressing is 1/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup prepared dijon mustard, 2 or 3 cloves of crushed garlic, 2/3 cup vinegar, half cider vinegar and half cheap balsamic and 1 cup of olive oil....whisk together, add 2 teaspoons of dried oregano and 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese.
A pound of fusilli or mini penne with 4 or 5 cups of veggies will easily serve 30 to 35 as a side to a sandwich.
If you are watching the pennies, use fewer veggies and corn oil instead of olive oil.

And I second the idea of fruit crisps or upside down cake.
I plan on cutting a 1/2 sheet pan into 40 servings, but plan on some eating 2 pieces. Also a recipe for Texas Sheet cake feeds a lot fairly cheaply.
Good luck!
Linda C

I used to go to pot lucks for, believe it or not, Amway and made killer enchilada casserole. Start with hamburger or meat of choice, add re fried beans, cheese, chilies, salsa and some Campbell soups, mushroom, cheese, onion etc. Layer with tortillas and throw it in the oven till it looks melted enough. Fills a turkey roaster. A typical bachelor dish mostly from cans. Always disappeared.

This might be a regional thing, but this time of year cucumber and onion salad is cheap and easy. The one I made for tomorrow family reunion is sliced cukes and onions thin, then mix 2 cups water, one cup white vineger, 1/2 cuup sugar, pour over, salt and pepper, refrigerate over night. Or a simple vinergerette is good with it, and add tomoatoes.

If you are having cornbread, a pasta salad is just another carb, though. So is a cake.

If you have to make a choice between a pasta salad or dessert, you could incorporate something with fruit in it, and kill two birds with one stone and make it a more balanced choice. When faced with an identical situation for a church luncheon where I had to come up with salad servings for about 75 people I hiked it down to the local market who had a section of shelves with institutional sized foods and bought a couple huge cans of peach halves and a huge tub of cottage cheese and stuffed the pears with it. Laid them on a lettuce leaf and topped them with maraschino cherries. The church secretary had given me the wrong date for the luncheon, so I went directly to the local charity kitchen and dropped them off there.

They were thrilled with them. They disappeared immediately. It was summer (hot) and they looked fancy (but were not), and I didn't have to really cook them (bought). And it added their servings of dairy protein, fruit and veggie. People on limited budgets or who must eat at places with limited budgets get enough processed flour. Sometimes it's nice to get something light. I also used to donate fresh organic farm eggs there by the dozen when the hens were laying heavily, also garden produce like tomatoes and green peppers. The cooks always said they appreciated that sort of stuff in summer, because the it was hard for the budget to stretch to fresh 'green' items.

Thanks, LindaC -- it's not too late, the dinner I'm cooking for isn't until mid-August. Calliope, excellent points; I guess I was thinking of "comfort food" rather than nutrition, but perhaps I'll bring one of each, since I'm a new volunteer, and see what happens. Do you recommend baking in disposeable foil pans? I'm tempted to use real bakeware and pinch some catering platters from the office....