Chicken fried steak and gravy,mashed potatoes and green beans.I bought a couple of round roasts the other day on sale and am cutting off steaks from them.My back is killing me so I may change my mind before time to cook.LOL Also have some fresh strawberries that I sliced and sugared last night.Maybe strawberry shortcake for desert.

Well for lunch, I had Mrs. Murphy's Meatballs. They are a kind of porcupine meatball I found online with onion, cabbage, celery, green pepper and rice in the meatballs. I used Campbell's Vegetable Beef soup (ABC noodles) rather than the tomato soup to cook them in. I like that flavor better, which a friend used in her porcupine meatballs eons ago. You put them in the frying pan with the soup and a 1/2 can water raw. Cook them 45 minutes on low, turn them over for another 45 minutes, add a little more water if necessary. Nice lunch.

Egg fu yung!! Yum! That is my most favorite Asian dinner item........not bad for brunch, either :-) I have made it several time myself but it never quite matches the deliciousness of the Chinese take-out kind. Unfortunately, the only decent Chinese restaurants in the vicinity are at least a half hour drive and a ferry ride away. I will often pick up an order to go when I am over on that side. Oddly, we have all manner of great ethnic restaurants where I live - Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Greek, Italian, Mexican by the bucketful - but NO Chinese!! What's up with that?? I fixed spaghetti and meatballs with jarred marinara and frozen meatballs :-) Fast and easy but more leftovers than I need!

If this is the first time for doing this and you have just over three weeks to organize and pull it off, limit what you do so that you can be sure to do it well. . Keep it simpler and you will be more successful and be able to build in the future. It sounds like you are responsible for getting pricing for the groceries, but also at least to some degree determining the menu and what those groceries will be. Pancakes, butter and syrup are given. Do you want to provide vegan or GF options or figure that GF folks will expect pancakes not to be their thing and be satisfied with generic pancakes being vegetarian? If you do decide to provide GF and/or vegan options, I would say so on any publicity for the event. Since it is a dinner, you could consider adding eggs for more protein/substance, and it could be a GF option. Scrambled are easiest -- and you may be buying eggs for the pancakes. Bacon is great, but it is harder to cook a lot of it to correct doneness and it is messier. Sausage or ham are easier to deal with for crowds. Since this is Shrove Tuesday aka Fat Tuesday, it might be fun to have whipped cream, chocolate chips and some berries. The baked apples sound good too, but both of these could reduce baked good sales if you want to add the bake sale on the side. Decide whether you would rather have just the dinner and both provide and charge a bit more or do the bake sale. I have also seen dessert auctions where towards the end of the meal, people bid on a whole cake or pie. This works best with family events where folks tend to come for the entire event rather than just come, eat and go. You could adapt the idea to coffee cakes, muffins and other take home items since many will have had all the sweet they can handle with pancakes and syrup -- with or without whipped cream, etc. You can do some pricing online. Sam's allows you to shop online and pick up at the warehouse, so you should be able to shop and price their options online. I think Walmart does also, though not all items may be in stock at the stores, so you might have to order in advance. Costco has different pricing online and I'm not sure they have the same order and pick up. They also don't typically give prices over the phone. If you were starting 6 months out, you could do a lot more research (mixes, scratch recipes, stores, etc. -- and maybe drive yourself nuts with it all, but given what you said about Krusteaz, I decided to take a look. Interestingly, Sam's and Walmart both have Krusteaz Buttermilk complete 10 lb bags with pricing shown online -- and Walmart runs slightly cheaper than Sam's -- about $7.50 vs $8. The info says that makes 240 pancakes (not what size) and all you add is water -- so that is your total cost for pancakes. The nutritional info says 90 servings per bag -- I'd guess you might do larger pancakes for dinner and maybe serrve as few as 50 guests peer bag -- but that's still 15 cents per person. And Krusteaz will reimburse half of that? I would go buy a smaller box of the mix and make a test batch this weekend. If you are happy with them, I'd stop worrying about the pancakes and move on. You can hardly make it easier or cheaper than that. Move on to sausage or ham, syrup, butter, plates, napkins, forks and knives and beverage options (since it's dinnerr, you can get away with iced tea, lemonade and water -- maybe add coffee) then decide if you want to add anything else. Have you set a price for the dinner? Do you have any idea how many people you might be serving? Will you sell tickets in advance (helps you can get an idea -- rough idea if you also do at the door sales)? I think you probably have enough to deal with without trying to get sponsorships or donations -- I would consider those things to consider adding next year. Those things take more time than you have to do successfully. You often have to go back, call and follow up a number of times to get an answer or work out details. Have I made this long enough to lose you yet? LOL Sorry