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I am the head of an events committee for the city that I live in. I basically am in charge of all of the local themed events that go on, whether it’s holiday related or a different type of theme. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work.

The weekend on Halloween we throw a great big Halloween party. It starts at 7pm and goes until about midnight. We don’t provide dinner, but we offer a bar and hors d’œuvres, kind of like a cocktail party.

Over the last couple of years, as the pandemic died down, the party took on a life of its own. It was like people needed to get back out and join civilization again. Needless to say, we needed to recruit more help for the event.

We had a meeting and decided that we would outsource what we could, but that we would get all hands on deck and help with whatever food and decorations we would need. We had an insane amount of RSVPs to the party, so we’d have to stretch our budget as far as we could.

We actually assigned small groups to do specific things: some for decorations and the others for food. I was overseeing the food, so I just put myself in both groups. One was for beverages and the other for actual food. I knew my work was cut out for me.

I had some time to plan, so I sat down and really did a deep dive into my research. What I found was both shocking but promising. My blood pressure started to lower as I realized this was a task that I could handle.

My research told me that everything we needed to get done in large batches could get done with the groups that we had. There were several recipes available for both categories. I just needed to purchase at least one food processor for each group.

I looked into what I could get and where. I found a company called Kitchen Worksinc. I made the decision to purchase a few of the Cuisinart Custom 14 Food Processors. I got 2 for the committee: 1 for each group, and I personally bought one for myself that I could use as a helper for each group and then in the end I could keep it, since I paid for that one with my own money.

For the drink specific group, we came up with 2 themed cocktails and 2 themed mocktails. So to help with those, I made all of the stuff ahead in mine, which included pureeing fruit for mocktails and also to infuse with liquor. I knew the two drinks were going to be frozen margaritas and frozen slushy drinks. They would make these up ahead of time and freeze them, then just lightly blend them with smaller blenders when it came time to serve.

In terms of food, I chopped a lot of vegetables up ahead of time for whatever hors d’ouvrés we were serving. I made up a lot of dough for different tarts and whatnot, and also I whipped up all of the dipping sauces as well. These again were all things we could freeze until the day of.

All I can say is thank goodness for the Cuisinart food processors. They were an absolute life saver in a pinch. Even not in a pinch, I think I still would have handled everything the same way, just not necessarily by the seat of my pants. Now that I know what a wonderful option it is, I plan to use it a lot more often.

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