Monthly Archives: March 2023

Wedding Reception Secrets From A Caterer: How To Store and Transport Hundreds of Appetizers

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A caterer’s wedding reception secrets can help a bride-to-be save big money on her wedding reception.

Caterer’s often use their freezers to stock pile freezable wedding appetizers for their busy wedding season.

Some caterers make their own appetizers. But some caterers purchase frozen appetizers from their food suppliers.

Whether a caterer prepares their appetizers from scratch, as I did when I was a caterer or they purchase pre-made appetizers from a food vendor which is very common in the catering business …
it is very likely that the appetizers will be stored in a freezer until the wedding weekend.

Just as the freezer can be a caterer’s best friend when it comes to preparing hundreds or thousands of party foods. The freezer can also become a bride’s best friend!

A freezer is one of the best investments a bride-to-be can make as she prepares for her wedding reception. By investing in a decent sized freezer, the bride will have the cold storage space that will allow her to begin amassing freezable wedding day foods, months before her wedding day.

By setting aside one morning, afternoon, or evening a week a bride can begin cooking up her own wedding reception!

Are you wondering how to store and transport all those delicious bite-size appetizers?

My secret as a caterer was to invest in clean, empty pizza boxes. Pizza boxes are an awesome way to store, freeze, and transport hundreds and hundreds of appetizers to the wedding reception.

Pizza boxes are a space saving and efficient way to store, freeze, and transport your appetizers.

1. Line the boxes with a sheet of bakery or sandwich paper.

2. Line all your appetizers up in neat rows side by side inside the lined box. Depending on the size of the appetizer, I generally was able to average between 60 to 80 wedding appetizers in a box.

3. Lay another sheet or sheets of bakery or sandwich paper on top of the appetizers.

4. Close the box.

5. Using a permanent magic marker, label the boxes in two spots. You will want to label the box for quick identification on the front side and also on the top of the box.

6. Make sure to include any special directions on the top of each box. This can be achieved with copies you can create from your computer printer or a copy machine, then cut and tape the directions to each box.

7. Wrap the box with commercial plastic wrap that can be purchased from a warehouse like Sam’s or Costco. You will want to wrap these boxes as tightly as possible. Begin by wrapping the pizza box from the bottom. Pull out a large extended length of wrap without cutting it. Then set the pizza box on top and start wrapping under and over until your box is completely secured in plastic wrap. When this is done correctly, you can literally turn the box upside down and the appetizers will not fall out of the box. As a caterer, I wrapped everything in this under, over fashion. Not only did it protect the food in the storage process, it also protected the food from accidents during transportation.

8. Put the wrapped box in the freezer and store until your wedding weekend. It is always a smart idea to monitor your freezer to be certain it is working properly.

9. If you start to run short on freezer space, get creative about places you can store food for your wedding. What about family, friends, or perhaps your church has a freezer that you can use for wedding reception storage.

10. To transport the wrapped boxes, simply stack them in clear large plastic bags. Tie the bags. This will protect the boxes of appetizers from shifting around during transportation. By all means assign this job of appetizer transport to a family member or friend. I would suggest asking a friend or family member, or hiring a staffer to be your appetizer co-ordinator for the wedding day.

11. If you have too many leftover appetizers after the wedding reception you really should not refreeze them. If you can not use them up during the weekend …why not donate them to a food bank and bless others less fortunate than yourself? Again, let a friend of family member co-ordinate the donation of excess wedding food for you.

Please keep in mind that you are dealing with perishable food and you want to be careful that all food is being handled in a safe manner and stays within safe temperature zones. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you enlist the assistance of a conscientous family member, friend, or hired assistant to help you. Don’t let this food safety aspect scare you off from self-catering or semi-catering your own wedding reception. As long as you take provisions of safety, you will not encounter any problems.

© 2006 Kathi Dameron, Kathi Dameron and Associates

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The “Break-In” Process For a New American V-Twin Motorcycle

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There’s a reason new motors are ‘tight” and not as responsive as ones that have had several miles put on them and that’s because all the moving parts haven’t “broken-in” yet. Friction is a key factor in a new motor because of how tight everything fits together and with a high amount of friction, you end up with a loss of power.

A new motor will actually work against itself until all the internal moving parts develop the wear pattern of least resistance. Because of the tight fits of the components there’s friction and friction produces heat, which in turn causes the motor to expand which causes the parts to work against each other instead of functioning in a smooth uniform way.

If you’ve just bought a new motorcycle or have installed a new motor in the one you currently own, if you start running it real hard without going through the “break-in” process, you will cause the engine to produce excess amounts of friction and heat, the number one enemy of an air cooled engine. These two elements will shorten the life of all the moving parts inside the motor and end up producing a significant amount of metal filings and grindings within the motor and that’s not a good thing.

This is the reason that someone who has taken a brand new engine and rides the crap out of it may initially experience better performance than someone who takes the time to follow a proper break-in process because the carefully broken in motor is still developing a minimum resistance wear pattern.

So which motor will last longer? Which one is faster? A correctly ridden V-Twin custom motorcycle or Harley Davidson really doesn’t get completely broken in until somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 miles. At that point, you’ll start to notice your bike will pick up speed and power because the friction on the internal parts has been gradually and carefully reduced as much as possible setting the stage for a long lasting motor.

On the other hand, the motor that has been run hard will still be running good and loose, but you can bet components such as piston rings to cylinder walls and valve to valve seat fitment is going to be aging well before its time and this will cause less compression which will affect the performance. It may not happen at 10,000 miles or even 20,000 miles, but it will happen much sooner that a properly broken-in motor.

You probably know the general rule of thumb is to ride a new motorcycle or new engine replacement at least 500 miles for the initial break-in. But the break-in process can actually happen in as little as 100 miles or as much as 800 miles depending on the metallurgy of the internal components, the type of oil used and what your riding habits are.

If you ride your motorcycle at a constant speed during the break in period, it’ll cause the rings to glaze and lose their sealing qualities. What you should do is slowly increase and decrease the revs as you go through the gears. It takes some patience to do this for 500 miles, but it will work out for you much better in the long run.

Another thing you want to try to avoid is letting a new motor sit and idle especially on a hot day. Keep in mind that the V-twin motor is air-cooled and with all the excess heat being generated from the break in of new components, you need to keep air flowing over those cooling fins. If you live in an area where it’s real hot you may want to consider night riding for your break in period. The key thing is to just use some common sense in how you treat your bike. Take care of it and it will take care of you!

Firewall Protection – A Must Have For Any Computer

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A firewall works as a security guard on your computer to stop your computer picking up nasty viruses, spyware and to stop hackers from accessing your system. This is really important because these viruses can slow down your computer and steal personal information from you. You shouldn’t just rely on a firewall on it’s own you’d also need to use an antivirus program like Norton. The anti-spyware tools and anti-virus program will work together and keep you safe from almost all threats.

A firewall is very important for any computer system. It is especially important for big computer networks where lots of people are accessing information. If a computer does not have protection it can end up getting infected really quickly with spyware and/or viruses. The bigger the network is, the higher the chances that it will be targeted. This is because hackers often target bigger networks in mainstream companies – the more users there are the more likely somebody is to make a mistake.

Spyware programs and hackers want to steal your personal information for lots of reasons. The type of information that they can take is credit card details, bank details, passwords etc. If your computer isn’t protected you’re just painting a nice big bullseye on it for hackers.

Most people don’t think that the information on their computer is of any value to anyone except themselves. However, when the information is stolen from them they suddenly realise how important computer security really is but of course then it’s too late. Hackers can even take over your computer and launch an attack on someone else through your computer which could result in you being in court defending yourself for a crime you had nothing to do with.

All this is why a good firewall is so important because it keeps your information safe. Every bit of information that goes through your computer has to pass through the firewall so it is sometimes called the bridge, or choke-point. This can stop the worst types of attacks on your computer and your files.

The firewall also stops it looking like your computer is connected to the Internet. By doing this it stops the programs that look for computers that are online to attack which can happen in just a few minutes of unprotected Internet connectivity.

You can install either a software or hardware firewall – it all depends on how much protection you need. A hardware firewall is usually only installed by large companies whereas a software firewall is enough for 99% of home computer users.

Some firewalls are made for big businesses and provide some tools very handy for businesses. These features include intrusion detection, antivirus, content filtering and spam filtering capabilities. Normally you would have all these functions on different pieces of hardware. When they are on lots of different pieces of hardware they can take up a lot of space on the server and can be difficult to maintain.

The good news is that once your software firewall is installed and configured properly it will work away quietly in the background keeping your and your data safe while you’re online.

Rent a Car in Munich – Enjoy Munich With a Car

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Munich is not only a great city but it is also a great place to spend your vacation. There are lots of great places to visit. However, you should have a car to enjoy these spectacular places in Munich. So a good idea is to rent a car in Munich if you are in this city for a short time.

So you can enjoy a lot more if you have a car in Munich.

1. Visiting Important locations become much easier:
There are number of locations that must be visited if you have come to Munich. If you haven’t visited these places then there is no use of coming to Munich. One of the most famous locations is the Chiemsee. It is also known as the Bavarian Sea and is very famous for enjoying nature and activates related to water. Also Dachau is also a well known place for the tourist. Other popular locations that you can visit are Neuschwanstein castle and Lake Starnberg. But you can visit easily to these places if you have a rented a car in Munich or else you will face lots of difficulties in visiting all these places.

2. The fun you can have if you have a car:
If you would like to enjoy then you should rent a car in Munich. It will give you the freedom and liberty to move around anywhere you want and spend as much as time.

3. Improved Car Rental Services in Munich
The car rental services in Munich have improved in the last few years. The distribution of car rental services in Munich is very systemic now-a-days. The earlier trend was to rely on the gut-feelings to decide on the distributions of car rental services in Munich. However, there is whole systematic process now so tourists enjoy a lot more when they rent a car in Munich.

So, if you are interested in enjoying Munich city then you must rent a car in Munich. It is better to book your car in advance and take your car directly from Airport.