I catered my first film set back in April 2015 as a last minute favor for my husband.

My hubby was directing his first independent feature film and, by the time production started, he hadn’t given much thought to how they would be feeding the cast and crew.

With no planning and no idea of what to expect, I accepted the challenge of feeding 20 people on set for 13 days while keeping the food budget on track! What a mind blowing, and exhausting, experience!

After my first day and a bit of confusion, I realized that I would need to provide meals for the vegetarians and the dairy-free folks. I would also need to provide regular meal options. I quickly got on board with the idea of learning about different eating styles and I was able to please just about everybody.  There was one exception…a crew member who had a preference for fast food! I just wasn’t able to make anything that came close to those drive through services! We’ll chalk this up as a partial success, I pleased most of the people, most of the time.

I fed this film mostly what I made for my family. I was still cooking for my family during production…my youngest, who was 7 at the time, wouldn’t have understood if he didn’t have dinner on the table each night. The easiest way I figured I could fit this unexpected catering job into my schedule was to shop for and make mass amounts of whatever I had on the family menu for the day! Of course, if I was making chicken enchiladas I would also make a tray of vegetarian enchiladas and include a separate meal that was dairy-free. As you can imagine, this set ate a lot of family style casseroles…but I was told it was nice to get a sense of home cooking and that indie film sets are notoriously known for pizza and red vines.

What an exciting journey that was! From that first experience, I’ve been hooked! Each time the hubby makes a new film and asks if I’m on board, I go all in!

Had I known, at the time, that this blog would exist in my future…I would have taken more (and better) food pictures. However, I didn’t know. Here are the only pictures, of food, that I have from that first experience on set. Enjoy…

Since I have limited food pics to share, enjoy a picture of me and the beautiful and talented Alicia Minshew! She’s a sweetie and had nice things to say about the food even on the day I wasn’t very proud of what I served. Yeah, that happened…I might share my food fail at some later point in time.

And for your amusement, a behind the scenes picture of me and Nadia Bjorlin on break. Is that big cup full of real whiskey? Everyone likes to have a little fun at work! I wasn’t serving whiskey with lunch but I do know an empty bottle was required as a prop…you can’t let the whiskey go to waste!