What food do you want to eat at DrupalCon Paris?...

Use this wiki to suggest the food that you want to see at DrupalCon Paris. Please be as specific as possible. We are also discussing the issues.

We need attractive, delicious and healthy food at DrupalCon to keep us all awake, alert and most productive. Having attractive food will encourage people to stay in the venue for lunch and so increasing the value of the event as a space for people to network together.

Proposed Menu

It seems the caterer wants to present us with bite sized bits of food that we can eat on the go or load on to a plate but which does not require cutlery. Here's what could ask for:

• Salad bowls - tongs must be provided to avoid contamination
  • Carrot sticks
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Cucumber sticks
  • Celery sticks
  • Lettuce leaves small (suggest Lettuce Little Gem variety http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?id=817)
• Dips - serving spoons must be provided to avoid contamination
  • Hummus
  • Tzatziki
  • Guacamole
• Meat on a stick:
  • Tuna and Salmon
  • Chicken
  • Beef
• Carbohydrates
  • Bread slices
  • Sautéed potatoes
• Dessert:
  • Fruits (suggest we avoid really exotic fruits as they will deteriorate very fast):
  • Apples, Pears, Oranges and Bananas
• Drinks:
  • From water fountain with bottle. Make sure it's pure spring water.
  • Coffee, tea and hot water and selection of herbal teas.

Previous Notes

Salads

• All salad dressings must be on the side: including olive oil, lemon juice, vinaigrette and any "mysterious mayonnaise".
• Carrot sticks. But have to be cut fresh in the morning as cut carrots tend to get a bit manky if left for too long.
• Green leaves: lettuce; although baby spinach keeps fresh longer
• Fresh sprouts

Vegetarian

• Ratatouille
  • Simple with no vinegar. See: http://www.beyond.fr/food/ratatouille.html
  • Benefit: can be served hot or cold
  • Risk: could be messy if spilt
• Soup:
  • Risk: could be messy if spilt
  • Tomato
  • Lentil
• Hummus
  • Benefit: it is served cold
  • Risk: near pure fat [objection: near pure fat?? Nearly pure chick peas with some tahini, garlic and lemon ... not even any olive oil in it]
• Falafel
  • Benefit: can be served hot or cold
  • Risk: fat and thirst-inducing (reduce fat by frying them less)
• Most vegetarians like protein included in a meal
  • protein = soy, legumes+grains, etc.
  • for ovo-lacto vegetarians, add dairy & eggs
• Vegetarians are diverse, avoid the tendency to pigeonhole them
  • some are strict vegans
  • some aren't strict vegetarians, but simply avoid certain types of meat, and/or eat meat sparingly
  • because of this, three meal options tend to be better than two (avoid a choice between only a vegan meal and a beef meal, for example)

Meat

• Local smoked fish: Mackerel is generally the cheapest fish around but it also has excellent healthy oils in it. Is it locally fished in France? Can be served cold.
• Chicken: what kind?
• Soup: What kind?
• Can we get away with just providing fish and chicken? Can we all do without red meet and shellfish for a few days?
• Some fish/chicken curry would be a great option

Carbohydrates

• Bread: baguettes? Is a brown alternative needed? Mixture of bread is always weelcome.
• Rice: Brown rice is more healthy but most people only know about white rice. What to do? (is this event about education?)
• Basmati rice has the lowest Glycemic index - even lower than brown rice - making it an ideal carbohydrate for diabetics
• Potatoes: come in many forms. Which do we choose?
• Rice cakes/crackers.
• Crisps.

Fruit

• What types and how many per person will we need?
  (apple / banana / pear / peach) are all easy to handle.
  I'd say one piece per person on average should be sufficient
  Offer fruits which are in season and purchased from local farmers, i.e. grapes, plums, berries

Drinks

• Water - use of water coolers in Szeged worked well, but ran out too often
• Cold drinks - were provided in Szeged but not enough to go around
• Coffee

Food Allergy Concerns

• Serve the following ingredients separate from all the courses as alternative condiments:
  • Nuts (walnuts, filberts, macadamias (too expensive), etc.)
  • Peanuts (and related products)
  • Sesame Seeds (and related products like humus)
  • Mayonnaise
  • Fava Beans (see why)
• Gluten-free:
  • Offer at least one alternative to wheat products (semolina pasta, baguettes, seitan, TVP, etc.) for people with wheat allergies and celiac disease.

Website

• Googlemap of health food stores or alternative supermarkets:
  • This would be helpful for people who wouldn't mind buying their own food alternatives like goat milk, gluten-free cereal, etc.

Logistics

• Use metal cutlery and washable plates to reduce our landfill/carbon footprint.
• Use local produce where possible.
• Avoid packaging and waste as much as possible.
• Where appropriate have messages saying number of items to load on a plate so everyone can have one.
• Rather than having a big long table we should have say 4 to 6 different table sets where people can get the same food. That would help with the bottleneck of queuing.
• Keep in mind we are targeting somewhere between 600-700 attendees.
• Sanitary serving - don't want to get poisoned - can we have servers?
• What about portions sizes. How do we keep these sane? Have small plates?
• Days 2 to 4 main food days - one day of beef and chicken. Other days will be fish and one of either chicken/turkey/duck. (Who needs to kill animals to survive this conference?)
• Sandwiches for days 1 and 5
• Best meal on the first day - day 2.

Notes

• Many thanks for the great feedback from the polls (on Healthy food at DrupalCon: what sounds like the best option to you? and twtpoll). There was a good number of votes and comments. It's obvious that around 75% of us want to go for the "Free buffet: people can choose between different sets of vegetables, fruits, bread..." rather than "Prepared sets, including vegetarian alternatives (salads for example)"...

• Let's err on the side of quality rather than purely quantity and also keeping things simple rather than fancy (like mysterious sandwich topping combinations! ;-). So, "simple healthy quality" are the watchwords. Let's also encourage people not to load mountains on their plates and so leaving the enough of the "best things" for everyone. We can do this by saying "please take up to one/two of these" next to a dish perhaps.

• Do we need to do a poll to see how many people are vegetarian, vegan, celiac (intolerant to gluten/wheat) or what else? If so, should/could this be poll be within the user profile on the DC website?

• Not sure what the cost issues are for serving hot food as opposed to cold food but please bear this in mind and give options for an all cold buffet as that could be cheaper.

• From the comments so far I've tried to collate how we would set up the buffet...