Christmas is the busy season

By Brandee Hayhurst Times-News

    Hovering over a scale, Cheryl Carden began the process of weighing out eight pounds of flour and other dry ingredients. It was noon at Cherlafay Catering in Haw River, and she and her partner, Lael Jordan, had already delivered a breakfast.
    They planned to roll out at 5:15 p.m. Thursday with dinner for 100 people at a company function in Orange County.
    "I’m making fresh yeast rolls, somewhere around 125 to 130 of them," Carden said. "We do all kinds of bread, but this is the basic one people like to have with their meal."
    Families get pretty busy this time of year shopping, baking and cooking for 10 or 20. But imagine cooking for 50 or more like caterers do. Many times over. For weeks.
    "We haven’t seen our husbands much these past three weeks," Carden said.
    Michael Thomas, one of the owners of Events Unlimited in Burlington, said they also do much of their business in the weeks after Thanksgiving.
    In fact, his workers "served in the neighborhood of 1,600 people just on catered functions last week."
    That doesn’t include the constant customers picking up their red velvet and brownstone front cakes, which will continue sliding out of ovens until noon Saturday.
    For those who are wondering what the latter cake is, "it’s a chocolate layer with a cooked, caramelized icing" and their most popular item, Thomas said.
    Thursday night was Cherlafay’s last job before Christmas, though next week they’ll return to prepare for a New Year’s Eve wedding. Carden will take a well-deserved weekend off from cooking other than whipping together a coconut cake. Her mother, Faye Staley, will make Christmas dinner.
    Staley also has helped out at the catering business however she can, on this day wrapping bundles of silverware.
    Jordan said she is still planning to cook up her family’s traditional Christmas breakfast.
    "We always cook a whole country ham," she said. "We cook it all night."
    Jordan rattled off the catering menu while she stirred together an aromatic concoction of mushrooms, onions and beef tips. Beef tips over rice pilaf, chicken cordon bleu, green beans with basil and cherry tomato, and apple bread pudding are some of the star attractions.
    "Some red wine and all kind of stuff ’s in there," Jordan said over her bubbling pot. "It was probably about 30 pounds of meat to start with."
    Carden and Jordan were looking forward to putting up their feet after a long workday that started at 6 a.m.
    "And we’ll probably get home about midnight," Jordan said.
Brandee Hayhurst can be reached at brandee_hayhurst@link.freedom.com