For a Thanksgiving celebration, cafeteria manager Mandy Saunders and her staff took nearly 60 pounds of onions and celery, plus 290 apples, pears and oranges and invested $2,000 to make a lunch for the entire school on Thursday, Nov. 20.

“This meal requires a lot of work,” Saunders said. “My employees and I spend an extra 30 minutes a day starting the Monday before nearly a week in advance doing tedious but rewarding work, like measuring ingredients. Everything before Thursday is just prep work, surprisingly. We don’t officially ‘cook’ until Thursday.”

Students were served turkey with sage stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce, cinnamon pears and homemade pumpkin pie.

“I love all the items we have this year, but the oven roasted turkey is my overall favorite,” Saunders said. “The stuffing goes along really well with it. The green beans are definitely a close second, though.”

Besides herself, Saunders had 14 chefs along with roughly 40 NJROTC volunteers to assist the whole process. The volunteers cleaned dishes, took out trash, and ran food from place to place.

“This day is probably one of the most stressful days of the year for me,” Saunders said.  “I just worry about making sure we don’t run out of food, that it tastes good, and that everything is as perfect as possible. Having the volunteers really helped since they easily helped wherever it was necessary.”

Finally, the cafeteria served enough food for 1,500 students and staff for three separate lunch periods, eating nearly all the items offered. These different periods let the staff restock all the food.

“Overall, the staff put together a delicious Thanksgiving meal,” freshman Matt Garbutt said. “I could tell that a lot of time and effort was put into this. My favorite food was by far the cinnamon pears. The cinnamon really made the pears even better, which surprised me. This was by far the best school meal of the year, and one of the best Thanksgiving celebrations.”