Recipe for success at Games a mammoth undertaking

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How do you make breakfast for 4,000 athletes?

Take 26,000 boxes of cold cereal, sprinkle with 20 pounds of brown sugar, and add 50,000 25-millilitre cartons of milk. Set on the table 50 cases (100 per case) of peanut butter, strawberry jam, honey and Chez Whiz and 200 cases of syrup (120 per case).

There you have a winning recipe for more than 4,000 junior athletes, coaches and officials participating in the 1993 North American Indigenous Games running in Prince Albert July 18-25. If those numbers are staggering, they're just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.

Athletes need fruit and somebody's orchard will be picked clean for the competitors. The Games commission has ordered some 7,00 apples, 7,728 oranges, 3,300 bananas, 2,100 pounds of grapes, 100 honey dew melons, 100 cantaloupe and 250 kilograms of watermelon for breakfast alone.

Wash all this down with more milk, 100,000 250-millilitre cartons of Vico or 100,000 250-millilitre cartons of juice and you may get an idea of the scope of duties Games meal planners have.

Whitney LaCoix, Norm McKay and Randy Bear, food services co-ordinators, have had their hands (and cupboards and freezers) full planning, ordering and preparing some of the biggest meals this city of approximately 33,000 has ever seen.

Take salads for instance. A tossed salad sounds simple enough until one becomes bogged down in the numbers. Start with the lettuce. Let's see, we'll shred 960 heads of iceberg and throw in 72 more heads of romaine. Or why not cabbage? We'll shred 236 k of that.

Then slice 100 pounds of cucumbers, chop 34 k of onions, mix up 45 k of green peppers, and dice eight cases of celery. That should be enough to feed the hoards of hungry athletes.

Also on the menu: 636 L of a variety of pickles, 158 k of various cheeses, 1,300 potatoes, 297 k of mixed vegetables, 297 k of kernel corn, 135 k of carrots, 135 k of turnips and 270 k pounds of peas.

Don't want spuds? Then also on tap will be 270 k of spaghetti, 1,058 k of other assorted pasta, 90 k of rice and 79 k of wild rice.

Hungry athletes need meat. Meals will consist of 7,000 orders (three pieces per order) of chicken, 405 k of ham, lean ground beef, rabbit meat, stew meat, 450 k or roast beef and 150 dozen wieners.

And for dessert, 672 k of instant pudding will be mixed as well as 45 cases of Jello. For toppings, there's 154 k of frozen strawberries and 20 cases (six 100-ounce cans per case) of fruit cocktail. And, to make these all lip-smacking good, why not indulge with 60 cases of whipped topping?

There is a saying: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach". In the case of the Indigenous Games athletes, how about coining a new phrase: "The way to the winner's circle is through a happy stomach"?