No offense, @Sclavus, but it sounds a little like you're falling victim to the same impulses that made you want to have colonels in charge of platoons. For the amount of money you'd spend feeding sixty people with real cheddar sandwiches and pancakes and such, you could feed a hundred with a decent-tasting meatloaf, big vats of mashed potatoes or rice, and other such lower-cost, lower prep intensity things. There's an episode of MASH where Hawkeye takes over the kitchen and tries to instuct the cooks on how to make an omelette. Head cook then pours a fifty pound sack of powdered eggs into the massive mixing machine and just stares at him.
I do have that tendency, which is why I ask questions like I did. I lack information, and often shoot for what I think is a good idea, knowing full well there are problems with it. I just don't have any idea what the problems are when I ask the question. @Homer Potvin helped me scale things back, and I'm grateful. I've scaled down the kitchen, and instead of serving really good food for every meal, it'll be okay food most of the time, with occasional goodies for holidays, and probably store-bought stuff. I'm sticking to a Continental breakfast, and soup for lunch. Maybe they'll have store-bought doughnuts with breakfast because it's Halloween. Beyond that, they just have to make it to lunch before the place gets burned down, but I'll need the kind of info Homer provided for when my characters move into new digs. Then it'll be about feeding hundreds, but in a less organized fashion.
Sorry if someone upthread has already said this, but it just occurred to me that this is one of those times when real-world experience is readily accessible, would really help your story, and would help some other people as well. Have you thought of going to your nearest larger metropolitan area and volunteering for a couple shifts? You might end up just running a mop or a sponge, but it would give you a lot better insight into how things work.
$10 for an app and they didn't even spell check the menu! Though to be fair I originally read Homer's comment as "Italian fingering octopus" which is something else entirely...
That - also you are falling victim to over thinking of minor points - the book is about a rag tag band of survivors taking on zombies and mercenaries in the streets, it really doesn't matter (and the reader doesn't care) what the homeless shelter was like before it got blown all to fuck, or what time breakfast starts or any of that stuff .... if you reference it all do it in passing like when two grunts are sharing a cold can of beans they could recollect "man I wish this shit was like the breakfasts padre used to make, dude that food was fine - waffles and bacon man," "Shut up due you making me hungry, just eat the damn beans fore zed comes calling again"
Also thinking about it is also feels like you are intending to start at the beginning chronologically, so you'll be describing Jester living in St Jude's and how the house goes and blah before the action starts. Personally I'd open with Jester jerking awake as the Hellions blow the doors in and go straight into the first firefight, then pick up the back story in bits and pieces through reflection and memory. You know the advice about starting your story as near the end as possible.. that.
I have been too focused on the wrong things. I realize that now. The story I've been trying to tell is a love story, a sort of mix between "How I Met Your Mother" and "Resident Evil." Of course I want to get all the little details right, but it's very easy to get lost in that sea, and lose sight of the real story.
