[Bryn-gwlad] Feast Gear

[Stefan li Rous]

On Sep 3, 2006, at 4:18 PM, tmcd at panix.com wrote:

> On Sun, 3 Sep 2006, Sandy Straubhaar <orchzis at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> and I still eat off of wooden plates and bowls.  I drink out of
>> leather drinking jacks made by Morgan the Tanner of Calontir
>> sometime in the eighties. ...  None of these things break, whereas
>> glass and ceramic (that you love) might easily break.
>
> Tradeoffs all around.
>
> I then got a
> silvery plate.  I'm not worried now about bacteria lingering,
> dishwasher safe ... worked great until I went to the Steppes Twelfth
> Night at Fair Park, Dallas.  Fair Park was made for summertime fairs,
> so there was no heating in that hall.  It was maybe 55 degrees inside.
> The chicken hit my plate and I could almost see ice crystals forming.
>
> Danielis Lindecolina

Yep. I use a pewter mug and had a similar problem. When filled with a  
hot liquid the rim can get too hot to drink out of comfortably and  
with a cold drink the metal is such a good conductor of heat that the  
drink warms faster than I might like. Unfortunately, I've not found  
many good insulated pewter mugs. :-)

I now use a set of pewter eating utensils. I recommend hitting up the  
various thrift stores and SCA merchants. It's much nicer, in my  
opinion, to pay $6 for a used pewter plate than $22 new.  However, it  
can take several years to assemble a complete collection of place  
settings.

Before I had assembled my pewter collection, I put together a place  
setting of brass eating utensils.

Very classy... Except they require polishing. Bring them home from  
the thrift store. Polish them. Put them away for a month or two until  
the next event. Bring them out. Polish them. Go to the event. Put  
food on the brass plate and watch it almost tarnish in the front of  
your eyes. Bring home. Polish them and put them away. Bring them out  
before the next event and notice they need polishing. Polish them.  
Repeat above process. Again. Argh.

Ceramics tend to have a rather short life span with me. I did get a  
nice tankard in an auction lot of items I got at this last Pennsic.  
And I lost one of my pewter tankards at that Pennsic. :-( We'll just  
have to see how this ceramic mug does. :-)

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****