SC - Re: sca-cooks Re: Research paper on Medieval foods.

[Marjorie Ellen Coates]

Uduido at aol.com wrote:
> What shire are you in that the Autocrat would would even presume to interfere
> in the Feastocrat's job? And how could a shire allow such a sad state of
> affairs to continue? I have never been exposed to this concept before. If the
> Autocrat even shoves his/her head in the Kitchen door I have been noted to
> say> "Ah, you're just who've I've been looking for! Here's a knife. There's
> 50 lbs of onions in the walk-in.". :-)
> 
> On a single occasion, I was asked for a menu in advance. I typed "Feast Menu"
> at the top of the 1 st page. The second page had the word "FOOD" typed in the
> middle.
> Never had the crat ask for that info since.What a hoot. :-)
> 
> Lord Ras

My experience has been that SCA offices rarely have a set limit to their
responsibilities, and people tend to be granted whatever level of
authority  they assume, and people allow them to have. Just as an
example, when I was local exchequer, I once asked an autocrat a couple
of innocent questions about his budget for an event, out of curiosity,
as an experienced autocrat myself. Suddenly there was a flash of light,
and budgeting decisions suddenly became part of the exchequer's job.
Autocrats were asking me how much they could charge for events. Took me
the remaining three years to get that straightened out. I see now, in
retrospect, that I could have just done a really lousy job, and that
responsibility would suddenly vanish.

As regards what authority the autocrat has over the cook, I agree that
generally it isn't that much. But, the autocrat will have to field some
of the questions from people making reservations, and should be assured
that the feast is in keeping with his/her concept of the event. For
instance, if the event is themed as 15th-century Burgundian, it might be
a small problem to discover at the last minute that the cook is in the
mood to do 13th-century Mongolian. This is more a matter of courtesy
than one of authority.

Just a month or so ago, I did an event feast where the autocrat asked me
if I'd mind doing more dishes, in more courses, than usual, but in
smaller portions, so people would be treated to a bit more like the
variety of foods they might have encountered in a period feast. I
thought this might be an interesting challenge. We discussed a budget
together, and I said I'd see what I could come up with. He never asked
me for a menu. I did send him one eventually, since he had been
receiving calls from people with allergies, and also, because frankly I
was kind of proud of it.

Adamantius