sca-cooks Complaining

[Kay Jarrell]

You know, the reason cooks bitch and moan about how hard it all was is so those 
who see food "appear" on the table will have some small clue as to how much 
work, time, training, experience, frustration, diplomacy, effort and late ngihts
went into not just the plate they see but the education of the cook. 

I have had few rewards so sweet as a round of applause from an SCA feast, or the
members of a class here at work, but the work had to get done, first. 

Kay of Tre Asterium C.L.

**************************************************
Chef Kay Jarrell
The Executive Education Center
Univeristy of Michigan Business School
kjarrell at umich.edu

_________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: sca-cooks Re: intro
Author:  sca-cooks at eden.com at Internet
Date:    4/10/97 10:38 AM


Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:
> 
> Someone (Sean?) wrote:
>   > Any have any suggestions on how to get
>   > comfortable cooking for 200 rather than 40? 
> 
> Gunther wrote:
>   Comfortable?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
>   You'll never be comfortable as Head cook!  Abandon all hope! 
> 
> Nope.
> 
> Plan, plan, plan some more.  Make lists, work out timelines, make some more 
> lists.  Have people you know, and trust, practice the recipes and take
> charge of each one.
> 
> It isn't that bad.
     
I was going to address this and hadn't figured out how to do so 
delicately.  If we (the experienced cooks) make it seem like cooking is 
the greatest trial and a miserable experience, how will we ever get 
others to join our ranks?  
     
This is like saying to newcomers "Oh, fighting is miserable, you get all 
hot and sweaty and bruised and battered and it takes forever to learn to 
be any good and its mortifying when you lose and the equipment is 
expensive and some big Duke is probably going to beat the tar out of 
you".  Certainly not what we do where I'm from, and not a very good 
incentive to getting people to fight.
     
Yes, cooking feasts is a lot of work.  But with some reasonable 
organization and advance planning, it doesn't need to be a miserable 
experience.  I teach a whole class on Feast Planning for our Kingdom 
University and it sells out every time, so there's certainly interest out 
there in "doing it and doing it well".  My great tool for feast planning 
is the clear plastic sheet-covers.  You can put the period recipe on one 
side, the redaction on the other, and write on it with a grease pencil to 
check off steps, or note "cooling in left hand  fridge" or whatever.
     
Keilyn