SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #447

[Philip & Susan Troy]

L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt wrote, to me, more or less:

> I have decided that the relative extravagance of
> >buying prime beef from a prime butcher, 
> 
> If you point this gentleman out to me, I'll sell the farm and move to NYC
> and marry him! That means I'll have to divorce Gilbert. Of course, since
> Gilbert is a mizerl----I mean a parsimonious old Scot, he'd probably beat me
> to the altar with the guy, regardless of his sex!

These are genuine Ottomanelli butchers, who are probably descended from
the paleolithic man who first took a big piece of sharpened flint to a
wild bull...there are several branches of the family in the meat
business, each with a different cousin in charge. The shop in my
neighborhood recently underwent a major dynastic change: Old Man
Ottomanelli [Sal] recently retired, leaving the business to his son,
Vito, a fine, strapping young lad of about sixty. His sons and nephews
actually run the place. I think there might be one token non-family
member in the place, and for all I know he may be a Family Member, or
some such. (You gotta problum wid dat???) Anyway, they all seem to be
married, and with children, by the age of sixteen or so... 
 
> Wow. Ten bucks a head. When I think that I live less than 100 miles from
> you, the mind boggles. I get half that for a really extravagant feast.
> Sometimes I have to come up with lunch out of that budget, too. I frequently
> donate a lot of stuff......my spices and herbs, a sotelty, etc. I suppose
> that's the difference between the two states, metro NYC and Rural Pennsylvania.

I guess we need to consider it as a bad exchange rate between two places
that have, nominally, the same currency. But only nominally. When I read
the posts about the purchasing power of the Australian dollar, in
connection with feast budgets, I remember ticking off the items, saying,
"Well, that's a little steep. That one's about right. That's CHEAP!" and
so on... . I'm not sure what the exchange rate is between Ostgardrian,
EK tygers, and the (insert monetary unit here) of Endless Hills,
AEthelmarc. What I can say is that while prices for many things are
higher, not all are, and salaries for similar work are probably
commensurately higher as well. A line cook in New York City probably
earns what many executive chefs earn elsewhere. Then they go and pay
rent, etc., and are just as broke before the end of the month as anybody
else.

Maybe we could work out a mutually profitable deal where I send you the
budgeted feast receipts and a shopping list, and you get the groceries
here in a van? I'd be curious about the "exchange rate" ;  ) .  
 
> We've been very lucky with site fees. the most we ever paid was $800.00, but
> it is usually substantially less. We just found a site that seats 400 for
> 150 bucks.

Kewl! Most of out sites run somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500 -
$2000, but we have one (and another in the works) site that allows the
use of the site two or three times a year in return for our demo
services at their various fairs, fundraisers, etc. The one we have is
small, although the new one we are trying to set up a deal with is much
larger (a historical landmark farm / museum, site of the annual Queens
County Fair. Yep, a real, honest-to-gosh County Fair, but most of the
people attending talk like Fran Drescher, which makes for a uniquely
ironic counterpoint amongst the quilts and the rhubarb pies). 

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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