SC - Fw: [Mid] Feasts

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Alderton, Philippa wrote:
> 
> Just picked this up on the 'Bridge. Comments, anyone? Adamantius, I KNOW
> you'll have something to say! :)

Who, me?!?

> > From: Steve Muhlberger
> > To: Middlebridge
> > Subject: [Mid] Feasts
> >
> > I have a preference in feasts.
> >
> > I like feasts to be a reasonable length.

Well, who likes feasts to be unreasonably long, unreasonably short, or
unreasonably anything? It's downright unreasonable! I hate when that
happens. What "that" is, though, I have no idea!

> > In the Middle Ages, from what I can tell, the big fancy feasts were
> > standalone events.  You had a feast and it was the one event that day.
> > In those circumstances, the feast could last a very long time, and
> > clearly people did not sit down during the whole thing.  They took big
> > breaks and did other things. 

Apparently, yes. This is quite likely one reason why individual courses
appear to us as complete meals.

> > We squeeze our feasts into the evening portion of some other event, yet
> > try to serve something similar to the huge standalone feasts.  Feasts
> > become long.  Also, the physical setup for the feast tends to take up
> > most of the site, which means our freedom to do other things is cut
> > down.

Okay. It 's probably true that doing feast _and_ everything else in the
total space of perhaps twelve hours can make it difficult to do either
one as well as we otherwise might. Certainly there are events held at
which there is no feast, and there are also events whose focal point and
main activity for the day is the feast. The fact that most events seem
to attempt to do both is probably simply an indicator of the wishes of
the majority. Yes, it is difficult to serve the number and variety of
dishes at a real medieval European feast, some of which had upwards of
five or six courses, each with perhaps fifteen dishes. Regardless of
whether we want to discuss the queston of who got what, and whether the
folks below the salt actually got a more "reasonable" amount of food or
number of dishes. The solution generally adopted by cooks and stewards
at SCA events is to serve far fewer dishes, usually in fewer courses. I
am told, for example, that in the Outlands it is fairly (oops, I was
gonna say "reasonably") common for four or five courses to be served,
each with one dish. Here in the East you generally find two or three
courses, with three or four dishes per course, served in quantities that
the average human can choke down in the space of perhaps two and a half
hours. Sometimes the cooks are able to keep people dazzled and in their
seats for that amount of time, and sometimes people get restless after
an hour or so. This is partly a function of things like entertainment,
the quality of the food, toasts, etc.    

> > If a feast is not the whole event, and we expect people to sit down
> > through a whole feast, then it should not be too long.   That way it is
> > neither a great medieval feast, nor a reasonable length meal for modern
> > people.

Again, "reasonable" is open to considerable interpretation. Lunch
(that's **LUNCH**) at Bouley in New York City is routinely expected to
last from noon to almost 3 P.M. There is one seating, and one seating
only, per day. The restaurant is always exactly full, day and night.
Never overcrowded, never empty. This is because the reservationist tells
the customer when it is convenient for the restaurant to serve them. In
short, a seller's market. Several thousand people, perhaps hundreds of
thousands (I haven't done the math in detail) come away from lunch
(dinner is even longer) there, with the feeling that they have just had
one of the most memorable experiences of their lives.

My point? These people think that three hours is a reasonable time to
spend eating lunch, under the right circumstances. The fact that some of
them are New Yorkers, and therefore of questionable sanity levels, is
moot, since many of them are tourists.

The longest feast I ever saw in the SCA lasted close to four and a half
hours from the time people sat down, to the time they finally cleared
the tables (I've heard of longer ones). These gentles understood that
this was to be a serious feast, at least by SCA standards. They had a
menu on each table, and really didn't want to leave without at least
tasting the last item, which was a sweet wine caudle. They paced
themselves, took small, tasting portions of everything (I believe there
were something like 22 dishes in three courses), and evidently had a
great time. Certainly there appeared to be no complaints of boredom or
sore hind quarters, and people seemed seriously disinclined to get up
and leave the hall until after the meal was over. Whether that
constitutes a feast, I couldn't say. I just cook 'em, I don't call 'em. 

What Finnvarr seems to be saying most is that he gets easily bored and
restless when a meal at an event runs too long for his taste. I'm sorry
to hear that, but the overall situation seems unlikely to change much
unless he organizes an event that is run more according to his tastes
and tolerances.

Adamantius (There! Are you satisfied?!?!?)
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================