SC - HELP!!!!!

[iceweasel.org at netaxs.com]

Hi Sianan

Several rocommendations from someone who has SCAexperience cooking 
and/or organizing 3 SCA feasts for over 300 and has mundane catering 
sxperience with feeding 1000 for sit-down dinners.

Firstly, you'll need a commercial kitchen.  Example:   doing all 
those tarts ahead of time and freezing is all well and good but you 
run risk of soggy crust when thawed or the possibility of egg based 
stuff seperating.  Think of this:  1 - 9"tart serves 8.  For 300 you 
need 38-40 tarts.  Think of baking all this at home and then 
attempting to find adequate freezer space for all those tarts.  We 
have held 2 East Kingdom , kingdom level events in a lovely Shriner's 
hall that has one of the best commercial kitchens we've ever worked 
in.  13 ovens and 22 burners and large tracts of stainless counter 
top (no dishwasher though).  You can fit 6-8 tarts in a Vulcan-type 
commercial oven, 8 in a pizza oven (the long skinny kind) and about 
4-6 in a commercial convection oven.  IF you can find a site of that 
size then, with proper organization and enough people helping you can 
cook this type of event without much precooking.  The most that we 
have prepped for these events is veggies, and we've taken the time to 
group ingredients and supplies by recipe when we can.

Secondly, if you don't have one buy a cookbook program.  I have 
"kitchen Gourmet" by Soft Key, which is now 2 yrs old.  It takes a 
recipe, converts # of servings, converts ingredient amounts, makes a 
shopping list and provides nutritional information if for nothing 
more than the sake of good giggle, especially for things like Savory 
Toasted Cheese.  Look carefully if purchasing one as not all do all 
of these things at once.

I frown highly on the "cook it and store it in coolers" or "par cook 
it and finish it later at the site" methods, especially for meat.  
Funny things grow in meat when stored between 90-110 degrees F.
Funny things that can make people violently ill, especially children 
or those with compromised health.  I know that I'll probably start a 
poop storm with this comment, but why risk it.  Cook it away from 
site, fully refridgerate it then reheat, or just cook it at the site.

I did a class on the topic of SCA feast prep from a mundane 
standpoint at Pennsic.  I have a ton more info for you if you'd like 
and can even give you recipes that worked exceptionally well in large 
quantities.  Please contact me privately if you'd like to talk more.

Good luck,
Aemilia

PS--- a guest list of 375 usually means 200-300 showing.  Find out 
the realistic head count. For example, it's possible that the 50 
relatives from outer Mongolia on the list who are recieving 
invitations as a courtesy  will most likely not make it.  

> A cheery hello to all the cooks out there,
> 
>    A couple of friends of mine announced their engagement a while ago. This
> is no great problem in itself.  However they want a medieval wedding and a
> medieval celebration to go with it and they want me to organise the food
> for them.  Since they said it was to be a smallish wedding, I told them
> that I'd be right glad to do it.  However, they recently produced a guest
> list of 347 people.  Here's where I'm choking a little bit.  Most of the
> events I've cooked for usually only hit the 50 - 75 people mark, 100 people
> tops.  Does any of the more experience cooks have any advice on how to
> organise this 'feeding of the masses' and any recipes for nice food, that
> is reletively simple and can be mass produced?
> 
> Thanks to all
> -A rather desperate Sianan
> 
> ******************************************************************************
> Marina Denton
> sianan at geocities.com
> 
> 		Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat,
> 		and taking the tartare sauce with you.
> 
> 		- Zig Zigler
> ******************************************************************************
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