SC - Introduction

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hi all from Anne-Marie 
Molly asks for suggestions on easy lunch foods...

we recently served a cold food buffet at 12th night. Everything was period.
And not a turkey to be seen! :) Some of it was pre-prep, but a lot of it
was storebought as is. woo hoo!
The menu:
cold sliced roast beef
dijon style mustard
horseradish sauce
bread rolls
sliced cheese
[we have no documentation for sandwhiches, but if people just happened to
take said foodstuffs and combine them in the same handful, who am I to stop
them?)
pickled asparagus
pickled mushrooms
pickled carrots
pickled cukes
pickled eggs
hardboiled eggs, dressed with balsamic vinegar
raw cukes and carrots
sliced salami
assorted elizabethan cookie things like marchpanes, shrewsbury cakes, savoy
biskets, etc
gingerbrede (the period kind, not the modern cakey kind)
satsumas (those small oranges that you can get by the case around 12th
night)
small lunchbox sized granny smith apples
olives
limonade

you will note that none of this is "wierd" food. None of it was
unpalatable. Except that the king thought the horseradish was ranch
dressing for the carrots and cukes. oops. he should have known I would
NEVER serve something like that as period! :) Funny, the queen knew what it
was when she loaded his plate...oh well.

we cooked the beef ahead of time and rented a meat slicer and sliced it
very thin. We made the cookies ahead of time, and some of the pickles.
everything else we got at Costco, our local warehouse food store. The
cheese and salami, for example we bought already sliced. woo hoo! We mixed
the limonade up with ice cold water at the last minute. We put everything
out in nice non-modern serving trays, etc.

Since no one was likely gonna have their feast gear, and there were no dish
washing facilities (this was done at a hotel), we provided nice high
quality paper napkins (the ones that are almost clothlike), and plastic
cups that are the same size and shape as the glass glasses used in the
15-16th century. OK, they were plastic, but we knew that noone would have
their mugs with them, and without dishwashing facilities.... All the food
was finger food, so no silverware was needed.

I put this forward as an example of how easy it is to do a period spread
with very little effort. We also bought a bunch of parsley, some extra
fruit and some edible flowers and Team Garnish went to town. Things like
putting the pickled eggs on the same plate as the black olives...lovely!
Every bit of it got eaten up with me chortling all time...."neener neener
neener, you're eating period food, ha hahaha ha, and you-oo liike it"

Why settle for same old same old? If you want regular sandwhiches, go to
Subway. Give 'em something they cant get at Dennys! :)

Other easy lunch ideas (ie do ahead, bring to site, and set up)
- --tartes of flesche or other meat pies we have documentation for. Do 'em as
individual servings in small tart shells.
- --compound salat
- --stuffed eggs
- --cucumbers from Apicius (cukes in vinegar with mint, pepper and a bit of
asafetida. YUM!)
- --individual tarts. Custard, or fruit filled or...you can buy the tart
shells from costco and fill them. Save some time.

hope this helps some!
- --AM
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