SC - The High Cost of Feasts/Events

[david friedman]

One of the things that may be making feasts expensive is the tendency to
produce too much food. Most of us are used to meals where there is one main
dish. So when designing a feast with (say) six main dishes, there is a
tendency to try to provide enough of each for a full meal. Even if the cook
makes some attempt to compensate for that tendency, the result may still be
twice what the guests can eat--and they have to pay for it.

Our usual solution to this is to go through the menu, and calculate the
total amount of boneless meat per person for all dishes combined. We figure
that it should come to half a pound if we expect people to be hungry and
there are not a lot of substantial non meat dishes, somewhat less
otherwise. Elizabeth's record as of about ten years ago (we haven't run any
feasts lately, aside from the one at thirty year which other people shopped
for) was about $2.50/head.

Of course, a second thing that makes feasts expensive is cooks who are not
making a deliberate effort to keep them from being expensive--to
concentrate on the least expensive available meats, for example. And a
third thing (as Elizabeth points out over my shoulder) is that groups often
use feasts as fund raisers.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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