SC - Decline in members signing up for feast.... Opinions?

[Stapleton, Jeanne]

And of course, there is always the excessively long organizational 
memory that the sca can have.  (You know - "I had undercooked chicken at

a feast in that barony 8 years ago cooked by someone who has long since 
left the sca, but I'm still not going to eat there" type of stuff.)

	I've run into this as well; I find it really disturbing.
	I was talking to someone locally who refuses to eat feasts
	cooked by one individual because of one bad judgment she made
	years ago (and I'll grant you, it was a bad one) in terms of
	kitchen safety/sanitation.  The comment was "...and now she's
	so and so's student".  YES; probably the person in question 
	has now taught her about good kitchen practices.

	The unwillingness of the SCA to gt back on the horse that
	throwed them at times depresses me.

And I'd like to point out that I started cooking feasts because my 
memory of my first few feasts were one small loaf of bread, a bowl of 
mushy honey-drowned carrots and a single small chicken to feed 8 people!

Who wants to pay to not get enough to eat?  (Now, my response to that 
was to start to cook and do it right - a lot of people just decided it 
wasn't worth the money and stopped eating feasts because of that...)

	Gosh, did we all go to the same feast?  :-)  yes:  for the first
dozen
	or so,
	pasty white small chickens (with no seasoning or sauces or
flavorings), bread and 	honeyed carrots.

Anyway, to me, as long as the feast sells out it's ok if not everyone 
wants to eat it.  I want to feed everyone who's interested, not everyone

who's there.

	Yes, I agree up to a point.  I think that there's striking a
balance
	between trying to do the best feast you can on several
levels--one
	that's pleasing, on time, the correct temperature,
well-researched
	and period varying to perioid--and trying to get people to take
an
	interest.  If you're cooking at a more isolated event, you
really do
	have a captive audience.  But in talking about pleasing the
customer,
	we should bear in mind that for many of these people they are
thinking
	in terms of having a McBLT plopped down in front of them.

	I think both "extremes" need to consider the POV of the other
"extreme":
	quite a few people *are* voting with their feast-going dollar,
and they're
	entitled to do that, because they're not being served steak and
baked
	potatoes.  That doesn't mean that I have to serve them steak and
baked
	potatoes to keep them appeased; they should also seriously
listen and
	consider what's being offered at the feast, and ask questions.
I had
	no problem last year when the seneschal and his lady, both
pretty picky
	eaters, dropped by and asked rather suspiciously what these food
items
	were at Midwinter.  They both came and both raved about the
feast; they
	got the variety of foods that I'd promised, they could pick and
choose,
	they could eat their roast chicken with the weird green sauce
:-)
	(Sauce Persleye) or the weird red one (Strawberye, the favorite
among
	the adventuresome diners) or plain if they liked.

Berengaria
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