SC - First Feast--Festival of Maidens

[Jeff Heilveil]

Salut!  
It's been a while since I posted, but I wanted to let you all know about
the feast I ran at fesitval of Maidens in Wuerm Wald.  For starters, here
was the menu:

First Course (Opening Sweet)
	Daryoles (as per Pleyn Delit)
	Wardonys in Syrup (as per Pleyn Delit)
Second course (Coarse course)
	A Roast of Meat (as per Miscellany)
	Counterfeit ofIsfiriya of Garbanzos (Miscellany)
	Pan de Campagne (from Bear)
	Champignions en Paste (Pleyn Delit)
	Frytour of Erbes (Pleyn Delit)
Third Course (soothing course)
	Chickpea Soup (Medieval Kitchens)
	Blanchmange (Take a Thousand Eggs or More)
	Erbolat (Pleyn Delit)
	Apple Moys (Take a Thousand Eggs or More)
Fourth Course (Closing Sweet)
	Chirseye (Pleyn Delit)
	An Apple and Walnut Tart (Alia Atlas Trans. of Ein Buch von Guter
Speise)
	Shortbread (Bear and my rendition of "Fine Cakes" in To the
Queen's Taste)
First off, let me say that overall things went well, and I have Bear to
thank for a whole lot of help.  The feast was priced at $6/head. 

Now, on to our story...

One of the hardest things about doing this feast is that the Baron was
very leery of doing a full feast.  Wuerm Wald hasn't actually done a full
feast in about 7 years as the last time they did there was a slight fire
in the kitchen.  I had $300 to do the feast, it was limited to 80 people
and I had no idea what the site looked like until four days before the
feast.  It was exciting.  The menu was kept simple, because pulling off a
successful feast, though simple was more important than an elaborate
feast.  I picked a lot out of Pleyn Delit, but in general worked off the
originals, instead of their redations.  

I made the Pan de campagne, and the shortbread the week before.  It was
relatively simple, and gave my housemate and I enough time to realize that
the pan de campagne recipe was perfect for use with Barm, so we wouldn't
have to use conventional bread yeasts (prior to this we usually had to
supplement the barm).  

Four days before the event I got to see the site.  I could move in.  Four
industrial ovens, twelve gas burners, movable work carts, sanitizer,
industrial friges, the works.

Bear helped out with the budgeting and whatnot, and Sams Club helped out
with the affordability of the groceries.

The morning of, I got into the kitchen around 9:30 and we started to work.
By 10:30 there was already a waiting list for people who wanted to attend
the feast, even though we had more than 80 people signed up.  

Really, there were no big problems, once we got the gas to the stoves
turned on.  The chicken took a while to deal with, as I had found thighs
for .49/lb, but we had to bone and skin them.  We accidentally doubled the
amount of wine in the pears in wine syrup, but that turned out to make it
a bigger hit than it was at the test feast.  The Daryoles took a while,
and set us a little behind, though the fighters asked for more time
anyway.  We started a half hour late (I was bummed), but it got out there.
The Counterfeit didn't turn out this time, and I haven't figured out what
I did differently, as I even got them to be wonderful at pennsic. Having
two fried dishes was a bit of a problem, as we were making them and trying
to get them out rather feverishly.  In fact, I would say that my major
problem with the feast was that with so many hot dishes it was really hard
to get things out there together and on time.  There was one other
problem.  The day before the feast I was informed that there would be a
high table, and everything had been counted out to 10 tables.  This caused
a little bit of strife but was dealt with in the end.  After the feast
many people came up to talk about the feast.  The best compliment I got
was a couple that thanked me for doing a feast with period food.  The
regional MoAS was there, and said that from the outside the feast didn't
seem to be late, and that the dishes came out in good time.  She said that
any lagging was more than made up for by having the hot dishes come out
Hot and not luke warm.  Some of the fighters wanted more meat, which would
be easy.  I know on what to work, and I have ideas for next time, but all
in all I feel that the feast went well.

Cu drag,
Bogdan din Brasov 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Heilveil				Bogdan din Brasov
Department of Entomology		    MoAS, Barony of Wurm Wald
University of Illinois		       Bucatar-sef, Liedmeister, Wurm Wald
heilveil at uiuc.edu				 Middle Kingdom
(217) 398-9529

It is said that the children of today will be our salvation.  That's only
because they are honest enough to see the things to which we blind
ourselves.
_______________________________________________________________________________


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