SC - Cooking at Faire

[WOLFMOMSCA at aol.com]

<< Has anyone done a food booth? I must admit I wonder the logistics of it >>

I was the morning cook for the Triskele Tavern one year at Pennsic.  The 
logistics weren't my job (thank ALL the gods), but we kept the problems to a 
minimum in a couple of ways.  First off, the menu was limited.  We did 
breakfast to order (for which we earned the odd appellation of St. Denny's).  
Lunch was usually something they could carry around with them (like sausage 
sandwiches with melted Swiss cheese and a dill pickle spear).  Dinner was 
usually a pot meal of some sort, including spaghetti, boiled dinner (that's 
ham & cabbage for y'all who don't live in New England), chili. etc.  

The biggest problem about running a booth on the Food Court is sanitation.  
Cleanliness is absolutely necessary, and difficult to achieve in the 
primitive conditions at Pennsic, so you cook food that doesn't require a 
whole bunch of separate pots & pans.  Saves on the scullery needs.  One of 
the things we discovered about our menu was that folks would wander in at 
noon, one, even two o'clock, wanting breakfast.  I had a confab with the boss 
about three days into War and we basically did away with lunch and served 
breakfast until 3:00 in the afternoon.  This simplified our lives and made us 
a very popular place.  The fighters loved us because they could get a hot 
breakfast, made to order, AFTER they'd fought for a couple of hours and were 
ready to actually put real food in their engines, and they didn't have to 
walk all the way back to their camps.  Breakfast was basically two eggs, done 
the way you wanted, some bacon or sausage, toast, coffee/tea, and my patented 
hashbrowns for a crowd.  The night shift at the Tavern had the responsiblity 
of cutting and pre-boiling about 50 pounds of potatoes per night.  When I 
came in at 0600, the boss had the coofeemakers up and running, and all I had 
to do was put together the hashbrowns and start grilling meats.  We had two 
regular house-type stoves with ovens, but the tops had been converted to 
griddles.  I did hashbrowns in one of those big cast iron deep dish baking 
pans laid across two burners.   We opened at 0700, and the steady stream 
began.  

My only complaint about doing this particular job at Pennsic was the fact 
that for two weeks, no matter how many showers I had or how many times I 
washed my hair, I always smelled like breakfast.  It's not exactly my 
favorite scent, y'know?  But the boss took care of me pretty well.  Lady 
Jane, his lovely wife, made sure she got my laundry from me when she was 
going off-site to do theirs, I never wanted for food, and I had something 
constructive to do for the entire war.  And I did meet some of the most 
marvelous personages as they staggered into the Tavern, coffee mugs in hand, 
bleary-eyed.  All in all, it was a very good year.

Walk in peace,
Wolfmother
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