SC - Cooking at Faire
WOLFMOMSCA at aol.com
WOLFMOMSCA at aol.com
Sat Jun 5 04:05:25 PDT 1999
<< 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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