SC - Serving question

[allilyn at juno.com]

>> Itend to use no more than a dozen servers for a feast serving 250. Is
that
normal for everyone else?<<

Yikes!  No!  Unless, of course, they are trained servers that you work
with all the time.  Up here in AEthelmearc, and in some parts of the East
and the MidRealm, each table is asked to pick some-one as a server.  That
person comes to the staging area to get his/her dishes.  I hate this
method, having occasionally been greatly spoiled by having a trained
servers' corps.  Volunteers never remember the name of the dish, usually
forget its ingredients, do all sorts of uninformed (I did not say 'dumb'
about volunteers!) things to louse up the Kitchen Steward's hard-worked
feast.  

A nice staging area is greatly to be desired, even if it's not available
all the time.  A cloth, lots of candles, all help to make the serving
more attractive.  Designate one area--preferably another table--for the
returned serving dishes for washing.

For serving when the utensils are not available, use your paste coffyn as
the serving dish.  Mistress Aiofe has a good article in the Florilegium,
and there are other good posts on that subject, as well.

Several attractive things I've seen at feasts: 
A center table in the middle of a very large U of tables, beatutifully
decorated, used as a buffet table for the first course, then used as a
staging table for the next two courses.  The diners were seated only on
the outside of the U, the servers worked the inside.

A group of the local people, in matching tabards, walking in pairs down
the center aisle, showing decorated pies to the populace and the head
table.  Each table was designated as an Italian city-state, and the pie
you got had your city's arms in food color on the crust.

I can't seem to convince folks in our barony that a permanent corps of
servers is a Good Idea.  But, I must say, the sink is usually crowded
with Peers doing dishwashing, which they jump up and do between courses. 
We have some great folks, here.  We are also lucky enough to have about
30 years' accumulation of cooking and serving equiptment, and *still*
need more!  Well, stuff wears out...

Regards,
Allison,     allilyn at juno.com


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