[Sca-cooks] Gifts for Assistants?

[Stefan li Rous]

Morgan asked:
> All of my volunteers are experienced cooks, so don't need utensils etc.  I =
> have thought of bags of fun spices.  I *am* planning to give some homemade =
> soaps, possibly some chocolate lip balm, and a facecloth.  They are all new=
>  to period cooking, so I am thinking of adding a copy of "Pleyn Delit."  An=
> y other suggestions?

For this past Bryn Gwlad Yule Revel, which I was the Event Steward
for, I gave my staff members various spices. Since one of the things
we were encouraging at this event was for folks to try their hands
at making some period food dishes for the pot-luck feast, I thought
this would fit in well.

What I did was bottle up various spices, two or three bottles of
each type. I then put them in a colorful basket and walked around
to my various staff members during the event and let them choose
the bottle that they wanted. I did arrange things to go to the
folks I thought had put in the most work first, so they got the
best choice. However, I had more bottles than I did people, so
everyone had a choice of items. Surprisingly, the less common
spices such as Grains of Paradise and Long Pepper were not the
first ones chosen, even by the cooks. There was only one person
who couldn't find a spice they wanted.

Next time I will do this further in advance, as I ran out of time
to package things, so folks only got one bottle when I had originally
planned on a set of two. Also, I must not have bought as large a
quantity of spices from the Pepperers Guild at Pennsic as I originally
planned on before Pennsic as I didn't have as much of some as I
thought I had. I had originally planned to get enough extra that I
could have some to hand out as prizes, thank yous etc. Oh well. I
guess I'll buy more at the next Pennsic.

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****