SC - Food timeline - great links!

[Susan Fox-Davis]

I routinely donate the wine/spirits I use to cook a feast (much of it is my
own homebrew). With all the nasty legal repurcussions we(the SCA) are
threatened with, it seems more a point of common sense. So I sneak it in.

Some wise people wrote:
>> As far as I understand it, the rules don't allow you to use SCA funds to
purchase alcohol unless it's being used _in_ cooking.

And another replied:
>And so how does one qualify buying alcohol for cooking? is there a ceiling
quantity limit or is it honour?

You buy what you need, AFAIK. Round here we pretend/ensure that there were
NO leftovers (nudge nudge). It's easier that way. Less accountability. The
wine goes off after a period of time after opening, anyway. Too much
transport or wrong storage conditions would also ruin it. That is, if you
refuse to cook with something you won't drink.

>>  It's also a big no-no to serve it if you're an SCA officer of any sort
(in other words, get someone else to "tend bar" at the war get-togethers).

Well, I've always been an officer (no wait, there was three month stretch
there where I did NO public service. It almost killed me). That did not
prevent me from making a solteltie that bled red wine for a huge event. I
provided the wine myself, but there was also purple grape juice for those
whopreferred it or were under age (also donated). And I made it clear with
the presentation of the soteltie that this was a donation of a private
citizen (me) and not of an SCA officer (me). I also had it served by folks
who knew who was allowed the wine, and who got the grape juice, and checked
those who were questionable. I see two reasons for this: #1 is taking
responsibility for my own actions. #2 is refusing to allow bureaucracy to
get in the way of historical accuracy. So my policy is (and was) "I did it,
I take sole responsibility, and I also take the credit for historical
accuracy or lack thereof." Needless to say, there wer no negative
repurcussions (kingdom seneschal was present at that event, as well as the
reigning royalty), but folks were really bummed when the soteltie was
destroyed by accident and couldn't make it for a return engagement.

>>  And it's frowned upon to donate for fundraisers, etc....all, of course,
dependent on your local/state laws, and the rules for the particular site.

Not here in Aethelmearc, though we're so shy of litigation that we seldom
donate stuff like this. But I figure that if other organizations can do
this, there should be no reason why the SCA can't do this. Ever won a booze
basket in a raffle from the Elks, Kiwanis, or VFW? What we're getting here,
in an effort to control every situation and it's outcome, is a sort of
prohobition. I'm not a drinker, but I get really irked when someone says
that I can't have alcohol, and in fact no one can in, a setting where one
would naturally historically expect to see it. That's the difference, as I
view it, between what the official SCA policy is (we can't buy it with SCA
fiunds except for cooking involving heat), and that alternate, paranoid
viewpoint that we mustn't see it at all in situations X, Y, and Z.

I find it funny that we can be so anal retentive about alcohol, and yet in
many areas a blind eye is turned to the doobie being smoked in the stairwell
at events (a common occurance in my neck of the woods 10 years or so ago,
and not entirely rare now). Probably the difference is the attitude that 'if
we don't officially see it, it doesn't exist, but if it's out there in the
open, we have to regulate it.'

>>Again this can be fudged (and in all reality it is done here every week I
suspect) by not listing the alcohol as a separate item, but lumping it in
the food budget.

Yeah, but sooner of later, you have to turn in the receipts. My Baronial
excheqeur demands itemized receipts, in fact sorts all the items into
categories so she knows how much was actual food (and what kind it was), how
much was related supplies (and what they were used for). If the store
doesn't itemize receipts, I am required to do so on the back of the receipt.
Personally I think she's nuts, because I know lots of groups who don't do
this, but I have to live with her system while she's in office. Of course,
at one point she itemized to such an extent that the responsibility for
submitting the event report was taken out of our hands and thrust squarely
into hers by the Kingom, but that's another story. I'm a cook, not an
accountant. It didn't used to be this hard.


Aoife, on the soapbox today