[Sca-cooks] Marzipan 8 track tapes

[Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy]

  Tara Sersen Boroson wrote:

> Puck, how many people would the hall fit for dinner at 12th Night?  Just
> as a wacky idea, would you consider offering a "below the salt" option?
>  Like, provide just bread and stew to people who want to stay and
> socialize, letting them bring whatever else they want to fill out their
> meal.  If you want someone to take that on, I'd volunteer.  Perhaps we
> could make it an Herbalist Guild effort, Jadwiga?  Or a Hartshorn-dale
> cooks project, Joe?  I imagine it could be done for about $1-2 per head,
> depending on how extravagent we get with the stew (rabbit and venison,
> anyone?)  And it's all stuff that could be made ahead of time, so the
> only kitchen space needed would be a couple burners for reheating.  Or a
> lot of outlets for crock pots.  For that matter, if kitchen space were
> tight, we could rent a propane stove cheaply enough to reheat things
> outdoors.  Or borrow everybody's trendy turkey fryers ;)

I believe there was some kind of financial intricacy involved wherein
bids would not be accepted by our Kingdom Exchequer unless they fell
below a certain amount for total expenditures. I forget the details, but
I remember there was a reason it was set it up the way it was, and I did
originally state that I would be able to provide more or less the same
feast for as many as perhaps 450 without significant loss of quality.

My problem with above/below-the-salt is that when you have both, there
is usually an assumption that the above the salt is simply going to be
an example of conspicuous consumption. The above-the-salt feasts I have
been to around here have tended to be, well, gross is the best word I
can think if, but not in the disgusting sense, just sort of coarse and
heavy-handed. My usual style has always been to provide 9-12 prepared
dishes (in other words, "bread" or "olives" are not counted as dishes)
freshly and accurately cooked and seasoned. In general it's nothing too
fancy but I do insist it be as close to perfect as we can get it, and
cooks in our group have a pretty amazing track record for catching
things before they burn, stick to the pot, cook to dissolution, etc,
because we've all tried to do our feasts for 450 with none of the
diminution of quality that is all too frequently seen in SCA cookery
when the numbers get high.  Now I can see the autocrat here saying,
what, 24 absolutely perfect dishes in four courses, that'll be no
problem for my Great And Powerful Master, but certainly it's easier to
do such things when you're not pushing the resources of your kitchen and
crew by sheer weight of numbers. And then there's the fact that at
larger numbers of dishes, the portion sizes get smaller, cooking times
reduce (you use more saute pans), and you can actually cook dishes in
sequence between courses. It's a lot of work doing it this way but it's
also a blast.

Of course, there's probably no real reason to view the below-the-salt
concept as being necessarily a financial problem as mentioned earlier,
if done right, but I do think having below-the-salt puts a bit more
pressure on the cooks to provide a bit more ostentation than they would
otherwise provide at an ordinary feast, for the above-the-salt people.
And this _is_ the People's Republic of the East, after all.

Adamantius