[Sca-cooks] Comparison shopping

[Kirrily Robert]

Muiredach wrote:
>
> Jadwiga, what boggles me is not so much advance *shopping*, where you
> actually acquire the stuff, as advance pricing.  Sooo say I go all over the
> place to find the best price on chicken, 6 weeks ahead of the event.  But I
> don't buy it, I make a note  of it.  Then closer to the event I go and buy
> it :-)

Well, I'm currently 4 months out from my first feast, and I have been
comparision-pricing stuff.  Why?  For budgetting.  It's my first feast,
so I don't have a very good feel for how much things cost in quantity.
But I wanted to reassure myself that I could feen X people for under N
dollars a head.  So I went out and priced all the components of the
feast I want to serve, and it came in at about 90% of N.  Looking around
a bit more, I got it down to 80% of N.  Now, I know there will be price
fluctuations closer to the date, but as long as *everything* doesn't
increase by 25%, I should be OK.  That makes me happier.

And, when it comes time to shop, in the weeks leading up to the feast,
we can look at the shopping list / budget I worked up in December, and
say "well, we budgetted this at $2 per pound, and it's on sale at $1.50,
that's good, let's do it!", or conversely, "Well, the lamb is more than
we expected, but that's OK because we got that deal on the eggs, so it
evens out alright", without having to go nuts checking *everywhere* in
the final weeks.

Yours,

Katherine

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"