[Sca-cooks] Feast on the day

[Liadan]

I did a feast for our Guardian here in Mooneschadowe a year ago.  Being
somewhat A-R, my head cook and I did a lot of advance cooking, timing,
etc. prior to the feast day.  Bear came up and baked the breads and
Spanish Pastries the night before. I had a small, but dedicated crew,
say 6 or 8 people who worked with me all day.  Gwennan, renown for her
ability to portion/serve feast, took over when serving began.

On my part, I broke recipes down into what had to be done early (cooking
chicken for the ravioli filling) what would take the most time (baking
the pork roladen) and what was the most labor intensive (making the
ravioli). Then, back-timed from when feast was to be served. Some things
the entire group worked on, some things we broke down into smaller
groups to do.

WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN! Recipes, timing, scheduling, everything.  Use a
white board for the scheduling so everyone can see what has been done
and what needs to be done. I had some jobs noted for inexperienced
cooks, while I saved others for more experienced cooks.  If anyone
volunteered to help, I found something for them to do. Even if it was
moving dishes around and cleaning off work surfaces or cutting prepared
food into portions or watering the cooks.  But we never could have done
it without some of the experienced volunteers we had.

We were scheduled to feed 120, but due to the weather, I believe we fed
at least 150.  I never got a clear count, but people were still paying
for feast the following day.

Since it was my first feast, I did suffer some "if I ever do this again,
I will..." So, with what I originally had written down, I made notes
about what might work better next time.

Don't hesitate to ask this list. They came up with a lot of good
suggestions that worked very well!

Liadan


"Leaving aside your actual questions, to which I don't really know the
answer... I have to say I'm amazed that any feast cook doesn't do prep
work ahead of the feast.  How many do you normally cook for?  How many
staff do you normally have?  How do you manage?  Please tell!

K.

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)"