[Sca-cooks] feast serving

[Stefan li Rous]

Brangwayna Morgan replied to me with:
> mark.s.harris at motorola.com writes:
> > Personally, I dislike this "every table must provide a server"
> > bit. I think it is better for the hosting group to provide the
> > servers. It is perhaps selfish, but I enjoy having the opportunity
> > to talk with my tablemates during feast. When one of them, and
> > sometimes as much as half the table, keep getting up to serve
> > the food this is disruptive.
>
> Oh, I agree.  But with a small shire, you just can't do it.

Yes, I tend to agree. At least if you only consider your shire for
servers. In this case I was speaking of the EK 12th Night, which was
put on by a barony and I believe had some outside help.

> Till we take
> care of the kitchen help, tollner, marshalling, clean-up, and everything
> else, everybody in the shire is already working or has already been working
> all day long and is sitting down for the first time...nobody left to serve!

Yes, this often happens. So convince a nearby group to provide the servers.
Or the squires. Or the Knights. Or a household. And make sure they get
credit for it. This will help you get such help in the future. Arranging
servers ahead of time also lets you do better organization and perhaps
some onsite training beforehand.

> And then there's the problem of how to handle feeding the
> servers - do they have to rush through their meal to serve the next course,
> or do you have to have something ready for them beforehand so they've already
> eaten, or what?

I'm not sure there is any one solution for all feasts or situations.
For some of the comments about various alternatives for serving as
well as feeding the servers, check this file in the FEASTS section
of the Florilegium:
feast-serving-msg (89K) 11/ 7/00    Ideas for serving feasts. How to organise.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/feast-serving-msg.html
--
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 ****