[Sca-cooks] Tableware

[Stefan li Rous]

Avraham said:
> > What materials are you comfortable carting around? Some people refuse
> to
> > carry glass or pottery on the grounds that it will break if you drop
> it on
> > the cement or tile floor.
>
> I'd vastly prefer metal, but will handle glass or pottery if the metal
> is too expensive.

I tend to avoid pottery and glass items, since I drop things. My wife
has bought a number of nifty mugs from several SCA craftsman over the
last few years. Some I have to get around to trying to epoxy back
together. Some there was no chance of recovering.

Metal does have the problem that it transfers the heat real well. This
means you cold drink may not stay that cold and your hot drink may make
the mug too hot to pick up.

What I'd like to find is an insulated pewter mug. :-)

I have a complete multi-place setting of one of the simpler Armatel
artifical pewter sets. However, I'm cheap and would not pay $16 and
up for the plates etc. While it took several years, I gathered my
set from various Thrift Shops, Goodwill stores, flea markets and
SCA merchants.

If you wish to eventually do this, you can start off with other
stuff such as alluminum tankards and plates easily available from
a Thrift Store and gradually replace things as you come across them.
And give the old stuff to someone just joining the SCA or keep it
as loaners or spares.

You might also enjoy making some of your own feastgear. See these
files in the Florilegium for instance:
Horn-Spoons-art    (9K)  1/ 5/00    "Making Horn Spoons" by Mistress Gunnora
                                       Hallakarva.
Gram-Letter2-art  (12K) 12/14/01    "On the Obtaining and Preparation of a Water
                                        Gourd" by Lady Shara of Starwood.
Gram-Letter3-art  (10K)  1/15/02    "The Making of a Bottle of Leather, for thy
                                       Pilgrimage" by Lady Shara of Starwood.

> > How nicely are you inclined to treat your feast gear (as in, how soon
> > after the feast is it likely to be washed, is it going to soak in
> water
> > for a week after that, etc.)?
>
> Not very. I hate doing dishes, and have a housekeeper come in once a
> week - which means, for most events, it'll probably sit (rinsed off when
> I get home) a whole week before anyone even looks at it.

Then I do not think that you will want wooden plates or bowls. Just
letting them sit in water, will distroy them, but I'm not sure that
sitting for long will be good for them either.

See this file in the FOOD-UTENSILS section:
wood-utn-care-msg  (9K)  1/10/02    Care of utensils made of wood.

> > Also, how complete do you plan on having your feast gear be? Just a
> knife,
> > spoon, and bowl, or are you looking at going whole hog--table linens,
> > aquamanile, pitchers, etc.?
>
> Basic for now. If Christos and I ever do break up (and I fervently hope
> that's never), I'll worry about filling in other items.

As I mentioned, you can start with a few simple items and add more
as you find more items you want. We take a different mix of utensils
to camping events than we do inside, fancy-feast events such as
Candlemas.

Here is a file that might be useful for a non-food utensil since many
SCA feasts are done in near to total darkness:
candlesticks-msg  (22K)  9/25/01    Medieval candlesticks.
--
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 ****