[Sca-cooks] feasts and courts

[Robyn.Hodgkin at affa.gov.au]

There are so many ways to combine feasts and courts.  Some are good, some are bad and some are downright disastrous. (we all know those ones so I won't bother illustrating on that point)

Generally, I reckon the best options seem to be:

1. Serve the first course and then hold court
2. Split court up into bits and put the bits between courses (the minus is that you have the feel of the event turning into one giant court
3. Don't have court at all <grin>
4. Have court as a series of on the spot awards and announcements around the feast hall. Our B&B have done this... the feast will be going on and suddenly the herald calls for silence. The B&B say their bit, give an award to someone and then everyone goes back to being noisy. Works well for small feasts
5. Have food on the tables so everyone can have a quick munch before court to stave off the hunger pangs.
6. Serve finger food while court is going on (we did this during 1st Coronation with a fair amount of success, though making sure everyone gets food can be hampered a bit by the crowd)

Our current King and Queen are very flexible and reasonable about things, and generally would be willing for the kitchen to serve food to the crowd if the K&Q are running late.

Kiriel