[Sca-cooks] Dayboards?

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Avraham haRofeh:
>  > Our "traditional" feast package is usually lunch and dinner the day of
>>  the event, although the lunch is more commonly served if the event in
>>  question's being held somewhere where folks can't easily go get a
>>  hamburger, or pick up nibbles at a grocery store.  I don't know that
>>  I've ever seen a breakfast provided, outside of perhaps a basket of
>>  rolls and fresh fruit for the Royal Room.
>
>Dayboard is basically lunch, except it's not a served, sit-down meal, it's
>usually just set up buffet style.

When I was a lad, back in A.S. Nuffink, we 'ad it towf. We 'ad to
'oont down oor own mastodons by diggin' pit ootside yon event site,
an' roost 'em oover fire built outta oor own legs. An' we were 'appy
to get it. Noone o' yer bloomin' dayboords.

But yes, I remember when dayboards were either nonexistent or a
rarity in the East; now they are pretty much the norm. They can range
from the minimalist bread-cheese-fruit thing to the more elaborate
ones with little pies and such. I imagine that with a relatively
large number of events taking place on a given weekend within 200
miles or so of most people, and massive competition from real life,
it's become very difficult to plan to attend an event too far in
advance, and when this occurs, a decent lunch (or at least the time
to prep one offsite) is one of the things that suffers.

Things learned from putting out dayboards (I'm sure Jadwiga and
others can help me out here): portion bread. It sounds ridiculous,
but there seems to be a tendency for people to tear a large loaf in
half, eat about a quarter of that, and throw the rest away.

I've never done a dayboard when I was not also cooking a feast at the
same time, so my approach has been rather minimalist -- see
bread-cheese-fruit above. When feeling elaborate, I'll add a meat
soup, a more-or-less vegan soup, and perhaps a frittata every half
hour or so. These last work rather well for small events; they don't
take long to cook once the bulk prep is done, you cook them for a
very few minutes on the rangetop, and then you can finish them in the
oven, and a decent-sized one serves maybe 20 people, depending on
what one considers "decent-sized". It may be the perfect combination
of industrial, bulk cookery and a la minute service.

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER