[Sca-cooks] Shopping for feasts (long)

[Stephanie Ross]

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<<how do most of you go shopping for feasts?
where do you go to get your meats and vegetables (in general, i mean)
where do you get good prices on beef?
how do you get hold of.. duck, for example...

how far in advance do you shop for feasts?
Kirsten>>

Well now, you had to go and ask the hard questions... ;).

BTW, I fotgot to re-introduce myself to the members of this list. I have been unsubscribed for over a year due to my mother's illnesses, and the fact that I have over a year's worth of digests from 9/00 to 9/01 to go through yet *sigh*. I am HL Aislinn Columba of Carlisle (new title, just received over Labor Day weekend, my 20th anniversary event). I live in Trimaris, have been helping out in the kitchen and doing feasts in both Trimaris and Atlantia for 20 yrs now. I was Trimarian-at-large for many years, whcih meant that I didn't have a home group with whom to do feasts, so I would just help out at whatever event I was at. I am very glad to see Phlip, Lainie, Adamantius and Papa Gunthar are still on the list. And I assume that Cariodoc and Cindy are still here too, but what about Ras and Elysant? And Puck? Kiri, are you still here too?

Anyway, about feasts...
For my budget, I usually go to the highest-priced grocery store in the area (Albertsons, Publix) to do pricing, and round everything up to the nearest dollar. After my budget is approved, I will hit the lowest-priced grocery stores in the area to do my actual pricing. In this area Save-A-Lot is the cheapest for staples, i.e. oil, eggs, milk, cheese, flour, sugar etc.. Sam's club is a great place to get pre-baked rolls, gravy in bulk, ricotta and cream cheese, and bags of greens, plus some #10 cans of veggies. But just because they sell in bulk doesn't mean that their prices are any better than the grocery stores, so watch out! For my last feast, I hit Kash N Karry, Save-A-Lot, Winn Dixie, Sam's Club, Walmart Supercenter, and Family Dollar and Dollar General, which are great places to find paper goods, garbage bags and cleaning supplies cheap. My meats I bought by the case from US Foodservice (being a restaurant worker can be beneficial), as well as butter, diced onions, dcied mushrooms, shreaded cheese and parsley, all by the case. I fed 125 people on a budget for 100, whcih wasn't easy, let me tell ya. And my shire members insisted that I serve Fri night dinner, and breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday, with about $7 a head to do this with. It was really, really hard, and I did go over budget. I got SO mad when the autocrat asked me if I bought toilet paper...I was barely able to make it with the budget I had, and he wanted me to squeeze in toilet paper too!?!! The menu was hardly extravagant, but it was period to periodoid. I was glad I bought most everything pre-sliced also, because my kitchen help never showed, and I had to beg help from the populace. It was our incipient shire's first event, and all my fellow shire members were busy running the event elsewhere. The hardest thing was finding pots and pans...the site supplied NONE, and I had to borrow them from the community center in my sister's neighborhood. Luckily she and I volunteer our time to do a monthly luncheon for the little old ladies' card party, so they were very willing to loan them to me. I am not sure how you would go about finding duck, except to maybe call butchers or the meat department managers of your local groceries and see if they could order it for you. I know that a URL was posted to this list for wild meats that you can get shipped to you, but I don't have it handy at the moment, prolly on disk somewhere. I don't actually purchase my food untill the week of the event, because I have no place to store all the stuff. I usually ask if I can get on site say Wed. before the event so that I can put the perishable food into the site's refridge and freezer. It's alot easier than going from house-to-house to collect food stored there by my fellow shire members. U.S. Foodservice delivered its goods to me the Friday before the event right to the site.  I start pricing my grocery list 4 to 6 months before the event, and pray for meat sales the week of the feast.

Aislinn


"Of the Good in you I can speak, but not of the Evil.  For what is Evil but Good -  tortured by its own hunger and thirst?  When Good is hungry, it seeks food , even in dark caves, and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters." - Kahlil Gibran
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