[Sca-cooks] What would you do?

[Elaine Koogler]

I'm afraid I lay this at the doorstep of the autocrat. If I am not given 
money well in advance of the event (at least a week), I keep after the 
autocrat. I also usually make it very clear to the autocrat that I must 
have the money early enough to do shopping and pre-cook. This is 
especially true this year as I don't have the money to front the event.

If, despite all efforts to the contrary, this happened, I would go ahead 
and purchase what I needed where I could. In my mind, this would negate 
any agreement about what I would spend per head...having to do all of 
the shopping at the last minute would make it so that you couldn't 
negotiate lower prices on much of what was to be used. I would also 
require that the autocrat and anyone else she/he could muster show up at 
my house for a precook that night...and that there would be LOTS of 
kitchen help during the day. I might also insist that the autocrat help 
with shopping.

I did find myself in a similar situation once a long time ago. We 
received a phone call from the autocrat of an event to be held about 5 
hours from where we lived...on Wednesday before the event. She asked us 
to help in the kitchen...bring our knives and aprons along. This was the 
Investiture of a new Barony, so was very important. The ladies who were 
to cook the event had looked in magazines at pictures, found some they 
liked, purchased the ingredients...then booked on the day of the event. 
So four of us were left with a bunch of ingredients, no period recipes, 
and an agreement with the school that we couldn't get into the kitchen 
until 3:00! We sent my lord out shopping...as he said, "Try finding brie 
in Blacksburg, VA!" As I said, this was many years ago. But with a great 
deal of imagination and the fact that one of us had a copy of "Dining 
with William Shakespeare", we did it. To my mind, this kind of 
flexibility is what makes a good SCA cook.

Kiri

Patricia Collum wrote:

><snip> For some reason the cook was not
>given any money to shop with until the the day before the feast (and did not
>have the money to pay for the food themselves and wait for reimbursement.)
>My question is, what would you do if you found yourself in this
>circumstance? (It's like one of those impossible situations from combat
>pilot training.)
>
>Cecily
>  
>
-- 
Learning is a lifetime journey…growing older merely adds experience to 
knowledge and wisdom to curiosity.
					-- C.E. Lawrence