[Sca-cooks] What would you do?

[Lorenz Wieland]

Patricia Collum wrote:

>Recently a simple feast was planned for an event. The feast was to include
>bread butters and fruits, salad and two veggie dishes, one casserole type
>meat dish, another meat dish and a very simple dessert. The menu was printed
>and pre-paid feast reservations were made. 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.)
>  
>
Many good responses so far and I'll try and avoid repeating the same 
things over again, but I also agree that such a situation doesn't occur 
without the complicity of the feast steward.  The money part of any 
non-trivial feast should have been worked out with the autocrat and/or 
exchequer weeks, if not months, in advance.  I can't think of any 
legitimate explanation for having this be a last-minute surprise.

That being said, this situation is not necessarily dire if the feast 
steward is experienced and has done their homework in other areas. 

For any decent-sized feast, I order most of the provisions from a food 
service company and/or local meat and produce wholesalers.  These guys 
all take orders by phone, fax, or e-mail, can pull items the same day, 
and will even deliver to site if I'm ordering a reasonable quantity of 
stuff from them.  I also try and have backup suppliers or menu plans for 
critical items which aren't always available at a good price and quality 
like fresh seafood or certain cuts of meat.  This solves most of the 
shopping issues.  Except for exotic ingredients, I place most of my 
orders two days ahead of time, and arrange for pickup or delivery of 
anything that doesn't need to be pre-cooked for the day of the event.

The other saving grace is having a good crew which can hit the ground 
running.  I've stewarded our shire's weekend event for the last two 
years (100-120 people, three days, five meals), and the difference 
between last year, where I had only one other person who knew the main 
menus and prep lists, and this year, where I had 6-8 people who had 
worked with me in advance, was enormous.  If I knew that I wasn't going 
to be able to do a lot of prep ahead of time due to some bizarre money 
situation, I'd make damn sure my menu and prep sheets reflected this, 
and that whoever was working with me knew exactly what they were getting 
themselves into.

-Lorenz