[Sca-cooks] Fair feast budget

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

For most of the feasts i've done, i've had a base of $300 for food 
for 75-80 people, but have been allowed to go over a little, usually 
about $25 more. That's about $4.33 per person. And this includes 
comps for at least 10 people and most of the kitchen help getting in 
at half price.

Our halls are expensive, however, so the price for most feasts 
recently went up to $15. Note that i am in the San Francisco Bay 
Area, where real estate is exorbitant but i guess food is cheap.

$15 is not at all outrageous in my opinion.

I go to a breakfast-and-lunch cafe once a week for breakfast with a 
friend. It costs about $10 for an omelette with a complex filling, 
home fried potatoes, toast or muffin (which i skip), bottomless good 
coffee (it's Berkeley - most restaurants serve really good coffee), 
and sometimes a small glass of fresh orange juice. The $10 includes 
8.75 per cent tax and a greater than 15 per cent tip.

I'm certainly willing to pop an additional $5 for a four course meal 
containing 12 to 16 dishes, considering that the usual restaurant 
dinner is souporsalad, a meat, a vegetable, a carbohydrate (such as 
grain, beans, pulses, or corn), and bread (i.e., 5 dishes counting 
the bread) and can easily cost more than $15.

My first couple feasts i cooked darn near everything in the feast 
kitchen and much of the crew consisted of inexperienced cooks. My 
last couple i used a number of experienced cooks, sent them my 
recipes, and had much of the food cooked off site. Then i included 
some less experienced people in the kitchen to help make those dishes 
that need to be done on site and to assemble and plate stuff.

I have always used store bought bread except for the Greco-Roman 
feast, when i recruited a "baking Laurel". And i've always used 
pre-made pie shells. Note that i'm fussy - i don't use major 
commercial brands, because i want to avoid lard because of the Jews 
and vegetarians in our crowd, and i hate the taste of artificial 
ingredients. I use Annie's, which are made with butter (and some 
vegetable shortening) and unbleached flour. After assisting Mistress 
Elizabeth in the Feast of St. Cecilia, i'll probably start making 
crusts ahead in my food processor and freezing them.

My feasts are usually pretty elaborate - between four and six courses 
with at least four dishes, and sometimes more, per course. I have at 
least three meats, usually four, sometimes more, with generous 
portions per person. You can see my menus and recipes on my website:
http://home.earthlink.net/~lilinah/diningniche.html

If i had $6 per head we could have one heck of a feast!

On the other hand, our Twelfth Night is one of our few indoor events 
(the others being our Collegia). It is usually held in a hotel, so we 
have no kitchen access. Therefore any eating is BYO or at a 
restaurant. So we have no really big feasts. So i can only fantasize 
about those feasts for 200 to 400 people.

Anahita