[Sca-cooks] Feasts per year

[Ruth Tannahill]

Berelinde Cynewulfdohtor, Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom signing on.

Ideally, I would cook one feast per year. I tend to spend a lot of time
planning (6 months or so), doing research, working up the budget, working
out a timetable, etc. I do some precooking. A big feast is more work than a
little one. One hundred seems to be around the dividing line, but that can
change based on the menu. I cooked a 6-course feast for a Japanese tavern
event that was 2 or 3 times more work than any Mudthaw (baronial event with
200 on-board), but that was an unusual case. I took on the assignment less
than a month out from the feast, and the autocrat insisted I use her menu.
She reluctantly consented to make a few changes, because the things she
wanted could not be done with the resources we had, but was resistant about
making changes even to minutae like garnishes. We fought for days over the
pine branches she wanted floating in the soup. I argued that pine trees are
sprayed with poisonous insecticide, and won in the end, but nearly every
suggested modification to her plan was rejected. But that was a special
case.

Oddly enough, I measure the SCA year from Pennsic to Pennsic. To me, Pennsic
is sort of a vacation from real life and the SCA, which is a really weird
way to think, but I don't have to do any real or SCA work at Pennsic, so
it's kind of like summer vacation.

This year, 2 events: one small easy one for 80, one big one for 200. I've
cooked up to 4 events in one year. I will never do that again.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that dayboard (some might call it
lunch) is not a feast. Dayboard for 500 is every bit as much work as a
typical feast (for, say 100). Since you're typically serving more people,
you are often transporing more food.

Berelinde