[Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long)

[Sharon Gordon]

That was an amazing save!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the detailed description of how it went and vivat to your kitchen
crew.

To make a situation like this easier in the future, it sounds like it would
be helpful to have
1) one or better yet two cooks plus the autocrat who have complete info on
the feast prior to the feast and could serve as backup.  Preferably these
two people would not be in close contact with the head cook to avoid the
likelihood of all being hit with the same illness or negative life event at
the same time.  It would also be useful if various of the kitchen crew had
helped test the feast recipes so at least one person was experienced with
each one.

2) Haven't seen your spreadsheets, but thinking that spreadsheets for the
people in #1 would include amount of an ingredient used in each recipe plus
totals for each checking.

3) A spreadsheet or handwritten gridded table in 15 minute increments for
each dish on the menu that tells what needs to be done at that time.

And if possible:

1) Redundancy in cooking and serving gear

2) Alternative resources for cooking and warming

3) Detailed equipment checks close to the event.  Other feasts have been
hampered by the discovery at 7pm on Friday night when no repair person could
be found that various pieces of equipment were nonworking or malfunctioning.
If someone local could go through the kitchen on wednesday or thursday, more
of these could be repaired in time.

4) An addition to the head cooks list of wierd things to check--check top
inside of grill for food safety.  Other people have had grills that wouldn't
light, broken grill legs, or tanks of gas that were nearly empty instead of
full and discovered that the meat was still raw because it had only cooked
for 10 minutes before the flame went out.

5) An extra % of workers for each hour based on the average number of
unexpectedly lost helpers.  Like if 8 people are needed, maybe you have 11
advance volunteers.  What does everyone think is a good safety margin?

6) The vinegar situation is wierd.  The disappearance of a gallon container
of chocolate I could more easily understand.  Do you think someone was so
far under the table that they saw Apple Cider and failed to notice the
Vinegar part?

7) A site with locking food pantries could be helpful.  It could also
prevent mix ups with different cooking teams working on different meals in
the same space at different times.

Other questions:
1) Just in case any of the rest of us need it, what proportion of sugar to
water makes a good substitute for honey?  How much of the honey can be
replaced with sugar-water?

2) If your substitutions had been more drastic, what's a good way to notify
any feasters with food allergies at the time of the feast?

3) If Aoghann sees this, would you tell us about the longships?  They sound
like a cool idea.

4) The peeler looks like a fun tool.  What thickness of food can the Wand
Blender handle?

5) Feel like you survived an Iron Chef Marathon?

Sharon
gordonse at one.net