[Sca-cooks] feast organization/service question
Susan Fox
selene at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 18 08:09:15 PDT 2006
Aislinn wrote:
> I have a question (several actually) about feast service. Do you folks use
> a hall steward in your Kingdoms to set up the hall and decorate it?
Oh gosh yes. Not enough time, energy and hands to do it all alone!
> Is this
> person seperate from the one who organizes the servers?
Yes. That is an entirely different skill set. The chief server needs
serious people skills and a loud voice. The decorator needs asthetics
and permission to do pretty things to boring walls.
> Is there a seperate
> person who puts the food into serving dishes (the co-feastcrat perhaps)?
> When I cook I like to stagger the courses so that everything comes out hot.
> That means I am still busy cooking and can't do the food presentation part
> myself.
That is an interesting idea. I usually do my own plating when I'm
cooking, because I already know what I want the finished product to look
like. But when I run a feast, I have "course captains" in charge of
each timed phase of the meal. They talk to each other to co-ordinate
access to the range and other equipment but otherwise work
semi-autonomously on their staggered course deadlines. It works for me.
> I like to have a seperate person than the hall steward be my
> "server organizer" because by the time feast rolls around, my hall steward
> is exhausted from all the hall duties and it makes for a much longer day
> for them. Plus we always camp here in my kingdom, so the hall steward works
> Friday night too.
That's serious business! Possibly your hall stewards need deputies to
whom to delegate some of the workload. This is supposed to be fun for
everyone, after all!
> Which means that running the hall for me takes four
> people - me as feastcrat, food plater, server organizer and hall steward.
> How does it work in your Kingdoms? Anybody have another term for "server
> organizer" that is more period yet still describes what the job entails?
>
Head Server is the best I can do here. There is a touchy balance
between the roles we play in the Society and our 21st Century Egos. Who
wants to be called a "scullery" nowadays, even if that's what he is
doing? I got in Such Social Trouble by playfully referring to my
household members as "Evil Minions," even though they were playing
along. I tried to switch to "House Elves" but there's this problem, I
keep giving them clothes. <grin> Seriously though, I am sure someone
here will post a list of those "period job descriptions" any moment now.
Selene
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