[Sca-cooks] An interesting proposal...

[marilyn traber 011221]

A friend recently, after 9 years of litigation, has done the last court date,
and will finally be paid. He wants to celebrate with his friends and family,
and he has asked me to cook/supervise a Medieval feast. This will be in
northern IL, in June.

My food budget is $5000 for 200 people ($25 per person), and, in discussion,
he thought he'd like me to do period German. We'll have plenty of meats- it's
farm country, and we're discussing whole pigs, geese, and chickens, among
other things.

The kickers are this. My "field of operations" will be, essentially, a hay
field, but I'll have a budget of roughly $15,000 to set it up as a kitchen and
a feast hall. Also, we're not cooking for your usual mundanes ;-) Most of the
guests will be Amish, and the rest will be blacksmiths ;-)

I need ideas, for side dishes that can be conveniently done outside. I need
ideas for a dessert-type board. I would like to do a subtlety, preferably as a
surprise for the man- he's a good guy, and considering he's been almost
starving these last few years, and one of his first thoughts was to share the
bounty with his friends, I want to make it as special as possible.

And, I need recipes for small beer and a quick mead. Because of the Amish, we
want to avoid mose than minimal alcohol, although Terry's quite willing to
compromise to make things more accurately period. I also need a recipe or two
for a period, completely non-alcoholic beverage, that would conceivably served
in Germany.

Any thoughts any of you will have will be greatly appreciated. This should be
fun ;-)