[Sca-cooks] Candlemas Feast

[Stefan li Rous]

Malkin replied to me last Friday:
<<< It will be mid-winter here, but given that mid-winter is four months
after first snow ... it is a very long winter. >>>

Meaning that by that time folks are too tired of winter to eat  
"seasonal" foods?

<<< Artemisia is small (population-wise) and spread out, and  
Otherhill is a
small shire (population wise), and really spread out (all land 150 miles
North/South of the Colorado-Wyoming border and 150 miles East/West of  
the
Utah-Wyoming border).>>>

Wow. A 90 minute drive to attend a shire meeting?  And I thought the  
problems of getting the populace together in a large, spread out city  
such as Houston or Dallas was a problem compared to Austin. Austin is  
about 30 miles across, with about 120 members.

I did put together this Florilegium file a while back:
sprd-out-grps-msg (10K) 12/27/01    Handling SCA groups spread over a  
large area
http://www.florilegium.org/files/SCA-INC/sprd-out-grps-msg.html

Hmmm. Longer back than I thought. :-) Anyway, perhaps it might give  
you some ideas or if you have any comments to add, I'd like to have  
them.

<<< Our Crowns almost always attempt to visit each
group at least once per reign. >>>

There must not be that many groups in Artemisia then. Ansteorra has  
been getting a lot more smaller groups, even though the overall  
population has not grown that much since I started in 1989. It would  
be impossible for the Crown to visit every group within a single  
reign, probably not even with the Queen and King going to separate  
events or having the Crown Prince attend a third event each weekend.   
There are often two or three events every weekend. And that is just  
the events which get on the kingdom calendar. I'm sure there are a  
number of non-calendar events when Shires only get one calendar event  
and Baronies only get two.

<<< Last year, without royal attendance, we had 20 folks.  I cooked
Celtic for
30 and had a TON o leftovers.  The number 30 was bent to include
Royalty and
Retinue anticipated whenever the royalty visits.  Won't change the
budget much. >>>

With a head count that low it would seem to be difficult to comp many  
extra meals. Do a number of people attend your events and not eat  
feast? Or are these 20 and 30 counts about the size of the events?

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****