[Sca-cooks] Beverage Service at Feasts

[Barbara Benson]

Greetings,

I personally do not subscribe to that particular tradition. Per
Kingdom Law children under the age of 12 must be supervised by a
responsible adult. In this part of the Kingdom, most of the children
are volunteered for drink service so that their parents do not have to
supervise them during feast because they want to enjoy feast.

That leaves the role of supervising adult to the Hall Steward - and
frankly, my hall stewards have waaay too much on their mind to
effectively supervise a passel of children.

My personal preferences in food service is to have enough adult
servers (who have attended a pre-feast server meeting) so that each
person handles one or two tables. They are responsible for all of the
food and drink service for their tables, and they are normally more
circumspect then the children in service.

The service of feast is/can be an art all on it's own, and children
rarely have the ability to understand the nuances of good service.

A tradition that some people (again in this part of the Kingdom) have
been trying to establish is having a separate Children's Feast that
has its' own cook and a menu more suited to children. It takes place
in a separate hall and is usually followed by some sort of activity to
fill up the time that feast occupies. I have even assisted in one that
the Head Cook was a pre-teen (13 years old) and several older children
helped with decorating their Hall and setting up the tables and
service.

What it comes down to is what you are trying to accomplish. If you, as
the head cook, are attempting to not only serve period food but serve
it in a period manner - you are well within your rights to have
restrictions on who you want to have perform said service. Especially
if you are attempting to use more period serving vessels (instead of
those horrid plastic pitchers). The drink vessels that I tend to use
are much to heavy for most children to safely handle - assuming most
feast goers do not want large pomegranate stains on their garb.

Glad Tidings,
Serena da Riva

On 6/29/07, Michelle LR <melbrigda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I need a little help in figuring out beverage service at feasts.  In
> Meridies it seems the tradition is to have children serve beverages.