[Sca-cooks] Beverage Service at Feasts

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> 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.

Interestingly, in our kingdom, I find kids volunteering on their own 
because they find it interesting (and I think they like being able to 
get up and roam around instead of 'sitting' through the feast). This 
means that as you are getting ready to serve feast, whether or not you 
have asked for servers, a certain number of kids come up and ask to help 
serve. 

We sometimes also ask for kids to volunteer, and they do. (Once 
one does it, they all seem to follow suit...)

I've had good results with this, but different techniques work in 
different situations.

In one case, where I had a lot of kids and a lot of adult servers (a 
total of one server per table) I paired each kid with an adult server 
and gave them 2 tables to serve. The only trouble was that the kids were 
so eager, I had to literally stop them and make them take a break 
between the 2nd and 3rd courses, lest the whole feast get served in less 
than 30 minutes!

Most of the time, service at our feast is done in a one-from-each-table 
way, so if there are a relatively small number of volunteers, we have 
them do beverage service and bring the voiders/empty plates back.

When kids do beverage service (and I don't generally put them on 
beverage service untill they are a certain height), it's done by having 
pitchers on the tables and water coolers with the drinks at the back of 
the hall.  I know it's not period to have pitchers on the tables, but 
it does work. Then the kid can *see* whether the pitcher needs 
refilling, asks for it, and asks what you want in it.

Another thing you can do with kids is have them offer handwashing before 
the feast, if you've got at least one for every table and a good mix of 
heights, so one can carry the basin and one the ewer-- if you've got 
more, one can carry the towels. They seem to love this, and it doesn't 
take long to teach.

-- Jadwiga

"I thought you might need rescuing . . . We have a bunch of professors 
wandering around who need students." -- Dan Guernsey