[Sca-cooks] Indoor Event Fund-raiser Lunch Table

David Friedman ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Sat Apr 11 18:14:14 PDT 2009


...

>I can't afford to donate all the food money, so i don't want to 
>spend too much. So far i'm imagining: bread, meat, torta slices 
>(egg-cheese-greens), boiled eggs, sliced cheese, condiments (period 
>mustard and sauces), pickles, fresh fruit, and cakes/cookies. For 
>beverage: water and homemade syrups. The weather should be decent. 
>At Fall Investiture in November it's usually cold and rainy, so i'm 
>thinking of serving soup, setting up a camp stove in the parking lot 
>to heat it. We are unlikely to have any kitchen access, since the 
>feast crew will be in there cooking dinner.
>
>I first thought of roast chicken in pieces for the meat, but i'm 
>concerned that may be too difficult to eat, whereas sliced meat can 
>be sandwichized, which keeps the fingers cleaner.
>
>I also think the fruit should be cut in halves or large chunks - comments?
>
>I've got two volunteers to make some of the food and may get a 
>couple more before the event in a month.
>
>Does this sound reasonable? Economical? Should i add or subtract anything?

If the weather is cold, you might think about serving some of the 
syrup drinks diluted in hot water instead of cold, assuming you have 
a camp stove or something similar to heat it with. We've done the 
lemon drink and the pomegranate drink from the Anonymous Andalusian 
that way.

I think gingerbrede works out to be pretty inexpensive, since it's 
largely bread crumbs. It's easy to make, keeps, and a lot of people 
like it. For your "cakes/cookies," Khushkananaj is a 
possibility--again one of our standards.

It would be somewhat more work, but your chicken could go into 
barmakiya, which makes it automatically sandhichized--and that can be 
made at home the day before. And is more interesting. You could even 
experiment with sealing the dough layers together in a pattern 
designed to make it easy to cut it into portions--not something I've 
tried.

For the soup you again want to think about cost. Eggs and bread 
crumbs make pretty inexpensive thickenings and there are a number of 
period soups that use them. Cheese gets used too--not sure if you can 
get inexpensive versions or not. Platina's potage from meat has bread 
crumbs, eggs, and cheese, and is quite tasty. Mirause of Catalonia is 
good too, and it's based on chicken, which is usually cheaper than 
beef--or at least was back when I was doing feasts. The one expensive 
ingredient is almonds.

You might want to think about the relative virtues of the sort of 
soup that has chunks of meat in it, and thus provides a more 
substantial meal, vs the sort that is all liquid and thus likely to 
be a bit less messy to eat.

What sort of pavilion are you thinking of? My vote would be for a big 
hub and spoke--looks impressive, and more period than a lot of the 
large tents one sees at events. The 16 sided version should have a 
diameter at the ground of about 24 feet--is that sufficient?
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com



More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list