[Sca-cooks] newbee cook attempting feast for the first time in december

[brooke white]

good and most gentle of ladies,
please let me, Elisande Walters from the shire of Drei Eichen in the
glorious realm of Drachenwald, express my gratitude about being able to post
on this list. I am sure you have hosted a great many successful feasts one
way or the other. Our shire was formerly a barony and we are currently
*reactivating* the group, but what we bear, is the great footsteps, without
people to sublement them with experience. Thus, it will be our first feast,
when we are going to host an event with royal presence on the first weekend
of december this year (called the Dragon in Winter).

NOW; I have been called a great cook, numerous times when it comes to
contemporary cooking but I have little experience with period food though
lots of *cooking*knowledge. So, apart from the dificulty to identify these
*yummy* recipes (here the meat is often dry and the flavors don't usually
compelment each other but mostly I think that is due to financial concerns
and bad cooking choices like making *broiled meat and not serving it on
time) I have to deal with the following problem:

HOW DOES ONE ASSESS THE AMOUNTS OF EACH DISH.

Is it really sensible to make *1* per person? how much such *each person*
have per meal? I find that my old cooking infos usually overdo it these
estimates. Ususally because the servings are considered to be part of a one
course meal with maybe dessert. But I am feeding everybody the whole day,
and IME the need for calorie intake depends on what you had during the day
as well as on your activities. I did a fairly good estimate for 35 people
over a weekend but that did NOT include a feast (we did a byob) now, I am
dealing with a prospect of 60.

Is there any rule of thumb? I was considering making more diverse dishes in
smaller portions. but that might actually result in some people not getting
some dishes which your survey pointed out as *difficult*.

I would very much appreciate any advise on this matter. I am going to serve
a big sotelties-cake from a modern recipe covered in blackened Marzipan so I
know that nobody needs to go to bead hungry but I *of course* want to do it
right , sigh. Thank you for any pointer to other resources or direct advise
that you can give me

Yours
In service to the dream
Elisande