[Sca-cooks] Encouraging Period Cooking: good feasts cheap

[Elaine Koogler]

This all sounds wonderful and I admire your creativity and energy in doing
all of this.  However, most of us are unable to take advantage of things
like this.  For one thing (in my case at least) I do not have the time nor
the inclination to slaughter and butcher my own meat...nor do I have the
facilities.  So I have to purchase what I use from vendors of one sort or
another.  I use places like Restaurant Depot, Amish markets and some of our
members have access to Post Exchanges.  On occasion, hunters in our group do
share venison with us but, to my knowledge, we do not have a law like what
you describe in Maryland.

Thanks for sharing your ideas, though!

Kiri

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Honour Horne-Jaruk <jarukcomp at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> Respected friends:
>
>
>
> Well, the venison was courtesy of the local sheriff- In some states, when a
> deer is hit by a car, the sheriff's department calls whoever is next on
> their list and says "will you go finish it off and take the carcass off the
> road?" I sign up in every state I live in.
> As for cheap feasts generally: Pull up a chair, this may take a while...
> The secret to _good_ cheap feasts is using medieval sourcing. You can get
> flabby, flavorless Frankenchicken for $.49 a pound if you haunt the sales
> religiously enough, but I get superlative chicken for the same price by
> putting out feelers and signs in rural areas. I pay for 50 straight-run
> "bargain" (mixed breed) chicks, delivered to the home of the people who will
> raise them: less than $40.00 US. I pay for $200.00 US of chemical-free feed,
> enough to supplement what they scratch for themselves. At about three months
> old, I take all the cockerels, and the farmer buys back the hens he likes.
> Usually, there are about thirty cockerels; the farmer pays me $4.00 US each
> for the "started pullets"-- leaving me about US $150.00 invested for thirty
> birds, or $5.00 US per 4-7 lb. bird. Then I skin all the bright-feathered
> ones, salt the skins, and sell them to fly-tiers and mask makers for $9.00
> US (or more) per skin, dropping my investment to $60.00 US, or $2.00
>  per bird--- less if more than ten have good feathers. So my averaged
> per-pound price hovers at thirty to sixty cents a pound dressed weight, and
> I can do fun things with the feathers I can't sell.
> For pork, I offer to buy to weaner pigs and supplement their feed-- the
> last time I did this, it was just helping out a friend, so I was all alone;
> it's much easier with co-conspirators. Every event I went to that winter, I
> asked permission to triple-line a trash barrel and designate it for only
> food waste. There were entire weeks when the pigs needed no other food.
> Failing that, you can go shares with another SCA group or family and buy a
> "finished" pig for slaughter. Since I know how to do slaughtering, one
> strong volunteer (Or a class at a previous event- I once was responsible for
> a venison butchering class at a Crown Tourney) and there's lots of meat on
> hand.
> For veal, I can buy a $50.00 US veal calf from a dairy farmer and pay him
> to take it to six weeks-- about $250.00 US for 40 to 70 lbs. of veal. For
> beef, it's best to go shares with one or more other families/groups, and
> have the initial slaughtering done by a pro; however, some states mandate
> that the pro must then also do the butchering, which ups the cost a _lot_.
> Rare vegetables can also be hire-grown. Contact your nearest 4H, many of
> them live on small farms and would love to get paid for part of their
> gardening work. Skirrets, anyone? (Actually, no. Skirrets are an invader
> species in the US. But white and yellow carrots, striped beets, Grey Field
> peas...)
> The reason I specifically mentioned fyshe in paste is that many unpopular
> fish, which are very rank when cooked plain, become very nice if cooked
> sealed in pastry. Since they're unpopular, they're cheap. For a big feast
> I'd talk to our seacoast members, and get someone to meet the boats when
> they come in- straight off the docks these "trash fish" are embarrassingly
> cheap.
> Another important factor in good cheap feasts is portioning. I always try
> to have servers who actually _serve_ --- because if the chickens go on the
> table whole, some jerk somewhere will rip the chicken in half and say "well,
> that's my share." People are happy with pre-portioned meat if it's served to
> them in good medieval fashion.
> Years ago, I wrote two articles on this subject, both of which are (oddly
> enough) in the Florilegium. One is entitled "Rob Peter to Feed Paul", the
> other "Warners" (a Warner is a completely edible soteltie. All Warners are
> sotelties, but nowhere near all sotelties are warners.) They're very dated,
> which shouldn't surprise anybody, but many of the ideas have stood the test
> of time and they'll at least give your own planning a springboard. Every
> once in a while, I google Rob Peter to see where it ends up; everyplace from
> a link on the page of a rabidly strict Imperial Roman Living History group
> to a Christian Fundamentalist web page on frugal living! (The latter took it
> down when I asked them how they found it; I guess they thought I'd object to
> the fact that they posted it with neither my knowledge nor consent.)
> Anyway, you get the idea. And, yes, I _love_ taking people shopping and
> showing off my flint-skinning skills. I was one of eight children, we
> usually had a cousin or three living with us, and I think my mother would
> have had convulsions had the words "ready to eat" passed our lips.
>
> Yours in service to both the Societies of which I am a member-
> (Friend) Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
> Alizaundre de Brebeuf, C.O.L. S.C.A.- AKA Una the wisewoman, or That Pict
>
> --
"It is only with the heart that one can see clearly; what is essential is
invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince