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

Honour Horne-Jaruk jarukcomp at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 31 16:28:54 PST 2011


Respected friends:


--- On Mon, 1/31/11, Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Good Lady, if you are serving fysh in
> paste and venison sausage on a $6 
> ticket - I want to go shopping with you!  Or are you
> hunting and fishing 
> for the main courses?  :-)
(snip)
> Cheers,
> Dame Selene Colfox, Altavia, Caid, SCA
> 
(In response to my comment)
> > Respected friends:
> >      My solution to the problem has
> always been cheap feasts. When they're getting 18 dishes for
> $6.00 US, they'll try _anything_. (fyshe in past(e)? bring
> it on. Venison sausage? yup. Sweet pies made with meat? hey,
> at this price who cares?)

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

FORTE EST VINUM, FORTIOR EST REX, FORTIORES SUNT MULIERES: SUPER OMNIA VINCIT VERITAS




      



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