Maidens-Fest-art - 1/29/99 The feast for the Festival of Maidens SCA event in the Barony of Wuerm Wald, Middle Kingdom, January 1999. The headcook was Bogdan din Brasov. NOTE: See also the files: feasts-msg, feast-ideas-msg, feast-menus-msg, headcooks-msg, p-menus-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 16:35:36 -0600 (CST) From: Jeff Heilveil Subject: SC - First Feast--Festival of Maidens It's been a while since I posted, but I wanted to let you all know about the feast I ran at fesitval of Maidens in Wuerm Wald. For starters, here was the menu: First Course (Opening Sweet) Daryoles (as per Pleyn Delit) Wardonys in Syrup (as per Pleyn Delit) Second course (Coarse course) A Roast of Meat (as per Miscellany) Counterfeit ofIsfiriya of Garbanzos (Miscellany) Pan de Campagne (from Bear) Champignions en Paste (Pleyn Delit) Frytour of Erbes (Pleyn Delit) Third Course (soothing course) Chickpea Soup (Medieval Kitchens) Blanchmange (Take a Thousand Eggs or More) Erbolat (Pleyn Delit) Apple Moys (Take a Thousand Eggs or More) Fourth Course (Closing Sweet) Chirseye (Pleyn Delit) An Apple and Walnut Tart (Alia Atlas Trans. of Ein Buch von Guter Speise) Shortbread (Bear and my rendition of "Fine Cakes" in To the Queen's Taste) First off, let me say that overall things went well, and I have Bear to thank for a whole lot of help. The feast was priced at $6/head. Now, on to our story... One of the hardest things about doing this feast is that the Baron was very leery of doing a full feast. Wuerm Wald hasn't actually done a full feast in about 7 years as the last time they did there was a slight fire in the kitchen. I had $300 to do the feast, it was limited to 80 people and I had no idea what the site looked like until four days before the feast. It was exciting. The menu was kept simple, because pulling off a successful feast, though simple was more important than an elaborate feast. I picked a lot out of Pleyn Delit, but in general worked off the originals, instead of their redations. I made the Pan de campagne, and the shortbread the week before. It was relatively simple, and gave my housemate and I enough time to realize that the pan de campagne recipe was perfect for use with Barm, so we wouldn't have to use conventional bread yeasts (prior to this we usually had to supplement the barm). Four days before the event I got to see the site. I could move in. Four industrial ovens, twelve gas burners, movable work carts, sanitizer, industrial friges, the works. Bear helped out with the budgeting and whatnot, and Sams Club helped out with the affordability of the groceries. The morning of, I got into the kitchen around 9:30 and we started to work. By 10:30 there was already a waiting list for people who wanted to attend the feast, even though we had more than 80 people signed up. Really, there were no big problems, once we got the gas to the stoves turned on. The chicken took a while to deal with, as I had found thighs for .49/lb, but we had to bone and skin them. We accidentally doubled the amount of wine in the pears in wine syrup, but that turned out to make it a bigger hit than it was at the test feast. The Daryoles took a while, and set us a little behind, though the fighters asked for more time anyway. We started a half hour late (I was bummed), but it got out there. The Counterfeit didn't turn out this time, and I haven't figured out what I did differently, as I even got them to be wonderful at pennsic. Having two fried dishes was a bit of a problem, as we were making them and trying to get them out rather feverishly. In fact, I would say that my major problem with the feast was that with so many hot dishes it was really hard to get things out there together and on time. There was one other problem. The day before the feast I was informed that there would be a high table, and everything had been counted out to 10 tables. This caused a little bit of strife but was dealt with in the end. After the feast many people came up to talk about the feast. The best compliment I got was a couple that thanked me for doing a feast with period food. The regional MoAS was there, and said that from the outside, the feast didn't seem to be late, and that the dishes came out in good time. She said that any lagging was more than made up for by having the hot dishes come out Hot and not luke warm. Some of the fighters wanted more meat, which would be easy. I know on what to work, and I have ideas for next time, but all in all I feel that the feast went well. Cu drag, Bogdan din Brasov _______________________________________________________________________________ Jeffrey Heilveil Bogdan din Brasov Department of Entomology MoAS, Barony of Wurm Wald University of Illinois Bucatar-sef, Liedmeister, Wurm Wald heilveil at uiuc.edu Middle Kingdom (217) 398-9529 Edited by Mark S. Harris Maidens-Fest-art Page 3 of 3