The King's Hunt, aka Trimaris Kingdom Art/Sci.....
Well, what can I say?
I am pretty sure the feast at Art/Sci was well received. :) I have a lot to journal, and even more thanks to give, I just hope I don’t miss anyone.
I will start off by saying this was the least prepared I have ever been for a feast. I cannot even count the number of feasts that I have cooked in my time in the SCA (heck, I have lived in Trimaris for three years and a month, and I have autocratted one and been head cook for three - and I have slowed down since I got here...). While I did have my menu set three months ago, but that was about it. No prep-lists, no shopping lists, no "plan". Normally, those would all be done at least a week out, more likely a month out. I did my shopping list on Thursday night, and my prep list? I was doing that during the day Saturday. All I can say is that most of my time recently has been taken up in other ways, more pleasurable than "work". THAT is a post for another day. :p
So…. Sometime during the holidays, E asks me if I had the site tokens done yet…. Smacking my forehead, I said crap. OK, maybe not so much so smacking the forehead… but I *had* put it off a bit. OK, a lot. The Monday between Christmas and New Years I carved the mold, and spent pretty much every available moment casting the 200 hunting horn pilgrim badges made for the event. A shame barely 100 folks were in attendance; we planned the event around a closer to “normal” Art/Sci attendance of 200, with the feast set at 100. As it was, only 71 folks bought feast, but I digress….
As I posted recently, my hours have been cut by 40% (that is the reason I am able to even write this post). As a result, I did have some extra time for things, like shopping Friday. Thank GOD for my apprentice Morgan and Lady Isabella (aka Izzy) doing some pre-shopping for me, and Izzy doing fully half of the shopping for me Friday. I had spent most of the night Thursday creating my shopping spreadsheet, and was going to end up starting the event tired. I found a place that I WILL shop at for any feast I am associated with, called Restaurant Depot. It will require me getting a business license, probably a catering license since I have the Florida Food Managers thing now. I could have shaved another $200 to $300 off my budget that way. Anyway, I spent almost two hours there, which threw my timetable for Friday off a bit….
I was on my way back to my house, after shopping, when I got the call from Morgan that the fellow who was scheduled to bring the huge grill to cook all the meat had had a series of strokes during the week, and was not going to be there…. The whole feast had been planned around that grill. I was just about ready to throw in the towel at that point. Not to mention the fact that all of the bread took up FAR more space than I had expected in the trailer, and I hadn’t even packed MY gear on, or the stuff at my apartment that needed to get to the site. Again, Izzy comes threw…. She got her truck unloaded and drove the hour to my place, and loaded up everything I had piled on my driveway into her truck while I was in the shower….
I followed Izzy to site, stopping once to to use the bathroomat Publix, before the “endless dirt road” that so often leads to the sites the SCA uses for events. This road almost proved to be an obstacle to my other apprentice Herbert…. There are tons of signs warning to not proceed, no trespassing and so on. In any case, we finally arrived on site by 4pm, and so it started….
To be continued…..
I am pretty sure the feast at Art/Sci was well received. :) I have a lot to journal, and even more thanks to give, I just hope I don’t miss anyone.
I will start off by saying this was the least prepared I have ever been for a feast. I cannot even count the number of feasts that I have cooked in my time in the SCA (heck, I have lived in Trimaris for three years and a month, and I have autocratted one and been head cook for three - and I have slowed down since I got here...). While I did have my menu set three months ago, but that was about it. No prep-lists, no shopping lists, no "plan". Normally, those would all be done at least a week out, more likely a month out. I did my shopping list on Thursday night, and my prep list? I was doing that during the day Saturday. All I can say is that most of my time recently has been taken up in other ways, more pleasurable than "work". THAT is a post for another day. :p
So…. Sometime during the holidays, E asks me if I had the site tokens done yet…. Smacking my forehead, I said crap. OK, maybe not so much so smacking the forehead… but I *had* put it off a bit. OK, a lot. The Monday between Christmas and New Years I carved the mold, and spent pretty much every available moment casting the 200 hunting horn pilgrim badges made for the event. A shame barely 100 folks were in attendance; we planned the event around a closer to “normal” Art/Sci attendance of 200, with the feast set at 100. As it was, only 71 folks bought feast, but I digress….
As I posted recently, my hours have been cut by 40% (that is the reason I am able to even write this post). As a result, I did have some extra time for things, like shopping Friday. Thank GOD for my apprentice Morgan and Lady Isabella (aka Izzy) doing some pre-shopping for me, and Izzy doing fully half of the shopping for me Friday. I had spent most of the night Thursday creating my shopping spreadsheet, and was going to end up starting the event tired. I found a place that I WILL shop at for any feast I am associated with, called Restaurant Depot. It will require me getting a business license, probably a catering license since I have the Florida Food Managers thing now. I could have shaved another $200 to $300 off my budget that way. Anyway, I spent almost two hours there, which threw my timetable for Friday off a bit….
I was on my way back to my house, after shopping, when I got the call from Morgan that the fellow who was scheduled to bring the huge grill to cook all the meat had had a series of strokes during the week, and was not going to be there…. The whole feast had been planned around that grill. I was just about ready to throw in the towel at that point. Not to mention the fact that all of the bread took up FAR more space than I had expected in the trailer, and I hadn’t even packed MY gear on, or the stuff at my apartment that needed to get to the site. Again, Izzy comes threw…. She got her truck unloaded and drove the hour to my place, and loaded up everything I had piled on my driveway into her truck while I was in the shower….
I followed Izzy to site, stopping once to to use the bathroomat Publix, before the “endless dirt road” that so often leads to the sites the SCA uses for events. This road almost proved to be an obstacle to my other apprentice Herbert…. There are tons of signs warning to not proceed, no trespassing and so on. In any case, we finally arrived on site by 4pm, and so it started….
To be continued…..