( cut for length )

The important part of all this? We raised over $10K this year (in a bad economy) for Breast Cancer research - in one night!

Notes on the peppers - while in general peppers were not period to SCA time period thehonorablellt says there is a variety of pepper that WAS available. She's promised she'd include it in the documentation, but price and availability may mean she uses bell peppers instead.

Recipes for TNT:
First Course

Premade items:
Pitas
Roasted Peppers

Recipes:
( Baba Ghanoush )

( hummas )

( kefta )

( Taboli )

Second Course
( Paella )

Third Course
( roast beef )

( Lombarda Salsa )

( Limonata (Lemon Sauce) )

( Menestra de piselli (Peas for Lent) )

( Rappe Turnips )

( Fritto Misto )

Dessert Sideboard (all items purchased premade)
Dried fruits and nuts
baklava
halva (sesame paste)

( Friday shopping )
( Saturday )

( lessons learned )
For the record since those two websites are eventually going to go away here are the menus:
( Pirate Feast )
( KA&S Lunch )

Are you guys tired of this yet?

( the latest version )

Here is the ROUGH DRAFT of the Investiture feast - Jan 20. What do you guys think?

( opinions please )

frederich, the party pooper says it's too much food and we need to cut back. :(

The documentation for Lady Tirzah's feast as Storvik Novice Tourney has
been posted here: http://www.otcreations.com/Images/Novicefinal.pdf and
yes this does include the recipe for the Pistachio Cream.

( Draft of documentation for Novice Tourney Feast )

cross posted to sca_cookery

Saturday night we had a delightful dinner, with thanks to the people who joined us. The only slight hiccup was that while we were planning a dinner for 10, we ended up with a cast of 9. That’s because even though we’d planned for frederich to join in the fun he worked in the kitchen. I really should have taken his place but I was working in the kitchen in between mingling with the guests.

We completed all dishes in reasonable time, and in fact one of the comments was that we were sending them out far too fast to be realistic for the real feast.
( The dishes )

I sent this report to LLT for her to add her comments but I'm impatient girl today so I'm posting it now. If she has anything else to report, I'll post it later.

It's only three weeks til the Novice test dinner and right now it looks like I still have five one or two spots open. Anyone interested?

1) Spikeywheel
2) Akiyo
3) Nostasia
4) Blaise
5) Johanna
6) Wynne?
7) Museclio (tenative)
8) Martykp
So...the TBD could be you!!!! If you want to come test the feast we're cooking for Novice Tourney, let me know. The dinner will be at my house in Clinton on Saturday June 17.

The other night when I got home I found that LLT had remade the Pottage of Raspberries. One of the things we tried is hollowing out a lime and serving it in that. The end result is we will probably be serving them inside lemons.

While talking about that we decided to switch the PoR with the "Bread with Eggs", which was basically the dessert for the 2nd course. Now the BwE is going to be in the 3rd course and the PoR will act as a pallet cleanser between the 2nd and 3rd courses.

Dinner last night was the third course of Storvik Novice Tourney Feast

( Stuffed Roast Pork )
( Sparagus with Cream )
( Mushrums after the Oliver )
( Red Carrots with Brown butter & onion )
( Potage of Rasberries )

D'oh! Event info would be nice...Storvik Novice Tourney, Washington DC area, July 8th (or whatever that Sat is).

Comments anyone?

( Staff )
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( tenative feast menu )

Menu is about 85% certain. We will be trying each dish individually so there may be some adjusting as we taste different things. At some point (prob mid March) there will also be a "test feast" of all dishes for one table of eight to see if any fine tuning needs to be done as far as combined tastes and amount of food.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( documentation )

A good friend of mine head cooked a feast recently. When I asked a couple of Laurels for their opinion I was very disappointed with the reaction. The most generous statement made was “well, I didn’t go hungry.” Yes there were a couple of dishes that did not come out as well as we wanted them to – specifically the risotto and chicken were each cooked in several batches and a batch of each ended up being undercooked. Unfortunately at least part of each of those batches ended up at the same table.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that I wasn’t looking for honest reactions. I just think that to only complain about what wasn’t right without making some comment as to what was good is a bad idea.

I was talking to another friend about this and we kind of came up with a definition that we liked for various types of criticism and I was wondering what you guys think of it.

Complain: Listing the problems with a project but not offering any suggestions. “The chicken wasn’t cooked all the way through.”

Criticism: Listing the problems with a suggested solution. “The chicken wasn’t cooked all the way through. Next time you might want to consider par-boiling the chicken before the event.”

Constructive Criticism: Listing the problems, suggesting a solution, and observing something good that was done on the project. “The chicken wasn’t cooked all the way through. I’ve had that problem in the past and found if you par-boil the chicken it has a tendency to cook more thoroughly. However, I really liked the way you did the lamb. May I ask where you found the recipe for the sauce?” No matter what someone does there is ALWAYS something good that can be said.

My point is not to suggest “oh everything is wonderful” is a good answer. It is to try to find some good to go with the bad. As it happens both T and I know that there were wonderful things about that feast. We had a 3 course feast with 4 different meats and a sugar rapier soltie. I know we have cooked well in the past and will make wonderful feasts in the future. We know that there were some problems with the feast and we have talked about ways to fix them.

I’m more concerned about what would happen if someone who doesn’t have confidence in their craft is faced with nothing but complaints. Most people will think twice before putting themselves out for abuse again.