The event steward for our local Standard Bearer’s event had not nailed down a feast steward before submitting his bid, and the first choice fell through with four weeks to go. I was asked if I’d step in.

I had a lot of ideas about a different feasts, but for personal reasons, decided to do the classic 14th Century English (aka taking it all from Curye in Inglysch). Since I need to do some research for on food for an event next June, that must be 14th century English, this seemed like a nice shortcut.

Where to start? To start with, I already had the budget from the event bid: 40 adults at $10 a head, 10 children at $0 a head, for a budget of $400. The only people I should expect to be eating free are our Baron and Baroness. This is a small enough event I don’t see a need for servers – I can ask people to come up and pick up the food themselves, and I’ll only have a minimal kitchen staff (four of us at a max). So I’m feeding just under 50 people on $400 dollars.

I’ve seen the event kitchen: it’s being held at our weekly meeting site. I’ll have access to one convection oven (yeah!), one six burner commercial stovetop and one commercial oven under it. There are sinks, but not dishwasher, no ice maker, minimal refrigerator space. There is a fair amount of counter and table space to spread out, which is lovely.

Most English feasts are three courses: I know from experience that the local feast crew can do around 5 dishes per course, with a 20 minute separation between courses to pre and plate the next, without too much screaming. However, we’re going to be lightly staffed. I would say that I’ll cut down the feast volume, but it’s already been priced at $10 a head, and that’s a pretty standard price for a three course feast. I want people to get what they pay for. So I need to focus on pre-prep and minimal pre dishes.

Next consideration – I don’t have the staff to handle ‘special’ dishes. So I’ll need to have a sufficient variety of dishes that the allergic or the picky can assemble a sufficient meal without me having to cook separately for them, on the day. If it’s a thing I can do in advance, I can afford to make some special dishes, ’cause I’ll have time.