I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on t he PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Flaming Arrow Post-Mortem The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly The feast was prepared and served a couple of weeks ago, and overall went pretty well. No plan survives contact with the enemy, of course, so there were lessons to be learned ... The Good There were two things that I particularly wanted to do that went according to my plan. The first was quite straightforward. I prepared two sets of documentation for the feast. There was a one page menu with nothing but the name of the recipe and the list of the ingredients I used in preparing it. This was primarily to let those with dietary concerns check for themselves if the dish was suitable for them. This has been my standard operating procedure for many years. I am still slightly bemused that it is not more common, given the amount of faffing about that occurs if someone with an allergy is trying to find out about a given dish, and has to ask a server, who has to go ask the cook, and then come back, and so on. I made enough copies of this for each table of twenty(ish) to have two, and one for the high table. The second set of documentation ran to four pages and included the original recipes with citations, along with my comments on what I was doing with them. I made only a few copies of this set, one per table and one for high table, since they are of less interest, generally, than finding out if something will kill you, make you sick, or violate some cultural mores. It is useful for those who are interested in period cookery, however. The second part that went according to plan involved the service of the first course. Especially for the first course, I like to roll all of the dishes out at essentially the same time. Partly that's for aesthetic reasons, but it also avoids the problem of sending out, say, a meat dish, but sending the sauce out later, by which time the meat has already been eaten. (The menu listing helps with this too - if people are expecting a sauce, they are more likely to wait.) The first course was plated and ready to roll as soon as the feast started. That was good. However, there was a problem ... The Bad Feast time had come, and the food was plated and ready to go! But, because I had plated it all, some of hot food was no longer hot. That really annoyed me. I had wanted the beans and spinach to go out hot and it went out lukewarm or tepid. Feh. For the second course, because they already had food on the table, I was less worried about getting the food out at lightning speed, and a little more worried about making sure that the hot food was hot. The other problem was that I cooked far too much food. I'm always terrified that there won't be enough food, with the result that I almost always cook too much food. Ideally, I want some left-overs, but not a lot. I had a lot. Going forward, I can probably prepare 25% less of the proteins and 33% less of the vegetables without feeling like I'm short-changing anyone. The Ugly I don't really have an ugly story, but that's the required triumvirate. What I had instead was an unexpected challenge, that actually turned out quite well ... I had intended to roast venison for head table, and lamb for everyone else (with a bit of lamb for head table). The reason that not everyone got venison was simply that the site could only provide a limited amount of venison. The venison roast for head table was fine, and the other bits were made into the stewed venison, which was also fine. The lamb was supposed to be boned legs (with the bones included for stock-making purposes). When I opened the package, however, I found it had been chopped into inch or two long pieces, perhaps 1/2 inch or so wide. I had to consider my options. Ultimately, I decided to make faux roasts. I brined the lamb bits, then divided them evenly into three large trays. I squished them close together, and held them there by wrapping them in foil. Then I cooked them as if they were large roasts. It worked a treat, turning the Ugly into another Good. I didn't get any real browning, of course, but the meat was very moist, and the outer bits were cooked more than the inner bits. The meat ranged from medium to medium-rare. It also incidentally removed any difficulties associated with carving. Overall, I'd give myself a B/B- with a few bits working very well, and no real disasters.

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