post-baitcon feedback

[quietann.livejournal.com]

My personal issues with baitcon are in my personal journal; however, there are a few things that IMHO need to change:

• Separate dishes/mixing equipment/etc. for any ice cream product containing meat. There are a lot of people involved who nominally keep kosher, and it's discomfiting to know that one's ice cream might have been prepared using the same equipment as, say, the chicken liver ice cream. (for that matter, I'd just ban meat-containing flavors entirely, but that's not my decision to make.)
  
• More whole wheat (not just wheat, whole wheat) bread, less white bread. We ran out of whole wheat by lunch on Saturday. (this suggestion passed on from Gregorian, who was amazingly polite about it, but still really would have preferred whole wheat bread for his peanut butter sandwich...)
  
• More tarpage for shade protection (may not be an issue if baitcon isn't at Mink Hollow anymore, but...)
  
• Re-reinforcement of the "modest dress" (ahem) requirement in and around the main area. There was one person in particular who seriously violated this. (insert serious snarkage here; I am trying to be polite.) Dancing naked in the rain, as usual, should be granted leniency.
  

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Maybe we're just asking that the meat ice creams be kept separate in some way, 'cause they're gross, ya know.

If that's what you're actually asking for, maybe it would have been better to state it that way, rather than confusing the issue by phrasing it as a kashrut problem?

And, well... it's baitcon. With 80+ flavors, everybody is going to find one or two of them repugnant. Maybe you should volunteer to research a better labelling solution?

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Meh. Since ordinarily one can assume that ice cream is lacto-ovo vegetarian* it doesn't seem way out of line to suggest more separation for that which is not.

I think I may have come up with a relatively easy labeling solution above.



*yes, I know that one can also usually assume that it's sweet and not savory nor spicy, and that there's always someone allergic to something, but for those who keep kosher and for a subset of vegetarians cross contamination is an issue.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

but for those who keep kosher and for a subset of vegetarians cross contamination is an issue.

I...don't want to seem to be harping on this point, but it's relevant and seems to keep getting ignored: all of the ice cream at baitcon is non-kosher. Every single last drop, and always has been AFAIK. Non-kosher kitchen, ergo non-kosher food.

Now, it may or may not be considered "acceptably kosher" by the idiosyncratic standards of any random partially-observant Jewish person (of which I am certainly one... :), but it just shouldn't be the responsibility of the kitchen, the staff or the runners to cater to entirely idiosyncratic diet restrictions: it's not an approach that scales at all. Especially, ahem, if the people suggesting it aren't the people implementing it.

And if there was one place and time in the world when I would not assume that any given ice-cream is l-o-vegetarian, it would be baitcon. :)

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

I don't even assume that an unlabelled ice cream at baitcon is safe for my usually-omnivorous self. If there were anywhere on the planet that somebody would create a Scampi Ice Cream or Crab Sorbet, it would be baitcon.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Completely true. But if a little of said crab scampi whatever were to get into your pineapple sorbet would it make the pineapple sorbet inedible to you?* For those who keep ingredient kosher** and for a not insignificant number of vegetarians it would.

Given that "Ice Cream" so rarely includes meat, and given that unlike the odd allergy there are a fair number of vegetarians/kosher folk who attend it seems like not a huge amount of effort to lessen the likelihood of cross contamination. My idea above was to put coloured tape on any non lacto-ovo ice cream containers, matching tape on a couple of scoops, and congregate it all in one area. I mean, we only had two meat ice creams this year, and I don't remember any in previous years.


*If you're allergic to shellfish it conceivably might.
** Or however you want to discuss people who eat cold things out of a nonkosher kitchen / people who don't eat pork or shellfish or mix milk and meat but don't sweat hecxures etc.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

crab ICECREAM is actually quite good.

the colored tags on the tables are hard enough to see in the dark, colored labels even more so. reading the existing labels without a light is pretty much impossible at some of the stations.

personally, i have my own icecream "tray", and scoopy spoon. i can at least maintain my own sanitation / rinsing / cross contamination to some degree. i run to the sanitation station and hose frequently during servings.

as far as kosher, i agree with the above. nothing served there, that is made there, is kosher, food or icecream, and the task of making that so, would be really ginormous. people who cannot partake of non kosher food, well, there's no simple solution for that. imagine trying to kosher LN2 ;P

for people with food allergies, they know they have them, so have to be doubly careful. labelling will help, but isn't perfect. rinsing will help, but isn't perfect. having your own tools for icecream will help a lot. it sucks, but the concom can't really cater to all needs. there isn't even a real middle ground.

#

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

as it turns out, my grrl was served some habanero strawberry - the container wasn't very well labeled, and the server wasn't aware that she does not, and cannot tolerate spicy food, we're talking black pepper and salt as an extreme for her. she was most not happy for sometime after. perhaps such flavors should have their own table? seems like a bit too much trouble already.

when does this rathole go too deep? why is this particularly a problem this year?

i agree that perhaps labels should be a bit more suggestive of lethal variety or ingredients as thorougly as the food menus are/were.


#

[dragonsea]

when does this rathole go too deep? why is this particularly a problem this year?

I think its because baitcon has gotten so big. There were ~150 people and 82 flavors, which are both records AFAIK.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

as it turns out, my grrl was served some habanero strawberry - the container wasn't very well labeled, and the server wasn't aware that she does not, and cannot tolerate spicy food, we're talking black pepper and salt as an extreme for her. she was most not happy for sometime after. perhaps such flavors should have their own table? seems like a bit too much trouble already.

Interesting point. Where do we stop on the specific labeling and separation? What percentage of the population can't deal with spice, etc.

Maybe at least clearer labeling would be a start*; I'd submit that religious/quasireligious* issues with an ingredient class are sufficient to be worth attempting to help not get X into Y, as well.


*At the Hot Foods party there was a star system identifying vegetarian foods and how spicy a given food was. Coloured tape around the tubs could work to identify nonvegetarian or spicy ice creams; if you just don't like mangoes it's easier to look specifically at anything that might be one.

[larksdream]

Actually, the habanero evil came from a melty bit that joined some strawberry kiwi I was trying from someone else's plate. Not much to do about that... but boy did it suck. *G*

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

No, not much to do on that one :) I guess lesson learned to ask whether proffering someone has anything hot in their bowl...

[larksdream]

I was so paranoid after that, I wouldn't even have any from a bucket until I asked a nearby person who was having some to tell me if it was spicy. I'm a REAL lightweight when it comes to hot foods. *G*

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Sorry; perhaps I should have said instead, "if you just don't like kiwi."

Fscking hell. Some things are easy to tackle and will make a fair number of people happier, and some things are a little harder.

You'll notice I also offered suggestions re allergies.

And we've also discussed the difference between sensitivity and true allergy.

AND a few years back we even had a soy free table so that someone with a soy allergy could have a selection of ice cream, too. Most of the ice cream is soy free anyway, but these were known to be, and served separately so that they wouldn't be contaminated.

As you pointed out in another subthread, if you're so incredibly allergic that things have to be washed like crazy to not kill you, you should probably not be trying to handle this in the first place. Otherwise, you've got an allergy that we can probably figure out how to help you not run into. Hopefully it was mentioned in the handy-dandy-medical-things-the-concom-need-to-know.

In any case, given that in other subthreads I did make suggestions for allergies (if someone's quite allergic to basil, perhaps using a specific colour scoop for the basil and asking people to not use that scoop on other ice creams would be an idea) I'm somewhat unhappy that you're telling me I'm ignoring what matters and emphasizing what doesn't.

Crikey. I'm omnivorous and if I'm sensitive to some foods I'm oblivious to it.

But if a significant subset of people would be happier with clearer labeling and maybe some separation between certain ice cream types I'm not sure I understand why kicking around possible ways to manage this is so upsetting to you.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

We certainly did seem to have a higher-than-usual number of mystery ice creams this year. If I had to wager a guess, I'd venture that it was due to the ever-increasing number of flavors versus the relatively static number of freezing staff, plus a serious crowding problem in the freezers, not to mention a greater amount of jousting and jostling around the tables.

I dunno if it's really feasible to train more freezing staff. Better labelling for the buckets would probably help a lot, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this issue may be more complicated than it seems on first blush; after 12 years I bet they've tried a bunch of things. (Olde Tymers feel free to chime in here.) Battery powered lights on the serving tables would probably help a lot...I might try to bring a few next time.

[frobzwiththingz.livejournal.com]

...I have a sneaking suspicion that this issue may be more complicated than it seems on first blush; after 12 years I bet they've tried a bunch of things.

Indeed, it is, and we have. the whole ice cream making-storing-serving zoo has been through several iterations already. This year the system we've been using (with reasonable successs) in the past for partitioning out the ice cream into pre-allocated stations got totally hosed by freezer issues; they're showing their age, and we have simply gone way past the amount of ice cream that they can successfully cool down. Crash suggested that we label the serving stations on the fly, rather than pre-allocate; I responded that that had in fact been done before, and turned out to have problems in practice.

We've managed to streamline the LN2 process over the years to the point where we made *82* separate batches this time around. Each one of these has a person behind it who very likely has some attachment to it, and doesnt want to miss it being served. The color-coded labeling scheme evolved over the years as a way of producing a map of where what would be as things got made. Nobody can remember where everything went as the flavors are called out, and the map allows people a better chance of finding the flavors they really want before they're gone. The separate tables evolved to spread out the people and avoid the problem that the main meal servings still have, that being that a single buffet line is incredibly inefficient. With the meals this just means long wait; with ice cream in the summer it also leads to soup rather than ice cream for most folk.

This year we ran into several new problems. The freezers didnt manage to set a good many of the flavors in time for the main serving, and did so in a way that completely skewed things such that if they went out as initially color coded, several stations would have been barren and others overstocked. This is why Crash started ignoring the color labels and round-robined them to different places, and why we went with the multiple rounds of 20-or-so flavors. We used far more of the small yogurt containers than before, to package up the small batches. But these are harder to label, and many labels got jostled off in the freezer shuffling.

W.R.T yet more stations, nice idea, but not necessarily easy to implement. There just isn't *that* much lighted space available for them. We'd need to complicate the labeling scheme some more,
and in such a way that is truly immune to error, in an environment where there are 150 people's worth of distractions.
And we'd need more "special" stations than regular ones. Of the top of my head we have "meat", "soy-only", "splenda only", "vegan", "no nuts", "no shellfish", "no lactose", "no alcohol" and i'm sure there are more. any individual one of these is fine, but add them up and it quickly becomes untenable.

suggestions as to how to make things work better are certainly welcome. anything that seems like a good effort/results ratio will almost certainly be tried.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

in talking with rob, who apparently liked my lexan serving plate and sampled from it a lot ...

if "we all" could score a bunch of trays - anything from large icecube style to army trays with MANY little dents, perhaps smaller batches could be "pre loaded" assembly line style by volunteers - to a given mapped scheme. sure, not everybody would want all flavors thus dispenced, but as a sampler tray ... who knows. that's my only major suggestion.

the multiple tables mapping system confuses me a little still sometimes, but it seems to work well enough for most people.

#

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

I do actually have one very simple suggestion: the con should acquire one of these (http://store.yahoo.com/suppliesroom/hmlmm3.html). As much as I appreciate the sacrifice that Crash and Sharon's vocal cords made for the cause, it was mostly a lost effort, and I know for sure that a lot of people didn't even have the faintest clue which flavors were heading in the directions of which tables.

I'll happily chip in 50% of the cost if someone else will ante up and the concom agrees it would help.

WRT to the mystery flavors... have we tried masking tape and a permanent marker, or does that complicate cleanup too much?

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Some of the yogurt containers did have masking tape & marker on them; others had index cards. Not sure of the rhyme and reason.

[penk.livejournal.com]

In actuality, Bait used the PA system the band had set up for announcing things, but it was chaotic and impossible to follow. I had no clue where anything was, and just sort of wandered around finding maybe the one flavor I had picked out of the noise.

I found the call/echo of Crash and Sharon jarring and incomprehensible. One caller, one voice to listen to, one way of saying things. Not "Blue, French Vanilla!" and "Vanilla, Blue table" and "French Vanilla, Blue!" and any other variations possible.

Not to mention the whole 'pink' 'red' fiasco. Lets just confuse things further.

[keith-m043.livejournal.com]

If the freezers end up being overwhelmed by the thermal mass of ice cream in need of setting next year, would it be possible to set a styrofoam cup of LN2 in each freezer to help them out? I expect that some measures need to be taken to make sure that the pressure buildup doesn't open the freezers by accident or cause the latching ones to explode. I have the vision of farting freezers as the excess nitrogen makes its way out the seals. Also probably any freezer with LN2 in it should be only for ice cream and be off limits to non icecream personel. Hmm maybe only one freezer needs to have LN2 and it could be the 'settting' freezer and batches could be moved to 'storage' freezers once set.

[mycroft.livejournal.com]

Dry ice would work better for that.

True

[keith-m043.livejournal.com]

but LN2 is what we've already got on hand.

A Couple Of Ideas

[(Anonymous)]

Before anything else, I have never been to Baitcon so you can take anything I suggest on this with a grain of salt. Preferably some Penzey's salt, but you get the idea. I *want* to go...

Somebody else mentioned (x-thread) labelling before the ice cream gets to the freezer. I think this is a good idea.

As a rule of thumb, people attending know their allergies and food restrictions and, I believe, let the people running things know what they are, yes?

If this is the case, then perhaps a color coded list of allergens/food issues could be drawn up pre-Con and appropriate color-coded tape labels can be put on each batch of ice cream? Red for rose-fruits, white for dairy and brown for chocolate, for example.

For example, gorp ice cream (which is not something I'd like but would be a good example) has dairy, peanuts, raisins, chocolate, vanilla and sugar. The pre-Con list shows five people with peanut allergies, seven who can't have dairy, two diabetics and one person with chocolate issues. So, the container is labeled for "Dairy, Peanut, Sugar, Chocolate" and stored. When it comes out to the table, assuming the tape stores well and doesn't peel off, people can clearly see what the allergens are by comparing the colors with a handy dandy chart. And of course there'd be the name.

I saw Bait mention greasy containers. While it (again) means more work I believe a quick vinegar wipe would render a section suitable for tape.

"But what about a last-minute attendee with unique allergies? That could wreck it." Agreed. Leave one or two colors open ahead of time and fill 'em in at-Con.

"What about scoops?" All I can suggest is having enough for a batch of 20 ice creams, then washing them thoroughly while getting the next batch. This way every ice cream has a clean scoop. I know, it's more work and may not be practical, but it's the best idea I have right now.
Also, since some scoops on the market have color handles, perhaps some of those could be used for vegan or kosher issues.

Re: A Couple Of Ideas

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Erm, this was me. I forgot I wasn't logged in.