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]

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.

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