Discussion #2 - Serving...

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Last year, we only put out a handful of flavors at a time. IMO this was a bad idea.

I'm an observer, I watch people, and with fewer tubs of ice cream on the table, I noticed that people were more likely to take two scoops of a single flavor rather than a small scoop of a couple of flavors.
If the ice cream was in one of the yogurt tubs having one person take half the tub was resulting in people (who weren't pushy enough to get in and get some,) not getting any or getting the melted dredges after it was pretty much gone.

The more tubs of ice cream we put out on the tables at once the more likely everyone will get some of the flavors they want to try as people will take smaller servings of multiple flavors so they can,
1. still have a full bowl and 2. get a taste of lots of flavors.

I think the thought in a few people's heads was, "Well, my favorite flavors aren't out, but I like this one flavor that is out so I'll just have a full bowl of this one flavor." Some people like to have full bowls, and if we don't have enough flavors out, they will fill them with what we do put out.

This also begs the question of serving utensils, do we need smaller scoops? tablespoon size, rather than ice cream scoop size?

I personally am in favor of putting out some of the smaller servings mid day/afternoon on Saturday, then putting out whatever is sufficiently frozen, all of it, on Saturday night and again, whatever is left on Sunday.

When we have 80 flavors, and two yogurt size tubs of many of them, putting out 30 or 40 yogurt size tubs for 120 people just doesn't make sense. Also, I got none of the flavors I wanted to really try on Saturday night last year. I had something like a single scoop of one of my own flavors, the rest of the ones I would even consider trying were gone before I got to them. A single yogurt tub is not a lot of ice cream when people take large scoops.

Yeah, this got talked about a bit last year, right after BC. But it's worth bringing it up again, and seeing if we can come up with some ideas so people don't end up feeling gyped.

Hope I'm not out of line in bringing these things up here in this community, but I think we do need to think about how things are done and strive to make them easier and more efficient in an effort to make more people happy.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I'd say this is exactly the place to post about this, though I don't have any answers for you. Smaller scoops does sound like a good idea.

(off topic, some day I /still/ need to post my pics from last year)

[flyingwolf.livejournal.com]

Last year, we only put out a handful of flavors at a time.

they did? It seemed like many many dozens went out at about the same time. Well, maybe I missed that. I love ice cream, but am lactose intollerant and not a fan of weird flavors. Or crowds - so the whole feeding frenzy thing tends to cause me to step back and take pics from a distance. I don't go to Baitcon for the ice cream. (blasphamy? maybe.)

[keith-m043.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall someone floating the idea of maybe getting some large tubs of commercial ice cream to put out with all the homemade flavours to make it less likely that the latter will be overgrazed. Two drawbacks with that idea are 1) some people are very picky about brands of commercial ice cream, 2) that it costs extra money esp. if a more prestigious brand is picked to appease ppl involved in drawback 1.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Nah... A large Part of BC is the homemade ice cream.

another part is the social of curse, but it all started with the ice cream.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Someone may have floated it, but I'm here to shoot it down. :)

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

Or we could make a few bigger batches of regular flavors. The burning need to have weird, inedeble, or otherwise surreal flavors seems to miss the idea of being able to actually eat the stuff. I don't really get how the weirder and weirder competition got started.

[larksdream]

Seconded. :P

[quietann.livejournal.com]

agreed.

I think the weirder and weirder competition is a form of dick-waving (from what I have seen, most of the folks who are amking those flavors are guys, guys who dick-wave over all kinds of stuff, so why not ice cream?)

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Huh, so that's what I'm doing.

Interesting analysis there. Thanks for sharing it.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

You personally may or may not be doing it to dick-wave (I don't know you well, but you don't seem to be into it for that reason...) That's just how it looks from the outside.

It's just that when the weird flavors take a bigger and bigger share of ingredients, the amount of ice cream amenable to a larger number of baitcon attendees decreases proportionally.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I does appear to be a case of one-upmanship, but not just with the guys, I know some of the women have been trending toward odder flavors as well.

[cutieperson]

right, because it couldn't possibly be about having different tastes, or wanting to flex ones own culinary muscles for the joy of that.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I agree, simple flavors like vanilla and not-spicy chocolate, maybe Strawberry should get larger batches or maybe a couple batches of similar flavors, (an example would be chocolate and orange chocolate and chocolate mint or vanilla, honey vanilla and vanilla chocolate chip.) Simple flavors that everyone will like in larger quantities.

[keith-m043.livejournal.com]

I think it's just a matter of home making ice cream giving one the power to make ice cream that one can't get in stores, and that when given that power, one wants to make something that no one has done before. After many years, that's getting kinda hard without using something that either no one has ever heard of, or using stuff that most people wouldn't countenance in ice cream. Anyone remember the cheddar cheese or raw onion ice creams?

[naiad.livejournal.com]

How about if everyone who brings ice cream also brings a melon ball scooper for serving?

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

well.

i see a difference between "a tasting" and "a feeding"...

common flavors made in quanity are fine for a feeding. a lot of people seem to be thinking that. this is good. there's a lot of lactose to go around

for tastings, perhaps a more generous approach of having everyone bring their OWN icecube tray - they don't have to but it keeps the flavors nicer.

having everyone bringing their own scoops is nice, but will involve double-dipping and cross flavor and allergen contamination. not to mention other issues.

portion control: as much as it PAINS me to say it, it would be better to have someone ISSUE the flavors from a container with a single spoon from that container. it controls size, and avoids all the priorly heated issues on contamination (of whatever kind)... yah, it requires someone to dole it out, assembly line style. speaking of which, a couple stations, one single line, just like in school or the army cafeteria. if you want, you point and grab. some will point out that they'll miss out on flavors if they can't willy nilly dive in and out of different tables and assert how aggressive they are. well, that's true. there's not going to be any good way to guarantee you get every last thing you want, in the quantity you want it.

the only other solution would be to have sample (icecube) trays be made in advance, that you can pick up and go. in those cases, you'll get waste, but there won't be mob scenes were the less aggressive or smaller are physically shoved aside.

#

[naiad.livejournal.com]

To clarify: everyone who brings/makes ice cream could also bring a small scoop to go with it. One scoop per flavor, no cross-contamination.

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

As someone with allergies, I would be eternally grateful for any measure that reduces/eliminates cross-contamination, and that idea sounds like it could really help.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. I have seen people get impatient waiting for the spoon and just randomly grab a spoon from another flavor and dig in.

As a person who suffers food allergies, I have to besuper careful, if I am not the first person to dog into a flavor I have to make sure that the scoop wasn't dipped into something else on the table or into the water rinse bucket since that is contaminated with all the other flavors on the table.

No matter how many times you say don't do that, or avoid cross contamination, people just aren't listening, all they are thinking about is digging in, there is a reason it's been called the feeding frenzy. :)

[ceo]

I think the problem can be at least ameliorated by a combination of more flavors out at once, smaller scoops and some degree of customer education: as in, "please don't take huge amounts of any one flavor!".

Of course, the other part of the problem is overcrowding at the tables. Having someone dole out ice cream strikes me as not really workable: it's inefficient and it's basically treating people like first-graders. It might work, however, to introduce the concept of lining up at each table, like we do for meals. A line on each side of each table would move pretty fast and avoid the pushing and shoving endemic to the current system.

I wonder if there's a better way to announce what flavors are at each table. Calling out the flavors as they're brought out strikes me as kind of useless, as it exceeds most people's short-term memory quite quickly.

And bring on the weird flavors. I love that people are inspired to make prosciutto gorgonzola basalmic fig, even if I had to throw my bowl away after sampling it (in fairness, I'd forgotten that gorgonzola is a cheese I can't stand).

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we should have a white board at each table with the flavors to be found there pre-written on the board for convenience. Wouldn't take much to make that happen.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Practical issues to consider: Light to read by, and what happens when everything changes due to rain?

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Not that anyone's going to see this at this point but you, but hey. :) (I figure I'lkl pull the ideas from this discussion out to a seperate post later)

An issue to remember with serving: The longer you wait, the slower things go, the more things melt. This is bad.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree.

This is why what happened last year shouldn't happen again. We put the flavors into separate color categories when they were made. They got colored cards signifying what table they were going to be on, people knew what they wanted would be on the green table, based on what was written on the flavor list, then you (or someone) decided to mix it all up. We usually have things separated by colors by table, you know... People look at that list and determine that they want certain flavors on certain tables. Not knowing where something was going to be until it was announced at the last minute made things chaotic. also not knowing if the flavor was coming out at all made people confused. (I did hear from other people how they found it rather chaotic and confusing so it wasn't just me.)

Thanks for consolidating the ideas into a separate post, it'll help clarify things.

The other major issue isn't getting much discussion... labeling to ensure that the labels don't fall off in the freezer.

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Remind me, Labling with Sharpie markers on the container has been done, right?

What if we labled with sharpie on the container and slapped a piece of packing tape over the writing to keep it from smudging or washing away too soon?