CTS Foreyule Feast - Preparation

Advertise Final Arrangements

Wednesday or Thursday
Send out a final missive to all the relevant lists, stating the venue (with directions), the start time, and (if appropriate) the meeting point and time for the walking party.

Work Out Budget and Shopping List

Add up the numbers booked for the various options, including turkey and vegetarian main courses, and work out how much money you have available to spend on them.
Complete the ingredients checklist (see Planning) with quantities - the mushroom soup and the potatoes are the things most affected by changing numbers.

Work Out Logistics

Complete all the logistical decisions, as far as possible:

• When you will do the shopping (see below)
• How the "unusual" cooking equipment will get to the venue
• How the food will get to the venue
• Where the potatoes will be cooked, and how they will be moved around
• How the clearing-up will be handled (see On the day)

Do the Shopping

You will now have a shopping list probably covering most of an A4 page. There are various choices for how to deal with the shopping, and you can pick and mix to some extent.
Some items, principally the turkey, the haggis and the cider, have to be bought as one-offs from specific shops. The timing for these will depend on how long the individual item will keep - the haggis will last a few days in a fridge, whereas the turkey should be bought on the day.
Most other items can be bought from a supermarket; some will keep longer than others, and this allows a range of possibilities for the timing:

• Buy a few items a day for most of the week. This is OK if there's somewhere to store things in the meantime, preferably with a fridge.
• Buy all the food on the day. At a pinch this can be done in the hour or two of dead time between the turkey going in the oven and work starting on the soup (see On the day).
• A new (untried) option: use Tesco Direct or equivalent to order all the food in one batch. If the hosts are willing, and the website permits, this could even be delivered direct to the venue, saving the need to move it all.

Move Everything

This is typically done during Saturday lunchtime and early afternoon, before the cooking starts. In the past, it has involved pushing shopping trolleys long distances across Cambridge, and cadging lifts from friendly CTS members. Depending on the circumstances of where everything is, and when you can get at it, different plans may have to be evolved.
If the beer is being provided as a cask at the venue, this saves one major inconvenience - moving 3 or 4 gallon containers from the Jug and Firkin. The only other individual large item of food is the turkey, and this can be fitted into a rucksack if necessary. However, the rest of the food together will occupy most of a shopping trolley. Tesco at Milton is accessible by shopping trolley from the Empire, but this may not be a sensible option at other venues.
With a bit of advance arrangement, you can ensure that the soup cauldron and other large bits of cooking equipment are either delivered to the venue, in advance, by their owners, or at least made available for collection. Alternatively, someone will have to run around on the Saturday morning picking everything up.
Whatever happens, the turkey and (ideally) all the cooking equipment must reach the venue by about 3pm, and the rest of the food must arrive by about 5pm.