SC - re: pre-1500 cookery (turns into rant; and I'm sorry...)

[kat]

In response to Ras' inquiry, good Ceridwen writes:

> Many
> people have a distinct fear of failure, which leads them to avoid trying
> something because "What if it turns out bad and I've wasted my time,
> effort, ingredients, etc"

> <snip> nor does the person have any idea what
> spices go with what and again, are afraid of experimenting for many of
> the same reasons as above. We Americans grow up with a very specific
> idea of what things are supposed to taste like,


Ceridwen, while I do agree with you, the above statements might be a lot closer to universal if you remove the words "are afraid of" and insert "are too poor to."

When your meat budget for the week only extends to the cost of one chicken, you are going to be VERY unlikely to make quail in galentine sauce any time soon.  And yes, I know, medieval food ingredients are rarely more expensive than mundane food ingredients; and yes, I know, it's cheaper to cook from scratch.  I do it all the time.

But the ingredients for stir-fried vegetables and ramen to feed three are much cheaper than JUST the bottle of red wine I need for that cameline sauce.  And let's not talk about the price of the roast, shall we?   ;-)

I know, from experience, that it takes a lot of courage to leave the well-traveled roads for the first time and attempt to break "new" ground attempting one's own redactions.  Please try to imagine how much MORE scary that might be if, instead of blithely saying "Oh well!" when you screw up and sending out for pizza, you had to explain to your family why dinner was canned soup and crackers... 

The "fear of failure" Ceridwen correctly points out is much nastier when accompanied by "fear of going hungry."

Forgive me, I didn't mean to start a rant!  Just expressing another point of view some may have not considered.  We all know what an expensive hobby the SCA can be, if we let it...   I just wanted to point out that there ARE reasons besides just plain stubbornness, ignorance and fear for not playing the game as completely as we would all like to.

	- kat 


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