SC - All Members

[Michael Macchione]

I've been sitting back watching this debate and have decided to throw my
two cents into the ring.

>From my experience on this list, I've noticed a couple of things.  The
main thing being that in general there are two types of people on the
list.  The first are those who seem to have been cooking in the SCA for
over 5-10 years.  This group tends to be the more prolific of the posters,
tends to be able to spout off documentation at the drop of a hat, tends to
have some significant rank in the society, and tends to know most of the
basics about period cooking and refer to them in statements that start
with "of course you know that..."   (note: those are all generalities and
none of those qualities are necessarily bad things.)

The second group are those who have only recently started to do period
cooking, and have come here to learn as much as they can.  This group
doesn't have extensive libraries of period cookbooks, tends not to have
the documentation for many recipes (or if they do, its from one of the
"standard sources"), and may have many misconceptions as to what might be
period foods.

I would think that most of you can put many of the posters here into one
of those two categories.  And I hope that you can see that many of us in
the second group (note I include myself) can feel intimidated by the
members of the first group.  Hat-a-phobia and/or Laurel-o-phobia can be a
very detering force for someone just starting out.  Consider the poster
that started this discussion.  She made a comment about having Hummous and
Falafel in a feast.  Very soon afterward she had a number of people asking
her what her documentation were.  IIRC Duke Cariadoc was one of these
people.  Now I know that His Grace has a large quantity of information
about Mid-Eastern cooking, and I hold him as an extremely reputably
source for information in this field.  So, as soon as I saw his response,
my gut  response was over-whelming dread (as it turns out, I'm
feastocrating and event this month with a mid-eastern theme and both
Hummous and Falafel are to be served as an appetizer course, I had been
told they were both period).  Since Cariadoc was asking for documentation,
I quickly came to the conclusion that if he couldn't document them, then
they are probably not period.  I would only assume that the women who
posted the original message (Rhi?) must have come to a similar conclusion
and where I felt dread, she probably felt embarassed for appearing as a
"clueless newbie" in front of the experts.  (note: I am only guessing at
how she felt and I don't mean to insult her by calling her a clueless
newbie since I made the exact same mistake that she did).

I had stopped posting on here for similar reasons (as well as many others
that have nothing to do with this list-- I'm hoping to be finished with a
Doctorate in mathematics in a year so my school work takes precedence over
this list).  I'm not much of a researcher when it comes to cooking, I'm
more of an experimenter.  I try various things with dishes and hardly ever
make the same dish the same way twice.  I started cooking when I was 7
(twenty years ago) and back then I cooked by watching other people and
trying to duplicate what they did.  I still tend to freak when I do a
recipe that I have no idea what the final result is supposed to be.  Thus
I tend to have troubles researching period cooking.  So, even though, my
shire all consider me an excellent cook, they don't know how much worrying
has gone into preparing the feast I'm doing later this month.

But all of this doesn't help solve the problem.

What might, though, would be if we could politely find a way to
distinguish the group 2 people from the group 1.  What I was thinking
might help is if we all adopted some codes to place next to recipes and/
or names of dishes to let people know just how much we know about
something when we bring it up.  For Example:

SDB   == see documentation below.
ITP?  == Is this period??
IHDBNWM == I have documentation but not with me
OOP  ==  out of period  (ie modern)
ND  == no documentation


thus is someone posts a recipe as a ND, people won't ask for the
documentation or might supply some of their own.

What do people think???

- ---------------------------------------------------

Now if you have listened to my long winded ramblings :) I have a question,
I have heard that pasta is period but I know that tomato sauces aren't.
Thus I assume cheese and cream sauces were used.  How does the following
recipe sound:

Pasta with bacon (ITP?)

Cook 1 lb pasta as usual (I tend to use angel hair, but I would bet
Linguine is more period).  While pasta is cooking, boil about 1 cup olive
oil.  Toss in the oil about 3-4 cloves garlic (crushed) and about 1/2 a
package of bacon, cut into small pieces. Continue boiling until the bacon
is cooked. Immediately after straining the pasta, combine the pasta, the
oil mixture (hot), 2 eggs, and about 1 1/2 cups of grated cheese (romano,
parmesean...).  Toss the mixture and serve (the eggs should be cooked by
the heat of the pasta and the oil)

I know this would send people's cholesterol levels through the roof, but I
have found it to be highly addictive.


Anyhow, I've rambled for far too long.

Kael
AKA Lord Mikael McCue
MKA Mike Macchione