SC - coffe and tea at events

[david friedman]

At 1:10 PM -0800 1/29/98, kat wrote:
>	I like sekanjabin; I've been fortunate enough to taste it at a few
>events.  A lady in southern Shores makes a rosewater sekanjabin I still
>fantasize about... but I don't even want to consider the price.

>	At $2.49 for 100 tea bags, that non-period iced tea is still less
>than 15 cents a gallon...

My standard recipe for Sekanjabin, borrowed from Claudia Rodin, is:

Dissolve 4 cups sugar in 2 1/2 cups of water; when it comes to a boil add 1
cup wine vinegar. Simmer 1/2 hour. Add a handful of mint, remove from fire,
let cool. Dilute the resulting syrup to taste with ice water (5 to 10 parts
water to 1 part syrup).

Let's price that:

4 c sugar = 2 lb = $.80
1 c wine vinegar=$.40
Handful of mint: Free if you grow it, otherwise abt $.40.

Total $1.20 to $1.60.  This makes about 5 cups of syrup, which dilutes to
about 3 gallons of sekanjabin. So the price is about $.50/gallon. More than
your ice tea, but still pretty inexpensive.


>	Same argument goes for the hardened-leather-versus-plastic
>argument.  My lord took a class on cuirboulli; he was fascinated both by
>how easy it was and by how adaptible the procedure was.  He longs to try
>it at home; but...  Have you priced leather recently?  Calculate for the
>shrinkage, and shudder...

Roughly speaking, you will pay $80 for a 22 square foot 12-14 oz side of
leather if you shop around. Shrinkage, for the length of immersion I prefer
for SCA purposes, is about to 7/8 each way, so you end up with about 16
square feet of cuirboulli. Covering my torso probably takes an area of
about 4-5 square feet. So if you could use the side with perfect efficiency
(which you never can) and don't overlap, that would cost you about $20-$25.
A more realistic estimate would be $40. I expect that is an unreasonable
cost for some people in the SCA, but probably not for very many. And, of
course, one can sometimes do better--I got a whole lot of 8 oz leather at
one point for what worked out to about 33 cents/square foot, which would
produce a lamellar cuirass for about $5. That was an unusual find--but
lamellar doesn't require big pieces, so if you have a source for scrap
leather you can probably do lamellar cuirboulli for less than the $40 price
quoted above.

>	I am saying this not to argue with you, nor to flame, nor to
>attempt to "correct" you.  I simply wish to remind all of us, once in a
>while, that there are reasons besides habit, tradition, modern tastes and
>(yes, it has been said, on this list no less) sheer laziness that keep us
>to our (59 cents/2-liter bottle) mundane habits rather than branching out
>and exploring period territory as thoroughly as we would ALL like.

I agree that financial limitations sometimes prevent people from doing
particular period things--my lady wife comments that she would wear more
linen and less cotton (cotton is appropriate for me but not very for her)
if linen were cheaper. But there are so many ways of being period that one
can usually find some inexpensive ways. And a lot of what people do that is
out of period is at least as expensive as the period version. Picklebarrel
armor is inexpensive, but Kydex armor probably costs about as much as
cuirboulli.

I'm not sure, by the way, what the 59 cents/2 liter bottle reference is to,
but that is substantially more than what sekanjabin costs to make.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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