SC - strawberries

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stephan said....
<snip>
>No, I have to disagree with this statement. I think there is too much evidence
>against this statement for it to be true. For a good article on this, see
>this article in the FOOD section (yes, yes, Stefan's at it again) of my
>Florilegium:...

If I am reading Sister Mary Endoline correctly she has not indicated that
spicing meat to cover up badness was period, but a fact of life where she
was raised. To me that is pretty much first hand documentation. We all have
come to the agreement long ago that spices were NOT used to cover up rancid
meat in period, but you also seem to disagree with her statement all round.
Unless you can prove that her family/country etc did not practise this I
will be inclined to believe exactly what she says. Disagreeing with her is
moot because her original statement still stands the test of living thru it
and we weren't there to discount it.

There were obviously times when meat in the middle ages wasn't palatable by
our standards. Heck I wouldn't even buy meat in the supermarket in Mexico
when I lived there just because of this issue. I saw how they handled it,
stored it, prepared it etc. If this is going on in the present day "here and
now" I imagine it may have happened in the middle ages. Granted there were
laws about meat selling conditions etc. but whose to say what happened when
it got carted home? Those same laws, albeit more stringent I would imagine,
exist today, but I know for a fact that different people have different
ideas about what is bad meat and what is not.

Alot of ideal situations and assumption can be made about it being hung in
the earth cellar and so forth, but poverty, ignorance and indifference makes
you do strange things and sometimes lowers your standards of acceptance of
what may have been edible and not. Having the opportunity to have some meat
in the house may just have been enough incentive to occassionally overlook
the fact that meat was a "bit off". Who knows. Again, we weren't there.
Making these assumptions based on an educated guess is, I think, a good idea
here. But blantently saying that NOBODY ate meat that was off is probably
not very accurate.

At any rate, we also have to take into consideration the fact that the human
body was very obviously different several hundred years ago. The time line
thingy, conditions back a few hundred years and the fact that there were not
new and improved killer diseases makes for a completely different resistance
system. Now I may be out of my element here but given the fact that were are
a biologically evolving species I just bet we may have had a whole different
system of flora and fauna in our systems then than now. Perhaps coping with
the "little beasties" was easier then? Does anyone know the differences
between "then and now" as far as our resistance is concerned?

This is an interesting topic to me. Again, having lived in Mexico I had to
train my system to drink the tap water. Very gradual process started by
brushing my teeth in it and progressing from there in increments daily. If I
can change my system in the present to this extent then I can imagine the
difference over several hundred years. But then I'm assuming aren't I.

Micaylah

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