SC - Herman-practical Huswif skills

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/11/98 1:15:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time, parlei at algonet.se
writes:

<<  I was, however, far to canny to take him on,  >>

Although I can understand the "horror" stories of the Herman phenominon, the
reality of the situation is that all one has to do is make a loaf of regular
sour dough bread 2 times a week to keep the starter viable. Given the amount
of bread that a household consumes in a week this doesn't seem so horrifying
to me.

As a child growing up in a household of 8 children, I watched my mother bake
bread everyday to the tune of up to 32 loaves a week. A pan of starter behind
the cookstove at night and bread making the first thing in the morning was the
daily ritual. Add this to a regular routine of house keeping such as wash day
on Monday, ironing Tuesday, dusting/mopping on Thursday, etc. it is readily
apparent that "modern"  appliances have complicated the home-making ritual
rather than provided relief.

I think it would be a good thing to remember that the frenzied "get everything
done today" pace of modern life is  basically an aberration when viewed
against the backdrop of historical house keeping. And that the mismatch of
daily activity in most of our lives in the Current Middle Ages is a direct
result of "progress"- progress that has resulted in a lifestyle completely
alien to most of our ancestors and new to our culture over the last 75 years.

A person only has to peruse some of the Books of Hours or manuscripts
describing "a day in the life of" to get a clear picture of the daily, weekly
and seasonal schedules of the average person in the Middle Ages. Keeping that
in mind, it strikes me as rather macabre that a modern home maker would find
the destruction of his/her bread starter a good thing rather than the obvious
disaster that it really would have been throughout most of mankind's history.

Whviewed in the context of 2 loaves of bread a week instead of fancy muffins,
cakes and other "fancy" things, the keeping of a sourdough starter really is a
practical thing which not only will provide good, basic nutrition for your
family but becomes a basic necessity when power outages or natural disasters
could limit your access to Stroeman's Wonderbread.

A'aql (pronunced Ras who was raised without running water, flush toilets or
electricity until 1971 C.E.)
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================