Goodbye (RANT) (Was: Re: SC - Is Arrowroot Period?)

[B. M. Crumb]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:

SNIP
> 
> Personally, common sense regarding the recreation of period recipes is a
> focused attempt to follow any given recipe as exactly as is possible whatever
> measures are needed to accomplish that.
> 
> Ras

I'm giving up my attempts to do medieval cooking.  More and more
I've gotten the sense from the posts on this list that if I'm not
willing to bankrupt myself to buy ingredients that are not easily
or affordably obtainable near me, and continue to follow my
decision that I will not ingest wine or beer or ale as an
ingredient in my food and will therefore leave that out or
substitute for it, I cannot consider myself a medievalist cook.  

I don't have access to primary sources, and only have ready
access to the Miscellany or the Florilegium to get recipes that I
can use.  No one I know actually owns an Apicus or even a copy of
Pleyn Delit, and my budget constraints mean that I can't order
them from internet bookstores.

I hear people say "don't substitute," "don't leave out
ingredients," implying that if I don't do it perfectly EXACTLY
according to the written original, that I'm a failure as a
cooking re-enactor.  

Have any of you people who keep harping about "periodness" really
looked at what you are saying to those of us with less
experience?  To me, it sounds a whole lot like, "If you aren't
going to do it right (IOW, exactly as the original source
documentation--or as "I"--say), don't even bother to do it."    

In the months I've been on this list, I've seen new folks appear,
and then rapidly disappear when we get a thread like the "period"
ingredients one going.  I have enough problems with self esteem
in my "Real Life (tm)" without having to feel slammed because I'm
not in a position to do everything in an exact "period" manner.  

The whole response on the "Period Ingredient List" was a great
example of what I'm talking about. Someone came up with an idea,
meant to be truly helpful to beginning cooks, and then all the
people who are adamant about only doing feasts set in one
particular place and time period started going on and on and on
about how it was a bad idea unless the author of the list was
going to specify just when each type of food was used and so on. 
Good grief!  Not all of us are ready to cook an perfect
Andalusian Muslim wedding feast circa 1239.... some of us just
want to get started doing things that aren't too complicated.  We
want to feed our patrons tasty foods that didn't break the bank
nor our sanity in cooking them.  We need our confidence built up,
not smashed down because we are doing a "generic" feast with
ingredients and recipes from throughout the "official timeline."

I'm sorry if I've offended anyone with this post, but I'm tired
of feeling like I'm worthless as a cook because I can't come up
to someone else's standards of what makes a successful SCA feast
menu and presentation.  Not all of us have been active in the SCA
for as many years as many on this list, and not all of us have
had an opportunity to get to have hands on training from the
"professional SCA cooks" who appear to be the ones we are
measured against.  Many of us have to work alone with no input
from experienced "kitchen stewards" or whatever the politically
correct term is today.  

If you people who are ranting on about feasts that use a variety
of recipes from a variety of eras in the SCA period aren't right
would quit griping about how your perfection isn't being reached
and insisting that we do it "your way," would instead do
something like come up with a recipe and procedure primer for the
beginners to feastocratting (yes, I used THAT word), with simple
but effective recipes that individually would teach the basic
methods of food preparation, and still make a tasty meal for the
populace being served--that's the sort of support I was hoping
for when I joined this list.  Instead, I've become less and less
enthused about doing medieval cooking.  Why should I be excited
about getting a frumenty made that my kids will eat, when I'm
going to see a post on the list saying that I should have done it
another way--implying that my accomplishment is worthless?

Oh, I've been able to post a thing here or there about purchasing
sources for odd things like the golden syrup, but just about
anything else I've posted here about my experiences in the
"medieval kitchen" has been ripped apart, ignored, or damned with
faint praise.  I was going to simply unsubscribe quietly and
forget about all this, but I decided that my feelings are valid
and that I had a right to present them.

Farewell. Maybe I'll come back someday... but if it's just more
of the same, then I won't be sticking around then either.

Bernadette