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

[Jeff Gedney]

> 
> 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.  

Either you have completely misread these discussions, milord, or 
utterly disregarded andy statements made by the "Stuffy Authenticicists"
on this list.

1) "Medieval Cooking" is not all expensive ingredients and weird spices
2) Nobody said that you can't cook what you want mad make whatever 
substituions you like.

All we have said, and all that we are TRYING TO SAY, is that if you make 
substitutions not in the corpus of medieval recipes (many of which can be 
found for absolutely free in Stefan's Florithingummy, BTW), then you are 
no longer making a "period" recipe.
This is simply argued:

Period recipe = recipe found in period documents  

a recipe that is not the one in the document is not the period recipe.
it certainly be called "period style", and it can certainly have the same name,
but you cannot call the same recipe that appears in the period document.

Cook what you like, as long as the feasters are happy. just be clear 
about what you call what you cook. that's all I am saying.

IF that offends you then I am sorry.

Just cook, and learn new period recipes, and cook them how you need to.
make the feasters full an happy. 
In the end that's what counts.

brandu