SC - Haggis and Strawberries

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/21/00 3:41:02 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
Black_Jade at bigpond.com writes:

<< To me...thats a task for a gardener, not
 a cook.
 
 Just my 2 cents worth
 -A'adeema >>

While I agree with you in principle...there is a variety known as the Alpine 
strawberry which can be grown in minimal space (e.g., as an edging, among the 
herbs, along a meadow border, etc.) that is available from any seed company. 
These plants produce plants with berries about the size of the first joint of 
your finger and their taste is to die for. 

However, commercial strawberries, which are a result of a cross between a New 
World variety and an Old World variety are perfectly acceptable at feasts. 
They taste like strawberries, look like strawberries and aside from size have 
all the properties of an alpine strawberry. 

I also agree with your assessment that the duties of gardener and cook were 
separate functions done by separate people in noble households. Oftentimes we 
forget in the modern world that jobs were very much specialized in the Middle 
Ages. A cook would no more have made his/her own shoes than they would have 
ground their own spices or tended the strawberry beds.

Ras
The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones.- Solomon Ibn Gabirol
http://members.aol.com/AbhainnCG/