SC - Re: New World Food Rant / Counter Rant

[Jeanne Stapleton]

- --- Linda Peterson <mirhaxa at swcp.com> wrote:
> I have to agree with Lord Ras' position on this,
> although perhaps not for
> the exact reasons. I see feasts as intended to
> enhance the experience of
> historical re-creation. I would tend to reject
> perfectly tasty and period
> recipes when designing a feast if I felt they were
> too familiar or
> reminiscent of traditional American food, ie.turkey.
> We don't try to make
> our food so weird that no one wants to try it, but
> something that's rather
> exotic or different helps to jumpstart that mental
> twist that make you
> feel afterwards that you've timewalked.

Put me on the bandwagon here; I tell people to view
period food as another ethnic cuisine, like Mexican
or Thai or Greek.  I find that people will often own
to not like a particular cuisine out of even the
above short list, but it's much more rare to hear
them going about telling others that Mexican food is
"inedible" just because they don't like it themselves.

 There's so
> much out there to work
> with (and the average American's diet is so plain)

YES, exactly--and most of them think that everyone
else eats just like them, and the assumption is that
feeding the masses has to be reduced to the lowest
common denominator in terms of "plain" and "bland".

Unfortunately, it's often too late to change most
adults because their minds won't be changed.  I
applaud parents that I see letting their five and
under kids try sushi, Thai...they don't let them
get into the mindset that there are only four things
in the world that they will eat.

I know that new tastes can be acquired later in life;
seen it all around me, and my favorite cuisine, Thai,
never crossed my lips in any form until I was 30
years old...I don't understand people who want to go
to an event and have "their usual fare".  That's not
the purpose of the feast.

> that it would be boring
> to put all that work into just feeding people so
> they could get on to the
> next "Medieval" event. 
> 
> Mirhaxa
> 
Yup.

Berengaria
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