SC - Kvas

[Jeff Gedney]

Good Gentles All,
I want to thank you for your suggestion for doing a discussion of period
foods at demos.  The one to which I refer is where you have foods from
both the old and new worlds and ask the participants to determine which
is which.  We tried this this past weekend at a demo for Girl Scouts at
a campground in our Barony.  The ages of the children ranged from 6 -
15...and almost impossible range to handle and maintian interest.
However, this demo did!  Even the adults were intrigued.

Because we were dealing with groups of about 15 girls at each "session",
we simply held up an item and asked the girls to identify "old" or "new"
world.  This was after a discussion of why new world foodstuffs were not
known in the Middle Ages.  I guess the thing that really blew me away
was that almost all of the groups did not know (or, as I believe, had
forgotten) that corn was new world!

If anyone had any doubt about the value of this discussion list, I want
to let you all know that my participation and interaction with you has
been one of the best experiences I've ever had!

Kiri