SC - questions/kinda long, sorry

[Jeff Gedney]

A Note to Lars:

you are continuing soms "Truths" which have been disproven time and time again
> Insisting on strident authenticity can sometimes cause the 
> feast not to go at all. If you know you are from a small barony, or a shire, 
> and the people you are serving are limited; and the goal of the feast is to 
> at least break even...then you need to keep in mind what people will **eat**. 
disproven "Truth" #1 "period food is strange, and people wont want to eat it"

"People" WILL eat period food.  
I have fed it to them myself, and there are an AWFUL LOT of cooks 
who cook very period food from period recipes on this list, and very few, if any
have had a significant proportion of food go uneaten.

Do you ever eat a steak cooked over a fire? Guess what? 
You eat period food! 
("Steak" is from and old English word for Stick, and refers to grilling method.)

How about Beef Roulades, or Blancmange, broccoli in cheese sauce, 
or lots of other perfectly recognizable and tasty foods. 

> The point is, when you know that most 
> folks will eat fowl, some will eat meat, that the attending king is a 
> vegetarian, and the queen has an allergy to wheat based products...it can put 
> a damper on the feast staying truly period. 

disproven "Truth" #2 "period food is difficult, and too expensive to make"

I can certainly manage a Feast that will be culled from period sources, is
tasty, will satisfy all involved, and do it for about $6.50 a head.
And I am not the most experienced cook on this list by a LOOONG stretch

> In that case, making receipes 
> with period ingredients without a menu to have based them on is just about 
> your only fallback. I don't know if Soy was a period ingredient, but for the 
> sake of the queen, I would make soy breads. 

How about barley breads? or rye? Pease bread? 
Why force "bread" on her at all? just serve Rice.
Please, there are lots of ways to get all sorts of around dietary restrictions.
 
> Alterations sometimes have to be made. Otherwise eventually no one 
> will show and the whole thing becomes undoable. We've had that happen here as 
> well. People want good food, edible, with tastes familiar to them, and fun 
> while they do it. 

And you can certainly do that without leaving the corpus of period recipes.
So, why the histrionics?
If you just don't want to be troubled to do the necessary research, say so, 
and move on. Dont blame your lack of affection for period food on the
food, though. It seems more your hangup. Others seem to manage just 
fine, and still manage feed the feasters full and happy, and hold the 
budgetary line, to boot. 
To paraphrase the Bard:
"The Fault lies not in the food, but in ourselves"

> and my ultimate dream will be a completely period feast with all 
> the trimmings cooked in a period way on period devices.... I can't just leap 
> both feet into a feast like that without learning. 

Nobody is asking you to. but just because you dont have access to 
an iron spit, and open kitchen hearth, does not mean you cant 
simply roast your beefe in the oven!!

you are "letting the best be the enemy of the good". as our noble
Cariadoc is fond of pointing out. 

Just because you cannot make a _perfectly and completely period_
meal, you are saying say that you will not try to make a _more period_ 
meal.


> I wouldn't attempt to put 
> one on like that without learning. It is my goal. In the meantime, I still 
> want to have fun, tasty feasts with good food as near to period as I can get 
> them, while considering the aspects of the people who are likely to attend 
> it. If I did it any other way I could be in the SCA for many, many years 
> without ever having done a single feast! 

This passage sounds like you actually agree with trying to make feasts as 
"period as you can get them", but before you decried the practice!!!
What exactly are you ranting about then?  What IS your point? 
Is trying to make Period food "bad" ( "stuffy authenticist" ) or "good"
( "contributing to a medieval atmosphere" )?
You seem to be yelling at the issue from both sides.

<snip of big argument about textiles> 
once again you make the rather groundless statement that we are 
trying to advocate "Perfectly Period Recreation in Methods and Recipes"
and taking some sort of umbrage.

Why? I have no Idea.

ONCE AGAIN, and I will say it LOUDLY:

NOBODY ON THIS LIST HAS EVER ONCE ADVOCATED THAT ALL 
FEASTS MUST BE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DOCUMENTABLE 
ALL THE TIME.
NOBODY HAS SAID THAT ALL FEASTS MUST BE PREPARED IN 
PERIOD METHODS. 
 I for one would not do a feast without my food processor, and possibly 
my KitchenAid. 

> Unlike the seamstresses/cooks of period, I have other 
> things that I must do with my day. 

And your point is...?
Guess what, so do all the "stuffy authenticists" on this list.

> It was just such an attitude that kept me out of playing SCA for over ten 
> years. When I began <snip>I was humiliated **again** and didn't go 
> back for 10 years. 

Oh, well, so you met the obligatory a**hole knowitall that every public 
organization is afflicted with at least one of, and decided that we 
are all like that????
gee, thanks for tarring me with that brush. 

> And I believe this is the 
> SCA longtimers greatest fault in many cases. We were all "learning" at one 
> time, and yet we forget to act toward the "learner" as we would have liked to 
> have been treated. 

Sorry, but most of the truly LONG timers I know ( I have been in for 22 years, 
and I consider long timers to be people in since Pennsic "single digits") would 
not DREAM of being so rude.
As a comparative long timer, thanks for tarring me with that brush, too.

Sit down some time with El of the Two Knives ( AS 2 ) sometime, or Baroness 
Arwen of Dragonship Haven. I could give loads of names of Longtimers who
are nothing like this. 
Infact there is a widely experienced phenomenon called the "Stealth Peer" 
This is a long time person who takes off his regalia most of the time, and 
often wears simple clothes, and pitches in at the dirty work, and helps out 
where needed and asked.
Walk into one of our kitchens, and chances are pretty good that that
muscular gentleman stripped to the waist, and scrubbing pots in the sink
was once or twice a King, or has some order of High merit.

You might try giving us the benefit of the doubt... 
One idiot among us does not mean that we are all idiots, only that at 
least one of us is.  

Still, some of what you say holds true, teaching is helping and instruction, 
not finger pointing and derision. I am sorry some truly assinine person 
made you uncomfortable at an event a long time ago, but that is not what 
we are advocating on this list. 
not by a long shot.

Brandu

(hmmm... Guess I'm channeling my "inner curmudgeon" today)