SC - Wierd vs. tasty tidbit

[Seton1355 at aol.com]

My Lord Ras,
Thank you for your thoughtful insight into this topic.  I agree completely 
when you say that  "what is weird food for one is quite normal for another."  
I come from a long line of gifillte fish eaters. It is delicious when 
prepared correctly.  I have yet to meet an adult non-Jewish person who likes 
the stuff  though.  Different backgrounds, differents tastes.......
Respectfully,
Phillipa Seton
<< 
 I have seen the use of the word 'weird' bandied about for several days  now 
 on this list. More frequently than is normal. I have a problem with this. No 
 food is weird. To perpetuate the use of the term for perfectly good food 
does 
 a disservice to what a lot of us are all about, namely the recreation of 
 historical cookery.
 
 To a person living in any given location, any food from another area could 
be 
 considered 'weird.' Some foods which I have seen termed as 'weird' by some 
 are not unusual by any sense of the word. For instant, venison and other 
game 
 is eaten by numerous peoples everywhere hunting is allowed. Or liver, 
brains, 
 sweet breads which are sold in markets everywhere so must be consumed 
 regularly by a lot of people.
 
 If we, as historical cooks, continue to categorize perfectly legitimate and 
 widely consumed food as 'weird'  then how can we expect people who have not 
 been exposed to these foods (which in most cases can be better described as 
 'delicacies') to embrace them? Given your apparent intelligence, Stefan, I 
am 
 particularly concerned when I see people like you using the term. If nothing 
 else, in the relentless quest to collect facts, thoughts and tidbits about a 
 myriad of subjects, it should be very much apparent that 'weirdness' simply 
 does not exist except in the mind of individuals.
 
 Perhaps if there were a determined effort to not describe food in derogatory 
 term, it would be noticed by others that food is simply food thereby winning 
 half the battle in getting people in general to try medieval food. When 
 President Clinton took office, there were only 50 web pages in existence 
 while today there are over a billion. The Internet is a worldwide community 
 and any  attempt to describe any particular food as 'weird' inevitably leads 
 to denigrating the eating choices of entire groups of peoples and are 
 potentially offensive to those groups who do eat  that particular food. For 
 instance, I have seen 'goat' meat described as 'weird' yet more of the 
 world's peoples eat it than do not. Milk is considered undrinkable and 
 'strange' by the vast majority of the world's population yet I have never 
 seen it described in this forum as a 'weird'  food which statistically it is.
 
 To a meateater, vegan dishes are 'weird'. To a vegan, meat is 'weird'. Yet 
 neither of those general food groups are ever described as such. Other words 
 that could be considered better or more descriptive are 'rare', not usually 
 found, delicacy, not often eaten in <insert location of choice>, usually 
 restricted to <group of your choice>. Even cutsey terms like 'tasty tidbit' 
 or 'morsel' would be better than derogatory words which are all too often 
 simply untrue. 
 
 Cleaning up our own language could do much to promote the acceptance of 
 period food, IMO.
 
 Just a thought or two........
 
 Ras >>