SC - Food Guessing Game

[Christine A Seelye-King]

Thank you Anne-Marie!
	We had a weekend-long demo this weekend, our 14th year at the local
Celtic Festival.  I have painted woad tatoos at this event, spun, we've
done candle dipping, and last year we had a display of various spices
with some of each ground so folks could smell and taste them.  All of
these activities have been very well received, but none so well as the
food guessing game we ran this weekend.  This is how we ran it:
	Lady Teamhair (Tara) and I brought two tablecloths, one a print of a
Roman mosaic, and one a woven (Am.) Indian design.  We laid them side by
side, and put a square green cloth napkin in the back center of them.  We
laid out two signs, one in an OE font that said "Old World", and one in
something modern that said "New World".  We then placed 16 foods on the
"neutral space" (napkin) and told folks they had to sort them out (this
took some time to explain to some people, but some grasped it right away.
 Sunday's crowd was much brighter than Saturday's, and more got it
completely correct the second day.  We wondered if the answers had been
posted on the net?)  
The foods we had were:

corn
jalepenos
cocoa
tomatos
potato
vanilla beans
pumpkin
green beans

and 

lentils
barley
olives stuffed with garlic
cinnamon
hazelnuts
turnip greens
mustard seed
cherries

	Lots of folks came by to play, many would go and find friends and bring
them back to play.  Teamhair was standing in line at the food booths
listening to people in various lines talking about playing the food game.
 We gave out samples of medieval gingerbread for playing the game, which
was liked by just about everybody that tried it.  Teamhair had made a
version without ginger to have an alternative, we decided that there was
a reason the gingerbread spice combination had survived as long as it had
the way it was!   We had several parents remark what a good learning tool
it was, and lots of families played together, which the parents also
liked.  Many SCA folks that played made comments like "Well, we've had
this at SCA feasts, so that must be period" and we would say, "You've
seen everything on this table at feasts, it's not necessarily so!"  One
fellow said he knew the potatoes, tomatoes, and corn were wrong from the
discussions on the Kingdom list about them.  
	So, it was a rousing success, and one we'll do again, I'm sure.  We gave
credit where credit was due, so AM's word-fame was spread through the
Barony of the South Downs.  
	Thanks again,
	Christianna
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