SC - You think it's not period??

[RButler96 at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/9/00 11:58:21 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
morgancain at earthlink.net writes:

> The Laurel and I have different expectations.  Even in this day and age, I 
do 
> not expect every feast I attend to be rabidly period, as long as they are 
not 
> blatently 20th Century.  Not everybody has the interest, skill set, 
> facilities, or support to prepare a perfectly period feast.  OTOH, I don't 
> like to see blatantly non-pre-1600 foods such as tomatoes, corn, white 
> potatoes, peanuts (yep, I've been faced with them), etc., unless the cook 
> offers documentation for the usage.

    Alas, I must bring a point up here.  

    Recently, there has been massive evidence of Chinese trade with South 
America dating to between 6th and 12th centuries.  One of the results of this 
is the find of ancient tomato seeds in the stomachs of some well-preserved 
Chinese mummified corpes.  Alas, they also managed to trade some of these 
with their Turkish Ambassador.

    The Turkish Ambassador to the Chinese wrote in his journal that he was 
served a dish containing something that surely must be sinful since it was 
the color of blood, and yet he ate it to abstain from disgracing his host.  
Seeking favor, he brought a sample back to the Sultan.

    Alas, the substance was a tomato.  Evidence has been found in South 
America (in the form of Chinese anchors), China (seeds and such), and the 
remains of several Sultanate palaces that were ruins far before a modern cook 
could have contaminated them.   I beleive the evidence is overwhelming....  
((btw, I do offer documentation, as soon as my moving is completed and I have 
a chance to unpack it.))

    Khadijah