SC - I am So Ashamed! (long)

[Jenne Heise]

I seem to be defending this book sight unseen, which is silly! But I have
gone out and ordered a copy so if it is as bad as we are led to believe by
the article (though the article just _sounds_ suspicious to me) I will
post a scathing review of it on my pagan bibliography, here, and/or on the
book websites. (Someone will have to post it on Amazon for me, as I don't
have any truck with amazon after the profiling fiasco).

> How can they say the medieval peasants both generally ate mostly
> porridge and ate whatever was just coming fresh into season? 

Um, because people appear (from documentary and secondary source evidence)
to have made the grains the basis of most of their diet, but they also
appear to have eaten fresh food as it came into season. Remember the
Little House books? They ate bread every day, but in addition to bread
they ate whatever was coming into season in the garden. 

>How can
> they claim these porridge eaters in the middle ages would propitiate the
> spirits with tasty treats  at the pagan holidays and not even bother to
> mention that generally the peasants had christian oligations as well.

Because it's a 'Wiccan Cookbook', I expect. ;) Small-minded of them, I
suppose.

> Not to mention the 'sanitation' issues? If they had such sanitation
> problems than how come they all didnt die of food poisoning?

Pre-modern people DID have sanitation problems, and people did die of food
poisoning (we're not sure, of course, how many, because a) there was no
CDC collecting stats and b) they couldn't be sure what someone died of).
Wasn't there a year in the 1500's where because of the outbreaks of
dysentery, it was illegal that year in England to sell raw fruit?

However, what I learned in school biology class was that if you lived past
infancy, you probably had acquired a certain tolerance to a certain level
of the microbes around you-- otherwise you'd already be dead. You probably
also got antibodies in your mother's milk, too. (Or your wetnurse's.)

Nowadays, we would never dream of leaving meat out on the counter
overnight: that's an open invitation to illness. But in the 1940s it was
common to do so in England... look at Agatha Christy novels.
 -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"I do my job. I refuse to be responsible for other people's managerial 
hallucinations." -- Lady Jemina Starker