SC - Salty Foods and general comments

[Morgan Cain]

Two Digests at once coming in here....

Your Grace Cariadoc, you're right that I know about sekanjabin.  And the
article pointed out that the Support Kitchen uses a lot of sekanjabin, so
the fighters are not totally opposed to period foods and beverages.  In
fact, I've found it does wonderfully to counteract the salty taste of a lot
of the foods (jerky, soup, pickles, pretzels, nuts) served around battles.

Maybe some of the naysayers need to hang around the Calontir Soup Kitchen at
a war and see how it works and ask some real questions?

Jadwiga, your idea of a pork pie is not the one HE Gunthar suggested, which
is something like a quiche.  Trust me, there are some fighters who do not
want to look at anything that resembles, smells like, could be called, or
might be the other-side-of-the-blanket bastard second cousin twice removed,
of a quiche.  And as I said, pork quiches for eighty, times four, are just
too hard to transport to a war and keep edible if they would eat them.  Most
"pie" in period is like a modern fruit or mince pie, not the pasties you
reference.

Stefan asked:

> Is giving heavily salted foods to possibly dehydrated fighters actually
> a good idea? Wouldn't eating beef jerky, or any heavily salted food,
> draw out water from tissues? Wouldn't this make any dehydration even
> worse? Or are we assuming that the fighter's salt has also been
> depleted and that you just give extra liquid to counteract any liquid
> that the salt would tend to suck out of tissues?

The reason for the salted foods before and during the battle is to help them
retain what water they have.  Also, the salty foods make them thirsty in the
mouth and the fighters them look for water and such to drink.  Any effect of
drawing water at that point is minimal compared to the sweating out of
fluids.  Plus, the jerky is easily digestible, unlike many other foods you
can think of to give hot fighters before and during battle.

Also, as to the plastic containers -- brine and plastic are not the best of
friends.

By the way, I am tired of seeing people harp on the Twinkies.  THEY ARE NOT
SUGGESTED AS A REGULAR FOOD.  They appear as follows in the righthand column
of page 14:

            Optional
            - delightfully unhealthy snacks (Twinkies, Oreos, et al.)

So PLEASE people, if you are going to continue to castigate the article, at
least READ IT first.  At no place does Mistress Jenna **recommend** serving
Twinkies.

Kiri, this has been part of my grief about the discussion.  People are
talking badly about the article without even reading it fully.  Mistress
Jenna clearly says "Our Soup Kitchen" in many places, indicating that it is
how THEY do it.  She explains the background for the Support Kitchen, how it
ties into the Calontir structure, and the logic that went into the selection
of foods and development of the programme.  Aside from Lainie, I wonder how
many people have actually read the article through?  Especially before they
started saying bad things about it and the quality of TI on the list?

I guess my gut reaction was more to the latter.  I have been an editor.  I
know what the TI editor goes through for articles, and why she wanted to use
this one.  To have people say that they were going to write nasty letters
telling her why they think it was A Bad Thing, as opposed to a nice article
saying "and if you want to do it with period foodstuffs, here's what we do,"
that just set me off.  Too many people like to vent but they don't have the
gumption to actually do anything positive.  It takes little to write a nasty
letter, and too much work to do the positive thing, which is to write an
article saying "and in OUR Soup Kitchen we serve...."

Now anticipating that my A&S entry this weekend will be soundly trounced and
all sorts of bad things said about it, I remain and all that,

                                        ---= Morgan


===============================================
To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to
be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final
blow, the coup de Grace for the painter as well as for the picture.
- - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)