[Sca-cooks] RE: Butter and Brie and Yams, Oh my!

[Olwen the Odd]

>I'm so depressed!
>
>Alys Katharine's comment about the holly has got me thinking.  How is it
>practical to prepare a totally documented feast for an event?  Maybe for
>some small cooking A&S thing, but to feed 200+?  How do cooks display their
>Magnus Opus, their SCA doctoral work?  No matter how carefully prepared
>it's
>always going to be flawed by modern yeast strains in your bread, modern
>hybrid veggies, etc.
>
>What's a part-time hobbist to do?
>Wrynne

Don't be depressed.  Come to a cook's guild meeting.  Sure it isn't possible
to do exact replicas of period recipes in most cases.  In some, maybe yes.
We (the guild members) look up or redact ourselves period recipes, make them
either beforehand or at the meeting, eat, discuss the taste,
cost-effectiveness and ease of preparation and decide if we would like to
"take it on the road".  (You have seen our traveling kitchen circus.)  In
some cases, like 12th night, there is a particular theme or time-setting.
In this case, we shall do what we can from 13th century and wing the rest.
Even our subtleties are usually fairly period/peri-oid.  Do you recall the
"head of the enemy" we did several years back?  That was a period recipe for
stuffed cabbage.  The decorations may not have been period though as I
recall I used a little red pepper for the lips and I don't think the spring
onions I curled and used for the hair was period.

Let's see, I believe our next meeting is Sept. 23rd at Cordelia's (it's
Ekaterina's birthday) and we are to make/bring items for possible inclusion
in the 12th night feast.   And Wrynne, a desert board will be set out after
feast, so even if you wanted to simply make an inclusion to that, it would
be more than welcome!

Olwen

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