SC - Icky Period Food and attitudes
david friedman
ddfr at best.com
Tue Jan 23 11:41:20 PST 2001
At 10:59 AM -0600 1/22/01, Michael F. Gunter wrote:
> > Every time I have a "super period" feast, it turns out to be so esoteric
>> that nobody seems to be able to eat it. It has indeed prejudiced me to that
>> fact and I apologize.
>
>Don't feel bad. A few years ago there were very few people in Ansteorra
>who cooked period food. And many of those who tried often produced nearly
>inedible meals. There were exceptions, Mistress Meadhbh, Baroness Clarissa,
>and Master Bjorn would produce good researched dishes but ofttimes they
>were fairly small or produced rarely.
>The majority of period food I'd tried, well, sucked.
Do you know that it was period?
That is a serious question. In the SCA, doing period things sometimes
gives you status. Hence there is an incentive to claim something is
period even if it isn't. Sometimes this involves deliberate
dishonesty. More often it involves someone not bothering to
check--either because what he cares about his not whether it is
period but whether he can say it is, or because he has no real idea
of how to find out such things.
That's not to deny that it is possible to start with a period recipe
and produce something horrible. But I think it is worth pointing out
that unless you either know the person who says something is period
is to be relied on--and rank and positions don't satisfy that
requirement--or you know enough to check the facts for yourself, you
cannot rely on the claim that "X is period" in the SCA, whether about
cooking or anything else.
- --
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
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