[SCA-Cooks] Medieval cooking for non-cooks

[Stefan li Rous]

Lainie said:
> Peter Ryan wrote:
> > The "guy" in Dante's Inferno was the titan, Tantalus, from whence the term
> > "tantalising" is derived.
>
> Whoop! Whoop! Nope- that wasn't Tantalus- Tantalus was the one with the
> perpetual thirst and the cup just out of reach. The one Stefan was
> referring to was Sisyphus, who had to roll the boulder up the hill, only
> to have it roll back down again.

Lainie is correct. I couldn't remember the exact name but I remembered
it started with an 'S'. Hey, this was back in high school which was a
long while back...

> Sez me, survivor of ITAL 341/441, both sections.

Sounds like an airplane crash.

> > I wonder if fighter training is the best place to try to convert people to
> > period food? I run a fighter training every week, and though many of the
> > folks there are extremely active in other facets of SCA life (we have a
> > Laurel, and a couple of us Pelican types turn up, plus Krae Glas is a very
> > A&S oriented Canton), but the sticks in hands, helms on heads thing seems to
> > nix any discussions of other topics.
>
> I suspect that Stefan was taking things to fight practice because it is
> frequently the only _regular_ meeting that most folks go to. And awful
> lot of folks go to practice and sit around to watch- they won't pick up
> a stick and try but they'll watch (and they aren't all An Tirians,
> either!). And those same folks won't go to an arts night. Or heraldry.
> In fact, quite a few branches combine meetings.

Tuesday night fighter practice is a major social get-together. In fact,
even though it was a designated "melee practice"/war company meeting,
they didn't really do much fighting and they started late. Our
regular monthly meeting won't be till next Monday. And I will try again
there. We used to have a Sunday afternoon fighter practice at the
city sewage plant, nice indoor meeting rooms where we could do
crafts as well as outside space for fighting and archery, but after
Sept. 11, all city facilities have been closed to the public. This
was also where our monthly business meeting was. Now we're searching
for a new place, but all the public libraries are already booked
for the season. (There are a couple of folks in Afghanistan I
would love to practice some of the period punishments on...)

Taking samples won't really do what I want in this situation. I'm
less interested in persuading folks to try period food, which I want
to do, than I am in getting folks to try making a period dish for
the Yule Revel I'm event steward for on Dec. 8. And I don't want
a bunch of people showing up with gingerbread because that is the
dish I took to fighter practice. I squeezed in extra time Tuesday
at work coming up with a just *few* more recipes to add to the ones
I'd done on Monday night, so there'd be just a bit more to pick from.
I guess I'd been over enthusiastic in thinking that folks would
take most of the recipes, if not for the Yule Revel, just to try
at home, so when *none* got taken, I was a bit disappointed.

Stefan

--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****