[Sca-cooks] Dayboards

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

> << For fighting events, people often try to go a little heavier on
> protein, salt and water content foods.  For more genteel indoor events,
> people may try for a very period spread with many neat things. >>
>
> I do both at the same time. People should get what they pay for (Sir Edward
> Gendy <Meat eater extraordinaire>taught me this), and I should enjoy giving
> them period food (learned from shadowing Master A). Each menu, dayboard or
> feast, should be a medieval lesson to the SCA public.


I try to do that, but in some places (not naming groups,) you get
massive resistance to trying to serve anything except "fighter food" at
fighting events.  Lots of fresh fruit, pickles, hard boiled eggs, hard
pretzels, cubed cheese, maybe sliced ring bologna.  This kind of control
gets so extreme that, for one breakfast, I wasn't even allowed to buy
the food I was to prepare.  I just showed up in the kitchen to heat up
what the autocrat bought for me.  Scrapple, scrambled eggs, sauteed
onions and bell peppers, english muffins.

I got an autocrat to allow me to do what I wanted at one fighting event,
and one of the critics showed up with a massive pot of chicken noodle
soup to "help [me] out."  In the end, it rained like a son-of-a-gun, and
the soup was appreciated because it was hot and could be slurped out of
a cup while huddled up in a cloak or towel.  But we didn't even bring
out the soup until the rain started mid afternoon, and I heard no
complaints about the kinds or variety of food.  So, period and filling
and good for fighters can certainly be done... if you can get past the
resistance...

-Magdalena
*caution, rant below.  Stop reading now if it'll annoy you*

<rant>
Unfortunately, there are many fighters who are just there to swing a
stick, and don't consider a lesson in medieval food to be what they paid
for.  If you cook well and consider the desire for finger food, they
either don't notice or don't mind that their grub is both period and
filling.  But, if you ask their opinion before serving it, they'll make
faces and gripe.  That's part of where the idea that fighters don't want
a period dayboard comes from.  That and the people who are sure they
know what fighters should be eating to stay healthy and feel it's their
job to make sure you only serve them healthy fighter things.  Never mind
that you can't make a fighter healthy in one meal, and the ones who need
it most eat potato chips for dinner mundanely.  Also never mind that,
while I don't fight, I do run several miles a day and lift weights and
work out like a fiend (well, I've slowed down since getting pregnant,
but normally) and concienciously keep a very good diet, so I have some
idea of how to eat healthfully for exercise; Most of the people I hear
complaining neither fight nor work out and don't normally have very good
diets of their own.
</rant>