[Sca-cooks] What would you advise?

[Peters, Rise J.]

Perhaps the lovely young lady should consider taking up cooking.  For one
thing, it would make it much easier for her to be aware of what's going into
the meal; for another, people who have to put out the effort to work around
her sensitivities would have some positive incentive to care about whether
she's happy.

Bear in mind, though, that in my heart I think people with actual
life-threatening allergies who eat food they don't cook themselves are
trusting fools.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rosine [mailto:rosine at sybercom.net]
> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 10:01 AM
> To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
> Subject: [Sca-cooks] What would you advise?
>
>
> I'm not feeling particularily balanced when it comes to
> addressing this
> problem, so I'm appealing to the list.
>
>    We have a newly-arrived member of the barony who insists on eating
> onboard. She doesn't consult with the cook beforehand (she
> and her husband
> also eat as part of the "baronial mess" when we're camping),
> but she has an
> allergy to onions that she says is so extreme that her throat
> will swell if
> she kisses her husband after *he* eats a dish prepared with
> onions. There's
> been a certain amount of silent pressure from her to push the
> host/ess of a
> casual gathering (like a fighter's practise with munchies) to
> insure that
> onion-less foods are provided.
>    I have to admit, until she arrived, I'd never even
> considered how much I
> relied on onions in my food preparations - nor thought of how
> insidious
> their use was in pre-packaged foods like ketchup or sauces.
>
>    I'm beginning to fear that the silent pressure will
> increase (not from
> her, but from other members of the barony who are reacting to
> her youth and
> beauty and her husband's potential as a really good fighter)
> to the point
> that our cooks will no longer be comfortable serving foods...
> it has already
> caused stress for the hosts and hostesses of our holiday gatherings.
>
>    Are there any kind of substitutions for onions? Is this
> actually an easy
> fix? Are we going over-board in catering to this sigular
> sensitivity? (I
> must add that at our last event, the feast cook was not
> informed of the
> girl's allergy and was considerably taken aback when on the
> day of the event
> she was treated to stunned disbelief that she'd planned a
> menu that involved
> onions - and the girl made a quietly public scene by breaking
> into tears in
> her husband's arms in the main hall when he left the kitchen
> to tell her
> what the menu was... but that could have been merely stress
> and dismay, and
> not artifice.) I'm at a loss as to how to address this, and
> at some point,
> as the baroness, I'm going to have to. So does anyone have
> any suggestions?
>
> Rosine
>
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