[Sca-cooks] Period cookery library for sale (long)

[Jamey R. Lathrop]

On Fri, 3 May 2002, Cindy M. Renfrow wrote:

> P.S. - Who are you? do we know you?

I am "the cook formerly known as Lady Allegra Beati."  I live in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, which in the SCA is known as the Barony of
al-Barran.  This falls into the Kingdom of the Outlands.

Back in the mid 1990s, I founded a local cookery group within the barony
known as Dediti Ventri.  Our mission was the "study, practice and
promotion of European medieval and renaissance culinary arts."  We did a
number of local feasts that were heavy on the education emphasis, and I
believe, were successful in changing a lot of local attitudes about period
food.  Overall, I'm pretty sure we had an excellent reputation for very
good food, judging from the number of kind souls who contacted me when I
announced I was leaving the SCA. I taught classes when possible, and one
thing Dediti Ventri was particularly known for was our "traveling feasts."
We loved to go to smaller groups within the kingdom, where there might
only be a few resident families or households, and actually do the feast--
the planning, the shopping, and as much as possible, the pre-cooking (not
to mention the hauling over a distance of 300 or more miles!)  We offered
this out as a service to the small groups so that they would have more
time to enjoy their own events (which can be tough when it takes every
member of such small groups putting in long working hours to run the
event).  Our hallmark was always a feast booklet given to each diner,
included in the price of the feast, that included some background on the
feast theme, all of the original recipes and their sources, and the
redactions of those recipes we were presenting at the feast.

Later on, I was a founding member of the Stewpot, which brought together
other individuals throughout the Outlands who shared the same vision and
goals.  Friends I stay in regular contact with tell me it has grown and
there are even people from outside the Outlands who are regular
contributors to the Stewpot email list (such as yourself, if I remember
correctly).  The last feast I planned and organized was a Stewpot feast at
an Outlands crown tournament in April of last year, the first such joint
Stewpot feast.

And now, I really have to get back to that awful finance textbook if I'm
going to successfully get myself out of grad school next week...

Jamey Lathrop

Jamey R. Lathrop
jlathrop at unm.edu

*** See the chocolate.  Taste the chocolate.  Be the chocolate. ***