[Sca-cooks] Requirements for a Laurel

[Laurie Hupman]

Nor is it in the West.  In fact, it can work to the competitor's disadvantage
since the competitors are judged more against each other, rather than some
arbitrary bar of "laurel knowledge."  

In the extreme case, once a competitor racks up a bunch of wins, he, or more
often, his friends on his behalf, starts to think he's being overlooked by the
council and it becomes a conspiracy.  Thankfully, those cases are rare, but I've
seen them happen -- and not just in cooking.

It's not impossible to judge a laurel candidate from their feast cooking, but
the problem is still visibility.  If you cook one or two feasts a year, and your
council only meets once or twice a year, it's easy to slip through the cracks. 
Especially if the council doesn't keep a watch list.

But comparing a cook to a fighter?  I don't think that's a fair comparison.  A
chiv candidate only has two available outlets for showing off his work --
tournaments and wars.  If he's not fighting, he won't be evaluated.  A cook has
considerably more -- feasts, competitions, demos, A&S displays, classes, queens'
& princesses' teas, blah, blah, blah.  It's silly to expect that competitions
would weigh more in a candidate's favor, unless they're trying to use that as a
measure of skill.  Personally, I think cooking and serving a meal, for four or
four hundred, shows a better understanding of period food than a single dish
entered into a competition.

Rose
OL, OP