[Sca-cooks] Secret Life of Christmas

[Susan Fox-Davis]

Finally saw the show Friday night.  My first actual screen credit!  ::dies::

Kathleen A Roberts wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 01:04:12 -0800
>  Susan Fox-Davis <selene at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> Also includes some b-roll footage of Selene [just hands, no interview]
>> making plum pudding and lebkuchen.  It re-airs in about 1 hour here, 
>> I may
>> stay up and watch.  For several months, I've been getting questions 
>> about
>> Medieval and other historical holiday practices - I want to see what 
>> they
>> did with it.
>
>
> speaking as a laurel, a cook, and one of those pre-christian religion 
> folks, quite well, i think.  sorry you didn't get more air time, tho.  
> they could have done two hours with that. 

Oh, there are lots of things that they "could have" done, like shoot a 
feast by the SCA which I feel would have been much better-dressed and 
researched -- but I am biased too.  One thing we shot but didn't show 
onscreen:   Having all the members of the family stir the pudding -- we 
got the producer, soundman, camera and grips to put their hands in and 
stir the bowl.  That was amusing.  

An awful lot of the script seems to have been derived from conversations 
and e-mails back and forth with the nice producer lady.  Certainly the 
positive pagan material was.  Just a sample of the kind of World Food 
History I want to cover in the series I want to pitch... making 
everyone's ancestors look good, not like ignorant savages.

> Those cookie molds are gawjus.  i ordered some of master huen's 
> sprengerle cookies for our midwinter hospitality room, but i would 
> love a couple of those molds, boy howdy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Aren't they fabboo?  I'm going to use the Annunciation one for the 
Barony of Angels yule celebration.  But probably won't use the lebkuchen 
recipe that we used on-air.  It takes a mold well but OW it is hard like 
dwarf bread!  Yes, you can carve them yourself but as I found out the 
hard way, you really need to carve DEEPLY into the wood to make a good 
impression on the cookie dough.  We ordered from House On The Hill.  

These are the ones they gave me to keep:
http://www.houseonthehill.net/product.php?cat=6&page=1&num=M1516
http://www.houseonthehill.net/product.php?search=sun&page=1&num=M5715

Stefan wrote:

 >The wassail section also was interesting. I do wonder about drinking 
from that large wooden tub, though.
 >It seems like as the tub got emptier you would have a big chance of 
the contents of the tub including the apples
 >(which were floating in the ale) in your lap along with the ale. It 
seems more likely that you would just dip your
 >drinking vessel into the tub. I wonder what the basis is for thinking 
you pick up the heavy tub and drink directly from it.

I liked that section too.  I want to apprentice to Dr. Anne!   Maybe the 
communal drinking tub was a form of party game, the kind that is funnier 
the drunker you get and the more people spill on their fancy holiday 
clothes.  <wry grin>

Selene