[Sca-cooks] Re: [Sca-cooks) onion soup...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach BeckysQuilt at aol.com:
>hello Bear,
>I'm sorry My opinion disturbed you. I too have over 20 years in Ansteorra and
>have had more than my share of very bad feasts. I am competent of my cooking
>skills for large groups. My first experience was with HL Elaine DeClairemont
>at a 1985 Steppes Warlord when they were still at Camp Burnett. She 
>called me 3
>day before the event and said "hi, do you want to do feast? I'm in labor!"
>Yes, I pulled it off very well then and have continued to be of 
>service at large
>feasts whenever I could. I have the skills to do this. The feast I am bidding
>on is this January's Coronation. I believe that at this particular event that
>the food should be well prepared and presented, period is a boon. The feast
>should compliment the event, not overshadow the importance of what is taking
>place.
>In my mundane life, my family owns restaurants. You could literally say I had
>a lifetime of experience in food service.
>Any period recipe for onion soup would appreciated. Again I am sorry if I
>upset you.

While I don't want to stick my nose into the emotional aspects of 
this discussion, I will throw in my two cents. I gather Ansteorra has 
had a fairly long history of good but expedient food, with large 
numbers of people travelling great distances to gather together and 
eat whatever they can have fun eating. Some of them may or may not 
have rather conservative, meat-and-potatoes, tastes. Or so I've been 
told.

I think you may just have hit a slightly exposed nerve, is all, but 
people like Bear, Count Gunthar, and some others have been trying to 
open the collective eyes of your Kingdom and make it clear that if 
good food at an event is cool, good, period food at an event is even 
_more_ cool. Where I live, we have a more or less holistic attitude 
about feasts, and we normally like to have food that at least doesn't 
scream non-period, because it's an integral part of the game, just 
like our garb, the fighting, our mannerisms, our language, our music, 
etc. Generally we go further than that, because our cooks love to 
show off not only their skills with the skillet, but with their 
research...

Now, I'm fairly certain you know all this, but consider the position 
of someone who's been trying to adjust trends and attitudes for 
years, hearing what might be interpreted as a suggestion that all 
that work has been wasted. Not conducive to the overall happiness 
quotient of campers, huh?

But I'm sure no harm was meant on either side of this... just one of 
those things.

Adamantius

-- 
  "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04