[Sca-cooks] from bacon to the availability of other meats

[Stefan li Rous]

   William de Grandfort said:
> The mention of bacon alone indicates that she did
> have ample pork as a protein source, and if she had bacon, then she
> likely had ham, and hocks and shoulder and rib as well.

And Jadwiga replied
> Gies and Gies and other sources indicate that bacon and other small
> portions of meat were often given to day laborers as hire or given out
> among the customary exchanges for harvest help. So she might not have
> had a pig in order to have bacon.

In addition, even if you raise the pig, that doesn't mean you keep the 
ham, hocks, shoulder and rib meats. Depending upon the local economy, 
those may be salable items. The bacon would have been less so and it 
might have been kept and eaten by this individual, as it was by other 
peasants, and the rest of the meat sold. Unfortunately, I can't 
remember my precise sources for this.

There are also problems with taking individual peasants and using them 
as examples of the peasant class as a whole. The economic life of 
peasants covered a wide span, even within a particular place and time. 
You could for instance, have serfs which were better off economically 
than free peasants. And very poor peasants on up to those who had 
substantial material goods for the times.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****