[Sca-cooks] Growing for Feast

[Susan Fox-Davis]

>
>
>>How hard was it to time the ripening of the
>>vegetables for the feast?  In
>>thinking about this it seems as though it would be
>>easiest to do a northern
>>European oriented feast in late spring-early summer
>>or the fall when cole
>>crops, greens,  and root vegetables would be at
>>their peak.  Though if you
>>wanted a feast with a lot of fresh stone fruits,
>>July might be best.  For
>>feasts where grapes, freshly dried raisins, olives,
>>or apples would be
>>featured, fall would be the ideal time.
>>
>>Sharon
>>gordonse at one.net
>>
This is the part that will make you crazy.  Our ancient ancestors didn't 
have to deal with kingdom calendar scheduling a year in advance.  They 
could hold a harvest festival whenever the harvest actually happened.  I 
timed a cooking contest, whose theme ingredient was "plums" to the usual 
date when my parents' trees were usually at their peak harvest.  Then we 
had a hot snap in the late spring and the damn things ripened a month 
early.  Aieeeee!

I wound up buying most of the plums for the contest.  Poop.

On The Proverbial Other Hand:  Maybe our ancient ancestors didn't have 
bureaucratic scheduling problems, but neither did they have freezers. 
 I'm going to go pick grape leaves in a couple of weeks, blanch and 
freeze the li'l darlings.  Will check the unripe grapes at that time. 
 The plums should hit in July, except for the few that I pick whilst 
yellow for umeboshi pickling experiments.

Regarding hunted meats:  the SCA population in the Los Angeles are are 
notorious city kids and would freak out entirely if we hunted our own 
game.  Fortunately, NZ farmed venison is available from friendly 
specialty butchers.

Selene Colfox