[Sca-cooks] RE: Scary Period Food [was Period vrs. Perioid]

[Joanne Clyde]

Saint Philip said...
So, if you can, could someone please explain to me why the period aspect of
the food is so scary? I'd be scared if part of the cooking required me to
sit in the oven with the food, or anything else of a dangerous nature- cook
it in the middle of an interstate during rush hour maybe ;-) But, dealing
with the recipes is the easy part...

****
2 reasons.

1.  Unfamiliarity
I come from a long line of picky eaters where anything vaguely different 
means danger.  I myself am a lot more flexible than I was.  Having an 
adventuresome husband (plus someone who appreicated MY cooking) helped me to 
try new things.   But my family (parents, siblings) STILL don't like it when 
anything new is put on the table.  ALSO there is the whole "overly spiced to 
prevent the taste of spoiled meat" non-sense still out there.

2. Recipes itself.
As a novice cook, I clung desperately to my recipe cards... It wasn't until 
I gained an appreciative audience in my husband, that I started to 
expirement more and let go of the cards.  I'm still very intimidated by 
midieval recipes...and I can see why others would be _afraid_ to cook them.  
They aren't written in a "recognizable recipe form,"  There are no 
"measurement amounts," and ingredients are called by different names 
throughout the recipes (sometimes).  Plus there is the whole archaic 
language barrier there too.  So there is a lot of "chance" involved with 
these recipes.  I don't like leaving a lot up to chance...especially with 
food.

The just throw it out comment if it falls short for me... How many of us 
had/have to get over the ITS FOOD YOU DON'T THROW IT A WAY... YOU EAT IT!!! 
conditioning that our family developed during depression eras and through 
our childhoods?   Some of us are still trying to get ourselved to do that 
when something flops.  Until recently, my husband has had to grin and bear 
icky recipes covered in ketchup.

I know that there are a lot of counter-arguments.  I now own "Take a 1000 
eggs" and have made recipes using the redactions, and they have turned out 
wonderfully.  My parents liked one of the egg tart things... I didn't tell 
them it was midieval until after they ate it.  But until that book was lent 
to me by a friend who did a lot of cooking, I had no clue.  Hey....only 
recently did I find out what a "redaction" is.

Because of these reasons...It took almost the entire shire's cooking 
community to get me invovled in period cooking.  I still haven't done many 
recipes myself, but I've really enjoyed "lurking" and learning terminology, 
hearing the debates, and getting ideas from you all.  By virtue of the good 
example and exuberance you all have for period food... I've developed more 
of a comfort for it, and now look for feasts at events  I go to and try to 
attend the feasts that are period.

I'll go back to lurking now.

Thanks!
Geertruyt