[Sca-cooks] menu planning for dietary restrictions...was Re: Lamb with Roasted Apples and Onions

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

hey all from Anne-Marie
when faced with menu planning, I often try and balance things to satisfy the modern 
mindset of what is "healthy" while still maintaining my own personal standards of 
using only documentably period recipes.

to this end, it is very possible to provide a selection of dishes, all of them 
within the medieval corpus that still meet various dietary requirements.

if you serve as your main dish some uber yummy and heart stopping lamb stew thingie 
(mmm. lamb), you can balance it with side dishes that dont contain butter or other 
fats.

also, interestingly, many medieval dishes dont specify the addition of salt. if you 
refrain from using commercially packaged seasonings, broths, etc and do stuff from 
scratch, I think you'll find that much medieval food is naturally lower in sodium, 
even if you add salt as a seasoning to taste.

lastly, the use of sugar is fairly prevalent through medieval and especially the 
later corpus. but there is nothing that says you cant offer alternatives for those 
who choose not to partake. for example, along with that yummy dariole (custard pie 
made with the yolks, sweetened with honey and dates), serve some small fruit tarts 
or baked apples or ??  so that people concerned about such things can police their 
own sugar intake.

I'm a big fan in people taking personal responsibility for their own diet but I'm 
also a big fan of me, as a good hostess, providing them the tools so that they can 
pick and choose from the menu to suit their own needs.

or at least thats how I do it....

--Anne-Marie, who given the choice would rather just a have a dish that normally 
doesnt have butter than to take one that is supposed to have butter and reduce it.