[Sca-cooks] Spices and the Irish Common folk

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> Anyway, we were talking about food preparation methods for 14th century 
> common folk:  I'll stick with my earlier conclusions.  Common folk in 
> the 14th century were essentially subsistence farmers with little to no 
> access to spices or herbs as such or beef or cookbooks or recipes.  They 
> scraped together what they could and stretched it into as many meals as 
> they could until it went bad.  If they found some vegetable matter that 
> was edible, they'd throw it in the pot without a thought as to whether 
> it was a herb, fruit, berry, leaf, stem, root, flower or pod.  They 
> couldn't read, weren't educated and didn't travel. 
> 
> That isn't speculation, pure or adulterated, or even 'prejudice' against 
> 14th century common folk.  It's the result of education, research and 
> maybe even a bit of common sense. 

The picture you paint is much bleaker than that presented by the
historians I've been reading. Preservation as well as planned planting
does seem to have occurred (what else are dried beans or stored root
crops than preserved foods?) Now, in times of famine, all bets are off,
of course, because there simply isn't enough food grown anywhere to
preserve!

Can you suggest some of the sources you've been reading so I can follow 
up and compare them with what I've been reading?

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on 
imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand." 
	-- Harry S. Truman