[Sca-cooks] Documentation "Fun"...

[Sheila McClune]

Bear wrote:

>At a feast, I don't expect people to concern themselves 
>with my documentation other than for their amusement, but I take it 
>seriously as part of my practice of the art of historical cooking.
><<<
>  
>

I've discovered that I do the documentation as much (if not more) for me 
than for the people I'm feeding.  I like to be able to look back a 
couple of years later and see where I've grown and learned things, as 
well as to remind myself of recipes that worked well (or didn't, as the 
case may be).  It's also useful to be able to go back and see what 
sources the recipes came from, so I can go back and double-check them if 
needed.  Sometimes I end up completely re-thinking my interpretation of 
a recipe.

I've also just discovered that I can't *not* do documentation.  A friend 
of mine and I just finished preparing a tea party for a mundane baby 
shower for a friend of mine, and I caught myself going back over the 
recipes and annotating the changes we made while we were cooking, and 
making sure I had all the sources noted.  Then again, we also 
mail-ordered clotted cream and treacle, and hunted down a store selling 
watercress, just so our recipes could be as authentic as possible.  So 
maybe I'm just insane.  :)

Arwen
Outlands