[Sca-cooks] Re: Documentation "Fun"...was "Potatoes and personal issues"

Patrick Levesque petruvoda at videotron.ca
Fri May 19 17:44:02 PDT 2006


I personally love the documentation and research part - I generally start
research about a year before the actual feast, if not more (albeit not full
time). This can be useful - for example, I have two working ideas right now
for feasts, and another one developing in the back of my mind, so if for
some unfortunate reason I have to take over a feast at the last minute  I
know I can whip up something fairly period and accurate.

However, the SCA is not just about how period the food we eat is - it is
mostly about how much fun we have eating it. Therefore, I prefer a good,
even if undocumented or OOP, feast over a bad one. I'd rather enjoy my food
eating it, than enjoy reading about it. Good food makes for a fun evening,
generally. Bad food can really spoil your day.

This said, I favour a constructive approach to encouraging period foods. For
instance, there is a cook in our barony who has cooked a couple of feasts
recently, both with good food, but definitely not period in either case. So
I sat down with her, congratulated her, and issued her a challenge: "You can
cook well, and that's the hardest part of it. So next time, I challenge you
to document it." And since I know that person well enough, I know that she
will actually be motivated (and not put off) by such a challenge; I rather
look forward to the next time she cooks.
On the other hand, it would have revealed quite fruitless to snort and
comment about the unnapropriateness of OOP food. Actually, had I done so, I
would have sounded like a pedantic bore more than anything else...

In any case, the ultimate test is whether my almost 3 year old son will eat
it - this is a pretty good indicator of whether I've succeeded in making a
good dish or not :-))

Petru




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