[Sca-cooks] Cook's Prayer, was RE: 9/11 SCA cooks

[Susan Fox]

Ana Valdes wrote:
> Thank you! And by the way, science-fiction and phantasy books refer
> seldom to food but in Eddings, Zelazny and other similar, the
> characters and the societies seems to me frozen in a Middle Age diet,
> wild boars, eelk, reindeer, mead, honey and beer.
> Do someone know if it's some written these about that? Food in phantasy worlds?
> Ana
>   
A lot of fantasy authors have also been SCA members and frequently 
mention food details.  Katherine Kurtz, Poul Anderson, etc. 

Karen Anderson aka Baroness Karina of the Far West is a gourmet cook in 
any era and her work reflects this. 

I've nitpicked with Katherine Kurtz, aka Countess Bevin Frasier of 
Sterling, about how some of the dishes she cited for stories set in the 
1200's were not right;  she replied that it was an alternate universe 
and some foods, like some weapons, were invented earlier.  OK, good answer.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the SCA founders, thought through the 
foods available on Darkover pretty thoroughly, using her knowlege of the 
Medieval period and northern regional foodways to concoct a cuisine for 
this snowy planet.  She even edited a Darkover Cookbook, a fanzine no 
longer available but of course I have keyed it in on my computer.

Lois McMaster Bujold goes into some food detail in the Vorkosigan 
novels, where Miles hires his guard's mother as his new head cook and 
she turns out to be a wonder.

Anne McCaffrey edited two cookbooks full of contributions from fellow 
genre writers.   COOKING OUT OF THIS WORLD and SERVE IT FORTH.  Many 
parts are edible.

THE INCOMPLEAT ENCHANTER by L. Sprague deCamp and Fletcher Pratt had our 
hero visiting the world of Norse Saga, where the all-meaty diet gave him 
the pip.  He asked for vegetable to eat and was mocked roundly with the 
monicker "Turnip Harold."  So it seems like these writers agreed with 
you about the standard Fantasy Fiction Diet, yes?

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used meals to enhance the good places and 
the bad places in Middle-Earth and Narnia respectively.  Supper with 
Hobbits or Beavers is far preferable than dining with Orcs.  Don't ask 
me where they got tomatoes and potatoes without a voyage over the sea, 
however. 

Potatoes are a favorite in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.  Rincewind 
dreams of them when shipwrecked far from home, and a hyper-violent 
gangster keeps a potato around his neck as a ticket to heaven.  The 
wizards' banquets at Unseen University bespeak a groaning board of 
stupendous proportions, and even the Witches of Lancre set a nice table 
up in their mountains.

That should get you started.  Bon Appetit -- in any world!
Selene