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

[Ana Valdes]

Wonderful list, thanks a lot! I love Katherine Kurtz and read all
books about Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I wrote an eulogy on her
when she died, for the Swedish newspapers.
But it's really interesting to read the food described on the books as
"wishthinking".
My grandmother was expert in Greek literature and she explained that
the Greek diet didn't include as much meat as Homer described. All
those slaughtered oxes were more a "wishthinking" of people who ate
most salt fish and goatmeat.
Ana

On 9/13/06, Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org
>


-- 
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
will always long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci