[Sca-cooks] 100 Mile Feasts

[Johnna Holloway]

What about spices?
What about imported commodities like sugar that they would have
imported prior to 1600?
Most of the flour in this country today is milled and transported from 
central
facilities; what about that problem? I can't grow wheat and take it 5 miles
down the road to be ground. It's an interesting idea.

Would this really help give a more period feel to events? We don't do the
generic medieval European feast these days. Every other feast is Asian 
or Middle
Eastern or Ancient Roman or Let's visit the Aztecs and dine with them.
We used to say that we were recreating the feasts of the royalty and 
nobility.
They certainly drew on more than just 10 miles for their cookery. 
Estates routinely
sent foods from the country to London and from household to household as 
people moved between properties.
Should a monarch have stopped by to dine, the estates would have gone 
all out to entertain that king or prince.
Dining locally would work if one wants to recreate the lower class
diet of porridge cereal, bread, whatever growing green can be had, and 
very occasional meat.

Johnnae


> 1) Try to source as much food for a feast within 100 miles of the event and/or the main cook for the event.  If the feast is already designed to feature food that is in season during the time of the event, this would make things easier.  And having some members grow part of the produce for the event would help too. snipped
>
> Either of these could help with giving a more period feel to events by helping the local resources use to more closely mirror the historic local resources.  I do realize that to some degree a 100 mile radius could be historically extravagant and that 10 miles might more closely represent a radius for an average historic market day.  And I could be off on the historic radius as I haven't researched it.  I am just thinking about descriptions of people walking/riding  in with a cart /wagon of produce, participating in the market and going back home that day or the next.
>
> What other kind of events or projects do you think would be fun to do with this concept?
>
> Sharon
> gordonse at one.net
> __________________