[Sca-cooks] Projects and challenges for 2008

Sharon Gordon gordonse at one.net
Wed Dec 19 17:13:47 PST 2007


In thinking about learning opportunities in the coming year in regard to
period cooking, another cook asked for suggestions for projects.   I thought
of several that might be fun and could add to our skills.  I thought I'd
post the list here too and see if other people might be interested in a
monthly challenge or focused project on the sca-cooks list.

Would you enjoy participating in some of the ones listed below?  What other
sorts of challenges or projects would you like?

To me the projects and challenges we have done in the past as a group have
been fun and enlightening.

1)Recipe translation/redaction challenges.  I learn a lot
from working with one myself and then also seeing what other people did with
the same starting recipe.

2) Another thing that would be helpful would be a challenge to plan a feast
menu using a particular cookbook and seasonal ingredients.  For example say
it was a UK cookbook and what you could get frugally and in season in your
Kingdom (if it was open to all sca-cooks as well)  in May/June/ealy summer.
Or maybe it's  Fall and you have an Italian cookbook

3) And I would be delighted to do a couple of virtual siege contests with
time to think about and research ways to make really good use of the
ingredients.  And people could even try out their solutions in reality if
they wanted to.  Seeing how other people make creative use of their
ingredients can give me a lot of new ideas as well, and I really appreciate
people's artistry.

4) Another thing I think it would be fun to do as a group with people who
have different recipe books would be to find a wide variety of recipes on a
certain theme and make a table/spreadsheet of the recipe contents.  Some
themes might be:
*Pasty recipes and other mixtures from the same cookbooks that would likely
be good in a pasties.  So this way you could have info on what was used, but
also apply some of the SCA creativity of the sorts of things that could have
plausibly been thought of by cooks at the time.
*Roasted and baked poultry recipes
*All the ways a certain herb is used in a cookbook or region
*All the recipes a certain common ingredient  that most people like is used
in such as apples
*All the recipes some less common item is used in

For the theme item collaborations, it would  be useful to have  every
ingredient columns for the ingredients, but it would also be useful to have
columns for sets of ingredients that would help us see patterns.  So taking
pasties as an example, in addition to specific ingredients in alpahbetical
order as column headers, you might have:

Year
Coobook
Page or Recipe number
Actual Pasty or Plausible Pasty
Pasty pastry ingredients
Meats
Legumes
Dairy
Fats
Liquids
Red/Yellow/Orange Vegetables
Green Vegetables
Other Vegetables
Starches
Herbs/Spices/Salt

5) Some sort of time-travel-entraprenurial challenges that could use a
combination of what was known then, what is known now, and what was
available then to start up a food related business (disregarding
restrictions of food guilds, gender oppression, difficulties in getting some
ingredients and assuming that you could get/do whatever was possible--in
other words the middle ages as it could/should have been :-) )  Some
possible challenges here:

*You are starting a new line of dried herb/spice mixtures for a particular
cuisine.  What 5 do you develop first?  What do you call your mixtures?
Develop ad copy for each that suggests 3 ways to use the mixture.

*You open a Soup and Bread restaurant in downtown Paris that's suitable for
families to eat in.  Pick a week in each season and develop a menu with 3-5
soups and breads for that week.

*You open a family friendly pub in the UK.  Develop a menu for one season
with at least five different entrees and a reasonable assortment of other
items.

*You've been asked to write an article for Monastery Living magazine.  The
topic is 20 Herbs and Spices you can Grow that are good for both Cooking and
Medicine.  What 20 do you pick?

*You've been asked to develop three soup recipes for a Healing Soups
cookbook of soups devoted to treating particular illnesses.  What 3
illnesses do you pick and what ingredients are in each soup?

*The Healing Soups cookbook was such as success that they've decided to do
another one on Healing Sallats.  You've been asked to develop three sallat
recipes for the cookbook of sallats devoted to treating particular
illnesses.  What 3 illnesses do you pick and what ingredients are in each
sallat?

*You are an experienced farmer and have decided to start a CSA/Veggie Box
Scheme/Subscription fresh foods business.   Pick a week and tell us what's
in the food baskets this week.  You give your customers one sheet of paper
each month printed front and back with recipes focusing on the  current
season's foods.  This is the week to give out the sheet.  What recipes do
you include?

* You open a take out deli near a university that has lots of well off
students, faculty, and staff.  Every day, you try to have at least 15
different items available for lunch and dinner.  Some items the students
will consume immediately.  Others they might save for later.  Each room has
small stoves that can keep the rooms warm and heat food as well, but the
halls don't have ice boxes or ice cellars.  Where is your deli located?
What month is it and what's on the menu today?

*You are the editor of Tuscan Living Magazine.  Your magazine is designed
for people who like aspects of classy healthy sustainable living but are not
necessarily rich though they may be.  Usually your magazine has at least 1/3
of the articles devoted to food in some way (recipes, nutrition, health,
gardening, etc.)  What month is it and what are the table of contents for
your magazine?

*You are an urban planner.  You have been asked by the Monarchs of your
country to design the center shopping section of a new town.  The shopping
part is 4 blocks long on each side for a total of 16 one sided business
blocks.  There's a center square with some open green space, maybe a park,
and maybe some other things.  Buildings may be up to four stories high and
up to one block deep(or not).  What country is your city in? What businesses
are on your blocks?  Tell us a bit about any food related ones.

Sharon
gordonse at one.net




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