[Sca-cooks] Non-Pennsic SCA activities?

[Lady Celia]

Dragon said:
<<I don't think there is any way that your potency assertion could be 
proven, in fact, I'd wager that the opposite may well be true when we 
are discussing whole spices (which I use exclusively and grind fresh 
when needed).>>

A wager would be ill advised, as we'd never be able to settled it, as
there's no way to prove the truth either way.  And while I concede that one
might think that time to market should be less today than in times past,
knowing how long spices can just sit in production stages is one of the
reasons I suspect that the potency of modern spices is less than those of
ages gone. 

But I use my language very carefully, which is why I said "I suspect" and
"That would be my first guess...", because in a case like this, all we can
really do is suppose, extrapolate and guess, as no amount of data that we
have from historical sources will provide the test that our tongues do. So,
lacking a time machine, all we can do is suppose. 

And as I said, the second part of that is that I also suspect that we just
simply have too many taste bud dulling substances in our diets. You may not,
but most of us do. It's quite possible that our ancestors were just more
used to subtle spicing.  Or that, like my grandmother, they believed in
putting down minimums when recording recipes, knowing that you can always
adjust up to taste, but you can't take spices out once they're in.

In service, 
Celia