[Sca-cooks] Non-Pennsic SCA activities?

[Daniel & Elizabeth Phelps]

Was written:

> I have decided to commit myself to doing the AS50 challenge. I have been 
> wanting to further my knowledge of period cooking and as I have mentioned 
> here before, I am a bit of a tinkerer and like to make things. So I have 
> decided that my challenge will be to produce 50 items that may have been 
> found in a period kitchen. This will include knives, pots, utensils, a 
> spice box, a spit, chests to carry it all in, maybe even a butter churn 
> and some casks. I'll get to equip my kitchen while also exercising and 
> improving my skills in blacksmithing, pottery, and woodworking.
>
Great idea!  Check out the Museum of London Books... "Knives and Scabards" 
has shears and scissors as well as knives and scabards.  Another, don't 
recall which one, has a simple leather sack/pouch opened up and laid out at 
half size scale.  How about iron strickers for fire making, such would be in 
a period kitchen too?  Potable scales for weighting out spices?  Can one 
"construct", like the scales perhaps, be made up of several items; i.e. the 
cups, the chain, the weights in the scales weight set (carved out of soap 
stone)?  If so then a spice chest with multiple drawers might count for 
several items too?   Spoons, cast in pewter and also made of wood and horn. 
A sharpening stone for knives?  A horn funnel for sausage stuffing?  Hand 
laid paper for wrapping up spices?  Hand made cord for tying up roasts?   A 
large bone needle for stitching up stuffed birds and roasts?  This is fun! 
Perhaps we on the list can come up with suggestions for items to be included 
on list of 50 items to be found in the well equiped period kitchen of say 
the 15th or 16th century?  Such, with documentation of each item, would make 
the basis for a nice article.

Daniel