[Sca-cooks] What constitutes modern food

[Ian Kusz]

Well, two points, maybe even 3.

1.) portability
2.) not dirtying a dish
3.) making do if you don't have bowls, or are worried about slopping because
people are moving around a lot

I mean, milord Stumblebum is headed to the Eric, could you hand him
something quick to nosh upon until he's called up?  But, since he's likely
to not stand around for dinner, and probably will skip the whole thing, this
will have to BE dinner.  And he gesticulates, so make it something for one
handed eating....and we want to make sure he eats his vegetables, so he can
grow up....er...big and strong.

Not to mention the teenagers who are in and out of camp, running around
who-knows-where, I think there's some kind of leatherworking workshop that
they're headed to, but we don't want to get anything on the leather.....

As for ruining a good soup, well, some soups are pretty good, served this
way.  I've had some fairly dry bean-based soups before, that were fine, and
some pottages just end up being thick, depending on what its base is.
Certain vegetables are supposed to be served mushy (if you count squash as a
vegetable), and others aren't too bad....peas, cucumbers (in soup), cabbage,
cauliflower, what-have-you.

How about this one?  venison, chicken, endive, sorrel, borage, bugloss,
lettuce, purslane, chervil, beetleaves, onion, cloves.  If you cut the
herbs, here, long enough, you can lay them across bread and they'll stay on
pretty good. shred the chicken and venison, and it sort of turns into a
sandwich.  Just limit the amount of water you put on the sandwich (or into
the pottage in the first place), and it's pretty sandwichy....oh, and I got
it from Digby.

Granted, he doesn't serve it as a sandwich, he serves it as a soggy (he
actually specifies that it be soggy) sop, but I'm just saying, the dish is
period, and can be served in sandwich form with a slight stretch of
justification (again, on the theory that the cook "overcooked" it, or left
it simmering all day during a campout, so that it lost most of its
water, which is not that much of a stretch).

I'm not saying, "this is a perfectly-researched, period food."  I'm saying,
"this is a portable, almost-period food, that might be a useful
interpretation for camping."

Anyway, I just thought it might be something within the realm of period, but
I appear to have spit upon the Pope, or tickled the Ayatollah.

But portability is often a bugaboo, which is why people like hot dogs and
burgers.  Just thought this might be a help.  You know, so you can shop or
camp crawl, and don't have to miss lunch.

I mean, I figure it's superior (period-wise) to just pulling something out
of a can......and can be fairly healthy.  And it's simple, besides; here,
throw these things into a pot, and put over a fire.  Well, okay, not quite
that simple.

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Antonia di Benedetto Calvo <
dama.antonia at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ian Kusz wrote:
>
>> Actually, I have this idea about sandwiches.
>>
>> Sops are period (of course).  But what if a cook had a sop that they
>> cooked
>> too long, and it became dry?  You could still eat it, but then you'd have
>> an
>> open-faced sandwich with a sort of mushy "filling" with mixed meat and
>> vegetables.  So, would this kind of open-faced sandwich with a cooked
>> topping be allowed by our period police?  What say you?  I'm thinking,
>> cooking it down to the consistency of, oh, exceedingly lumpy mashed
>> potatoes
>> with pieces of meat and vegetable mixed in.
>>
>>
>
> Suddenly, I seem to be stepping into the role of the period police.  What
> the heck is the *point* of this exercise?  It sounds like ruining a good
> soup so you can serve squish on toast and pretend it's period?
>
>
> --
> Antonia di Benedetto Calvo
>
>

-- 
Ian of Oertha