[Sca-cooks] Minor rant - allergies and following directions

[yaini0625 at yahoo.com]

<Wink wink> There is a way to make a dish period and make it gluten free.
Being a celiac and a historian I started doing research to see if this was even possible. 
It is possible to do both.
However,
I still maintain that it should be our responsibility to inform the chefs in a timely manner of our dietary needs AND attend. I am so appreciative when a chef does make the extra effort to make things gluten free for a feast. 
Its when the chef bluntly states they will not change the menu or work with me to find alternatives that I get annoyed. I don't attend a particular retreat because of this attitude.
Aelina

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-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
Sender: sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 22:38:04 
To: SCA-Cooks maillist SCA-Cooks<SCA-Cooks at Ansteorra.org>
Reply-To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Minor rant - allergies and following 	directions

Selene said:
<<< I recently ran a feast for about 60 where two celiacs showed up  
without
notice.  This could have been a problem, but I had been under the
influence of my incipient mother-in-law, also celiac, and had carefully
NOT thickened anything with bread crumbs or the like.>>>

Were you intentionally not cooking with breadcrumbs? Or did your  
particular menu not use them?

Bread crumbs were a very common method of thickening things in period  
cooking. I would hate to see us changing the medieval dishes we serve  
just because one or two people might have problems with one ingredient.

Even more so if something is avoided because there might be a  
hypothetical person who might show up and have a problem with an  
ingredient.

And even more so, changing a medieval dish into a modern one because  
of such concerns.

Your second paragraph tells me you might not have meant this as I read  
it, and that your menu just happened not to need bread crumbs.
<<< It being from early Persian sources, if anyone had showed up with a
killer allergy to ALMONDS, there would have been a real problem.
Happily, that did not happen, this time. >>>

However, at risk of making myself the target of all the celiacs out  
there, or others with special diet requests, I don't think we should  
be making things less period for everyone to met the needs of a few.  
especially when the situation being concerned about may be hypothetical.

I've seen this come up before in other discussions where people wanted  
to rule out camping sites because they were difficult to navigate in  
wheelchairs.

Stefan

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****






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