[Sca-cooks] Local Feast Disappointment

Jo Foster jo_foster81 at hotmail.com
Fri Nov 8 08:33:51 PST 2013


Now, I am an OLD woman; both chronologically and within the SCA.  I’ve been involved since my 16th birthday and I’ve been involved for 33 years.  I’ve dabbled in pretty much every facet the SCA has to offer; heavy weapons, light weapons,  projectile weapons, thrown weapons, metallurgy, woodworking, fiber arts, textiles, clothing, music and dance, glass arts, performance, and the preparation and serving of food, just to name a few.  I am expert at NONE of it, because I suffer from SCA ADD.  I get easily distracted by the next really cool thing to learn and have not focused narrowly on any one thing (not ever, in my life, as far as I can tell).

 

My original thought was to stay out of this.  I’ve had to step back from the SCA of late, in part, because I have taken up a leadership role in a motorcycle riders organization that supports veteran’s causes and it takes up a LOT of time and energy (more than I had expected actually).  I still subscribe to this list, and I truly enjoy the exchange of information, try the recipes at home, tinker with the techniques and in general ... play with our food.

 

I am going to offer a single point for consideration on this subject and then I am going to retire to the wallpaper again.  Here it is.  Folks who haunt this list are food geeks.  We like to, in essence, play with our food, and take great pleasure in hanging out with other food geeks within this group which does indeed encourage education in any facet of Medieval Life involving the preparation and serving of food.

 

Within the SCA we have other total focus folks.

 

My friend Sean (whom I have known since he were a little boy) is among the top fighters in the SCA (he is also a food geek, but I couldn't come up with another example very quickly).  Sean spends a significant portion of his life studying arms, armor, weapons styles, fighting forms and formats and has generally made himself an expert in all things martial regarding the time period we recreate.  He focuses on the study and is very good at teaching the art.  It is where he has chosen to focus his SCA life. 

 

My friend Karen is a clothing geek.  She has made it her business to become well versed in the period exactness of clothing.  She studies it, works at it, and has made it her business to reproduce exactly the attire from Medieval court life.  She has made it her business to teach other interested folks how to prepare period clothing so that they might enjoy this game to the fullest extent possible.

 

My friend Dan is a dance geek  He focuses specifically on the exactness of period dance.  He studies it, searches out any information he can on properly reproducing the dances from multiple time periods across multiple geographic regions.   He has worked hard to make himself an expert on all facets of Medieval dance.  He seeks out sources for the music and partners with talented musicians to reproduce the music found in period sources and teaches others how the dances are done so that they might enjoy the dance as much as he does.

 

My friend Mike is a blacksmith.  He has spent a great deal of time and effort reproducing as exactly as he can afford to, the workings of a blacksmith’s trade.  He studied available artwork (often with a magnifying glass, so as to glean out minute details), what a period smith would have had in a fully functional period shop, determined as closely as he could, the uses of items that would have, in period, been so commonplace as to not even be discussed in available literature on the subject .  He invites others to come learn what period smithy is all about.  

 

These examples of our wonderful organization are (not surprisingly) all peers within the SCA.  Sean is a quad peer, Karen is a triple peer, Dan is a double peer and Mike is a peer.  They have dedicated a huge slice of their lives to the research and education portion of our organization, and then the teaching of this information to others so inclined.

 

I would expect any one of them to step up and organize a feast if asked, or if a need was made known that the feast needed a director.  In fact, I would expect any one of them to take on organizing a feast just because it was something different to try.  I would not expect ANY of them (except maybe Sean) to concern themselves with the period-ness of said feast., because that is not their chosen area of focus (except maybe Sean).  Does that make the feast .... bad?  no ... just makes it less ‘period’.  Does that make them bad people?  Nope ... just means they are trying their hand at something new that MANY folks on this cook’s list are ALREADY EXPERTS AT.   

 

Perhaps, the cutting of a little slack might be in order here.  Again ... just a suggestion.

 

Cheers

 

Malkin

Otherhill

Artemisia


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