baabeee beluga

It's a curious fact that all pictures of beluga whales make them look like dorky stuffed animals, probably because of the body shape, the huge forehead melon, and the perpetual smile.

In real life-- if you've ever had a chance to see them in real life-- they are strikingly spiritual in appearance, though they have a very Zen/Tao sense of humor. (Visiting beluga whales in Seattle, I became convinced that belugas in captivity see their human visitors as a kind of interactive beluga tv, especially if they can convince small girls to watch them closely enough to be splashed.)

Anyway, Cute Overload reports that the Shedd acquarium has a baby beluga (and has had a number of them in the past). Here's the update on him/her: http://www.sheddaquarium.org/beluga_calf_update.html
Which provide temporary relief for whatever ails us.

SCA cooking judgement

an interesting point that I've been thinking about lately, because I've been reading books with other people's interpretations of pre-1650 recipes in them again.

In the SCA-cooks world, we try to limit ourselves to recipes that are fully documented, specifically ones that start with a known, extant recipe written down before 1650, and which we 'redact' (i.e., recreate in modern measurements) as exactly as we can and with great care to ingredients.

But I find myself fussing in certain ways about what people do in their redactions and in their service, and in different ways about what I do, and what corner-cutting or accomodations to modern life I find acceptable for me to do.

I, for instance, tend to fuss about modern spicing and modern expectations of textures being accomodated in redacting and menu choices. But then I smack myself about serving modern crudites in my dayboards, and my tendency to serve certain sauces to be eaten with bread. (I haven't found good sauce on bread documentation, though many of the veggies I serve in sauce are meant to be served OVER bread, such as buttered worts...)

And then there's the drinks. Infusions of herbs and jalabs of sugar syrup are very popular in my kingdom, and I've helped to make them so. But I wonder if anyone routinely drank cold mint tea or cold lavender tea rather than small beer or small mead? What about my lemon-ginger syrup jalab? I serve that at events, and people think I'm being very
period-- but I made that recipe up, using the proportions in a modern sekanjabin recipe, and I have to keep admitting it. That recipe has escaped out into the SCA cooking world and has a separate existence. People think it is period because they've had it at feasts that were full of redactions from period recipes.

I've served Vanilla pizelles in place of period wafers with something, because that's what I had time and people would eat, and comforted myself with the idea that Vanilla is the modern equivalent of rosewater. But my pizelles weren't from a period recipe, and they had vanilla in them!

And yet, I'm still cranky at Constance Hieatt because in Pleyn Delit she recommends allspice in a recipe, though the allspice can't be documented as a regularly used spice in our period, and because her cameline sauce is based on a completely obscure version, which, if tweaked by unsuspecting cooks, comes out as a raisin-nut stuffing...

Do I hold a double standard? Am I really judging my work by similar, if not the same, standards I judge others? I've served bananas at a dayboard, and will do it again. Is it right for me to complain so bitterly when someone serves Bigos/Hunter Stew with tomatoes in it at a feast?