Food and Mail

[hrj]

Today's sensory postcard: I'm walking out to the parking lot after work, watching the full moon rise out of the pink and purple haze over the Oakland hills, and suddenly the breeze shifts so it's coming from the Scharfenberger factory. Mmmmmm.

Saturday was Mists Investiture. I'm coming to the conclusion that SCA feasts are for the young and hearty of appetite. It was all delicious (well, ok, except for one dish that needed less than a tenth of the salt it included) but there was Too Much. Even having skipped lunch and keeping to a single serving of each dish (well, ok, except for the eggs in coats, because it was the first dish and I was starving from having skipped lunch; and except for the cherry soup because it was sooooo good, but the servings were small), by the time the last dinner course was over I was painfully full and was incapable of even tasting any of the desserts.

I can understand the attraction of putting on elaborate multi-course banquets (been there, done that) but I've reached a point in my life when I want to be a gourmand, not a glutton. I guess I'll have to work on that willpower thing. (But it all looks so good!)

Sunday was for shopping (boring stuff), going to the movies (see my mini-review of Pride and Prejudice in Callistotoni's comments section), and setting up the new laptop.

The setup was largely uneventful, despite dealing with the new version of Apple's OS (10.4) but due to some indeciperable settings problems I was having in Eudora I decided to switch over to the Macintosh native mail program. So I'm having the fun of rebuilding address books, filters, files-n-folders and getting used to a new interface. (But at least it talks to all my e-mail sources in both directions.)

Comments

[maestrateresa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that grand sensory image moment :)

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

I am with you on the "groumand vs. glutton" bits. The feasts I've attended (we missed the one at Mists Investiture) have all been really great, and that's been a problem, actually. Lots of really good food. It's hard not to eat too much. I really think that the cooks need to trim back a bit on the number of dishes/courses.

On the positive side, at least the food is good. There was a time when you did the feast to be supportive and ate very little of the mediocre food, and then went out for pizza afterward.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong -- the one thing I love about "modern SCA feasts" as it were (as compared to back in the teen years of the SCA) is that the food is good. The problem is, the food is good. <g> By the time you get to the last course (not even counting the dessert course), you're usually stuffed to the gills ...

[callistotoni.livejournal.com]

I'm going to echo stella_nordica's point. As someone who can't/really doesn't want to eat certain foods, a large variety means I can eat *something*. At the Mists Bardic feast, for example, there was at least two dishes I could eat enough of. (Admittedly it's hard for me to justify a feast ticket for myself these days...)

I'd venture that others, like maestrateresa, are in the same boat. So you've got vegetarians, people who are leaning towards diabetic and so have to limit carbs, people who can't eat certain veggies, people who can't eat fish, etc. I believe we all appreciate the trouble feast-planners go thorugh to provide a wide variety of food, even if it means those who can eat everything are in danger of suffing themselves. :-)

Re: Regarding the feast...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

That matches my guess -- that it was a result of reduction of a liquid that had been appropriately salty before reduction. I had a similar "oops" moment once when I took the drippings from a roasted ham to flavor pea soup ... not realizing that the drippings had started out as salty as the ham and then done a lot of evaporating.