Argh! I've been baited!

[Rutlands@aol.com]

Poster: Rutlands@aol.com

In a message dated 8/14/98 1:04:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, nix@iolinc.net
writes:

<< I'll not give a way sources (except privately) but you can document
 floral and culinary examples of Potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers (not
 bell) yams and other foods, wing nuts and threaded screws, folding
 knives, and resin type plastics ans well as rubber for jewelry and
 padding, candle wax from flowers and trees, and many other little
 oddities. 
 
 I hope someone feels inspired.
  >>
OK, now... I know that the 1598 ed. of Gerard's Herball documents potatoes,
tomatoes (red AND yellow), yams, peppers. I used to bait M. Jaelle myself with
the tomatoes. A lot of the gardening stuff the Americas had was available at
least in the literature by late period-- remember, we're talking over a
hundred years between 1492 and 1600.  Whether it was available in actual fact
is another matter, as she would probably say, but what the snort.....

The REAL trick (he said viciously) is growing what they had then.  Period
varieties of apples, pears, other fruits and probably some vegetables are out
there commercially, and many more noncommercially.  Consider gathering things
wild   (first making SURE you REALLY KNOW what you're gathering)-- a wild
species is probably (not always) the same from then to now.  Consider
skirret-- a root vegetable not grown commercially now, but eaten widely (?)
then.  There is a commercial source for the seed, if one cares to grow it.  
     Hee, hee, hee... Always make sure the bear you bait is chained to the
post.  James of Rutland

P.S.-- I LIKE this thread and will contact you about the other stuff.  For the
first time in weeks of sorting through gossip I'm going to learn something.
=======================================================================
List Archives, FAQ, FTP:  http://merryrose.atlantia.sca.org/
            Submissions:  atlantia@atlantia.sca.org
        Admin. requests:  majordomo@atlantia.sca.org