Member Spotlight: Lenore Carvoe

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Author: Emory Sheldon
1 October 2011

Lenore.jpg

Lenore Sedai, a Sister of the Blue Ajah, personifies this quote exactly. No matter the situation or circumstance, she “will always stay blue.”

The Blue Ajah describes itself as “active throughout the community” and likes “to get involved”. They are “hardworking” and “will turn [their] hands to any task”. Lenore Sedai has definitely done that. Since she has joined the tower in November 2007, she has been a Guild Master for the former Gleemen Guild, served with the Online Events Team and won an award for outstanding leadership in the Gleemen Guild. She also volunteered to organize the Euro Party in 2010 and has gone to the event for the last three years. She admits, her favorite memory was “sitting at the campfire - feeling hot in the face and cold at the back - and sharing a cloak with my loved one while having good mead in the mug. Not many things are able to beat that.”

I asked her where she spends most of her time now and she said, “My home of course - the Blue Ajah Sitting Room and the Blue Ajah Chambers. I usually check everything, though. I mean, there’s a reason, why I’m a Blue.” Lenore may spend most of her time with the Blue Sisters, but I found her in another place entirely. Did you know that she likes to cook? Okay, according to her, on the site, “it’s still far more about baking than cooking”, but for those of you who have not visited the Home and Garden section, you are seriously missing out. She started her own thread and it’s “for [anyone] who is interested in German cooking and baking and who likes to do more than just open a can or a box with premade stuff.” Did I forget to mention that she is from Germany?

Her German cooking thread is a wealth of knowledge. I asked about her favorite part of cooking and Lenore explained it to me like this, “At first, I like searching for recipes, which occupies me quite some time until I’ve found what I was really looking for. Then, it’s choosing the correct point in time to make and serve it, because people, who are special to me, will always receive something special to eat or drink. ‘Liebe geht durch den Magen’ is a German saying, ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ in English. Well, and then it is standing in my kitchen, assembling all the ingredients and starting the actual process of cooking or baking.” She does not like everything, though, “Definitely the least favourite part is doing the dishes afterwards.” She advises that everyone tries cooking from scratch. “It does not only taste so much better, it’s cheaper, too, even considering the cost for electricity or gas. And one shouldn’t forget, that – at least, when not done in a rush – cooking and baking have indeed ruminant qualities.” Finally, for anyone who wishes to try out her authentic German recipes, she proposes to “throw away those measuring cups” and “to buy a pair of digital scales! Those often have even the opportunity to change the units from g and ml to oz for example, and they do have the advantage to be much more precise than any measuring cup. Not to forget about altitude problems, which won’t occur when weighing instead of going by volume.” Oh and just to throw one more thing in, I asked her if there were any stereotypes she wanted to clear up about German cooking and she said, “German cooking is far more than Sauerkraut!”

The Blue Ajah also says this about its members: “Like the Blues in the books, we have the freedom to do what we want to. We all have our own causes and ambitions, but you can guarantee each of us is putting all of our energy into achieving whatever it is we've set our minds and hearts on.” Lenore Sedai is no exception to this. Whatever she does, she certainly invests her whole heart. Try some of her recipes, or see her at the Euro Parties and you will see her heart.