The Night of the Recently Dead
Oct. 29th, 2005 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichThe Recently Dead... that might just be the three guys who are using heavy tools to sand down pieces of metal not ten feet from my office window. Armor needs to be made, I understand that, but... (actually, I'm feeling a little sorry for them too, since it's cold enough that two of them are muffled up in coats, scarves, and hats. I'm glad they're smart enough to wear hats).
I'm relieved to realise that in my world, I don't have any 'recently dead'. Everyone who I can think of who have passed on this year were more important to me because of how their deaths affected my friends rather than how they affected me. That's a nice change from last year when I had to write about my mother and Gyrth. As I was saying:
(Borrowed from the SCA-Authentic Cook's List)
On October 24, John Kasper, better known in the Society as Master Johan von Traubenburg, died at Allegheny General Hospital, as a result of a work-related accident. His loving wife, Baroness Arianna of Wynthrope was with him at the time. Johan is survived by her and their two sons, Kenneth and Robert.
Johan was not a cook, but he was an ENABLER of cooks. He was the owner of the Sated Tyger Inn at Pennsic (I was the manager) and the person who did all the heavy lifting and transportation, the one who set up the tents, stored all those heavy cauldrons -- which he had provided, from his family's farm in Marysville Ohio in the first place
-- and set us up again the next year.
When I had researched the possibility of a portable period oven, Johan was the one who engineered it and made it actually happen. I believe that oven was the first ever at Pennsic; there have been many more since.
Similaraly, I showed him a picture from Scappi of the multliple spits on A-frame sides. I asked if he could make one, and he said yes -- but actually improved the design.
He also backed the venture financially, as part of his merchant enterprises in the SCA. I was more visible, since I was working kitchen and counter, but the Sated Tyger owed its very existence to Johan.
As another part of his merchant activities, he kept a scribe on the payroll, Hannes von Nurenstein (which I have probably mispelled).
Hannes wrote out all the signs and posters for the inn, and painted the beautiful sign that hung over it. At one point I (having an English personna) decided the nameless dirt road we were on should be called The High, or High Street, as the main thoroughfare of many English villages is called. Johan constructed a sign post, but it took a little while. By the time Hannes got a chance to paint it, he had forgotten the exact wording and wrote High Road...and then took another piece of wood and wrote Low Road. Soon people were coming to the inn and asking for more road signs. Johan generously constructed them and paid Hannes to letter them. Many of those names persist to this day, but it was Johan and Hannes who made the signs and started the practice in the first place.
Johan was also my best taster. He could not only say what he liked and didn't, but why. He gave me the best description of how cubebs taste, which I have used ever since: "Imagine a spectrum with pepper and one end and allspice at the other; cubebs are in the middle." He was no flattere and always let the cook know if something was not quite right. But when it was good he'd say: "This stuff is terrible!
It should be wiped off the face of the earth! Here, let me take care of that right now!" and he'd eat it all.
So I say to all good cooks, when you happen to think of it, pray raise a glass to the memory of Master Johan von Traubenberg, who did so much for the food traditions of Pennsic...and much else good beside.
I miss him already.
--Old Marian
I have one (maternal) grandmother left alive. My parents and three of their parents have passed on. It seems so strange. I'm becoming the Oldest Generation.
Tomorrow is the last night, the night of Family Pets.
I'm relieved to realise that in my world, I don't have any 'recently dead'. Everyone who I can think of who have passed on this year were more important to me because of how their deaths affected my friends rather than how they affected me. That's a nice change from last year when I had to write about my mother and Gyrth. As I was saying:
(Borrowed from the SCA-Authentic Cook's List)
On October 24, John Kasper, better known in the Society as Master Johan von Traubenburg, died at Allegheny General Hospital, as a result of a work-related accident. His loving wife, Baroness Arianna of Wynthrope was with him at the time. Johan is survived by her and their two sons, Kenneth and Robert.
Johan was not a cook, but he was an ENABLER of cooks. He was the owner of the Sated Tyger Inn at Pennsic (I was the manager) and the person who did all the heavy lifting and transportation, the one who set up the tents, stored all those heavy cauldrons -- which he had provided, from his family's farm in Marysville Ohio in the first place
-- and set us up again the next year.
When I had researched the possibility of a portable period oven, Johan was the one who engineered it and made it actually happen. I believe that oven was the first ever at Pennsic; there have been many more since.
Similaraly, I showed him a picture from Scappi of the multliple spits on A-frame sides. I asked if he could make one, and he said yes -- but actually improved the design.
He also backed the venture financially, as part of his merchant enterprises in the SCA. I was more visible, since I was working kitchen and counter, but the Sated Tyger owed its very existence to Johan.
As another part of his merchant activities, he kept a scribe on the payroll, Hannes von Nurenstein (which I have probably mispelled).
Hannes wrote out all the signs and posters for the inn, and painted the beautiful sign that hung over it. At one point I (having an English personna) decided the nameless dirt road we were on should be called The High, or High Street, as the main thoroughfare of many English villages is called. Johan constructed a sign post, but it took a little while. By the time Hannes got a chance to paint it, he had forgotten the exact wording and wrote High Road...and then took another piece of wood and wrote Low Road. Soon people were coming to the inn and asking for more road signs. Johan generously constructed them and paid Hannes to letter them. Many of those names persist to this day, but it was Johan and Hannes who made the signs and started the practice in the first place.
Johan was also my best taster. He could not only say what he liked and didn't, but why. He gave me the best description of how cubebs taste, which I have used ever since: "Imagine a spectrum with pepper and one end and allspice at the other; cubebs are in the middle." He was no flattere and always let the cook know if something was not quite right. But when it was good he'd say: "This stuff is terrible!
It should be wiped off the face of the earth! Here, let me take care of that right now!" and he'd eat it all.
So I say to all good cooks, when you happen to think of it, pray raise a glass to the memory of Master Johan von Traubenberg, who did so much for the food traditions of Pennsic...and much else good beside.
I miss him already.
--Old Marian
I have one (maternal) grandmother left alive. My parents and three of their parents have passed on. It seems so strange. I'm becoming the Oldest Generation.
Tomorrow is the last night, the night of Family Pets.
