(no subject)
Apr. 29th, 2013 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichI am definitely slower about posting entries but aren't we all, pretty much?
Two weekends ago was our Rural Hills Highland Games demo. The Austlandr invited two other groups to join us, the "Sons of Loki" from Georgia and as-yet unnamed VNA group from Richmond, VA. There was the usual stress about people arriving late (anyone arriving after 4:00 on Friday afternoon would not be allowed to bring modern items into the Living History area, so their gear and such had to be hand-carried from the parking area about a quarter-mile away). The Sons of Loki had invited friends who are not members of any group to join them - we didn't know about that until Saturday morning when the "chieftain's wife" (a woman with an outfit that looked marvellous on her but was a jumble of Norse/Dane cultural bits and included a large embroidered(!) coif modelled on the Dublin ones) and her husband joined us. They are accustomed to doing talks for school classes and had brought one of the tri-fold display boards with them, which they used all day. As they were set up furthest on our edge we didn't interfere but I don't think they felt comfortable with us and left on Saturday night. Then again - they DID drive all the way from Georgia and had to be back home in time to start their work week in a normal fashion. I regret my behaviour towards them. I was not as friendly as I should be to new people, being stressed about getting the foodstuffs out and also dismayed by their outfits and their display board. I didn't even go over and look at the thing, just visited long enough to make sure they'd eaten and to let them know that there was a sideboard available along with chairs and tables under shade if they wished a break since they didn't have a sunshade where they were. But the John of the Richmond group brought shade and set it up between them and our cooking area, so that meant we really didn't see them hardly at all.
Cooking was fun once I got my tent back. The rain had finally ended sometime during the night and the boys were able to erect Finnr's tent and pull their equipment out from my cook tent and into either that or out as display, so I could reach the supplies as well as my cookstove. I set one man up to cook over the fire with the two frying pans - fry a set of bacon, then fry ham in the bacon fat until there was no more fat, and repeat until we were out of both. That was visually pleasing to the visitors and gave our folks something hot to munch on while I was in the cook tent making the rest of breakfast. I served mystron; barley cooked in chicken broth. I was concerned that the Good Old Boys, our highly-southern white guys (and I put it that way because they actually have family members who are members of the KKK) would not like a savoury porridge but I needn't have worried. Everyone had a bowl, or two, of the grains and were quite happy with the taste. Very complementary. I'd also heated water for tea and coffee - hardly anyone wanted coffee. I think they were put off by it being instant but they'd never tried Bustelo's instant espresso and probably didn't know that it tastes pretty good. I did have a few who appreciated the teas, though, and two young men came back to try more than one type just for the variety of it.
Lunch was fried meat pies. The leader of the Sons of Loki, Seth, is a cook in his regular life and he was very excited about cooking over the fire instead of over a stove, so he took care of finishing the pies. I'd brought rapeseed oil with me so we poured it into my big kettle (I must figure out a lid for that thing) and also used the left-over bacon fat on a frying pan in order to try the two methods to see which one we liked. We'd started with the frying pans dry but that didn't seem to work well so it was good that we had left-over bacon fat. The pies were small. I used empanada wrappers, as I'm horrid about making pie crusts anymore, and folded them over to create half-moon shaped pies. The filling was a blend of ground beef & turkey, onions, cheese, and spinach. We have a member of the group who has to have very little fat in his diet so I'd used dried parmesan cheese and counted on the ground turkey to offset the fattiness of the ground beef. Spiced them with a bit of salt & mustard... I didn't care for the way they tasted, too bland, but everyone else was happy with them and would like to do them again at our next demo. Next time, I'll experiment with the filling blend at home until I have it tasting more like I like. I was wondering if using some summer savoury in it would be good. And surely there are a few other herbs that would help boost the flavour a bit.
We didn't have dinner together, most of the guys going into town and then to their hotel/house, so I didn't cook again until Sunday.
Sunday was the same start - hot water for coffee & tea, and someone cooking bacon & ham over the fire. I made oat porridge; two batches with dried cranberries & honey in them and one batch with lingonberry jam stirred in. Of the three, the last was the most tasty and I'll have to remember to do it again. Lunch was supposed to be sausages cooked over the fire on the grill, which we did do, but I'd brought out plain skyr and a big bowl of blackberries for people to mix together as a snack (and cream for those who didn't want to eat the skyr). I thought few would eat it but I was very wrong. I should have brought more skyr. Who knew young men, gamers even, would go crazy over skyr? Everyone ate until there wasn't any left. The children had drinks mixed of fat-free milk halved with blackberry juice (I had to get rid of the juice somehow, right?) which made them very happy. By the time the sausages were ready, eating them was an after-thought and I was so tired I didn't put the mustard into a period container with a spoon but just wrapped a cloth around the modern container and told our people what it was.
Seth had purchased chicken thighs to cook over the fire so he played with grilling those and we decided to boil up a pot of veggies to go with them - mostly in a 'we want to play with cooking' sort of mood. Or he was, anyway. I'd planned for that earlier in the week but the time didn't seem as though it'd allow it during the actual event. Still, he was adamant that he wanted to do more cooking, and the veggies were just going to go to waste, so why not? I used chicken broth in the big pot and added in a small number of onions, mushrooms, and peas, then chopped up sweet celery into 1-2 inch chunks and threw that in to boil until it was soft. Originally, we were going to dip the celery out with its accompanying veggies and eat it as a side along with the chicken but Seth decided to cut up the chicken and add it to the celery so we had soup. And a very long discussion about whether or not that was in the least bit historically accurate, given what we knew about Viking-era cooking and based on later recipe books (Stews of meats mixed with vegetables as we know them modernly do not show up in European recipes during the medieval or Renaissance eras).
I had to share out a few recipes, so I count the cooking as a success. And boy, did we get a lot of tourists taking pictures of us doing it! Along with our table laden with foods.
I'd set up a washing-tub for myself to deal with my dirty cook ware. I should have expected that once anyone heard that I had such a thing, they were going to use it too. Next year I will make a better arrangement for it so it can be easier for others to access without blocking me from my cooking supplies and such. People were a lot happier when they knew they could wash their dining ware and I want to ensure that we keep that from being a worry whenever I am there. But it does take a plastic tub, and that means hiding it where the tourists won't see it - which means 'inside Hrothny's cooking tent'. And I'll have to figure out a way to toss the 'old' water without anyone seeing me doing it. We are not situated where we can easily sneak to the side of the woods and toss out the grey water without being obvious to everyone. I don't mind the tossing, it's the visible tub which creates the problem. I may try making a cloth cover for the outside of it. That'd be weird but would solve that problem.
Two weekends ago was our Rural Hills Highland Games demo. The Austlandr invited two other groups to join us, the "Sons of Loki" from Georgia and as-yet unnamed VNA group from Richmond, VA. There was the usual stress about people arriving late (anyone arriving after 4:00 on Friday afternoon would not be allowed to bring modern items into the Living History area, so their gear and such had to be hand-carried from the parking area about a quarter-mile away). The Sons of Loki had invited friends who are not members of any group to join them - we didn't know about that until Saturday morning when the "chieftain's wife" (a woman with an outfit that looked marvellous on her but was a jumble of Norse/Dane cultural bits and included a large embroidered(!) coif modelled on the Dublin ones) and her husband joined us. They are accustomed to doing talks for school classes and had brought one of the tri-fold display boards with them, which they used all day. As they were set up furthest on our edge we didn't interfere but I don't think they felt comfortable with us and left on Saturday night. Then again - they DID drive all the way from Georgia and had to be back home in time to start their work week in a normal fashion. I regret my behaviour towards them. I was not as friendly as I should be to new people, being stressed about getting the foodstuffs out and also dismayed by their outfits and their display board. I didn't even go over and look at the thing, just visited long enough to make sure they'd eaten and to let them know that there was a sideboard available along with chairs and tables under shade if they wished a break since they didn't have a sunshade where they were. But the John of the Richmond group brought shade and set it up between them and our cooking area, so that meant we really didn't see them hardly at all.
Cooking was fun once I got my tent back. The rain had finally ended sometime during the night and the boys were able to erect Finnr's tent and pull their equipment out from my cook tent and into either that or out as display, so I could reach the supplies as well as my cookstove. I set one man up to cook over the fire with the two frying pans - fry a set of bacon, then fry ham in the bacon fat until there was no more fat, and repeat until we were out of both. That was visually pleasing to the visitors and gave our folks something hot to munch on while I was in the cook tent making the rest of breakfast. I served mystron; barley cooked in chicken broth. I was concerned that the Good Old Boys, our highly-southern white guys (and I put it that way because they actually have family members who are members of the KKK) would not like a savoury porridge but I needn't have worried. Everyone had a bowl, or two, of the grains and were quite happy with the taste. Very complementary. I'd also heated water for tea and coffee - hardly anyone wanted coffee. I think they were put off by it being instant but they'd never tried Bustelo's instant espresso and probably didn't know that it tastes pretty good. I did have a few who appreciated the teas, though, and two young men came back to try more than one type just for the variety of it.
Lunch was fried meat pies. The leader of the Sons of Loki, Seth, is a cook in his regular life and he was very excited about cooking over the fire instead of over a stove, so he took care of finishing the pies. I'd brought rapeseed oil with me so we poured it into my big kettle (I must figure out a lid for that thing) and also used the left-over bacon fat on a frying pan in order to try the two methods to see which one we liked. We'd started with the frying pans dry but that didn't seem to work well so it was good that we had left-over bacon fat. The pies were small. I used empanada wrappers, as I'm horrid about making pie crusts anymore, and folded them over to create half-moon shaped pies. The filling was a blend of ground beef & turkey, onions, cheese, and spinach. We have a member of the group who has to have very little fat in his diet so I'd used dried parmesan cheese and counted on the ground turkey to offset the fattiness of the ground beef. Spiced them with a bit of salt & mustard... I didn't care for the way they tasted, too bland, but everyone else was happy with them and would like to do them again at our next demo. Next time, I'll experiment with the filling blend at home until I have it tasting more like I like. I was wondering if using some summer savoury in it would be good. And surely there are a few other herbs that would help boost the flavour a bit.
We didn't have dinner together, most of the guys going into town and then to their hotel/house, so I didn't cook again until Sunday.
Sunday was the same start - hot water for coffee & tea, and someone cooking bacon & ham over the fire. I made oat porridge; two batches with dried cranberries & honey in them and one batch with lingonberry jam stirred in. Of the three, the last was the most tasty and I'll have to remember to do it again. Lunch was supposed to be sausages cooked over the fire on the grill, which we did do, but I'd brought out plain skyr and a big bowl of blackberries for people to mix together as a snack (and cream for those who didn't want to eat the skyr). I thought few would eat it but I was very wrong. I should have brought more skyr. Who knew young men, gamers even, would go crazy over skyr? Everyone ate until there wasn't any left. The children had drinks mixed of fat-free milk halved with blackberry juice (I had to get rid of the juice somehow, right?) which made them very happy. By the time the sausages were ready, eating them was an after-thought and I was so tired I didn't put the mustard into a period container with a spoon but just wrapped a cloth around the modern container and told our people what it was.
Seth had purchased chicken thighs to cook over the fire so he played with grilling those and we decided to boil up a pot of veggies to go with them - mostly in a 'we want to play with cooking' sort of mood. Or he was, anyway. I'd planned for that earlier in the week but the time didn't seem as though it'd allow it during the actual event. Still, he was adamant that he wanted to do more cooking, and the veggies were just going to go to waste, so why not? I used chicken broth in the big pot and added in a small number of onions, mushrooms, and peas, then chopped up sweet celery into 1-2 inch chunks and threw that in to boil until it was soft. Originally, we were going to dip the celery out with its accompanying veggies and eat it as a side along with the chicken but Seth decided to cut up the chicken and add it to the celery so we had soup. And a very long discussion about whether or not that was in the least bit historically accurate, given what we knew about Viking-era cooking and based on later recipe books (Stews of meats mixed with vegetables as we know them modernly do not show up in European recipes during the medieval or Renaissance eras).
I had to share out a few recipes, so I count the cooking as a success. And boy, did we get a lot of tourists taking pictures of us doing it! Along with our table laden with foods.
I'd set up a washing-tub for myself to deal with my dirty cook ware. I should have expected that once anyone heard that I had such a thing, they were going to use it too. Next year I will make a better arrangement for it so it can be easier for others to access without blocking me from my cooking supplies and such. People were a lot happier when they knew they could wash their dining ware and I want to ensure that we keep that from being a worry whenever I am there. But it does take a plastic tub, and that means hiding it where the tourists won't see it - which means 'inside Hrothny's cooking tent'. And I'll have to figure out a way to toss the 'old' water without anyone seeing me doing it. We are not situated where we can easily sneak to the side of the woods and toss out the grey water without being obvious to everyone. I don't mind the tossing, it's the visible tub which creates the problem. I may try making a cloth cover for the outside of it. That'd be weird but would solve that problem.
