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Cooking
Dear dueSouth fandom: I didn't say this last time it got on my nerves, but now that I have actually written some dueSouth fic, I am going to:
Stop writing Kowalski as the experienced old hand with undercover work and Vecchio as the newbie in over his head! Vecchio was originally assigned to work with the Mountie because he'd been doing too much undercover, and the Lieu wanted to make him be himself for awhile! He spent the first several episodes after that trying to get away with doing more undercover work! Yeah, they kind of dropped that thread a quarter of the way through the first season, but he was at least as addicted to it as Kowalski!
***
Anyway, I don't think I've mentioned it here, but at the end of this week I am going to Pennsic War - the massive two-week-long SCA medieval reenactment encampment - for the third year in a row. (I'm not actually an SCA member, but it's two weeks of camping for way cheaper than I could manage at a state park, surrounded by geeky do-it-yourselfers and amateur historians and people who like learning just because they can, plus a bunch of my friends and relations are there anyway, so, yeah.)
I spent a few hours this evening doing the final version of the recipe book for this year. I'm sharing meals with two other people, and we're being pretty informal with it, so I'm writing out a week or so's worth of dinners that can be made with the ingredients we brought, so that if any of us get hungry we will know what we can cook.
I declared myself in charge of the food because, well, it's fun! And it's an excuse to keep collecting historical cookbooks. We have whatever we bring with us, no refrigeration, a very limited farmer's market on site, a Coleman stove, a communal campfire (some nights) and strong encouragement to avoid modern convenience foods.
Since they let me make the menus, our food box is probably about half oatmeal, cornmeal, rice, and beans. The goals were: cheap, easy, durable, filling, using minimal different ingredients, and somewhat timeless. Exactly my kind of thing! Plus one of the other people who has to eat it has almost no sense of taste, and the other one once lived on nothing but instant mashed potatoes for six months, so I don't have to feel nervous about messing up. I'm going for something vaguely like what medieval peasants might have had for a week at a fair (heavily adapted, mostly for cheapness, and with a lot of Colonial American somehow getting in.) Also most of these have meat, since the folks I'm sharing with are carnivores, but in most of them the meat can be left out (or replaced with salt) no problem. Since I was typing them up anyway, I thought I'd share.
Dinner recipes tested in previous years:
2 large cans of chunk chicken (.5 per person)
2 cup wine
2 cube chicken bouillon (1 large cube)
1 cup water
Parsley, hyssop, cloves, mace, saffron, ginger, cinnamon or to taste
Dried dates or raisins (~1/4 to 1/2 cup)
Rice or other boiled grain.
Dissolve bouillon cube in hot water. Combine broth with wine. Boil. Add canned chicken, drained; raisins or dates, and spices. Start rice; let chicken & sauce simmer uncovered until rice is done. Serve over rice.
3 potatoes (1 per person)
2ish carrots
1/2-1 small onion
1 qt Water
1 packet powdered milk (enough to make 1 qt)
salt, pepper, herbs, spices (to taste)
optional: potato flakes (small amount)
Start 1 qt water boiling in large pot. Peel and slice (~1/4 to 1/2 inch-ish) all vegetables, including potatoes. Add to water pot as water is just starting to boil. Add powdered milk and seasonings. Boil, stirring frequently, until carrots are soft all the way through. Remove from heat. If stew seems thin, add very small amount of potato flakes to thicken (will thicken as it cools.)
1/2 lb dry beans
1 package country ham or 1 can spam, diced or equivalent
(Add 1-2 diced potatoes, 1-2 carrots, small amount of onion if available and desired)
1/4 tsp cloves, allspice, other seasonings to taste (do not add extra salt.)
Start beans soaking 12-24 hr in advance in ~4 c cold water. When ready to cook, bring to boil, add ham, and simmer, covered, until beans are mostly soft. Add vegetables and spices, boil covered five minutes more or until vegetables are soft.
~1/4 lb pickled meat (beef) per person
Large can of pears
other seasonings to taste
Rice or other boiled grain
Cut meat into bite-sized chunks. Dump canned pears into saucepan. Add meat, small amount of pickling juice (for flavor). Start rice; simmer uncovered until rice is done; serve over rice.
1/2 lb (1/2 package) split peas
1-2 Carrots
~1/4 c or less Onion and/or celery, if available
Seasonings to taste; do not add extra salt.
1 package Country Ham or 1 can chopped Spam or etc.
Add peas, carrots, ham, onion, seasonings to 3-4 cups water. Simmer with lid tilted 20-30 minutes or until soft. Good hot or cold, in the pot, up to nine days old (will thicken as it ages.)
1 fresh tomato per person
Warm Cheese, cubed
Sliced apples (fried, fritters, or fresh)
Pickled chicken
Pickling vinegar
Wedge or dice tomato. Cover with apples and cheese and chicken. Pour pickling vinegar over as dressing.
Corn: Peel back husks, leaving them attached at end. Remove silks. (Dip in salt water). Recover with silks. Place directly on hot coals for just a few minutes, turning once.
Potatoes: Place directly in fire, cover with ashes. OR Cut open, add onions/butter/spices, wrap in aluminum foil or fresh leaves, place in fire. Cook ~30 min - 1hr, depending on fire.
Squash: Place directly on hot embers; cover with ashes. Cook until soft when poked with a stick.
Hoe Cakes: Make up cornmeal mush, reducing water from standard recipe. Add salt + a little grease or oil. Make into golf-ball sized cakes. Cook on a hot, flat surface near the fire until brownish.
Possible dinner recipes with existing ingredients, not yet tested:
Jiffy Mix
Water
Cheese
Tomatoes
other toppings
Seasonings to taste
Make baking mix pizza crust dough according to instructions. Peel and dice tomatoes, saving any juice. Simmer tomatoes, juice, and seasonings uncovered until sauc-y. Make dough into flat rounds. Spoon tomato sauce onto dough rounds; add other toppings; add cheese; bake in reflector oven until crusts done.
Alternative, with no reflector oven: make pan bread; put tomato sauce and cheese on top in skillet; leave in skillet until cheese is fully melted.
Jiffy Mix
Leftovers, vegetables, shredded field greens, shredded potatoes, meat, cheese, anything that looks good, cut into very small bits.
Seasonings to taste
Make Jiffy Mix pancake mix. Add fillings. (make sure there's enough batter compared to fillings that it stays mostly batter-y.) Fry, flip. Serve with ketchup, soy sauce, or other savory condiments.
1 large Can chicken
2 large bouillon cube
4 cups Water
2 Carrots, thinly sliced
onion, diced
1 Potato, diced
Seasonings
Jiffy Mix
Make Jiffy Mix dumplings. Boil chicken, bouillon, carrots, onion, potatoes, water, seasonings until carrots and potatoes are soft. Add dough balls and boil five more minutes, covered.
1 cans chicken
1.5 cups water
1 cup rice
1 bullion cube
Put chicken, bouillon, and water in pot. Bring to simmer. Add rice; simmer 30 min, stirring until thick but not dry. Season with onion, salt and pepper.
...I should probably write up the lunch/drink/dessert/breakfast/pre-made portions of the Pennsic Cooking Notes too, but I am out of motivation, and these are the only ones that really needed to be legible :P
Stop writing Kowalski as the experienced old hand with undercover work and Vecchio as the newbie in over his head! Vecchio was originally assigned to work with the Mountie because he'd been doing too much undercover, and the Lieu wanted to make him be himself for awhile! He spent the first several episodes after that trying to get away with doing more undercover work! Yeah, they kind of dropped that thread a quarter of the way through the first season, but he was at least as addicted to it as Kowalski!
***
Anyway, I don't think I've mentioned it here, but at the end of this week I am going to Pennsic War - the massive two-week-long SCA medieval reenactment encampment - for the third year in a row. (I'm not actually an SCA member, but it's two weeks of camping for way cheaper than I could manage at a state park, surrounded by geeky do-it-yourselfers and amateur historians and people who like learning just because they can, plus a bunch of my friends and relations are there anyway, so, yeah.)
I spent a few hours this evening doing the final version of the recipe book for this year. I'm sharing meals with two other people, and we're being pretty informal with it, so I'm writing out a week or so's worth of dinners that can be made with the ingredients we brought, so that if any of us get hungry we will know what we can cook.
I declared myself in charge of the food because, well, it's fun! And it's an excuse to keep collecting historical cookbooks. We have whatever we bring with us, no refrigeration, a very limited farmer's market on site, a Coleman stove, a communal campfire (some nights) and strong encouragement to avoid modern convenience foods.
Since they let me make the menus, our food box is probably about half oatmeal, cornmeal, rice, and beans. The goals were: cheap, easy, durable, filling, using minimal different ingredients, and somewhat timeless. Exactly my kind of thing! Plus one of the other people who has to eat it has almost no sense of taste, and the other one once lived on nothing but instant mashed potatoes for six months, so I don't have to feel nervous about messing up. I'm going for something vaguely like what medieval peasants might have had for a week at a fair (heavily adapted, mostly for cheapness, and with a lot of Colonial American somehow getting in.) Also most of these have meat, since the folks I'm sharing with are carnivores, but in most of them the meat can be left out (or replaced with salt) no problem. Since I was typing them up anyway, I thought I'd share.
Dinner recipes tested in previous years:
Chicken in Brewed Sauce
adapted from A 15th Century Cookry Book2 large cans of chunk chicken (.5 per person)
2 cup wine
2 cube chicken bouillon (1 large cube)
1 cup water
Parsley, hyssop, cloves, mace, saffron, ginger, cinnamon or to taste
Dried dates or raisins (~1/4 to 1/2 cup)
Rice or other boiled grain.
Dissolve bouillon cube in hot water. Combine broth with wine. Boil. Add canned chicken, drained; raisins or dates, and spices. Start rice; let chicken & sauce simmer uncovered until rice is done. Serve over rice.
Potato Stew
Various sources3 potatoes (1 per person)
2ish carrots
1/2-1 small onion
1 qt Water
1 packet powdered milk (enough to make 1 qt)
salt, pepper, herbs, spices (to taste)
optional: potato flakes (small amount)
Start 1 qt water boiling in large pot. Peel and slice (~1/4 to 1/2 inch-ish) all vegetables, including potatoes. Add to water pot as water is just starting to boil. Add powdered milk and seasonings. Boil, stirring frequently, until carrots are soft all the way through. Remove from heat. If stew seems thin, add very small amount of potato flakes to thicken (will thicken as it cools.)
Bean Stew
Source unremembered1/2 lb dry beans
1 package country ham or 1 can spam, diced or equivalent
(Add 1-2 diced potatoes, 1-2 carrots, small amount of onion if available and desired)
1/4 tsp cloves, allspice, other seasonings to taste (do not add extra salt.)
Start beans soaking 12-24 hr in advance in ~4 c cold water. When ready to cook, bring to boil, add ham, and simmer, covered, until beans are mostly soft. Add vegetables and spices, boil covered five minutes more or until vegetables are soft.
Pears and Pickled Spiced Beef
SCA word-of-mouth; adapted period recipe~1/4 lb pickled meat (beef) per person
Large can of pears
other seasonings to taste
Rice or other boiled grain
Cut meat into bite-sized chunks. Dump canned pears into saucepan. Add meat, small amount of pickling juice (for flavor). Start rice; simmer uncovered until rice is done; serve over rice.
Split Pea Soup
Adapted SCA word-of-mouth; period recipe1/2 lb (1/2 package) split peas
1-2 Carrots
~1/4 c or less Onion and/or celery, if available
Seasonings to taste; do not add extra salt.
1 package Country Ham or 1 can chopped Spam or etc.
Add peas, carrots, ham, onion, seasonings to 3-4 cups water. Simmer with lid tilted 20-30 minutes or until soft. Good hot or cold, in the pot, up to nine days old (will thicken as it ages.)
Tomato Salad
No source; for days when it's too hot to cook.1 fresh tomato per person
Warm Cheese, cubed
Sliced apples (fried, fritters, or fresh)
Pickled chicken
Pickling vinegar
Wedge or dice tomato. Cover with apples and cheese and chicken. Pour pickling vinegar over as dressing.
Roasting on the Coals
Various, word-of-mouthCorn: Peel back husks, leaving them attached at end. Remove silks. (Dip in salt water). Recover with silks. Place directly on hot coals for just a few minutes, turning once.
Potatoes: Place directly in fire, cover with ashes. OR Cut open, add onions/butter/spices, wrap in aluminum foil or fresh leaves, place in fire. Cook ~30 min - 1hr, depending on fire.
Squash: Place directly on hot embers; cover with ashes. Cook until soft when poked with a stick.
Hoe Cakes: Make up cornmeal mush, reducing water from standard recipe. Add salt + a little grease or oil. Make into golf-ball sized cakes. Cook on a hot, flat surface near the fire until brownish.
Possible dinner recipes with existing ingredients, not yet tested:
Roast cheese and tomatoes on flatbread
Adapted from scouting recipesJiffy Mix
Water
Cheese
Tomatoes
other toppings
Seasonings to taste
Make baking mix pizza crust dough according to instructions. Peel and dice tomatoes, saving any juice. Simmer tomatoes, juice, and seasonings uncovered until sauc-y. Make dough into flat rounds. Spoon tomato sauce onto dough rounds; add other toppings; add cheese; bake in reflector oven until crusts done.
Alternative, with no reflector oven: make pan bread; put tomato sauce and cheese on top in skillet; leave in skillet until cheese is fully melted.
Savoury Pancakes
What happens to okonomiyaki when all the ingredients that one of us hates are removed.Jiffy Mix
Leftovers, vegetables, shredded field greens, shredded potatoes, meat, cheese, anything that looks good, cut into very small bits.
Seasonings to taste
Make Jiffy Mix pancake mix. Add fillings. (make sure there's enough batter compared to fillings that it stays mostly batter-y.) Fry, flip. Serve with ketchup, soy sauce, or other savory condiments.
Chicken and Dumplings
adapted from various1 large Can chicken
2 large bouillon cube
4 cups Water
2 Carrots, thinly sliced
onion, diced
1 Potato, diced
Seasonings
Jiffy Mix
Make Jiffy Mix dumplings. Boil chicken, bouillon, carrots, onion, potatoes, water, seasonings until carrots and potatoes are soft. Add dough balls and boil five more minutes, covered.
Chicken Bog
Adapted from 17th Century Basics with a Modern Touch1 cans chicken
1.5 cups water
1 cup rice
1 bullion cube
Put chicken, bouillon, and water in pot. Bring to simmer. Add rice; simmer 30 min, stirring until thick but not dry. Season with onion, salt and pepper.
...I should probably write up the lunch/drink/dessert/breakfast/pre-made portions of the Pennsic Cooking Notes too, but I am out of motivation, and these are the only ones that really needed to be legible :P
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And I like pea soup (pease porridge) cold better than hot!
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(Okay, it's not quite modern city life either, and I'm in one of the more decadent camps, where my campmates cook baklava, pizza, and chocolate chip cookies in a proper house-kitchen-style oven (using propane) and we have a water heater for the camp shower, but even when I was doing solo camping in the 1980s there was an awful lot of "this feels like a town" going on all around me to feel like it was 'camping'.)
Not that I'd trade Pennsic for anything, of course, or that it doesn't provide opportunities for a change of pace with respect to cooking and eating. (I rather like cooking over a fire, in the years when my camp has room for a firepit, and I mostly do the "only bring period ingredients" thing and improvise with those (though the last few years I've gone back to bringing a cooler, which I didn't do for quite a while).)
Not sure when I'll be arriving -- possibly just the second week -- but I'm looking forward to being 'home' in E15 again for however much of it I get to this year.
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Okay, if you have a propane oven or a hot-water-heater-shower, it's not camping, but that is not how we do it. :P If we keep going every year, at some point I may convince the people I go with to even leave home the Coleman stove. We try to mostly stick to period ingredients, with the caveat that one of my personae gets to be Cahokian. :P And rolled oats instead of ground. And canned chicken for period recipes that call for pre-boiled chicken pieces anyway.
YMMV, but ...
It's not a modern city with modern conveniences, but IIRC it's reasonably comparable in population and total area (though not in internal distribution of population density, or house size) to medieval London. (I need to look that up again ...)
I'm with you on the period ingredients, though when the camp meal plan has extras (being the sole vegetarian, it's easier for me to just cook separately) and offers me pizza or chocolate chip cookies, I'm not about to complain about their not approaching Pennsic cooking the same way I do.
Attending a huge annual ice cream party in upstate NY (which I've missed the last few years, alas) where almost everybody spends the weekend in tents, doesn't feel like high school biology-class camping trips, a fun jaunt with a friend to Kitty Hawk where we stayed in a campground, or any of the camping I keep wanting to do, but those are all much more similar to each other than pretty much anything else is to Pennsic. (I've heard that Burning Man can be compared in some ways, but I've never been, and what I've heard suggests that the main point of comparison lies in how unlike anything else each is, plus the intentional-community in realspace aspect.)
Though I suppose even in my camp, it's a little bit more like camping than for my friends near the amphitheatre who bring a ceramic tile floor for their camp kitchen, or the folks with a hot tub like some folks along the lake did a while back (I've heard a rumour of one on the Serengeti more recently but have not confirmed that), or a friend's camp on the Serengeti with a kitchen with wooden walls), or my friends across the street whose tent is larger than their bedroom at home. I think Casa Barducci may take the prize, decadence-wise (go visit during their open-house; it's impressive -- make sure to check out their chapel).
Still, I don't think of "camping" as something that includes a few hundred pages of sheet music on my packing list. (No double bass for me this year, alas, but plenty of other instruments.)
Gotta agree wholeheartedly with this part
What I find most fascinating is that someone can spend almost all of Pennsic attending classes during the day and doing a little socializing at night, and not even notice there's a war there (I know people who do this),
... and someone else can seriously occupy all their time with shopping and a little crafts and not notice there's a war, or Pennsic University ...
... and another person can spend the entire two weeks fighting in battles, fighting in tourneys, fighting for practice, doing archery, maintaining their armour, and drinking in drum circles, and not notice the classes or get to more of the merchant area than the food court, ...
... and somebody else can spend the nights partying and not notice that stuff happens during daylight too ...
... and yet another person can fill all their time with either attending or performing music and plays and maybe take a class or two, and barely notice the rest.
And I know people in each of those categories -- heck, there've been years when I've been in some of those categories -- and I'm pretty sure I've still overlooked something big. (Court stuff? Can that fill a week or two?) And then you've got folks who stay in persona for two weeks, folks who make the barest token nod to persona once or twice, and people who flit in and out of persona constantly. What amazes me isn't that we get 10-12 thousand people there; it's that we effectively get several worlds there that all overlap in ways that make all these very different experiences recognizeable as all being Pennsic.
Re: Gotta agree wholeheartedly with this part
And yeah, I go onto the battlefield before & after the actual war happens in order to fly kites, and for the astronomy classes, and to watch the hurley*. And that's pretty much it! Most of the time the only time I remember there's a war is when somebody in armour clanks through the University on the way to the battlefield.
And I know people in all four of your other categories, too. (Plus some people who just hang around camp all day sleeping, drinking and socializing. And people who are working the heralds' tent or as chirurgeons nearly every day, or in the A&S demos. And even people who camp at Pennsic but spend half their time off-site...)
*although usually the hurley is more violent than the battles anyway.
Re: Gotta agree wholeheartedly with this part
As a photographer, I try to get to a battle at least once every few years. I've been meaning to check out the hurley, but haven't managed to yet -- maybe this year. I also keep missing the atlatl demo. I did catch the coursing demo once.
My first Pennsic, my then-girlfriend and I moved into a Viking A-frame in the merchant area, across from the barn, right at the top of Runestone, that our friend the merchant had to vacate because she couldn't stay for closing weekend (this was back when stuff still happened on the final Sunday and people were still arriving that Friday). I was woken up by An Army Clanking Past My Door (followed by two more armies several minutes later and a little later still). Made an impression, that did. I'd heard about Pennsic for years before that, and had wanted to go, but nothing I'd heard could prepare me for just how big it felt (and it was only 4000 people then!) or how outside-of-modern-mundane-time it felt even with all the modern anachronisms everywhere.
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40 garlic chicken also works well on the fire and was a camp fave. Try savoury toasted cheese as well. Old people will come out of the woodwork for it and new folk need to discover the joy. Beef or Chicken and dried apricot stew is also good.
I realised the other day I was wearing the t shirt from the last Pennsic I attended... XXIII ... What are we now XL ? My how time flies.
Have a good time.
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And yep, it's XL! I understand there's been a large jump in attendance, too, partly 'cause it's a ten-year anniversary.
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