The last two weeks have been stressful. The weekend before last, my daughter was hospitalized with an asthma “event” and we spent several days in hospital. I then spent two days catching up on everything. Then last Saturday, my daughter got the stomach flu and it has hung on for the majority of this week. For the child that I typically described as “freakishly healthy”, this has been upsetting and difficult for everyone.

The little oasis of sanity for me has been cooking. I’ve been making soup for the Agincourt event and cooking for an event this Saturday while my daughter recovers. Unfortunately, this means few updates on facebook and late updates here.

For this week, I offer a redaction for Seeded Soup:

This is a dish from Le Menagier de Paris. I used the translation done by Janet Hinson.

SEEDED SOUP is a winter soup. Peel onions and cook them all chopped up, then fry them in a pot; it is appropriate to have your poultry split through the back and browned on the grill over a coal fire, or if it is veal, the same; and whether it is veal cut in pieces or chicken cut in quarters, put it with the onions in the pot; then have white bread browned on the grill and moistened with some other meat stock: and then grind ginger, clove, grain and long pepper, mix with verjuice and wine, without sieving, and set aside: then grind the bread and put through the sieve and add to the soup, and strain it all together and boil; then serve.

Note that we say ’sur-fry’ when it is in a pot, and ‘fry’ in an iron skillet.

Redaction

6 cups chicken stock
2 cups onions, quartered and thinly sliced
4-5 lbs chicken, any parts will do, bone in
3 T olive oil
1 T salt
1 T powdered ginger
1 t powdered cloves
1 t ground long pepper (I used my mortar and pestle to grind it)

• Take your chicken, rinse and dry it.
• Cook your chicken on a grill or cook the pieces in a cast iron pan. The idea is to get some char and get the chicken cooked the whole way through. Using a grill is closer to the original recipe, however, if you don’t want to deal with the grill, just use the cast iron pan. You can get some nice flavor that way as well.
• I used no seasoning on the chicken.
• When the chicken is cooked through, cut the chicken into an approximate 1/4″ dice.
• Put the olive oil into a pot on the stove.
• When the oil is hot, add the onions.
• Cook the onions until they are getting soft, then add the salt.
• Continue cooking the onions until they are translucent and there is some liquid sweated out.
• Add the chicken and mix thoroughly.
• Add the ginger, cloves, and long pepper.
• Mix again.
• Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil.
• Reduce the heat and then simmer for about 30 minutes to blend the flavors.

According to the original recipe, this soup would have been thickened with bread crumbs. This texture is typically found to be unpleasant to the modern palate. For this reason alone I did not include it in the redaction. The batch that I made yesterday was without verjuice as the sourness isn’t necessarily going to be popular with the people that I’d be cooking for at the event, but on Friday when I have the first “First Friday Cooking at Odriana’s” meeting, I will be adding the verjuice. Well, not really verjuice, but the juice of two Granny Smith apples. Verjuice was the juice of either unripe grapes or crabapples (according to the fine folks of the SCA_Cooks list) and running two Granny Smiths through my juicer is a good enough analog to get the desired flavor.

I have an acquaintance that has a habit of making updates in the form of a list so that he can cover a multitude of topics in a compact space. Taking my cue from his form, this part of the update will be in the form of a list.

1. The feast menu and notes are up: Here’s the link. The notes are found at the bottom of the page if you follow the link for “Feast Notes”.
2. There was a rumor that there was to be a whole pig served for coronation feast, now that seems to have been nixed, this means that my plan of pork loin for the “stuffed pig” may be back-burnered in favor of tasty, tasty roast piggies.
3. I have decided to make the sausages for the Agincourt feast and that is a daunting, but exciting prospect. I will be learning a lot about how to do that and sharing what I learn here.
4. The column is a nicely-sized challenge and I’ve finally targeted how to tackle it in a reasonable way. I’m going to determine a focus topic for each month.

Creativity
The thing that I have been struggling with the most lately is a sense of disconnectedness from other people and a dip in creativity. I’ve been struggling with what to do with myself now that I don’t have a child at home all day and we live in the middle of nowhere, so there aren’t people to talk to during the day. This has taken a toll on my creativity as I busy myself throughout the day with home projects to try and stay away from the computer as I don’t wish to sit all day. Last night, I had a breakthrough - I decided to learn how to gild.

Gilding is using a sheet of gold leaf or foil to create a metallic effect on a painting or scroll. You can even use gilding on wood for an Icon or to fancy up a wooden box. The process is to use gesso, which is slaked plaster, either colored or plain, as the glue to affix the gold leaf. I had some colored (brick red) gesso and a book of gold leaves and figured that I’d do something on pergamena (my preferred medium) to learn how to do it. Previously, I’d used Schminke’s Gold Gouache, which I love and will continue to use when necessary. During the Middle Ages, the substitute for gold leaf would have been “shell gold” which is ground gold leaf in a medium. My understanding is that it’s called shell gold because it was typical to use a shell for a palette for this color.

My attempt was mostly successful. I got the gold leaf onto the pergamena without too much trouble and with only some spots left uncovered. I figured out that you can re-wet the gesso with a brush and then re-apply the leaf where there were larger holes. I then used a piece of smooth glass that a friend of mine had gifted me after a trip to Wales to burnish the gold. I did that entirely because I don’t have a proper burnisher and it did the trick nicely.

Once I stepped back and looked at my work, the floodgates opened for me. I felt accomplished and enjoyed the process of learning greatly. The things that had been blocked were no longer blocked and it was such a creative rush that I am having trouble finding words to describe it.

It couldn’t have come at a better time, really.

Agincourt Feast
As mentioned earlier, I have decided on a menu for this feast, and I’m pleased with the outcome. I’ve already started making chicken stock for the soup and the plan for pre-cooking is falling into place nicely. The feast itself is going to be a significant challenge as it’s being held in a private home, with a kitchen to match. There is, fortunately, a dumbwaiter from the garage to the kitchen so we can put together a kitchen in the garage and move the food upstairs easily. The plating will be easier as I’m doing it as a series of trays so we can move each course from the basement to the kitchen for plating and just stage everything upstairs. I’m excited about the feast and will be talking about it a lot in the upcoming weeks before the event itself.

That’s all I have for this week and hope to be a bit more prolific now that I am no longer creatively blocked.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that making bacon was a skill that I should have. So, I talked to a friend that had made bacon and then did some quick online research. It seemed pretty straightforward, so I decided to dive in and just do it. I had a like-minded friend, so we did this together.

We purchased several pork bellies (also called pork side) of varying weights and I decided to attempt a one day cure (which is really just aggressive seasoning) on one piece and to go through the extended bacon-making process with the other. The one day cure did not work as desired, but we did end up with a tasty piece of grilled pork belly. With the other piece, I used about 1/4 c canning salt on each side of the pork and rubbed it in liberally, covering each surface. Within just a couple of hours, there was about 1/4 c of liquid in the bottom of the container. I put the whole thing in the refrigerator and for the next three days I added a liberal sprinkling of salt and rubbed it into each surface of the meat. For two of those three days, I also poured some maple syrup over the meat and rubbed it onto each surface after adding the salt (day one was the remainder of some B grade maple syrup and day two I had to switch to A grade).

On the fourth day, I took the bacon out, rinsed it, and patted it dry. The smoking technique that I was going to use is cold smoking, which involves removing the meat from the fire in some fashion. There are a number of designs, including a nice two-oil barrel design that has the fire in the bottom and the food to be smoked is in the top barrel. The smoke rises through two metal pipes that connect the barrels. I didn’t have that kind of budget or welding skill so I went with another design.

On Good Eats, Alton Brown covered bacon making (Scrap Iron Chef) and created a cold smoker using a series of three gym lockers. I wasn’t so fortunate as to have several lockers to use, so I decided to take the basic structure and instead of using two paper boxes (I’m weird about fire), I used a trash can, a hot plate, and a smoker box to create the smoke. The top of the trash can was covered with a flat box with a hole cut into it and a piece of flexible ducting attached to the hole. I chose not to compromise the structural integrity of the trash can lid so that I can use the can alone as a hot smoker. I used a cardboard box for the cold side. I merely placed the opening towards the front and cut a hole in the side for the other side of the ducting.

This is my original plan

The hot side of the smoker

The cold side of the smoker

The smoker in action

Clearly, I need to trim up the box over the hot side, but I wanted to get things moving and didn’t want to waste time messing about with it the first time. I smoked the bacon for six hours with a combination of apple wood and hickory smoke. There were a few issues:

• After the initial burn, I never got the buildup of smoke that I really needed/wanted.
• We used a CPU fan to draw smoke into the cold side, which just seemed to dissipate the smoke, not draw it, so we pulled it out and kept allowing physics to do its thing.

In general, the product was tasty. The maple was more prevalent as a smell and was in the aftertaste, which could be improved by using all B grade syrup. I sliced it pretty thin and served it alone and as a garnish with dinner. It was generally popular and I was pleased with the result. Next time, there will be improvements on the smoker, mostly in how the smoke is generated. I haven’t come up with anything as of yet, but will do so before I do this again.

This is my very early research for the feast that will be served on 25 October 2009 at the Agincourt event that will be held in the Greater Pittsburgh area (Barony Marche of the Debatable Lands). Not everything here will be 100% accurate, and will be supplemented with subsequent research.

There is a story that says that in the few days prior to the battle at Agincourt the French held a feast to celebrate their upcoming victory over the English. The French were not entirely out of line by doing this, their army was tens of thousands strong, while the English Army numbered in the thousands and had been engaged in a battle at Harfleur. The English Army was also suffering from dysentery, which they had picked up in Harfleur. Additionally, the English Army’s route to Agincourt had taken a significantly longer time than originally expected due to the river near Abbyville had flooded and they were not able to take that as a direct route to the field at Agincourt. This extra time had significantly depleted the food supply of the English, who were on enemy soil and unable to supplement their rations.

The French Army were well supplied and somewhat rested as they hadn’t been marching miles out of their way and had not been engaged in a recent battle. The French supply line included the bounty of the French countryside and the assistance of the French people. They were also unaffected by dysentery, increasing their chances of winning. I was unable to find if the French were aware of this physical advantage, but considering that Harfleur had been lost to the English and the disease was ravaging the residents of that city, it is not out of the realm of reason to assume that the French would have known that there was the possibility.

Both armies brought with them a number of servants to attend to them during campaign and those servants would have been employed in the amassing of supplies and the preparation and service of the food. The presence of these servants would have left the soldiers free to focus on fighting, rather than in the acquisition of supplies.

During the Autumn months, the countryside itself would have been in a state of harvest, increasing the availability of a variety of foods for the French Army. The countryside would also have a number of wild animals that could have been hunted for such a feast. The variety of animals that they would have had available to them include: deer, rabbits, and wild pig. There would have also been the availability of vegetables such as parsnips, carrots, and other autumn vegetables.

My focus for this feast is to provide a sampling of the bounty of the French countryside befitting the station of not only the attendees, but for the presence of the people who will be King and Queen. This event is particularly special because the King and Queen have Fourteenth Century personae and I have heard that the King’s persona died at the battle of Agincourt.

I am relying greatly on James Prescott’s translation of Le Viander de Taillevent (http://www.telusplanet.net/public/prescotj/data/viandier/viandier1.html) and Janet Hinson’s translation of Le Menagier de Paris (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier_Contents.html) for the recipes for this feast as well as information from “Medieval Hunting” by Richard Almond for information about hunting during that period of time.

I am still in the process of setting the final menu, but these dishes are ones that I will be including at this time:

Roast Hares
Without washing it, lard it and roast it; eat it with Cameline [Sauce] or Saupiquet [Sauce] (to wit, add some finely chopped onions, wine, verjuice and a bit of vinegar to the drippings in the pan). Throw it on the hare when it is roasted, or put it in bowls. Some baste them when they are roasting with the same sauce as for a Bourblier of Boar. In a pie, parboil them in large pieces and lard them. Eat them with Cameline [Sauce]. (Trans. Prescott)

Decorated Rice for a Fish Day
Pick over the rice, wash it very well in hot water, dry it near the fire, and cook it in simmering cow’s milk. Crush some saffron (for reddening it), steep it in your milk, and add stock from the pot. (Trans. Prescott)

Pipesfarces (breaded, fried cheese)
Take egg yolks and flour and salt, and a little wine, and beat together strongly, and cheese chopped in thin slices, and then roll the slices of cheese in the batter, and then fry in an iron skillet with oil in it. This can also be made using beef marrow. (Trans. Hinson)

This is a thin offering for now, but I will be updating with more detailed information as I select the dishes for the feast. My greatest hurdle is the absence of vegetable dishes in the primary sources I am using and will require that I reach outside of those references for recipes.

This originally appeared in “At Branches Reach” the newsletter of Sunderoak.

This column will touch upon a number of aspects of Medieval Cooking and home life with a focus on Sixteenth Century Flemish Food and Life. In part, this first column is to set the stage for the world that Odriana vander Brugghe lives in during the year 1593 in Brugge, modernly located in Belgium.

The thing that has been occupying my mind in the kitchen has been putting things away for the winter. Yesterday was putting up some pickled cabbage and there will be a variety of pickled, canned, and salted items that make their way onto my shelves over the next couple of months. This time of year is where things begin to wind down towards the autumn and winter months, a mere preview of the things to come when the harvest is in full swing.

The rhythm of the seasons is the rhythm of the kitchen. This is true for the medieval as well as the modern cook. During the Spring, the focus was on planting, cleaning, and clearing the way for the first fruits and vegetables of the season. As the Spring turned into Summer, the typical increase of fresh fruits and vegetables occurred. The general sense of plenty and abundance settled in and this year, farmer’s markets and road side stands benefitted from the new-found preferences towards local ingredients.

During the sixteenth century, the weather in Brugge would have been generally colder than it is currently. Western Europe was in the grips of the “Little Ice Age”, a period of time that stretched approximately from the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries. There is some consensus as to the causes of the little ice age, however, because there are disagreements as to what “normal” temperatures were for that period of time and there is a limited amount of information available for most of that span of time, there is no definite answer as to why.

Based on this general information, it can be assumed that in the Mid and Late Summer, the weather was even cooler during the late sixteenth century and the sense of urgency in the cook to begin putting away for the Winter would have been somewhat greater than it is now. This would not only be because of the weather, but because there were few options for making up food that was lost by spoilage and could mean the difference between life and death for those in the lower classes or in rural areas. Brugge, being a city, would have had greater options to make up the loss of food; however, the ability to take advantage of those options would entirely be dependant on the individual’s ability to pay.

The advantage in urban areas in the Low Countries was that it was not uncommon for middle-class urban dwellers to keep some livestock, usually pigs and chickens, which were easy to keep over the winter and could be fed with table scraps and then could be used entirely in a variety of applications. Keeping the animals would have provided a predictable food source beyond what the family was able to preserve or could purchase in the marketplace.

A map of medieval Brugge shows how dense the population was in the city and there are spaces that would indicate large gathering areas for festivals and markets:

From “The Gamer Traveler” http://dmperez.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html

You can also see that Brugge was surrounded by farmland, which would place fresh fruits and vegetables in close proximity to the city, making it relatively trivial to transport those foods to the city for sale. There was sufficient access from the outlaying areas to make travel reasonable, as well. The windmills placed on the outskirts of the city would have served the purpose of pumping out any excess water that would come into the seaway during a wet season, keeping the town safe and preventing the farmland from being entirely covered in seawater, destroying the crops. Obviously, this was not a perfect system and there would have been losses of crops due to the sea encroaching on the farmable area.

According to the Tacuinum of Liège , the nature of summer is warm and dry and slowed the digestion and increased the bilious humors (the black and yellow bile – black bile was thought to cause melancholy and yellow bile was thought to cause one to be choleric ). You could bring the body closer to balance by taking in a humid diet in a cool environment. (Arano, 1976). This would be achieved by consuming water and other beverages and eating things such as lettuce, wheat, and squash – all which are in season during the summer.

The urban-dweller in the late Sixteenth Century would have been as affected by the seasons as the farming families. While urban dwellers would not necessarily have grown their own produce, they purchased their food from the farmers, just as we do now in urban areas. In looking at the few paintings of medieval urban life in Brugge that I have been able to find, there is no indication that there were small gardens, however, paintings are not a good enough reference to definitively say whether they did or not and requires more research on my part.

What is provable is that there was a large marketplace in the center of Brugge, even after the port was no longer useful as a major port (the port in Brugge silted over in the fifteenth century and the majority of trade moved north to Antwerp). There was a wide variety of foods available from the farms further inland as well as the abundant sea creatures that would have come in from Zeebrugge or Oostend on the coast. This would have afforded a diverse diet to the urbanites that allowed for them to sample a number of local foods and to stock up their larders for the cooler months where it was not unheard of for the seaway to freeze over, making fishing more difficult.

The same kinds of hurdles exist for the modern cook that focuses on a local diet – you have what is in season when it is in season and you rely on the plenty of the local farmers to fill your refrigerator. During the winter in this area of Pennsylvania, there are few farmer’s markets open (as most of them are outdoors, this is not surprising) and it is necessary that you save the harvest for use during those cold months when things are less plentiful. Being a modern person, however, I have access to every ingredient at all times of the year thanks to my local grocery stores. I do not have to worry about starvation and my choice to eat locally is just that, a choice, not a necessity born from a lack of options.

Over the next few months, I will continue to talk about the relationship between the modern cook who focuses on a local diet (sometimes called a “Locavore”) and the medieval urban cook. If you would like to contact me with questions or commentary, please send email to inthekitchen@medievalcooking.org.

First Friday Cooking at Odriana’s

Starting in October, on the first Friday of each month at 7:00 p.m., there will be a medieval cooking gathering at Odriana’s home. This is open to anyone that would like to attend. The first meeting, on Friday, 2 October, 2009 will be a casual, get-to-know-you event with a potluck dinner. Please bring a dish to pass, preferably one from a period recipe. If you are new to medieval cooking, you can find some wonderful recipes at Godecookery. Please bring a card with the recipe and ingredients list for your dish. Please contact Odriana for directions to her home by sending her email to jenn.strobel (at) gmail (dot) com.

• October - Potluck Gathering
• November - Soteltes [subtletys], A discussion on soteltes in the context of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, both savoury and sweet. We will make marzipan and use it to create small soteltes for everyone to take home.
• December - Eating in Winter during the Middle Ages. How did people prepare their food stores for the winter and what kinds of dishes would you expect to eat during the winter months during the middle ages in Western Europe? We will discuss this and make a dish based on winter eating.

We returned from Pennsic on Sunday sunburnt, exhausted, and happy. An unexpected, and very appreciated, invitation from my mother for swimming and dinner was the perfect decompression into the modern world.

Pennsic did not go entirely as planned for me. I had the distinct honor of making the food for a good friend’s vigil on Sunday night and was more tired than expected on Monday, so we did not make it to the Known World A&S Display as I spent the day in convalescence and community with our new camp. I was disappointed that I missed it, but know that it was important to re-hydrate and commune with my family and new friends and acquaintances. I am anxiously awaiting photographs, and if you have pointers to them, please share.

This Pennsic was about learning how to support my husband as a fighter. In May, my husband became a Man-at-Arms to Sir Aengus MacBain and this was his first time on the field with the unit from Singing Stone. It was my first time on the field as support and it was alternately confusing and wonderful. I have the great fortune to be friends with a number of ladies that were experienced in pushing liquids onto fighters and knowing what to do to be the most useful to the fighters while they were on the field. After one battle, I was more comfortable with what to do and felt like I was supporting my husband and the rest of the fighters in our unit and in the units around us much better during the second battle.

This was the first time in years that I had a War that was Not About Me, and it was absolutely wonderful to learn how to work as part of a unit and to contribute in a whole new way. I’m still learning, but I’m excited about learning more and becoming more skilled in that arena.

As usual, Pennsic signaled the beginning of the SCAdian year for me, and I have the usual creative surge that follows going to Pennsic. I have new focus on my plan for the next year and I’m excited about starting (and finishing) a number of new projects. In October, I will be Head Cook for a local event that focuses on the Fourteenth Century, specifically on the Battle of Agincourt. We will be hosting our Royalty at this event and the dinner is going to be something special for them as their personae are Fourteenth Century French and I feel the need to do something properly in period for them. My current thought is to do a Hunting Feast using information gathered from hunting manuals of the period. The urge to make a whole pig is strong, but I need to figure out the cost for doing that and how much that will cut into my overall budget before I can fully commit. The lunch will be a selection of French Campaign foods - foods that would have been consumed by the French Army as they proceeded towards the field at Agincourt. As the battle of Agincourt took place in France, the French Army would have had the support of the towns and villages that they would have passed through, which increases the diversity of foods that they would have had available to them. There is the possibility that they would have carried some food with them to eat while between populated areas. I need to do some more research to be more definitive as the last time I did a feast like this was three years ago and there may be more and/or better information available now than what was available then.

I am also taking on a rather significant challenge and entering the Pentathlon at Ice Dragon. I will be entering in the research paper category, the curiosa category, the cooking category, the woodworking category, and the vocal performance category. I will be sharing snippets of what I am doing as I do the research for each category, but please forgive me if I don’t share everything so that I don’t show my hand too early in the proceedings. I will publish my complete information after the event, which takes place in late March 2010.

I am excited and looking forward to the next year. I have not committed to an update schedule for now as I want to see what my schedule looks like once my daughter and husband start back to school in a couple of weeks. I am also going to be launching a new business venture in the next couple of months, which will take up a considerable amount of my time. I am focusing on updating twice per week, I am just unsure which days will work best right now. I have also asked a couple of people to be guest bloggers here and as soon as I have more solid information about when and who, I will share that with you.

So, how was your War?

I will be on hiatus for the next two weeks while we attend the Pennsic War. I have a number of things to share with you when I return, hopefully including some photographs from the Known World A&S Display that will be taking place on 3 August 2009. I will also do my best to remember my mobile phone so that I can tweet directly from there.

If you are going to be at Pennsic (you may already be there, we have the luxury of living nearby, so I’m home), I hope that you have a wonderful time. For those of you that would like to be there, but can’t attend, I hope to see you next year. For those of you not going, I hope that you have a wonderful two weeks while I am being inspired by my fellow re-creationists in the Society for Creative Anachronism, some of whom travel from as far away as Australia to share their work.

I’ll see you all when I return.

The last couple of weeks have been dedicated to preparing for Pennsic and there has been very little else going on in my house. Okay, that’s not entirely true. There has been the usual days spent with my daughter going to the park, talking, walking around the track, working on the fruitcake reliquary, and our normal weekly routine. This makes for an extremely busy time.

Cooking has been perfunctory: Bread baking on Tuesdays and daily meals. I’ve been working up a menu of Viking food for a catering gig that I have in August, which has been fantastic. The most research I’d ever done was to see how Viking food and Frisian food matched up as Frisia is within reasonable traveling distance from England and during the Dark Ages there was most certainly water travel. I’ve been pushed to think about things differently, less ornate than cooking sixteenth century food, and infinitely less direction than the handy cookbooks that are available from later periods of time. The ingredients are less fussy and sometimes difficult to work with, like barley, which has no gluten and the breads are flat and made differently than the yeast risen loaves that I’m familiar with. Additionally, the primary meats are fish and pork as pigs are a high return animal since they will eat table scraps and still allow you to gain a lot of food from them if you use them nose to tail as the Vikings most certainly did. There is very little in the way of decoration so the food must stand well on its own. In the modern context in which I work, this translates into slightly higher quality ingredients. During the Dark Ages, it would have been whatever was available, regardless of quality, and you may have had a mix of both high and low quality foods in a singular dish. This is not to say that the Vikings ate bad food, but that they had to be less selective in what they chose to cook with as waste was not an option. I am also looking into presentation, which is minimal. This is still very much a work in progress and a full report will not be available until after Pennsic as I simply don’t have the time for details in this medium prior to that.

The thing that has been consuming most of my time is the fruitcake reliquary as I have a deadline during Pennsic for it to be completed. Or, at least as completed as I am going to make it. The top of the box is my project. The rest of the box is a project for whatever talented soul would like to make it so. I’ve hit a number of roadblocks, all of them creative. I get so far, hate what I’ve done, erase a bunch of it, and then start over again. On Monday night I hit a point where I didn’t hate it, so I have been able to move forward on it at a far faster clip than previously. If you’re interested to see what I have so far, here is a picture:

It’s not done being penciled, as you can see. The colors that I will be using are gold, blue, red, black, white, and whatever feels right for shading, etc. It’s based on fifteenth century Italian scrolls, rather than reliquaries as the medium that is more appropriate for reliquaries requires metalworking skills that I do not have nor do I have the time to learn right now.

I have been sewing like a madwoman so that our tent is properly done for living in it for two weeks. I don’t have pictures of what I’ve been doing, but it’s basic repair work and the addition of a set of flaps that will attach to the outside of the ring to help keep rain out of the doors and off of the sides. They’ll be about four inches wide.

The primary cooking that I’ve been doing is attempting to replicate the “Peachberry” pie that is available at a local restaurant chain. It’s amazing. Peaches, blackberries, and raspberries in a double crust. I had dinner with friends coming up where I was to bring dessert, so that is what I was planning on bringing. I didn’t make the crust by hand as we were running out of time today so I purchased one that didn’t have lard in it (being a Vegetarian, it was necessary) and found that Marie Callender has a wonderful crust with vegetable shortening in it. The recipe is:

Peachberry Pie a la Jenn

Five peaches, peeled and cut into slices
a quart of raspberries
a quart of blackberries
1/2 cup Sugar in the Raw
1 t vanilla extract
2 T arrowroot powder

Cook down the peaches with the sugar until they are soft.
Add the vanilla.
Add the raspberries and blackberries into the pot.
Cook until you get a good amount of liquid.
Add the arrowroot powder and cook until the liquid reaches a velvety consistency.
Pour into two pie shells.
I used a single sided pie shell, rather than a double sided pie shell.
Cook for 20 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Serve either hot or warm.
Serve with a dollop of fresh whipped cream.

It was as awesome as the pie at the restaurant and didn’t cost me $2.99 a slice.

As stated earlier, updates will be sporadic and I will provide as much content as I can before I go on hiatus for two weeks. I hope that everyone is enjoying their summer and look forward to getting to regular updates after the hiatus, which should be the second week of August.

Every year we try to attend the Pennsic War, which is a two week long medievalist convention where we all camp out and dress in pre-17th century clothing (to varying degrees of authenticity). This year we did not know if we would be able to attend until mid-June and ever since then I have been scrambling to get a number of things completed (tent repair, some new clothing for my family, getting the house ready to have someone else living here while we’re gone, etc.). Unfortunately, everything is taking about three times longer than expected and that means that it cuts into my writing time.

I’ve been pushing myself and writing bits here and there, but as I realized after reading the food preservation class handout, the quality is not where I know it can be and where it needs to be. Since I don’t want to put something sub-par onto the internet (where nothing ever goes away), I am redoing the work so that it is up to my standards.

My intention was to update as normal until Pennsic starts, and then take a two week hiatus. Unfortunately, it looks like there will be sporadic updates and then a two week hiatus. I have been adding content to the Facebook group pretty often as the medium is conducive to one and two line updates or quick recipe sharing. If you have not joined us on Facebook, now is a really good time: Join the fan page by clicking here.

This afternoon I will be redoing the handout and publishing it here. There will be Viking Food as I have recipes and things that I need to produce for a catering gig at Pennsic. Fear not, I have not merely vanished, I am simply difficult to locate.

While I am being sporadic, please go and check out a few other really nifty Medieval and Modern Cooking Blogs:

Medieval:
Medieval Cookery

Modern:
Zwei Fat Chicks
Culiblog
Nose to Tail at Home

I am not gone, only difficult to locate, and for that I do apologize. It is sincerely a lack of planning for how much time things were going to take pre-Pennsic and afterwards, I should return to a far more predictable and reasonable update schedule. Right now, I have a number of projects in process: a full-on chicken research paper, a database of Medieval Dutch flavorings is being populated, the usual translation-fu, and writing an A&S Handbook. All of which I am dying to tell you about. But not before Pennsic.