Back in the saddle again
Okay, not a horseman, which I’m sure relieves a number of equines out there, but the saying holds true. I put this blog on hold for a while because of the fire we had in Paradise, CA, where I live. And yeah, like most of …
An electronic version of the notebook in my haversack
Medieval Cooking
How to Avoid My Blathering
So far, all of you have been very kind and not told me to “Shaddap”, because I know I can get rather long winded, especially when my “Obsession” button has been pressed. To reward you for your patience, I have here a guest poster, a …
A Good Day Out
So, we had a single-day SCA event today, a local one. Just a few miles from the house, so of course that meant we had to fill the car with stuff. Sunshade, chairs, tables, small ice chest, my Microkitchen…you know, the bare essentials. There was …
Parte The Last…
…in which our brave hero, having deciphered the cryptic manuscript, quested for and received in turn the most necessary Ingredient, and followed all the steps of the Dance Culinaire, does finally put the pieces together and assemble the Dish at Last. Well. Yeah. We did …
We are committed, and that’s no lye!
I love much about my job. Especially on days like today, because you see, I have a flex schedule, and 4 ten hour days, meaning Fridays off every week. This is relevant because when you have a big project, like doing 72-hour short ribs in …
How far is far enough? Scary far!
Okay. I know I can be maybe a trifle obsessive when it comes to cooking medieval recipes. It’s not enough to be actually cooking dishes based on sometimes-fragmentary and unhelpful recipes that are occasionally not even in anything resembling English, but then I have to …
Learning about the past from the more recent past
So, my friend Kerri was out at the Pennsic War this time around (yes, I’m jealous), and shopping is nearly as big a sport there as whacking your buddies with a stick. She came across this book, purporting to be a collection of Transylvanian recipes, …
Day Four—Saturday
This is also known as “Cook All The Things” Day, and it’s kind of bittersweet. No one holds back, but that’s because we have to pack down and go home the next day (actually, given the amount of sheer stuff we have, most of us …
Day Three—Friday
Yeah, now I was hitting my stride. So was everyone else. Friday at the War for the Cooks’ Camp generally means Fish Friday (so very medieval), though there’s no requirement to do it if you’re not into fish. Since dried octopus wasn’t to be found …
Day Two—Thursday
Wait, you might cry, what happened to day one? Day one was Wednesday, aka set-up day. And when you have a large pavilion, a huge pile of gear to move from truck to ground, and from ground to where it goes, plus the bed, stuff …
Been a while since I’ve posted…
But I wouldn’t want you think I’ve been ignoring this blog. No, I’ve been getting ready for an event that’s fairly important to me, and now that the event has come and gone, I can write about it. You see, this past week (well, five …
A King’s Ransom…okay, maybe a Baron’s
If you know me, or have gotten a sense of who I am from these articles, you know I am a little strange. I’m not a terribly tidy person, not really, but I DO prize order and organization. I love lists. I like to compartmentalize …
Purely for the amusement value
When I tell the story of how the Transylvanian Cookbook came to be, I make sure to mention the first translation of the recipe titles. Not having anyone handy who read fluent Hungarian, we fed the webpage listing all the recipe titles into Google Translate …
Poll Question for you folks…
So, I have a pretty decent collection of medieval cookbooks these days, and of course there are SO many more available for free access online. To the folks who read this, my question is this: What three to five SCA period cookbooks, in order, do …
3.0 Inbound!
So, what with all the SCA wonderful weirdness hitting my life this second, I felt the need to actually wrap up the 3.0 edition of the Transylvanian Cookbook. This is, realistically, probably the last major update I’m going to do. If I start doing more …