[Sca-cooks] Period cooking and camping

[david friedman]

>I don't necessarily think they baked bread everyday however, if I was a
>housewife in early 1500's Italy, I would probably get fresh bread every day
>from a commercial bakery.

I think that depends on whether you were an urban or rural housewife.

>and.....  I *want* fresh bread everyday when I'm
>camping.  Since we are mostly doing flatbreads, it's relatively easy to do.
>Usually I fire up the coleman and make biscuits, rolls or cinnamon buns in
>the coleman oven but since we're switching over to period cooking methods
>this won't work any more, sigh... and it was sooooo easy!

You might want to look for things that can be done in a frying pan.
The Ain i Akbari bread can be. So can my conjectural oatcakes (based
on a comment by Froissart). And we have two Islamic frying pan
pastries--Murakaba and The Leafy Dish. All in the Miscellany. Also
there are fritter type things.

>Hmmmm....  wonder if you could coat *any* cheese in wax to keep it?

Try it and let us know how it comes out.

>Out of curiosity do you do the period cooking thing at every event or just
>Pennsic?  Was it a transition thing for you or did you just do it all in one
>fell swoop?

At this point, with two children who aren't all that interested in
the SCA (although that's changing for the older), Pennsic is the only
camping event we regularly do. We did period cooking for Thirty Year,
Twenty-five Year, and Twenty Year, though. I can't remember ever
going to a camping event and doing any other kind of cooking--I've
never owned a Coleman stove. But my early years in the SCA were in
the Middle and East, where camping events are a smaller part of what
happens than in the West, where we now are. For non-camping events we
generally bring period nibbles, or a cold pie, or the like. And we
did use a cooler in the early years, abandoning it as much because it
was a nuisance as because it wasn't period.
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/