[Sca-cooks] Non-Pennsic SCA activities?

Dragon dragon at crimson-dragon.com
Wed Aug 6 09:04:40 PDT 2008


For those of us who can't make it to the "big show", what have you 
been up to that is SCA related?

I have decided to commit myself to doing the AS50 challenge. I have 
been wanting to further my knowledge of period cooking and as I have 
mentioned here before, I am a bit of a tinkerer and like to make 
things. So I have decided that my challenge will be to produce 50 
items that may have been found in a period kitchen. This will include 
knives, pots, utensils, a spice box, a spit, chests to carry it all 
in, maybe even a butter churn and some casks. I'll get to equip my 
kitchen while also exercising and improving my skills in 
blacksmithing, pottery, and woodworking.

This last weekend was a rather busy one for me.

On Saturday, we held a small local tournament called Leodamus of 
Thebes here in Calafia. I decided to bring out the cooking gear and 
prepared a couple of recipes from "Pleyn Delit" which were both big 
hits. I used the Green Peas with mint recipe and the Mishmishiya 
recipe. During the event, I was asked (and I agreed) to lead the 
kitchen for the Calafian Anniversary in November, this will be a 
special one as there will be a new Baron and Baroness stepping up that day.

On Sunday, we held the first ever Baronial "Arts in the Park" event 
at Calafia Brigade practice. This included all of the Baronial guilds 
coming out to display, and in some cases also demonstrate, what they 
do. It was a successful experiment and it looks like we shall do it 
again. I brought out the cooking gear for this as well and prepared 
two recipes from Volume 1 of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More" for 
people to sample. I did the stewed beef and the pork fryes recipes, 
both of which also went over very well. I've been asked to do the 
pork recipe again for the upcoming Baronial Anniversary feast that I 
am now in charge of.

Part of my cooking display was an array of spices that would have 
been available in period and a number of cookbooks that pertain to 
period cooking and hearth cooking. Along with this and the food 
samples, we displayed pottery from the Calafia Pottery guild and some 
of my forge work in an uncompleted state.

On an observational note, I have noticed that the modern versions of 
the recipes from both Pleyn Delit and 1000 eggs tend to be pretty 
light in their use of spices. I've found that when I make them with 
the quantities specified, that they tend to be rather under-spiced to 
my taste. Does anyone else find this to be so? In each of the recipes 
I prepared from these books, I significantly increased the amounts of 
spices and though them much improved from the way they tasted with 
the called for amounts.

Dragon

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  Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
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