Greet's Middle Ages

Wine List, February 2011 (aka Way Overdue)

(Here ought to go a pile of apologies for forgetting how to blog.  Let's call that done, and get to the good stuff.)

Way back in February, my adopted group Glynn Rhe, threw an event called Wine List.  The "List" part had to do with a tournament, in which all participants put a bottle of wine on a blanket, and then everybody fought everybody else, and the winners* got to take home the wine, and some prizes, besides.

*There were teams involved.  I really only understand about that much, and that the Viking was on the winning team, and that's why we had a pile of wine to take home.  I was busy with the next bit.

The "Wine" part of Wine List not only has to do with the prizes for the "List" part, it is also the theme of the non-fighting part of the event.

I love a theme, therefore I appreciated wine.  First, I learned how.

The fabulous Martabon (Mistress?  Not sure.  Didn't I say there was wine?) traveled in to help our own Mistress Odindisa show us how to talk about the wine we were appreciating.  They gave us a chart, which was a particularly good idea, because now I can read what I thought about it three months later.

We graded wines on the following aspects (I quote from the chart, and editorialize in italics):

Appearance/Aroma/Flavor: Is the color pleasant or does it seem too thin?  Are there distinctive aromas you can identify?  Is it dry or sweet?  Full-bodied or light?  Does the flavor seem consistent with the aroma?

Overall impression: After the aftertaste has faded, what do you think of the beverage overall?  Is it pleasant and applealing? Simple or complex?  Are all the components in balance?  Does it make you want another sip? (My favorite criteria.)

Drinkability: Is this good enough for you to drink an entire bottle by yourself? (Don't you like how the standards seem to be increasing?) Maybe you'd take a few sips and give the rest to your spouse?  If served this beverage in a restaurant would you have to gulp it down so you could order another glass of something else? (Ick.)  Would you serve this to good friends?

We drank/tested a fair few:

Barefoot CA Riesling, CAVA Brut, Fetzer Gewurtztraminer (by FAR the favorite at the event), a homemade blueberry, Morgan Creek blueberry, Beaujolais Louis Jadot, Frunza Merlot, Barefoot Shiraz, Barefoot Chardonnay, and Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon.

We also used 5 steps in our appreciating:

1. See - clarity and color.
2. Swirl - look for "legs", the drips back down the glass vary in viscosity, and "strong legs" is called a more full-bodied wine
3. Smell - here we tried to assign metaphors like "floral" or "fruity" (other than grape)
4. Sip - My notes say here, "ketchup: Shiraz, mustard:Merlot, Pinot Noir/spicy".  There were TEN samples, y'all.
5. Savor - What's the aftertaste?  Disa and Martabon had these lovely "wheels of flavor" which were very helpful to pin down a flavor, or just jog one's vocabulary.

Since I'd had so much fun appreciating wine, and Martabon's husband Sir Gwydion seemed lonely at the Beer Appreciation table (the fighting was just winding up), the class headed over there.  Fortunately it was close by.

Warning: I am learning to be downright snobbish on both beers and wines.  And now I have picked up some knowledge to reinforce my uppity opinions.  Did you know that hops, those awful sour things, were only added to probably perfectly good beer as a preservative to keep the beer good on the way to India?  Which occurred AFTER 1600?  So there, I now feel I never have to drink a hoppy beer again.

Here are the ones I really liked. 

I also like the taste of malted barley, which could just be sprinkled on the top of baked goods, to my mind.  And the explanation of the yeast eating up the sugars in the fermented barley, peeing alcohol, and then dying in its own pee, is never going to leave my mind.

After so much alcohol appreciation, we waited around for dinner, and the Viking appreciated cabbage, by frying it with bacon, and we all sat around and appreciated more wine, and the smell of dinner cooking.

There.  A proper blog post.  I have a couple more brewing (ha!) and am headed to Kingdom A&S, so maybe I'm back on the wagon again.

Pomaireware bean pot debut!

(The cat checks to make sure I am not planning Fricassee d'Feline.)

This is the first in a collection I am making of ceramic cooking pots, in an effort to use more period gear on site.  Although I admittedly started this project motivated by appearance, I am learning that Ceramics May Be Just Better, aided and abetted by Paula Wolfert's  Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking.

Pomairewaire is from Pomaire, Chile, and I bought this pot from Earthfare, which is a grocery chain that will possibly be the death of my favorite health foods coop in Tallahassee.

Yesterday the pot debuted brilliantly.  After following Wolfert's seasoning advice, which seals the pores of the bottom of the pot with casein, I put a pound of great northern beans in six cups of water, set the bean pot in a cast iron pot (as a heat diffuser) and put the whole thing on one of the small eyes of our ceramic stovetop.  (The pound of beans had soaked for four hours.)

It took an hour to heat the pot, slowly raising the dial to a max of 3.5.  The beans went on at 11 am, and were done by 5 (probably at 4 - they were dry at 5) with perfect texture, yummy smelling, and no scorching.  I checked on it a lot, which probably slowed it down, taking the lid off that much.  Next time I will not touch it for three hours, and then start checking!

I'm thinking the next pot I want is an 10" dia. glazed cazuela, with a small hollow handle, so I can pull it off the fire.  It's essentially a  2.5" deep skillet, with straight sides.  You can use it like a small casserole, or like a skillet.

Note: Although the cast iron pot worked well as a heat diffuser, it lost its seasoning on the spot that the bean pot sat.  Probably because the ceramic held heat.  I'm going to need a proper diffuser plate anyway, because 10" won't fit inside any of my cast iron skillets.
 

Leftover dye

What to do with a small batch of leftover black dye?

I needed to dye a bit of fringe leftover from the first diamond twill, black.  Small pot of RIT.

 

I'm inordinately proud of this idea - the point is to make my braid look like a bell-rope, like this:

Tassels everywhere!!! 

(This kit improvement is motivated by helping serve Madhavi's super-authentic Indian feast at Trimaris' 25th year.  My kit has a LONG way to go, before it looks as good as this, but that's part of the fun.)

Cotton dyes incredibly quickly - no wonder it replaced linen and wool so fast - but then I had some leftover dyebath.  I dyed a small bit of wool to use for appliques, but still had some leftover.  Can't throw it down the sink...

Hurrah for not having to completely remake the Viking's banner just yet!  This may not make it through the rain, but it looks quite a bit better already.  I'll iron it in hopes of setting the dye further. 

RUM 2010

RUM was held less than an hour away this year, so I got to go.

The Royal University of Meridies is the annual big teaching event for the kingdom of Meridies, and it also hosts meetings for many of the kingdom's service groups, resulting in the usual problem of too many places to be at one time, and difficult decisions for someone like me, who has her hand in too many Yahoo! lists.

So I chose according to Most Pressing Responsibility, which was first that I'm the new chatelaine of Glynn Rhe, and there was a series of How To Be The Best Newcomer Supporter Ever classes offered by the chatelaine of the entire SCA, so of course I had to see what she was like.

(I've already broken one of her suggestions, in that it's been more than 72 hours and I hadn't blogged yet.  Oh well, I'm learning.)

But there were all sorts of other lovely ideas about expectations for demos, followup, what loaner gear should be like to encourage retention, etc.  I look forward to Baroness Marie's summary of what was talked about.

I also took Ailleaghan's "Medieval Foods for a Modern Palette" cooking class, in view of my Pressing Responsibility for feast this year, and feel a little better about having the skills to pull this off.  Neat tip about how to use Excel to keep track of amounts and repetition of ingredients - since I'm working hard to become an Excel monkey mundanely, this is fun.

I hauled around some cardweaving that I'm doing to bind the cut edges of Honnoria's diamond twill wrap Viking apron.  I think I've got a new loom design worked out, based on the archeological board finds that I've seen somewhere, probably in Collingwood's book.  (I don't have a new board yet, but I've been using a segment of my warping frame with only two pegs, and it's working fairly well, and would work better if it were wider and had a big hole in the tummy end.)  Sorry, no pics, still camera-less, and I haven't taken a moment to sketch yet.  Bad Greet.

I didn't make all the social rounds I usually do, having showed up Not Early that morning and skivving off in advance of approaching thunderstorms, but it was nice to catch up with those I saw.  Fun to see more developed Roman and Kentish kits coming along...I wanted to take pictures of Her Highness Lethrenn in her new Kentish, but...no camera.

I also wish I could have stayed for the singing, but mundane life called, and I missed the Viking, who stayed home to handle Stuff, and was asked about.  We plan next to visit Trimaris for 25th Year (I'm really looking forward to the Indian feast!) and think our next Meridian event will be MGT.

Cooking pots for fifty! Or eighty! Haven't decided...

NEW BIG HAIRY LEARNING CURVE ALERT!  I've volunteered to be feastcrat/head cook for Glynn Rhe's combined A&S/fighting event, Convivium Collegialis/Wine List, held next February.

As faithful readers of this blog will guess, I've had a Big Idea about how to organize my effort planning.

Imagine that you come into the event, and somebody has a camp kitchen set up, with several dishes cooking.  You can stand around and take perhaps a couple of hour-long classes (on the tools and the recipes) and get copies of the recipes that are being cooked.  At the end of the day, everybody sits down to feast, and through the magic of hidden modern equipment and precooking, fifty people get to eat what they've been smelling all day.  Or maybe eighty.  Haven't decided yet.

This illusion of the loaves-and-fishes variety has been growing out of the interest that the Viking and I have in period cooking equipment, and our desire to cook in camp using techniques that are period, for an integrated experience.

(Although it was fun to run around giving away catfish at Gulf Wars, it would have been cooler if the pot hadn't been stainless steel.)

So right now I'm collecting more information about cooking pots, about various cuisines that used them, and I am coveting this book:

 

Whose author apparently has quite the collection, with guides to use, sources to buy, and "traditional recipes".  (Though any recipe that purports to be "older than the Lost Continent" shouldn't have tomato paste in it, right?  Just checking.)  

Next step after laying my hands on this one, is to hunt up the archeology and try to corrolate pot types.  I have a guess as to which area/time I'm going to land on, but I need more data!
 

Gulf Wars 2010 recap

So now I've been in the SCA three years.  Gulf Wars was my first event, so it's a great time to think about how my play has developed, see where I've grown, and set priorities for the next year.  Basic recap first:

We got in just at sunset Wednesday, and after setting up camp, got ourselves over (late) to the Meridian Social.  The theme this year was RagaROCKS, and since I have about as much memory of eighties' hair metal as I do blue hair, my impression may not be quite recognizable, but it was fun to pull together:

 

My idea was to rockify my Borum Eshoj stuff.  (Mom, the "nalbinded beret" is on its way to becoming a filk, and was very popular.  You were right, again.  Albeit roundaboutly.)  So we have here: Nalbinded beret, made by my mother with indigo yarn she dyed herself, vest and necklace from thrift stores, the infamous BE gravefind string skirt, miniskirt version of BE skirt, and new bog coat that I made at Convivium Collegialis.  Fishnets and tall boots were already a part of the Costume Box of Wonderfulness.

This year I camped again with Glynn Rhe, but now it is my home group, and felt nice to belong somewhere properly.  The wool tent did fine again, though I am now sure I want to put toggles on the door ties to make getting in and out faster.  I now have two wood benchboxes, and they are perfect for keeping camp and foodstuffs in.  The Viking's cooler was totally ample and very efficient (the ice we brought with us got to go home again).  I need to remember to pack a broom next time, and I am still playing around with lights - he's wanting a multi-wick oil lamp, like this.

We brought one too many tunics for him, but just the right amount of food - maybe the catfish was excessive, but I distributed it to people in an area of about 2 acres.  We had plenty of goodies; enough to be generous, and people are learning that I like to bake.  That Krispy Kreme bread pudding may not be period, but gosh darn is it tasty.

Camp cooking is a recent and mutual interest.  I want to be able to take care of me and mine, and have it all look nice, and work.  A friend focuses on things cooking+Roman, and she put together a beautiful Roman kitchen, winning the Period Life competition.  I'm so impressed with her setup:

 

But we used some of our heirloom castiron on Wendy's kitchen setup, which worked pretty darn well.  Modifications need to be made regarding being able to "turn down" the heat.  I'm not sure whether a setup where you are able to pull the fire out from under the pot, or install a trivet under the pot, or perhaps both is the best way to go.  More options to try!

Cooking pots are definitely catching on in the merchant area, with varying prices being quoted for various things.  Fire Horse Pottery had a collaborator in Gode Erthe Pottes, who'd brought all sorts of ceramic cooking things: a heat reflector, with notches for a spit, a drippings tray, a waffle iron, a chafing dish, and even a lobster trap! in addition to the bread ovens that I'd seen before.  Apparently the bread ovens work, though there's a learning curve (isn't there always?!) on how to use them.

We did most of our shopping on Thursday: I bought two wool shawls for $65, one heavier weight in iridescent twill green/red, so that I can wear each of our colors, and a wonderfully light one in charcoal and gold so I can quickly dress up for court.  The Viking says the shawls make enough of a difference that he had difficulty finding me in a crowd - I consider I've gotten a bargain, considering that's two more "clothes changes" for the price of yardage and zero sewing effort.  Plus they pack tighter.  We also bought a lot of music - 5 CDs.  Two are of Owain Phyfe, a wonderful guitarist.  Three are from Vince Conaway, who I had met at Pennsic with Heather Dale, and got to talk to both of them again here.  I was so pleased that the Viking got to meet them too - I've gushed about how impressed I was with them as people, not just as professional musicians.  He bought some elbow cops, and we got a packet of leather to use on various projects - we're thinking a bag for feastgear and a gorget for me.

Friday I hoped to get into a bookbinding workshop, but it had sold out the day before.  I did get to watch and take pictures, though.  They were making these:

 

I also got to do a little painting of one of the class participants:

 

And then I painted the dyeing setup, which is one of my favorite things about Gulf Wars though I never have the patience to hang out there and dye things:

 

Saturday we packed up, trying to beat a storm out.  I squeezed in one last sketching session (hopefully I'll get to watercolor that sketch soon), and a really intriguing math history class, from someone I want to find again - she seems incredibly knowledgeable, and very bright to make connections.

Cooking pots!

Yeah, yeah, so I needed another activity.  Like a hole in the head.  I've always liked cooking, particularly as a preface to **eating**, but as there's lots of hospitality in the SCA, I put my first efforts into clothes (and clothes, and clothes), activities, and camp gear.  But now that I'm pretty much dressed and housed, and certainly entertained, I can start contributing to hospitality.

At Gatalop, Randver and I geeked with potter Mistress Kiara about her cooking vessels.  I'd seen a bread oven of her crafting at Baroness Mairie Ceilidh's, who is a cooking laurel, and a recurrent patron of Kiara's pottery.  Here it is:

That's my size 8 foot next to it, for scale.  I'd guess it's about 18" tall.  The idea is, you put hot coals in the hole in the base...

 

And put the bread in the top part.  The handle on the lid is a tube, to let some steam out, but not all.  Apparently these guys were found in Pompeii by the thousands.

I admired another cooking vessel at MC's, and turned it over to find Kiara's mark again...

Isn't this a lovely mixing bowl?  And it's green to boot.  Here's a closeup of the handle...

(That's Baron Romas cooking onions in the background, with an excellent shirt.)

SausageFest!

I'd never made sausages before, and so I thought I'd ask all the crowd who showed up today what was in their sausage, in order to learn better how to make a good one. 14 different kinds of sausage!

(I apologize in advance for mangling anyone's name.)

Greet & Susannah:
Chicken, bacon, havarti cheese, granny smith, rosemary
(we're eating this now for dinner, and it's a trifle dry. More bacon, I think,
equal to the chicken.)

Kim & Michael:
Pork, onion, basil, parsley, sage, oregano, garlic, salt & pepper

Teresa/Katerine:
Pork, maple syrup, onion, sage, milk, salt & pepper

Octavio:
Pork, habenero cheese, jalepeno cheese

Umble:
Pork shoulder, trimmed of fat, granny smith/fuji, thawed cherries, cinnamon,
salt (will add pepper next time)

Rebecca:
Turkey, italian seasoning, riesling, salt and pepper AND
Lamb, Mairie Ceilidh's moroccan spice rub, cumin

Sarah:
Beef, LA Cajun Hot Season Blend, Minced garlic, onion, salt

Romas:
Pork shoulder, bacon, cooked onion in rosemary olive oil, caraway, mustard seed,
allspice, grains of paradise (from 16th c German bratwurst recipe, but with
Lithuanian spices)

Matthew:
Chicken, maple syrup, onion, parsley, garlic, italian seasoning, salt and pepper
(and other misc. spices that couldn't be remembered after the frenzy of the
muse.)

Grainne:
Chicken, goat cheese, dried cranberries, onion, garlic, Bell's seasoning, salt

Matt & Kelly:
Ground sirloin, chicken, turmeric, powdered mustart, cardamom, ginger,
coriander, salt and pepper

Adsiltia:
Barley, fatty bacon, caraway seed, pepper, kosher salt, bay leaf, onion (from
Estonian Christmas Sausage, in a book Home Sausage Making)

Simon:
Boston butt, raw onion, fresh basil, cumin, roasted red pepper, splash of olive
oil, hot marinated olives, greek peppers, sweet red peppers, capers, pizza
seasoning, liquid smoke, salt and pepper.