Moar War photos, plus Coronation! Mushroom pickle happened and a potluck (oh, the food!) and more pincushions and such. Pickle will be tried next week after it’s had time to steep. This coming week is all normal stuff.
- Sewing Night – At Ancient Light, Thursdays, 6-8pm
- Herb Bunch – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 11am-1pm
- Sewing Time – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 3-5pm
- Project Day – At Ancient Light, Sundays, Noon to 6pm
- Cheese & Wine – Watch the schedule or the Facebook group! This is going to be irregularly scheduled for when tasks need to occur.
- Next Potluck – 8/20
Here is the direct Portfolio link which has all the past Project Day reports and various projects, original here: https://housecapuchin.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and new one here: https://housecapuchin2.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and number three is here: https://housecapuchin3.wordpress.com/portfolio/
Early Week – The un-molding of the latest incarnation of schiz happened and some sewing. As folks were posting War photos, Anja found a seriously cool pouch design (pix below) and started one. The leek buckets went home and got watered, sanding of a goblet kept going and pincushions kept appearing in the largesse drawer. Anja’s going to go over those and decide which are going for largesse and which she’s going to keep for sale, though.
People started posting War pix on Monday and Anja saved out some cool ones, mostly of folks she knows.
Some other flours got purchased or made, early in the week. Rye and barley are not spendy in the bulk section and oat…well, we had a huge bag of oatmeal that was the 2nd bag of which we’ve eaten 1/3 of the first… 🙂 So flour happened from that on Tuesday night and bread for the Sunday potluck
Cheese and Wine Workshop – The cheese got unmolded on Monday and then put by for the potluck, since we wanted fried cheese again. 🙂 (Moar pix below in the potluck stuff)
Sewing Time – Amy was there both days along with Loren and Anja, although Loren is sanding. On Thursday the box of goodies for Sport of Kings got put together and pincushions made. On Saturday, more pincushions and Amy learned how to make sachets.
Thursday
Saturday
Herb Bunch – We started with going through some herbals that both of us have, talking about sources for plants, whether to wild-craft, grow or buy, mostly. After that we worked on re-potting some herbs and succulents that were getting pot-bound, got the next step done on the rose sugar, then processed fennel seed. We didn’t get any pictures! …so I added one of ladies gathering mint from the Tacuinum Sanitatis. …and then got two on Sunday.
Project Day – Kinda started Saturday night as Loren and Anja started cooking. A pea/barley pottage, beef in wine and a root veg stew cooked overnight. The pickled mushrooms got started Sunday morning (although they’re not ready for eating, yet). Anja went to get some 
heavier fabric for pincushion back and the fabric store wasn’t open, so grumpy Anja, so she went to the Chocolate Frog, bought some truffle bites and…. happy Anja!
One of our Herb Bunch was here when she got back and then got going on the mushrooms after a few minutes. Eventually those were in the fridge and the press of the food prep happened.
We had a great feast, with a couple of guests and Jay actually managed to get here! We haven’t seen him in awhile. We all ended up stuffed and lots of stories were told. Not a single thing happened on projects, though….
Jay might be able to start getting armor together soon and he and Amy were making plans to get to Fight Practice so Amy can work on marshalling and Jay learn fighting.
Potluck Menu
1st course
- Oat and wheat bread – Loren
- Butter – Loren
- Garlic butter – (from storage in the freezer from a previous feast)
- Fried Cheese – Anja and Loren – Schiz (made last week), sliced and fried in butter
- Olive plate – Loren – Olives in vermouth, black and green olives
- Stuffed Mushrooms – Jay and Loren – Mushroom caps, cheese
- White wine – (leftovers from cooking)
- Red wine – Courtney
- Burgundy – (leftovers from cooking)
2nd course
- Pease/Barley pottage – Anja – dried peas, pearl barley, caraway, onion, carrots, salt
- Beef in wine – Anja – Angus beef, burgundy, mushrooms, salt, caraway – gravy of butter, rice flour and broth from the beef
- Vegetable Stew – Anja – Turnip, spinach, carrot, rutabaga, celery, onion, lovage, plus misc greens, salt, caraway
- Salad – Amy
- Sekanjabin – Loren and Amy – Mint (harvested and prepped by Anja), Honey (local), vinegar, sugar, ice
3rd course
- Molasses Cookies – Amy
- Comfits
Pickled Mushrooms – We had less than 2 pounds of mushrooms to start, then 8 caps went for stuffing and a lot of stems into the veg and beef, so the recipe was halved. Also dried ginger and whole mace were not obtainable at the time we started this experiment, so we used dried. Horseradish was subbed for the pepper because of Anja’s allergy.
We washed the mushrooms Saturday night and left them to dry a bit, then started them with salt on Sunday morning. They needed to lose liquid. Since we could only run one burner at a time we did the ‘shrooms first, mostly over medium heat, then started the pickle broth which was wine, rather than vinegar. Drawing the liquid took time., at least an hour, maybe 1 1/2 hours. After that they were drained and set onto a towel while the pickle broth was going. Loren sterilized a jar and the mushrooms went in and then the pickle broth. It went in hot because of timing. A turnip got added after the feast, so’s to try that in the wine pickle.
Original Recipe (edited for length)
Pickled Mushrooms – Mar11by Mistress Leoba of Lecelade
TO PICKLE MUSHROOMS
Take your Buttons, clean ym with a spunge & put ym in cold water as you clean ym, then put ym dry in a stewpan & shake a handfull of salt over ym, yn stew ym in their own liquor till they are a little tender; then strain ym from ye liquor & put ym upon a cloath to dry till they are quite cold. Make your pickle before you do your Mushrooms, yt it may be quite cold before you put ym in. The pickle must be made with White-Wine, White-Pepper, quarter’d Nutmeg, a Blade of Mace, & a Race of ginger.
Ingredients
| 1.5kg mushrooms | 1 tsp white pepper corns |
| 500mL white wine | 1/4 of a whole nutmeg |
| approx. 1/2 cup of salt | 1/2 tsp mace |
| 1 piece dried ginger |
Method
In a mortar and pestle, roughly crush the pepper corns and mace. Using a grater, grate the ginger and the nutmeg (grate a whole nutmeg until you have used a quarter of it).
Put the spices and the wine in a pot and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, then leave to cool completely.
Wash the mushrooms and remove the stalks.
Put the mushrooms in a heavy bottomed pan, then throw the salt over them. Heat the mushrooms well and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms have coloured and shrunk considerably. A lot of liquid will leach out of them.
Strain the mushrooms, and put on a towel so they can dry and cool.
When both the mushrooms and pickling wine are completely cool, put the mushrooms into a sterilised jar and pour over the pickling liquid. If there is any spice residue, pack this on top. Ensure the mushrooms are completely covered by the liquid.
Keep the jar of mushrooms in a cool, dark place and leave to steep – the longer they steep the better.
Notes
Lady Fettiplace would not have had access to fresh ginger, and if you can find whole dried ginger it’s a revelation. I found some in an Indian grocers and it smells incredible.
Mace and nutmeg come from the same plant, Myrstica fragrans. Nutmeg is the seed in the middle of the fruit, and mace is a lacy membrane that surrounds this seed. Even though they come from the same plant, they have quite different tastes, and you can’t really substitute extra nutmeg for mace.
You will lose a lot of volume from the mushrooms as you are stewing them in the salt. We lost over 600g of weight – at the end of the process, we had 830g of mushrooms after starting out with 1.5kg.
Further Reading
Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
Spurling, Hilary (2011). Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book.
Miscellaneous pix – Project Ideas
Miscellaneous pix – War
Miscellaneous pix – Coronation
Music
The Renaissance Album by Windham Hill Records, Label: Windham Hill Records, ASIN: B019GRFAFC – https://www.amazon.com/Renaissance-Album-Windham-Hill-Records/dp/B019GRFAFC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1500237499&sr=8-3&keywords=the+renaissance+album+windham+hill
Links – After our period, but likely the same recipes.
Funnies
Loren, Anja, Amy, Herb Bunch (2), Jay
Largesse Item Count – (includes gifts, prizes, auction items, etc.)
- ASXLVII = 24
- ASXLVIII = 88
- ASXLIX = 794
- ASL = 2138
- ASLI = 731
- ASLII = 138+13 = 151 plus 4 pouch, 25 pouches for block-printing, 28 pincushions, 1 lucet cord, 1 hat, 1 bone needle & case, 3 sewing box (in process), varnished stuff (124)
- Sent to SoK – 1 blackworked pouch, two blackworked pincushions and one sewing kit with a bone needle in a bamboo case. (13 pieces)
- Total as a Household = 3510 handed off
In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 7/9/177 & published 7/16/17 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 7/16/17
House Capuchin 3 
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