Lots of projects underway this week, not counting the potluck! Anja’s blackwork project got finished and she started another project of some cute little pincushion/dolls. The trial run on the poullaile farcie worked, although there’s some tweaking to be done, still. Loren’s sundial project got to the point of sending drawings through and he’s ready to start making some more. Other projects are underway in various places, many for 12th Night.

Workshops are ongoing and should be at the regular times this week. Project Day will go on as usual, despite the holiday.

• 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
• Next Potluck – 1/20, (no Feb potluck) March is 3/17

• 

  Winter Feast Date is 2/17/19

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 – Anja did more work on the pouches and got more of the process pix with Loren’s help. That’s going into another project page. They’re also working out details for 12th Night, for merchanting and crash space and who’s got to be where, when…. Gudrun’s up in WA prepping for the move there. Sasha spent time this week making ornaments. Amor is experimenting with pemmican.

Suvia posted a wonderful article on Facebook, mid-week. I have it below the Music link for the week.

…and a very young and cute SCA member…. This is Eulalia and Anna’s son Rori.

Cookery – Not too much happened during the week, but there’s plenty in the potluck section below.

Sewing – Feast token pouches production line on Monday/Tuesday. Cuff still going….

Mon/Tues.

The cuff got to this point on Saturday.

Sundials – Loren pecked away for days at getting the formulas right for his sundials. Last Sunday he send some pieces through and then on Friday, managed to do one that seems to fit on the dowels that we have. Hopefully pix next week!

Herb Bunch – We spent awhile bagging herbs and discussing their properties. During the last 1/2 hour of the workshop time we made a batch of wood butter and some eggshell fertilizer.

Project Day – Loren and Anja had trouble getting started in the morning. They usually try to have the main cooking ready to go by the time they open their shop at 11am. Loren got bread going by 1pm, when we had planned to start it at 11… Anja made a new pincushion. They’re made like little gnomes, with a sand-filled body for the cushion. She went back and forth from cooking to pincushions or embroidery, all day.

Next was the chicken and stuffing. Anja almost never stuffs a chicken, but this one calls for it and for “quenelles” which are little egg-shaped sausage balls. Pix and recipe below.

Once Loren’s bread was done, he got his knife sharpened and then started on a njalbinden needle of bone. We mostly quit around 5 to set up for the potluck, but put in some time while waiting for the chicken and then after.

Potluck – Since the chicken was running late we set the table with things that had been previously made and ate a good first course.

After about 1/2 an hour of projects we had some of the quenelles and then pulled the chicken, set up the platter, got pictures and then carved. That way there was a bit of time to admire. It was a pretty dish!

We skipped dessert, being very full. That had been intended to be the comfits and a sliced apple that was soaking in burgundy, but we decided we were too full.

Potluck Menu 

1st course

• Pickled eggs
• Fig rennet cheese (the last of it)
• White bean pickle
• watermelon pickle
• turnip/carrot pickle
• strawberries pickled with ginger
• bread
• butter
• olives
• mustard
• cheddar

2nd course

• Poullaille Farcie – We ate the quenelles an hour before the chicken was done.
• Cabbage with caraway and onion

3rd course

• burgundy-soaked apple
• comfits

Recipes – Trial Run on Poullaille Farcie

Make stuffing – We had leftover cabbage roll filling (made of ground pork and beef, barley and onions) and I forgot the cheese and eggs. I did add salt, garlic powder, onion powder, mushroom spice, dill seed, caraway and mustard.

Stuff Chicken and make “Quenelles” – The neck was already chopped off of the chicken and I mangled the gizzard/liver/heart in getting them out of the body cavity. I’m told I can’t get a chicken with it’s head still on from a butcher. Hmm…. I used a spoon to cram the stuffing into the body cavity, then my hands to mold the quenelles into egg shapes.

Bake – The chicken went into the roaster along with some quenelles on foil. The roaster was turned to 350F at 3pm.

Temperature…. The quenelles were at 180 after 2 hours. The chicken needed more time being only at 160 in the center of the stuffing. That implies that the quenelles had better be baked in a separate pan…. That would work well, anyway, because we’re going to want to make a lot of “eggs”. So we tried one and glazed the others.

Saffron egg glaze – Beat the bleep out of a single egg and add a generous pinch of saffron, then set in the oven until the chicken is nearly done. Beat again, then paint over the chicken and the eggs…and add some water before you start sloshing it on, else it puddles and just looks like cooked egg. I pulled the glazed quenelles at 3 hours. They were getting a little toastied.

Chicken done – Finally, at 7:15. If the glaze had been put on about 15 minutes before and reglazed a few times, I think the color might have changed. The skin was browned and a rather more golden brown than usual. The stuffing was the usual shape of the body cavity, less the piece that I scooped out to have right away. The dark meat was moist and quite tender. In fact one of the legs was falling away from the body. Tie, maybe? The white meat was a touch dry, but tasty. We might start it breast up and flip at about 2 1/2 hours, since that’s the orientation to turn it into a dragon, anyway.

65. Stuffed chicken. (from Le Viandier de Tallivent)

Take your chickens, cut their throats, scald and pluck them, and make sure that the skin is sound and whole. Do not refresh it in water. Take a pipe of straw or other material, insert it between the skin and the flesh, inflate the skin, slit it between the shoulders without making too large a hole, and leave attached to the skin the thighs, feet, wings, and neck including the head.

To make the stuffing, take raw mutton, veal, pork and pullet dark meat, chop them all together, and crush them in a mortar with some raw eggs, good harvest cheese, good Spice Powder, just a bit of saffron, and salt to taste. Fill your chickens and restitch the hole. From the rest of your stuffing make quenelles shaped like cakes of woad. Cook them in beef broth and boiling water with plenty of saffron. Make sure that they do not boil so vigorously that they fall apart.

Spit your chickens and quenelles on a very thick [thin?] iron spit. Glaze them with green or yellow. For the yellow glaze, take plenty of egg yolks, beat them well with a bit of saffron, and put the glaze on a plate or other dish. If you wish green glaze, crush greens with the eggs. After your chicken and quenelles are cooked, put the spit on the dish where the glaze is, throw the glaze all over, and put it back on the fire until the glaze sets. Do this two or three times. Make sure that the fire is not so big that the glaze burns.

Dragon Discussion – It’s been Anja’s intent to turn this dish into a dragon subtlety.

The idea is to turn the chicken into a dragon with a tail of carrot wrapped in spinach, a neck, ditto, and a brussel sprout head with little spikes of carrot stuck into the sprout for those eyebrow spines. We want to put beet spines down its back, probably held on with toothpicks and wings of bok choy.

It was suggested that we model a dragon head out of spam, but that’s not a period product and ew….

Although that triggered off a description of a castle subtlety that was done for a competition at one point. Two cans of spam. One was sliced into 4 longways pieces for walls and carved to look like “stones”. The other was sliced across into 3 towers. The creator used hard-boiled eggs for rocks, parsley for trees and pickled beet slices for the tower tops. It was cute to see this big fighter type getting all embarrassed being swarmed by the cute girls….

Miscellaneous pix

Last weekend (12/7-9)

Prague

More

Music – Medieval Carols – A Holy Night (Album)

Medieval Carols – Middle Ages Christmas (Album)

1. Hodie Christus Natus Est
2. O Nobilis Nativitas/O Mira Dei/O Decus Virgineum/Apparuit
3. Lux De Luce
4. Alleluya: A Nywe Werke
5. Verbum Supernum Prodiens
6. Balaam De Quo Vaticinans
7. Ave Maria
8. Gabriel, Fram Heven-King
9. Lullay: I Saw A Swete Semly Syght
10. Prolis Eterne Genitor/Psallat Mater Gracie/[Pes]
11. Vox Clara, Ecce, Intonat
12. De Supernis Sedibus
13. Omnes De Saba
14. Puellare Gremium/Purissima Mater/[Pes]
15. Lullay, Lullay: Als I Lay On Yoolis Night
16. Tria Sunt Munera
17. Orto Sole Serene/Origo Viri/Virga Lesse/[Tenor]
18. Peperit Virgo
19. Ecce Quod Natura
20. A Solis Ortus Cardine
21. Ther Is No Rose Of Swych Vertu
22. Videntes Stellam
23. Nowel: Owt Of Your Slepe Aryse

An Article by Suvia (Althea Turner Rizzo) posted on 12/12/18 on Facebook 

Documentation is as documentation does.

We have so many fine artisans in the Summits who bring such beauty to life. You work in so many mediums, you produce such lovely things that add to the mediaeval flavor of this game we play. As a Laurel, I look forward to having many of you sit in council someday.
I‘m going to share a secret with you. (Don’t tell the other Laurels that I told you this ☺ ) When we discuss candidates in council, we don’t always know your work very well. We may have seen some really cool thing you made, but we don’t really know how you made it, or if you have a body of work that we can ogle and admire. This is where the dreaded D-word comes in.

Documentation.

Documentation doesn’t mean that you need to submit a doctoral dissertation. Really. While An Tir is blessed with a fairly high number of Ph.Ds. in the Laurel Council, we aren’t looking for dissertations, unless that IS your jam. Here’s a perspective that I hope helps you understand why we do need some documentation, though.

Consider the knightly path. Along the way you are tested by training and competing and learning and exchanging blows with knights. By the time you are brought up in council, you have years of whacky-whacky under your squire’s belt and most knights will have fought you at least once. They will know you by word fame and right of arms.

Consider the pelican path. By the time you are brought up in council, you will have years of service under your belt. You will have stewarded events and submitted the reports to prove it. You will have held office and you will have submitted the reports to prove it. You will have sat gate, washed dishes, planned feasts, and served on retinue. These things are known. There are reports to prove it.

Consider the laurel path. You work in your workroom or studio or study. Your work is mostly hidden, we don’t see the years of quiet work that leads to mastery. Occasionally, someone may see your pretty shiny thing and know that is pretty and shiny. But they don’t necessarily know if it is medieval. Your pretty shiny thing lacks context much like looted archaeological finds lack context. Your documentation, your provenance gives context to your pretty shiny object. It tells us the medieval-ness of your thing.

Documentation is as documentation does. It tells the story of your pretty shiny thing. Documentation can take many forms. It can be a formal research paper designed to stir the loins of the most hardened and jaded academic. It could be an 8th grade research paper. It could be a series of blog posts that show the in-progress making of your pretty shiny thing. It could be a series of Facebook live videos in a group where you discuss how you made the pretty shiny thing and why it is, or is not, medieval. It could be a video of you teaching a class and then shared online. It could be a geek-out with your fellow woozle-nerds at an event.

Documentation can be boiled down to four concepts:
• What are your sources?
• How did you make it?
• What was your thought process?
• Why is it medieval?

The medium of the documentation doesn’t matter. Sometimes your documentation is your shiny pretty object. I was “laurelled” for research into the Merovingian material culture, not for making pretty shiny objects. The Laurel council needs to be able to put your art into context. Please make our jobs easier by providing information about your body of work.

We want you to join us on the council. We need context. So post videos, do blog posts, teach classes, do geek-ins. Go forth and art the eff out of it. Then tells us about it. Tell us ALLLLL about it. 🙂

Links

• The British Bake Off That’s Resurrecting a Forgotten Medieval Cake – https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-bake-off
• If “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” were a serious film – https://www.wimp.com/if-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-were-a-serious-film/
• Historical Accuracy at What Price? – https://www.properlydressed.co.uk/blog/2018/12/7/how-accurate-is-historically-accurate
• 16 of the Most Interesting Ancient Board and Dice Games – https://www.livescience.com/64266-ancient-board-games.html
• A beer brewed from an old Tasmanian shipwreck – http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181206-a-beer-brewed-from-an-old-tasmanian-shipwreck
• Scientists Have Determined The Worst Year to Be Alive in Human History – https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-determined-the-worst-year-in-human-history

Updated Pages

Fig Sap Rennet Cheese Experiments – Anja – https://wp.me/P8ngGY-1F9

Funnies 

Loren, Anja, Gudrun, Amor, Gogor, Herb Bunch (1), Sasha

Largesse Item Count – (includes gifts, prizes, auction items, etc.)

• ASXLVII = 24
• ASXLVIII = 88
• ASXLIX = 794
• ASL = 2138
• ASLI = 731
• ASLII = 304
• ASLIII – 82 plus 25 pouches for block-printing, 7 bookmarkers, 25 bottles of gall ink, 25 unfinished pincushions, 1 sewing kit (except for bone needle), varnished stuff (124)
• Total as a Household = 3766 handed off

In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 12/7/18 and published 12/17/18 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 12/17/18