House Capuchin 3

Big week of cookery for a feast makes for a long post with lots of pix! Most of the regular sections have gotten eaten by Feast prep. ..and yes, like last week, a lot is in first person because I’m the only one writing except for personal blurbs…. Same problems with pix up until Feast Day and at the current time only pix of the dishes during the day and the soup course exist. I’ve put in pix of some of the dishes from previous feasts. We’ll be adding more pix as time goes on, since several other folks

took pictures but haven’t gotten ’em to me, yet. The whole feast report, plus the final copy of the cookbook will appear on this page. https://wp.me/P8ngGY-Hi , but right now, it’s not quite finished! Photos courtesy of Louisa and Amy!

After all the stuff from the feast is put away we’ll be going on with regular meeting nights and times.

• 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. THere’s likely to be on this Saturday, 2/24 at around 2pm. We’ll be making tvarog again.
• Next Potluck – 3/18

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 – Finding cooking equipment, making sure tablecloths are laundered, packing utensils, finding CD’s and other music, asking folks for help on specific jobs for the feast and “does-anyone-have?”. It takes a lot of time! I sit and sew when I’m talking to someone in the shop, so the kiss-lock pouches are steadily progressing.

Cookery – Monday

Loren did a bread loaf in the afternoon, then set up a kolache dough…or started to and then got sidetracked. He was pulling out the milk from the shopping trip to add it and discovered that one of the jugs was leaking. Oi!

I had gotten the failed rye bread made into crumbs by that point and the beets ready to cook, but still needed a basket that I couldn’t reach to dry the crumbs in and to have the beets rinsed so they could cook in the pickling broth on the heat…and I couldn’t get to the sink.

I got the garlic cheese wrapped properly so it will “hold” until the feast and then got bad news on the caviar. The place I was sourcing it from didn’t tell me until this day that they didn’t have any and wouldn’t until May! That’s really not good business. We might end up replacing that course with pickled herring and the garlic cheese with the rye rolls and maybe the potted cheese, which still needed to be made at that point.

So the beets went into the broth and then the crumbs into the drying basket which is up on the fridge, now. Loren had the dough going. We have a class on Monday nights that dug right into the time when I needed to be forming kolacky, but Loren got the dough together and I filled them after class and we took ’em home to bake. He finished up the pickled eggs while class was going on, and they still needed to go to the pickle fridge, but were fine where they were until morning.

We had two trays of makovny kolacky (poppyseed buns) to bake when we got home, so Loren went upstairs to do that and I worked on more paperwork. Eventually, they were all ziplocked and in the freezer.

Cookery – Tuesday

I got several  “set-ups” done. Those are things like the mushroom & onion for the beef getting prepped into jars, (leaving the cans to form the schiz), the cherry juice for the cherry tea spiced and sugared, rummy cherry batch set up….that kind of thing. Loren did dishes, pulled things down for me and put things away. I got a garlic butter done first, then an herb and onion butter. That one had onion, basil, oregano, thyme and sage. After that I pulled the pickle fridge stuff out of the shop fridge so that Loren could take it home and put it away and I’d have room to put more stuff in!

Next was a recipe of schiz. That’s the Italian cheese I’ve been making that fries up well. I had that heating by 10:30. It takes a long time of cooking to get it right. It takes over an hour of heating, standing, re-heating and draining, then molding the cheese, too. By 1am that was draining and I was making ricotta with what was left in the pot. By 2 the ricotta was draining.

The tvarog took preparation, mostly. It was set over the heater at 2:3am to culture overnight. I also managed to get the whey taken care of and squeezed the schiz one more time before putting it into the fridge.

Cookery – Wednesday

First up was to unmold the schiz and get that put by. Loren went out to get milk for another batch since the heater had turned off and the tvarog wasn’t ready to cook. We discovered that the heater kept flipping the power bar. He scrubbed molds for the schiz and pots and knives so I could cook, while I was setting up the sweet/sour cabbage. That took awhile to cook so I sorted clean stuff and checked on what was where in the fridge. I was still trying to find out whether the lentil pottage that I remembered setting by in the freezer awhile back was still around….but couldn’t dig deep enough. I also chopped the extra red cabbage (mostly the core and about 1/2 cup of other bits to add to the borscht.

At about 7:45 Tempus headed for Corvallis to pick up Jay’s friend. Around 9pm I had gotten the cabbage into the canning jars and was starting the holoubky filling when the breaker flipped! I had turned off the hot plate under the onions, I thought, but it was still plugged in and when I went to cook the barley in the nuker, everything flipped. <sigh> …and that was that for a couple of hours.

So that all got finished by about 1am…..

Cookery – Thursday

I got the tvarog started heating since the culture finally worked. I was sleepy enough that Tempus tended it for me while I got a short nap. Two hours of cooking and the tvarog still wasn’t done! It still wasn’t up to temperature and it took forever to try to get it there, and then it drained for hours. Not quite sure why. This one just didn’t work like the others….

Stella came in and dropped off her mustard for the feast. She’s not going to be able to make it. Tempus had a pea flour bread ready so he headed back to the house with it to bake and check through the freezer.

When we left the shop, late, the cheese was still dripping…wow… so we hung it up and left it overnight. Tempus had done a pea flour bread and a barley bread during the day.

Sewing Time – Thursday – …Was just Anja. One kiss-lock pouch done and the lining started for another of the cut-out-and-covers-sewn ones.

Cookery – Friday

The tvarog was finally done dripping so it went into the fridge right away when we got in, durin the morning. Loren took off to do the last of the feast shopping (I hope it’s done!) around 2pm.

I went into the back and pulled the jam ingredients out and got those done after That was 3 batches of jam from the fruit picked last summer: blackberry, huckleberry and salal. The blackberry got a touch of cinnamon, the huckles stood on their own merits and the salal got ginger, cardamom and nutmeg. …although part of the salal jam took flying lessons when Frankenhand took over to juggle the cook pot…. Luckily it wasn’t a whole lot and I have about 3/4 of a pint.

Loren got back around 6pm, did some cleaning up, started a babovka dough and pork chops for supper. I bustled back and forth sorting things into the totes that we’re going to use on Sunday.

I got the asparagus pickle made and sorted out some things in the fridge so that they were findable. I started to do the raisin wine for the beet, leek and onion salad and discovered that what Loren thought were raisins were dried cherries. Hmm… choice was between figs or dates, so he went to the store…. he had to get the pickled herring, anyway. (…and then we found the raisins on Saturday, but it was too late by then….)

So tvarog and caraway tvarog got put together, then the tvarog filling for kolache and put by. The raisin wine got set up to “cook”. Next was the cherry babovky and the broth. We had to take the babovky home to bake so Loren did those (it took until 4am!) while I worked on some of the lists and the broth was in a slowcooker overnight.

Cookery – Saturday

Getting hit, walking in the door, by a blast of delicious scent from the chicken broth was lovely! I’m glad I set that going overnight. So, first was to strain and set the broth aside to de-grease. Well…. to be honest, the *first* thing was to get some dishes done so that could happen! 🙂 Most was bottled and set with other jars of the same size in a divided box in the fridge.

I got the raisin wine decanted and in the cookpot, and the raisins into the tvarog filling and went to set up the beet, leek and onion salad, which was going to take careful tending so it didn’t go funky. …and then that was done… and then I found out that I forgot the leeks! 🙂 Oi… So that got done.

By then Loren was doing rye bread and setting up one of plain wheat and eggs were boiling. Leslie stopped to drop off some equipment and we chatted for a few and then got going on the gutting of the freezer.

Gudrun and Casey arrived and then Toni stopped by for a bit, dropping off another breadmaker and pot and stuff. Toni got to chat for a bit and then headed home. Gudrun and Casey went to get the pickled herring at Rays’ while Loren set up another kolach dough.

I loaded the ice chests that were to go with us right off the bat. After that we loaded up their car, then loaded down the front of the shop with the various boxes of SCA stuff that will come in a 2nd load (hopefully not a 3rd). They headed out to find supper while Tempus and I finished dealing with hardboiled eggs, kolac and such, then loaded our car. Dang, that takes awhile…

The kolacky still needed to be baked when we got home, so Loren headed upstairs to do that, while I finished up paperwork and sorting out what was where.

Cookery – Sunday

I was up early, running lists through my head. Loren and I got out to the hall and found snow on the ground! It was hailing on us all day, alternately with snow, and then with sleet in the evening. Isabeau hit snow in philomath/

It was a good thing that I built in a lot of wiggle room in the schedule, ‘coz it was 11am before everything got to the hall and the pickle fridge was yet to get unloaded.

While I was waiting for the 2nd load of stuff I started to get the beverages set up, but I was really wondering where Gudrun and Casey were, since they had the next set of things to do. I sat with my sewing, while waiting and then got the “solar” set up with the balls project.

 I got out into the kitchen, starting the cooking, and Gudrun and Casey started doing food labels and then tags. After that they put up the menu and did tableclothes and such.

I went back to the shop to get the next load, since the fridge needed to be gutted, and then came back, watching hail bouncing off the car windows. We got a lot of giggles out of the hail coming down out of a clear blue sky.

By 10am the rest of the crew was starting to arrive, which meant getting the hall into shape. By 12:30 guests were coming in to be greeted with bread, pickles and cheese already on the table.

The feasting really started a bit after 1pm. I was making substitutes as we went because of things that hadn’t arrived, yet. Eventually the contents of the pickle fridge got to the hall.

Day foods included not only breads, cheeses and pickles, but some hot dishes. The fried cheese and cabbage was a hit. The hot crab wasn’t quite as popular as the last time I made it. But people got a kick out of the really different dishes that we had.

Several people helped out with some of the “warm body” jobs in the kitchen, setting up dumpling dough, defrosting soups and the like while I got some of the concocting of sauces and such done.

Loren got music going, the recording of the music from the time of Charles IV, and a couple by the Baltimore Consort. I took a couple of cookery breaks during the day, taking time to chat with people, and during one of those breaks I did a couple of stories. One was the “Old Soldier” and the other “Axe Soup”, one of the Hloupy Honza series. I also picked up my sewing during another of those.

There was a wide variety of people there: House members, both from the local area and the ones from inland who brought coworkers, one of whom had played with the SCA in Atlantia. There were local people, some from my classes at the shop and some who had heard me blathering about the feast and asked to come. There were also SCA folks from the Valley, who play with the House every so often. Loren’s and my landlady, who used to do Ren Fairs in SoCal also came and we seated her at the head table with us.

Some of the day foods got raves and a lot got compliments. The garlic butter and the herb and onion butter got mowwed on (the latter by Jay and Josh) and the pickles were “it” as far as one lady was concerned. The fried cheese and sauerkraut was a definite hit. The breads went away pretty fast, too.

Then I got back into the kitchen for setting up the feast proper. The hall got re-set and the food cart loaded with the crocks. We had Hlebova Polevka (bread soup), Borscht, čočky (lentil soup) and an oat and greens pottage. The soups ran late, lack of communication on getting started, there.

…and then the rush was on. We only did 4 of the 5 main dishes, but nobody cared, and by the 4th dish everyone was stuffed. 🙂 Most of the foods worked very well, although we missed a couple of things in the rush to get everyone fed. I undercooked one set of dumplings, but the rest were fine. …and we decided at the last minute to not do the rice and barley, which was a good call.

The sweets went over well. Gudrun and Casey’s Shrewsbury Cakes were good and the babovky and kolacky were tasty. …..and then people talked and ate and picked at leftovers, starting to head out around 8pm.

Looks like we had 23 total, although a couple left before the feast  ‘coz of work, and several came late!

Gudrun/Casey took off early so they coull get home before weather turned vile, but they had been working hard all day. Jay and his buddy Josh did a lot of the hall sort and sweep up and left-over eating. Isabeau, Toni, Lezlie and Louisa did all the kitchen cleanup!

They kept telling me to sit down and stay off my feet. I was limping pretty badly by then, but I had to get the stuff from the fridge and freezer and make sure things got sorted as best we could. Loren ran back and forth with carloads of equipment and food and such.

One by one folks headed out. Louisa, unfortunately, hit some black ice about a mile from where she was planning to stay 360’ed into the guardrail and ended up spending the night in the Walmart parking lot! She and her pup are both fine, but the van has cosmetic damage and something wonky in the electricals.

Isabeau went home with Toni to stay overnight before heading back to Albany, and Lezlie took Jay and Josh home after we had loaded up the last of the equipment and closed up the hall. Nobody had any other road problems.

I was really cold. We had turned off the heaters in the hall after folks left and I just chilled right through. I didn’t really feel like I had thawed out until hours after I crawled into bed.

So this week we’re putting away and sorting out, mostly. There’s a lot of the equipment that’s already done, but several totes yet to go.

Isabeau’s take on the feast

The feast was amazing in spite of the bi-polar weather.
Several visitors attended and were truly awed at the array of delightful dishes.
Many members of the household were in attendance and were thrilled with the menu choices. Anja outdid herself.
Laughter and merriment abounded.

Feast Day – Hall Pix – Only two at present, although there were some taken.

Feast Day – Food Pix

Day foods

Feast Day – Feast food Pix – Only soups at the moment, but there are supposed to be some other ones out there.

Final Feast Menu – (“NS” means “not served”, “NM” means, “not made”)

Day – On the table full time – Breads/butters/jams – Varieties rotate through as baskets/containers empty. (breads: wheat, oat, barley, pea flour, rye/caraway) (butters: regular, garlic, herb & onion) (jams: salal, blackberry, huckleberry)

• Noon – Garlic cheese, salted tvarog, caraway tvarog and pickled (NS) and potted cheese (NS).
• 1pm – Hot crab and bread
• 2pm –Fried cheese, & fried sauerkraut with black bread and pickled mushrooms
• 3pm – Pickled Herring with caraway rye and hard-boiled and pickled eggs.
• 4pm – Pickled sausage and variety pickles

4:30pm Hall re-set

5pm – 1^st course

• Borscht for the horde (both “hard” and “soft”(NM))
• Bread/Cheese Soup – Chlebova Polevka
• Onion/Cabbage/Leek Pottage
• Lentil pottage
• Breads
• Sauces offered for dipping – Spenat, Lentil, Mushroom, Mushroom Catsup, Dill (NM), beef/Wine (from roast)

5:30pm – Main course – Beef cooked in wine with onions/mushrooms, Caraway barley with onions (NM), Beet, Leek and Onion salad

5:45pm – Main course – Chicken Stew (NS) as a subtlety with the pheasant pelt and “made” head
Baked fowl (Game Hen) (NM)

6pm – Main course – Caraway pork roast with brined apples (NS), Bread Dumplings with gravy/sauces

6:15pm- Main course – Baked salmon with honey carrots (NM), saffron rice (NM) Sweet/Sour cabbage

6:30 – Main course – Holoubky w/egg dumplings (NM) in beef broth

Sweets, afters – 6:45pm

• Babovka
• Kolacky
• Brandied cherries
• Shrewsbury cakes
• Rohlicki (NM)
• Zabi Hyby NM)

Drinkables

• Czeminga – Hydromel (NM)
• Mint water
• hot mint tea
• Hot chai (NM)
• Cherry Tea (NS)
• Hot coffee

Music

Medieval Music Banquet hosted by St George’s Canzona – EGMusic Classic – Published on May 27, 2017

 Álbum: A Medieval Banquet hosted by St. George’s Canzona Artista: St. George’s Canzona; Directd by John Sothcott