So, a lot of cookery went on this week. We have a final menu for the Winter Feast and the last trial run dishes got served on Sunday for the potluck. We’ve done enough of the “alternate grain” breads now to set up a page for those which should start happening this week. Brined apples are going and we have worked out an alternative if they don’t turn out as planned.
Yes, we had a good potluck on Sunday. We may put them off to the later time more often, since it’s easier on everyone’s schedules. Next one is schedule for 1/21/
So, this week all of the regular meetings are planned. We have no clue if anyone will show up for Project Day since it’s Christmas eve. We’ll see.
- Sewing Night – At Ancient Light, Thursdays, 6-8pm
-
Caraway Rye loaf 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 – 1/21
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
Loren decided to get a jump on this week’s food things by making a loaf of rye bread Sunday evening after Anja got the report out. It was solid rye, so it didn’t rise the way he expected and was more of a batter than a bread dough…and then it scorched. Anja wanted it for the bread soup, so that was perfect. It had a wonderful flavor and scent. (more on bread soup below….)
On Monday the mushrooms were dry, so they got put away.
Cookery
Test run on pork roasts on Monday. 1 peeled and quartered onion, 2 1/2 pound boneless butt, 1/4 cup caraway, 1/2 cup water, sprinkle well with salt. Crockpot at 4pm on high. Flipped at 6pm. Perfect at 10pm. I mean perfect as in it’s the consistency of butter…. Wow…. At a lot of this at the potluck
On Friday, we made the starter for the brined apples. Pretty simple. 1 cup flour, 1 cup warm water, 1 tsp yeast, mix well. It needed to sit overnight. Saturday morning we harvested mint, thyme, lemon thyme and a few last raspberries to go with the apples. Loren got the apples and mint washed and then Anja assembled the box. She used a Tupperware box because we didn’t have a big enough jar. Next was the broth, which was: 4 tablespoons rye flour, ½ tablespoon salt, ½ cup honey boiled together and left to cool. 2 tablespoons of the starter were added and then the whole poured over the apples. Yes, we used a Tupperware box. That’s not usually recommended. … On Sunday the apples were under pressure and were burped at 11, 2, 3 and….
Sewing Time – Thursday – Anja finally finished an embroidered band that she’s been working on since 1996, what with it and the off-brand/off-color floss that she used taking turns hiding themselves when she was looking for them, it only happened this week…. minus parts of one motif…. she’s out of floss! The band is about 36 inches long, so she’s looking for ideas on how/where to use it. Amy has more of the yarn for the lucet cords for the feast, so those are up and running again.
Sewing Time – Saturday – Was just Anja, so she worked on a new pouch with a snap top, trying to sort out the pattern….
Herb Bunch was all the brined apples above. …oh, and “ends” of turnips, carrots and sprouted garlics are getting planted in the buckets as we go. We have some greens, but most are being saved for the feast.
Project Day – The shop smelled delicious as we were walking in and that was just from the chicken broth that was going all night. We got it strained and set aside to cool. The brined apples were under pressure, at least a little, but dunno about that starter…. We fed it in the morning and hopefully, that will get it going again.
Amy and Stella both came in between 1 and 2pm. Amy needed to study at the library and told us that she has two more lucet cords done. Stella was going to a concert (Wind and Waves doing medieval recorder music), but she offered to pick up Jay on the way back and we decided to put the potluck off until 5pm, so everyone could get back. So, cookery and cleanery <grin> happened during the afternoon. It gave Loren and Anja a little time to get ahead of some of the clean-up at least, and Anja got a few licks in on the pouch that she’s doing. Loren started the caraway-rye for the feast at a bit after 2pm.
The chicken stew got the chicken and veg from the broth added to it and then it was set to heat back up. Apple got cooked. It’s a remnant of just one of the apples that went into the brine and a trial run of a dish that has no recipe, just a description of apples cooked with honey and then cream put on top. Then pecans got started…, then the fennel got set up. …and then the broth for the bread soup. At which point first Amy came in and then Stella with Jay. Anja was still working on the bread soup for the first 20 minutes or so, and then afterwards, the fennel, which mostly just needed to stew.
We ate from 5pm to 6:30. 🙂 Stuffed people…. By 7pm Anja and Loren were putting away leftovers. Everyone had headed out.
Potluck Menu
- Caraway Pork Roast – Pork butt, salt, caraway, onion
- Bread/Cheese soup – Chicken broth (celery, herbs, garlics, salt) rye bread crumbs, aged cheddar
- Vegetables stewed with chicken – brussels sprouts (leaves and stem) celery, carrot, turnip, misc herbs, salt, onion, dill
- Bacon blue butter – butter, bacon, blue cheese
- Caraway Rye Bread (didn’t get finished until after the feast)
- Barley Bread
- Apples with honey and cream – (just that)
- Fennel stewed in wine (same as last week)
- Spiced pecans (sugar, egg white, pecans, nutmeg) (didn’t get finished until after the feast) (will put recipe in newsletter next week)
- White cheddar (no pic)
- Mango spears (no pic)
- Lemon pound cake
- Clover rolls (no pic)
Other dishes
Vegetables stewed with chicken – brussels sprouts (leaves and stem) celery, beet tops, carrot, turnip, misc herbs, salt, onion, dill, turnip, parsnip, chicken – This was actually two batches, a bunch of cut-up veg bits from other cookery early in the week, with two chicken breasts added and water to cover, cooked overnight in the crockpot and put by. A 2nd batch which was 3-4 pints of water, 3 chicken breasts and 1/2 a bunch of celery, cooked overnight on Saturday. When the latter was strained on Sunday, the broth went into two quart jars and the “bottom bits” were another cup that got added to the bread soup. The “strainings” got added to the stew with dill and a little too much salt. Two of the chicken breasts were chopped and put by separately, since there was really too much meat for the stew!
Cheese Soup – Loren and Anja watched a Townsend’s video about a cheese soup, made from a bread soup base (in his case, pancotto) and went, “Ooh!”. Bread soups are huge in Central European cookery, so we decided to try this simple one, even if his recipe is 1755. Video is below…. the one problem with is is that the recipe wasn’t given for the bread soup base, so Anja tracked down this recipe (Italian….) https://food52.com/recipes/33081-pancotto-tuscan-bread-soup to give her an idea of where to start, even though she had watched her grandmother making it.
…and we finally tracked down the period recipe that Anja was certain was there. http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec15.htm
Ok, 1/2 pound of bread crumbs to 4 cups of broth, a bit of salt and some herbs….then add the grated aged cheddar cheese, just long enough before serving to let it all melt.
Loren made the rye bread Sunday night and grated it on Friday, so to “stale” the crumbs.
Anja made broth from chicken, celery and garlic in a crockpot over Saturday night.
Sunday morning she strained the broth and set it aside to start cooking at about 4:30, after the cheese was grated.
Cheese Rye Bread Soup
- 2 ½ cups rye bread grated to crumbs and dried over a couple of days, at least (this is from loaf above)
- 4 cups chicken broth
- the “bottom bits” from the straining in about 1 cup liquid
- 1 egg yolk
- Small shallot
- Thyme (3 springs)
- Oregano (5 sprigs)
- Basil (1 sprig)
- ½ pound aged cheddar cheese
- Starting from cold broth, put in soup pot.
- Whisk in “strainings” (small bits) from what settled when you made the broth.
- Whisk in egg yolk.
- Heat to boiling, whisking occasionally.
- Once it boils, turn to medium and simmer until shallots are no longer crunchy.
- Add bread crumbs and stirring at least once each minute, let cook until bread is softened and mostly broken up.
- Divide grated cheese into 4 batches, and add to soup 1 batch at a time, making sure each is stirred and melted before adding the next.
- Serve immediately or this will “hold” in a crockpot on low for quite some time.
- Refrigerate leftovers and use within a day or two. Reheat in the microwave.
Music
Links
Leather tooling examples links:
- http://www.larsdatter.com/boxes-leather.htm
- http://www.larsdatter.com/cases.htm
- http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/AY17-16-Leather-and-leatherworking.pdf
- http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/leather/plwt.html
Funnies
Loren, Anja, Amy, Stella, Jay
Largesse Item Count – (includes gifts, prizes, auction items, etc.)
-
- ASXLVII = 24
- ASXLVIII = 88
- ASXLIX = 794
- ASL = 2138
- ASLI = 731
- ASLII = 185+70=255 plus 25 pouches for block-printing, 14 (plus 26 unfinished)
- except for bone needles), varnished stuff (124)
Total as a Household = 3614 handed off
In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 12/4/17 & published ??/??/17 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 12/17/17
Mostly we’ve been working on foodly things this week, (rabbit pie, tvarog, mushroom catsup, pickles, fennel) but progress was made on some small sewing projects and a big chunk of largesse went out. Feast planning is still happening and we’ll be getting invites out over the next couple of weeks. Want to come? Let us know. You have to be invited to this feast, since there’s no site fee and seating is limited, but there’s lots of room!
Early Week
Loren ran down to the shop, grabbed the pie and got it into the oven when he got back. He went up to check on the pie at about 3:50 and didn’t come back with it until 4:40, but the pie was done and we headed out as quickly as we could.
We had a beautiful drive. The sun had set before we left the shop, but the colors of the sea and sky were amazing, shading from gold and metallic pale blue through orange and slate blue to deep red and a navy blue so dark that it was nearly black. One of the last colors before things started to grey out was a skinny band of sky, right on the horizon, that was the exact color of a blood orange.
Heceta Lighthouse was shining, the beam sweeping over the trees as we went past and on the mist rising from the ocean. We went on our way, talking cookery, working out a recipe for baked beans that would suit the both of us among other things.
I got confused by the drydocks and lights of Reedsport, thinking we were already in North Bend, when we were just going into Garibaldi, but we got to the potluck site just before 7pm.
We had a good time seeing folks that we know, talking stitchery and Investiture, eating some yum food and generally visiting. I had managed to forget my embroidery tin somehow, so spent the time sewing, or trying to. I didn’t have anything easy to work on, so didn’t accomplish much. We weren’t there very long since the gathering broke up at 8pm and we headed home.
Orion was up and bright as we left North Bend. I dozed off for awhile, but woke as we got to Reedsport where we grabbed a couple of hamburgers, since there hadn’t been a lot that I could eat at the potluck. The Moon was up, a thoroughly nibbled wheel of cheese, but bright as bright. The rest of the way home I watched for Her light on Woahink Lake, the Siletz River, Sutter Lake, 10 mile Creek, Big Creek and the Alsea. Beautiful Moon Paths! The ocean was black, but the skyglow showed the horizon line. As the Moon rose higher, the shadows from the Coast Range over the ocean grew shorter, but it was only just as we were getting home that the ocean started to brighten up. We stopped to drop stuff off into the fridge at the shop and were home by 10:30.
Sewing Time – Thursday – Amy was here and we caught up on what needs to be done before the feast.
Mushroom Catsup – This is a product of the 18th century, not period, at least as far as the name. The methods all make sense for a period sauce, though, so we decided to try it after watching yet another Townsend’s video (link below). This was started Saturday evening with two pounds of mushrooms, chopped up, two Tbsp of salt and several bay leaves. It was left to sit overnight and reduced the volume by 1/3 by morning. The crockpot had been full to the lid!
This week went sideways since Anja got sick and she runs most of the workshops. A few things happened, anyway and Project Day was normal. Corvaria did the Bend Christmas Parade, which is something we’ve talked about here, but have never managed to do.
Early Week
Herb Bunch – The workshop didn’t happen this week, but that doesn’t mean that herbs didn’t… 🙂 Anja was nabbing pictures and this interesting lichen showed up.
Due to the holiday, most of the meetings didn’t happen this week. We did go to Adiantum for their A&S Night and some things got accomplished on Project Day.
Adiantum A&S – Every other Tuesday in Adiantum is an A&S night. We try to go when we can. This time we had two goals, one was to get a fur collar to Louisa, the other was to get the pickles and cheeses taste-tested. We offered Stella a couple of bribes to do the driving, plus gas money. One of the bribes was that Alan was going to bring his lyres and the other was that we’d love to listen to her playing and singing. We ended up going 1 of 2 in both cases! In the flurry of getting out the door, the bag with the collar tipped over and didn’t make it into the car. Alan didn’t make it to the A&S night, either! …but the music was well-received and Stella got to talk to a lot of folks.
The taste-tasting was pretty good, too. We had for pickles: red cabbage (not as good) green cabbage (Yums all ’round), mushrooms and onions (too strong for 1 of 6), wine-pickled mushrooms (too loud for 1/2, but rinsed off, were pretty good) pearl onions (if you like ’em at all, you like these) and carrots (yums, again), pickled walnuts. Then there were the two cheeses, potted and tvarog, which everyone loved, unreservedly, and an apricot babovka, ditto, with the reservation that it was dry…which it is, it’s a characteristic, and why it’s usually eaten with coffee.
Cookery – Was mostly holiday stuff this week, but we had a bunch of taste-testing happen all week. Some was at Adiantum A&S (above), some was on Thanksgiving (general yums and “omgs-gimmee” on a bacon and blue cheese butter and a couple were random people wandering through when we were eating and offered them some, which responses were all “Yum! How’d you make those?”
Sewing Time – None happened this week, so I nabbed a cool idea to show you from 
Poundshop e-reader cover, and covere
MANNFALL is a new, educational-experimental concept of early medieval events that aims to a more intensive and progressive reenactment. Every event will be held
Players had to protect the caravan on the way to Křivoklát castle. During the journey, they all had to sleep in the nature, protect themself from bandits and cross the river. Finally, players bound hands of the bandits and brought them to the castle. Then the game was over, and a banquet was held. All participants enjoyed the event, even though it was a very hard lesson. The total distance was 
more than 28 km, with food, woolen blankets and wargear. The water was drunk from wells and streams. What makes Mannfall special is the fact it is not just a hike, but there was also fight. Participants were members of 8 different groups from 3 countries, so the event had a positive impact on the community in our republics. Enjoy the pictures and feel free to leave a comment below or share. Photos by Michaela Hermanová (
A link to an article about a volcanic eruption in 1362 in Iceland and it’s aftereffects – 
Oh, we had another quiet week, with lots of progress on projects, but not a lot to show in the way of pictures and things… We do finally have a stack of waxed food covers again, and we had a *great* potluck! Thanks to all who came …and wow…. Brandon and his family drove over 5 hours to get here! Luckily they had planned to stay the night, locally, rather than braving the weather. They’re hoping to be back for the February Winter Feast.
On Saturday the pies got made and baked and Loren used some of the whey for the feast bread along with doing pickles in Herbs Workshop.
Sad face…. The number of active members of the House is at an all-time low. We’re picking up people who are non-SCA at a lot of the workshops, but there are only a handful of us, now. We’re still getting things done!
Potluck is this coming Sunday! With any luck we’ll have rabbit pie for a main dish, plus the pickles and babovka that we’ve gotten made. Everyone is welcome, just bring a dish that serves 6-8 and your feast gear. We *try* to be in garb, but it doesn’t always happen, since Anja and Loren’s shop is open during the potluck time. All meetings this week 
are at the regular times.
Candied Borage Flowers
It’s been pretty slow this week, but lots of us are very busy with school and work. This week’s big deal was the trials runs on the cheese filling for babovka. We already know that the poppyseed will work (it was tried on kolache for a feast several years ago) but needed to know if the cultured milk cheese (tvarog) would work and then also to try the babovka dough recipe in the bread maker. All of that is below, along with some stitchery and herbs.
Sewing Time – Thursday – One of our sewing boxes went to Martinmas as a fund-raiser. It’s the hexagonal one with the red top seen in previous pix. We’re almost to the bottom of that stack. No one was here for the actual time, but Anja worked on the kneeler piece and got it finished.
Herb Bunch
We don’t have nearly as many active members as we did for awhile, so projects are going slowly and we’re still sorting out from various events. This week’s meetings are at the normal times.
Sewing Time – Thursday – Amy, Loren and Anja were there. Amy had made a lot of progress on the lucet cords for the feast necklaces. Anja worked on her kneeler piece, and then finished it later that night. It still needed to be blocked, though.
I had a fun day! We were up *way* early for us and at the shop by 7:30. I got dressed in my garb and had coffee and before I was done Amy got here, we loaded the car and headed out. We had a smooth drive to Veneta, although the directions were awful. Google maps’ fault! We got to the site in time for lunch and I got to talk to friends and work on my embroidery all afternoon!
During the day I got a long chance to sit and food geek at Yseult and to chat with Vesta, Christina, Temperance and a few other people. My brother Iurii was sitting gate, so we didn’t have a lot of time together. Both lunch and supper were tasty, although we headed home before Court started.
or in the road. We, along with many others, had run over the one, about a 4 inch alder, that was pretty beaten up by the time it was our speedbump. The roads were completely covered in spots with leaves, needles and branch bits that had been torn off the trees, and once we were past the crest of the Coast Range you could see very little else but leaf litter on the shoulders, even in spots where the roadway had cleared. Oddly 101 was clear. Maybe a lot of ours came down in that last storm?
Anja set up a beef in wine crockpot on Friday that was fridged until cooked overnight on Saturday. It was blearily flipped at 5am. It cooled in the fridge preparatory to being separated, with the beef sliced and the broth being further prepped into gravy. Apple pies got made and set aside to cool.
We didn’t have as many of the utensils ready as we thought, so things kept running later and later. Sasha and Josh showed up around 2pm and helped. We prepped the herbs for the frytours and Sasha prepped the onions for the pies while Anja did the crusts. Jay showed up at 3pm and Loryea just after, and Amy finally near four. We started on Loryea’s souffle almost right as she walked in, since it wasn’t going to keep. (recipe below). Everyone went out front to chat while Anja finished up the onion pies and gravy and then we feasted! Folks kept going back for 2nds and thirds and more!
Potluck Menu
Souffle
House Capuchin 3 