House Capuchin 3

This is the page for commentary and final reports. The clean-up reports follow those.

Ok, everybody, comment!!!!

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.

…and another more recent one. – I had fun at the feast. There were a vast amount of foods. Plenty to eat. I have food issues, so many of them I couldn’t sample. The guests truly enjoyed themselves. I was busy enough helping I didn’t see the recipes available.
The hall is very quaint. Maybe a few more decorations up. Possibly Banner-like.

Anja’s take – I’m not going to try to do a feast of this size again for the House. It was too hard on me physically as one person after another who had offered to do part of the work bailed out, and too hard emotionally having had one invited guest after another vanish. I understand why the helpers couldn’t (job, money, transpo, weather….), but why do people who are all excited about an event and ask all kinds of questions, repeatedly assure you that they’re coming to your feast and then just not show up, not say anything and just ….vanish? I think, honestly, that I’m too old to stand the physical stress, too.

I always overcook, but this time I did better than I have before. We had almost exactly double the amount of food needed for the people who were at the feast, plus the number of servings of the dishes that *didn’t* get made would have covered the other 10 people that were planned for.

I didn’t quite plan well enough for freezer and fridge space. I didn’t expect to have our landlady’s foodstuffs suddenly occupying part of our big freezer, either. 🙂 That isn’t one I’ve had to deal with before.

A big problem was getting the things to the hall in time for me to cook & serve them and that big communication glitch with Loren was the worst part of that. Part of that was not having a printed list that I put directly in his hands of what was where and when I needed it. It was up on my *computer* at the shop, but….

My biggest disappointment was due to another communication glitch. I had intended to freeze the leftover soups. They got left in the coolers until the next morning, still warm. Uh…. well, no, those aren’t going to get served….

The rest of the leftovers got dealt with fairly quickly, either getting fridged and then eaten or frozen or otherwise used up during the first week, except for that bag of cabbage leaves and cores left over from making the cabbage rolls, which finally ended up in a corned beef and cabbage dish for the 3/18 potluck and a couple of boxes of that set aside for later feasts or meals.

Some of the pickles are going to go bad before they get eaten, since I had planned for leftovers to go to Coronet or All Fool’s and I can’t get to either, but that does happen with that much left over.

Otherwise…. the pre-cooking made a huge difference. So much of the food was simple dishes to make, with only a couple of complicated ones that the amount of effort on feast day was the quantity, not the complexity. Otoh, I’m a batch cook at heart, so….

It was great having people in the kitchen to do some of the simple stuff, like following an ingredients list to load the breadmakers for dumplings (Thank you, Josh!) setting up the lentils, thawing soups, etc. ….but I need to remember to make a list, not carry it in my head, since I missed some things. Pickled onions to decorate the pork roast platter? <sigh>

Printed lists… I knew that counter and table space was going to be at a premium, so mostly I had the recipes printed, but I should have printed the “each dish” lists.

…and omgs, I would *not* have been able to do the final cleaning by myself! I was out of spoons by the time we finished dessert, ran out of spoons borrowed from the next week by an hour later…. Again, *THANK* *YOU* those who helped!

Clean-up reports

2/25/18

Oh, the clean-up! That’s what we’ve been doing all week! We’re finally as far as folding tablecloths and about 1/2 of the rest of the stuff is cleaned and put away. Leftovers are finally all stored or eaten. All the towels got back to the hall folks. Oof…..

Early Week – Sorting and putting away was still going on even on Sunday! That was a *lot* of equipment that got moved. Everything got beautifully cleaned at the site, so at least there wasn’t that to do, but several of the box lids got mixed up and the contents….well, there was a lot of sorting still, even if the boxes are back on the shelves. The hall towels got cleaned and delivered on Thursday, but they’re only giving us back $75 of our deposit because they said the stove wasn’t clean. We cleaned it. <grr> Tablecloths got washed and garb and all. Oof…. plus Anja did a lot of sitting, so she was sewing, too.

…and Sash managed to stop by on Thursday, so he got loaded down with some feast leftovers, too.

Cookery – Remnants of the pork roast and caraway tvarog made awesome sandwiches. Various of the kolachky got parceled out to friends. Other foods went into freezers. Most of the uneaten pickles went back into either the pickle fridge or the shop fridge and lots of baked goods landed in both freezers. We did find out that the batch of babovky that didn’t quite bake right can be toasted and be tasty. 🙂

Herb Bunch – We also got a lot of the “ends” of vegetables (from trimmings and peelings from the feast) planted in buckets to re-grow, which were also a lot of the greens in the oat/greens pottage, for example.

 

 

Roman-era food-themed mosaics

3-4-18

Many things still need to be done to finish the clean-up from the feast. The leftovers have all been consumed or frozen at this point … well, not the pickles, those are getting dates put on the lids so we know how long they have to stay good.

 

Early Week – We’re still cleaning up from the feast. 🙂 The last leftovers got frozen or made into something late Sunday into Monday and the very last of the perishables were being eaten up on Sunday.

Jars are finally being emptied and put back into boxes and the Tupperware boxes are mostly cleaned out and stored.

Leftover marzipan and candied ginger are being made into candies.

Cookery – We’re eating up leftovers and enjoying the heck out of ’em. 🙂 So are some of the folks in classes at Anja and Loren’s shop! A lot of things are in the shop freezer, so give us some warning and then stop by for a taste! Many of the dishes are being turned into other Czech foods that aren’t necessarily period by Anja is having a wonderful time with it.

…and Anja is looking at the wonderful foods in this link and contemplating more cookery! https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/2018/03/five-sweet-savory-and-fried-custards.html

3-11-18

Cookery – All week we intended to make Čočky (lentils) and finally went to get them going on Sunday and discovered that we’re apparently out of lentils. It turned into a pease pottage instead! Anja is starting to build up her stocks again of foods for potlucks and such. We also had the last of the dumplings during the week and then Loren got some semolina flour on Sunday, which Anja wants for pekanky, which are the little gnocci-like egg dumplings and froze some to be cooked for this coming potluck.

veral weeks ago.

Project Day

Loren had some errands to run and picked up the semolina flour for the pekanky and some more lentils on the way back.

Also the onions in the big bag that we got for the feast are starting to “go off”. So Anja started the hacky-choppy-freezy part of that. …and got interrupted and interrupted…. .

Rafny and Gwynn stopped by for a short visit on the way up the coast! It was great to see them! …and she was too “oniony” to embroider while they were there, so the only progress was from Saturday night. More onions happened.

Amy stopped in for a few minutes, too. More onions happened.

Loren returned and sorted the dry skins (that we’ll use for dyeing) from the “wet” parts in the trash can and left it so Anja could sort into those from then on. More onions happened. Eventually 14 bags of 11 oz or better happened!

…and Anja was wiped, so quit for the night.

3-18-18

Cookery – We made pekanky on Monday.

Project Day – ….started with cooking. We had a chunk of corned beef to cook with cabbage and then some čočky, figuring to have those for the potluck, but with leftovers. .

Around 1pm the cooking got started: a beef brisket and a pot of čočky. The beef got onion (from the frozen stuff, mustard seed, salt, a dab of caraway and burgundy (although it was thinned out by water). The čočky got the lentils, salt, caraway, onion and carrots.

Project Day – Potluck time – We ate until stuffed. Anja told the story of the Silver Veil Mine and a little history about it. She also worked on the pouches in the picture and we talked about languages and borrowed words.

…and then after Amy headed home, Stella showed up on her way back from the Blues Jam. She got a share of the food and we talked for an hour or more. It was really good to see her! …and she reminded me of a song, that I put the lyrics below.

Project Day – Menu

• Bean Pottage – Leftovers from feast
• Hawaiian Rolls – Amy
• Butter – Leftovers from feast
• Bean pickle – Leftovers from feast
• Cabbage pickle – Leftovers from feast
• Corned Beef & Cabbage – Jeanne, Anja, Loren & leftover cabbage
• Pekanky – Anja
• Makovny Kolacky – Leftovers from feast

In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 3/19/18 & published 3/19/18 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 3/20/18