Historical Food Fortnightly: Sweets for the Sweet

The Challenge:4. Sweets for the Sweet (February 12 - February 25) It’s sugar, and maybe spice, and definitely everything nice. Test out a historic recipe for sweets, sweetmeats and candies - but don’t let them spoil your appetite!


The Recipe: (where did you find it, link to it if possible) Take one hundred cocoa beans, two chillies, a handful of anise seed and two of vanilla (two pulverized Alexandria roses can be substituted), two drams of cinnamon, one dozen almonds and the same amount of hazelnuts, half a pound of white sugar and enough annatto to give some color. And there you have the king of chocolates from What's Cooking America?  You can read some of the book it is from here.

The Date/Year and Region: 1631, Spain

How Did You Make It: (a brief synopsis of the process of creation) I obviously didn't use the amounts the original author indicated. Half a pound of sugar is a bit much. Also, I don't like hazelnuts.

• 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
• 1 heaping tablespoon of sugar
• 1 cup of vanilla flavored almond milk
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• a pinch of anise

I mixed this together and I had hot chocolate!

Time to Complete: A couple of minutes
Total Cost: I had everything on hand

How Successful Was It?: (How did it taste? How did it look? Did it turn out like you thought it would?) The chili powder really changed the taste. However, the rest of it isn't too terribly different from how I make modern hot chocolate so....I loved it!   It's spicy because of the chili powder I used but it's really quite good if you like a rich chocolate taste.

How Accurate Is It?: (fess up to your modifications and make-dos here) I used store bought almond milk and store bought  ground ingredients. I also used the microwave. ;-)  I used almond milk rather than almond flour because, once you add water to the almond flour, the only real difference is that the almond flour would make the drink slightly more thick.   Since the kind of almond milk I buy already had vanilla in it, it makes sense to use that rather than crushing up a bunch of almonds and using vanilla extract (or the vanilla beans I have on hand that are not cheap!).

Modern Cooking: Harmony Soup

I bought a bag for $5 at my local "Amish" market of what looked like beans. On the side was a recipe for Harmony soup. I've never had Harmony soup before but, given the ingredients, I figured I'd give it a try.

Recipe:

2 cups of Harmony Soup Blend
1-3 lb of a whole chicken
3 quarts water
1 tablespoon of dry savory leaves
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup fresh chopped onion
1 cup fresh diced celery with the leaves
2 tsp salt or to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric


Now, I didn't use a whole chicken - I had a pound of chicken breast in the freezer I took out instead. Also, I didn't have turmeric on hand so I left it out. I don't think it affected the taste that greatly.

Based on the directions, I dumped the entire bag of the soup blend into my soup pot, put some water in it, and let the beans soak overnight in the fridge. The ingredients of the soup blend are as follows: Hard red winter wheat, pearled barley, pinto beans, kidney beans, split green peas, red rice, black beans, navy beans, and safflower oil. I guess they coat the beans in the oil at some point? The bag itself wasn't oil so I'm not sure why the safflower oil thing was added.

Anyway, the beans soaked overnight and I threw away the water in the morning based on the directions. I'm not sure why you do that since the next thing to do is add a little over 3L of water back in but, eh, whatever. I also added the chopped up chicken breast, the spices, and let it simmer for an hour. After an hour, I added the carrots, onion, and celery. You just let it boil for another 20 or 30 minutes and then, soup!


Taste verdict: First, it smells heavenly. Seriously, if you just want your house to smell good, make this soup. It's not the least bit difficult and I bet, like me, most people have a lot of the spices and ingredients on hand.

Second, it's good. It's not an instant favorite but it's certainly something I'll make again. It's a bit too "light" for my normal tastes - I like heavy, full bodied soups and stews. However, it's good and it's one of those soups that you like more after you've eaten it, if that makes sense. I think I might change it up next time and soak the beans in chicken broth rather than plain tap water. I really think that will take it to the level I like. I'll also go an buy some turmeric. ;-) Still, if you are a Panera fan, I think you'll really enjoy this soup.

BTW, the recipe makes a LOT of soup. I might buy another bag before Pennsic and invite people over for soup. I probably have enough for ten or more hungry people, easily. Based on nuts.com and other websites, a normal human's bowl full of soup is probably about 200 calories.

Fixing up the kitchen

This week, I had a new tile kitchen floor installed - which is 1000%  better than what I had before.  Apparently, I had corkboard and vinyl stickers (yeah, I don't know either.)

However, once the floor was installed, the new baseboard didn't match at all and I could finally see the wall behind the fridge and oven...and it needed to be painted.  Badly.

What you see is the decades of paint this house has been through.  Pink in the 1950's.  The super bright yellow chartreuse right in the "seam" of the wall is from the 1960's.  The I'm not sure if it's a sunny lime or a not yet ripe lemon from the 1970's makes up the majority of the wall in the left side of the photo.  I should also point out, this was after I cleaned the wall.  It was even scarier before that.   This is what was hiding behind my fridge and oven.

So, I went to my home goods thrift store, the Community Forklift, which is just a few miles down the road from me.  I wasn't looking for exact matches to anything - I wanted to see what they had.  I knew I wanted a "sandy" color for the background, a terracota color for the bricks, and a glossy tardis blue for the new baseboard.   (More on that later)

I amazingly found all three for $2.50 at the thrift store.  I was shocked to find the glossy tardis blue but extremely happy.  I figured terracotta and sandy were fairly normal colors.  

I already had plastic wrap, blue tape, and some brushes so, really, all I needed was the paint.
First, I painted the tricolored wall with the sandy paint.

It looks splotchy in the photo because I had just finished putting on the second coat.  At this point, it already looked WAY WAY better than it did before.  I could have left it there but I wanted something cool and something that, when I sell my house in a couple of months, others will think is nice.  ...Meaning I couldn't paint in an elven door or a Tardis.   Although the wall is pretty well hidden when you glance at the kitchen, it's not when you are doing dishes at the sink.

The next day, I taped off the bricks - which was a LOT easier than I expected.

Since this is behind the fridge and the oven, I didn't care about perfection.  Not all the lines are exactly the same but they are all close.  The "bricks" are supposed to be the same size as the panel ones for consistencies sake - 7 1/2" by 2 1/2".  Once I got the horizontal lines up - which involved measuring every 2 1/2"- I then started on the vertical.  Once you have the first two rows done, it's just about copying those all the way down - no more measuring!   Pretty simple and then you paint!

I am a very messy painter.  Even if a little bit of the paint ends up outside of the edges, it's no big deal with this faux paint - they are supposed to be bricks!   Bricks sometimes have little notches or there are places where the mortar just didn't quite cover.  It's fine.

I waited two hours - I only did one coat- and then ripped all the tape off the wall much to my pup's amusement.

You can just see Abby's tail and back at the bottom of the photo.   Like I said, it's not perfect, but it's far less visually abrasive than the paint colors of the 3rd quarter of the 20th century was.  I'm pretty sure this will blend in with what is up on the walls now (and I can't take off because they put the cabinets over it) and won't jar anyone doing the dishes.