Egg Allergies

My oldest nephew has become severely allergic to egg recently. He's six and his throat starts to swell up (though not completely closed) when he eats anything with egg in it. This includes one of his favorite foods - birthday cake!  Here is a list of all the ingredients that have egg hidden in them:

Contain Egg:

Albumin Apovitellin Cholesterol free egg substitute (e.g. Eggbeaters®) Dried egg solids, dried egg Egg, egg white, egg yolk Egg wash Eggnog Fat substitutes Globulin Livetin Lysozyme Mayonnaise Meringue, meringue powder

Ovalbumin Ovoglobulin Ovomucin Ovomucoid Ovotransferrin Ovovitelia Ovovitellin Powdered eggs Silici albuminate Simplesse Trailblazer Vitellin Whole egg

May Contain Egg:

Artificial flavoring
Lecithin
Natural flavoring
Nougat
- See more at: http://www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/resourcespre.php?id=36


Some are obvious like Mayonnaise, meringue, and anything with "egg" in the name.  Those that don't know Latin might not recognize all the "Ovo" ones - Latin for egg.  Still, there are a few I wouldn't suspect like Albumin -> Latin for white coloring.

Luckily, due to my own food allergies - particularly the dairy one- I did some research on vegan cooking.  For eggs, it's common to use bananas in sweet dishes - however they change the flavor profile greatly.  Nothing tastes like banana except...banana.   It's a hard flavor to hide.  Apples work really well and I've used those with great success.  I'm told there are some other more artificial egg substitutes but the more artificial in my family and the greater the chance someone is allergic to it.


So how do you use fruit rather than an egg?  It's really easy, honestly.  For each egg a recipe calls for, use one very mushed up, smashed up banana.  This really is yummy in a chocolate cake or a yellow cake with chocolate icing...if you like bananas.  :-)  You just peel the banana and mash it.  There really isn't any more to it than that.

For apples, it's a bit more time consuming - but apples won't change the flavor profile as much.  For each egg, you normally need two medium apples.  Peel and core them.  Boil the slices until they are soft - typically about 10 minutes.  Drain the slices and either put them in the blender or mash them by hand.  Use this as the egg substitute.   You can use apple sauce straight from the jar but there are a couple of problems with that - they tend to have other ingredients rather than just apples and it tends to add too much water to the recipe.  It will work if you lower your own liquid ingredients to accommodate the apple sauce but I like using apples I peeled and cored myself.  I know exactly what is in the apple sauce then.  (And, most of the time, I even know where the apples came from since I pick my own!)


Now to go cook up some yummy vegan yellow cake with dark chocolate fudge icing for myself and my oldest nephew!  :-)

Historical Food Fortnightly: #6 Seasonal Fruit/Veggies

6. Seasonal Fruits/Vegetables

Concoct a dish based on the fruits and/or vegetables that would have been in season and available to the particular time you wish to interpret. It needn’t be the place you are in at this moment, but it should coincide with the season!

Lemons!!! Lemons are sort of an almost year around crop in southern Italy but they tend to be "best" from the end of July until October. Knowing that I wanted to do lemons for this HFF, I looked up recipes with lemons in Italy.

lemon Sauce For chickens Or capons

This is an excerpt from The Neapolitan recipe collection

(Italy, 15th c - T. Scully, trans.)

The original source can be found at University of Michigan Digital General Collection

Lemon Sauce for Chickens or Capons. Get one or more chickens, capons or cockerels that have been cooked a little in water; take them out of the water and mount them on a spit; then get peeled, well ground almonds and temper them with the bouillon of the chickens; then get lemon juice and mix it all together with good spices; and put it into a saucepan to cook a little; then pour it over the roast with a little fat; serve it very hot.

Okay so, lemons, almond milk made with chicken broth again, "good spices" and chicken.  This sounds...strangely normal.  Basically, it sounds like grilled chicken with a creamy lemon sauce.  However, what are the good spices?  Luckily, there is another recipe for the lemon sauce in the same book.

This is an excerpt from The Neapolitan recipe collection(Italy, 15th c - T. Scully, trans.)The original source can be found at University of Michigan Digital General Collection
Lemon Sauce. Get almonds, blanch them, grind them up, make milk of them and boil this with cinnamon, ginger and saffron; the milk - I mean, the almonds - is strained with lemon juice or pomegranate juice and a very little verjuice and lean broth; and if you want it quite strong, put in more lemons or other citrus juice
Based on this recipe, the good spices are cinnamon, ginger, and saffron. Great! I have those!

My recipe:

3 chicken breasts
11/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 cup almond milk
1/2 tablespoon ginger
a pinch of safforn
4 very large lemons
water


I started with making the almond milk.  This time, I cheated a bit.  I used the almond flour they sell at the store rather than grinding my own almonds.  I put some of the almond flour in the nut bag I just bought and had this suspended over a tall container.  I mixed chicken broth with the almond flour until the chicken broth was gone.

 I basically would make a valley of the almond flour and put the chicken broth in, mix them together, and the almond milk would seep through the bag.  Below is the resulting almond milk.

 I ended up making enough that I can make some more chet soup later as well.  :-)

Next, I juiced the lemons in a separate bowl to add the lemon juice to the almond milk.  I put 1 cup of the almond milk in the sauce pot along with the spices.  I didn't heat it up yet, however.   I did start to boil the chicken breast and turn the oven on to 450F.

 Once the chicken breast was white, I put them in the oven and started to heat up the sauce.  I added the lemon juice and then stirred up everything.  I also basted the chicken breast in a bit of olive oil for a slight hint of flavor.

I left the sauce on a medium heat and stirred it until the chicken was almost done.  I turned the chicken at the 10 minute mark.   The sauce is a creamy lemon sauce and I poured it on the chicken when it was done.

It tasted a LOT like the "lemonade" chicken my Mom used to make for us.  I loved it.   It was completely delicious.  The lemons really taste sweet with the almond milk although I didn't use a hint of sugar.  The sauce gets very creamy as it cools - it's rather watery when it's hot- and the cinnamon and ginger remind me more of a jerk chicken recipe.  I almost think this would be a good "getting used to medieval food" recipe as it does taste similar to many modern dishes.


EDIT:  Forgot the total cost!   I only used a bit of the almond flour but it was the most expensive at $11 for the bag.  The chicken was $6.71 and the chicken broth was $2.75.  The lemons were 75 cents each.

War of 1812 Outfit

For the Battle of Bladensburg, I made a new dress out of an old green sari I got for $4.90 at the local thrift store. The sari had woven borders and a woven pallu while the petticoat part of the sari was all green organza. It was stunning as a sari. I hoped to make it just as lovely for a War of 1812 dress.

I cut off the pallu (the heavily decorated edge that goes over the shoulder on most saris) but left one small border of it because it worked well as a decorated edge opening for the wrap gown I ended up making. The upper border of the sari, I cut off and used as trim around the bottom of the sleeves. I lined the dress in some of the pink silk from the curtains I cut up in the Under $10 HSF.

This was after I had worn it for a few hours so it's rather wrinkly.

Sorry for the blurry back photo!  It's not really that wrinkly, it's more that it's silk organza and that doesn't photograph well.

You can see the bottom border here.

Close up of the bodice.

On most of the fashion plates from the early 1810's, ladies are wearing partlets during the day.  I took my old renaissance partlet pattern I designed a few years back and used that with some minor edits.  I was going for something similar to this partlet.

The biggest difference between a 16th C partlet and a 19th c partlet is the collar. I made the collar twice as long and then pleated it to the neck opening. The collar edge is rolled under. Very simple but it worked well.

Really, the biggest issue I had wearing this was that it would not stop raining! So I ended up coming home early. I hope the British troops go home soon and take their weather with them!

Warm Knitted "Gauntlets"

While at Pennsic, I finished my fingerless mittens from this pattern. While not period, they are WARM and I loved them.

I did them out of a lovely burgundy wool I got in Ireland a couple of years ago.  The one on the right is slightly shorter than the one on the left - only by one row.  The pattern calls for 14 rows to be knitted above the thumb gusset - which is way too much for me.  The left gaunlet has 11 and the right has 10.   Finished, they come to just above the elbow.

The pattern also calls for two rows of 8 knit between the increases for the thumb gusset (rather than going from 6,8,10 there is a second 8 in there).  I ignored that and went with only one row of 8. 

These mittens were a dream to have on at night when I went to bed.  It gets cold at Pennsic and I slept with these on.   The pattern is BIG but not unreasonably so.  I'd say if you want a close fitting mitt, go down two needles sizes.  If you want one that is a bit loose, go down one.  I could easily fit my entire hand through the finger opening without any issues. 

I am washing these to see if they will shrink a bit.  I'll try the pattern again some day with a smaller needle - they are simple but fun.  I'm not good with the complicated patterns and this was very easy for me to understand and knit up fairly quickly. 

Period-esque License Plate Cover

I wanted to cover the very modern looking license plate on the vardo/trailer/shepherd's hut with something more medieval. I figured I'd make a banner of my heraldry and use that as a cover when the trailer is parked in camp. Not only would it be a cover, but it would also serve as it's own license plate of sorts- just in the medieval way.

First, I raided my scrap pile.  My heraldry is "Bendy sinister sable and argent, on a chief Or a pair of wings conjoined in lure gules". In other words, black and white stripes at an angle with the top part in gold/yellow and a red pair of wings.

I had black velvet and white silk for the stripy part.  The yellow is from my nephew's butterfly cape and polyester.  The red wings - which ended up looking like a very highly stylized M no matter what I did- are out of red polyester.  The backing is a jacquard left over from my Vampires in Venice dress I made last year.  

First, I pieced the silk together and sewed the yellow poly across the top.  This served as the background for the black velvet and the red wings.  I stitched down the black velvet strips by folding the sides under and just doing a normal running stitch.  The wings that look like an M were stitched using a buttonhole stitch.  

I then attached the jacquard backing and added loops out of the jacquard as well.  I closed up the top, put a dowel through the top and added some fishing line.  It's not pretty - at all.  I really wish I had the time to fix the M shaped wing but it will do.  This will look better than a license plate, at least. 

Historical Food Fortnightly: Foreign Foods

4. “Foreign Foods”July 13 - July 26

Make a dish that reflects the historical idea of “foreign” - either foods with a loose connection to foreign lands, named after faraway places, or attributed to foreigners. Real connections to actual foreign countries not necessary!

What I originally planned for this challenge changed drastically when I read that the "French Style Apple Pie" I wanted to make required Pike eggs. Having no idea where to get pike eggs (um, caviar? Around here?), I thought it best to find a different recipe. That's when I stumbled upon this one:

Florentine-Style Meat in a Baking Dish: Get veal or another meat with the bone, cut it into the pieces as small as a fist, and put them into a baking dish with a little water, a beaker of wine and another of good verjuice; if you master likes, add in a few slices of onion or, should he not like onions, use parsley, the root that is along with raisins, dried prunes, and salt; cover the meat by no more than a finger of water, and set it in the oven; when it looks half done, add a few cloves, a good lot of cinnamon, pepper and a good lot of saffron let it taste of pepper; when it is half cooked, turn it over; then take it out onto a plate with the spices and sugar on top, or else leave it in the baking dish. You can do the same with fish that is, grey mullet or ells cut into pieces four fingers in width, washed well and put into a baking dish with a little oil. Note that you can make these things sweet or tart according to our master's taste.The Neapolitan Recipe Collection, Terence Scully (trans.) Circa 15th Century
I always love reading through the Neapolitan cookbook as my persona in the SCA is from Naples and my maternal family is from the traditional area for the Kingdom of Naples. Back in the 15th C, Italy wasn't unified as it is now and there were several countries battling for control over the boot by the 16th C. Spain took over the Kingdom of Naples in the early 16th C after a bit of a conflict with France - who was always vying for more control. The Turks would try to invade a few times as well in the 16th C. Basically, the entire place was a mess because everyone wanted control of the Mediterranean trade routes as well as Rome. Although that's the 16th C, the 15th C wasn't much different.

So, the Republic of Florence was a completely different country from the Kingdom of Naples at the time this cookbook was written. This makes this dish foreign. Okay, so "foreign" in the sense that Canadian Bacon is foreign to most Americans but still, these were two different sovereign countries at the time. (It's so weird! Their bacon is round and not wavy! :-p)

I used this site's redaction of the recipe as a guideline but changed it up a bit. Really, all I kept was to cook it at 350F for a total of an hour. What struck me about this recipe was the mention of doing the same thing with fish. I've created a salmon dish many times using a mix of alcohol and water (beer in this case) with herbs. I can easily see doing this Florentine dish with salmon and white wine.

So, my recipe:

1 beef steak with bone still in it
1/2 onion
1 lemon to make verjuice
1/4 red wine
1/2 cup of water
2 teaspoons parsley
1/4 cup raisins
6 or 7 dried prunes
salt to taste
6 or 7 whole cloves
a little less than a tablespoon cinnamon
same amount of pepper
1 generous pinch of saffron
maybe 1/4 cup sugar to sprinkle across the top



I cut up the meat into pieces a couple of inches wide and threw them into the cake pan.

I then cut the lemon and squeezed it to have the lemon juice. We don't have a juice made out of sour grapes readily available anymore and the closest we seem to have that works well in these medieval recipes really is lemon juice. I mixed that with some cheap merlot and water, pouring this over the meat until it was about a 1/2 inch thick. I also chopped up half an onion, put in parsley even though it was optional with the onion there, put in raisins, prunes, and salt. I then covered it all with tin foil and threw it in the oh so period correct electric oven for a half hour at 350F.

This is what it looked like when I put it in the oven. :-)  After it had been in for a half hour, I took it out to add the cloves, cinnamon, pepper, saffron, and sugar.  I also turned the meat and threw it back in for a half hour to finish cooking.

Above is what it looked like when I took it out of the oven. Very often in medieval and Renaissance recipes, they say to serve this either over bread or rice. Since I didn't feel like cooking rice....

Bread it was!  Honestly, it's pretty good.  I think it would have tasted better over rice as I don't like soggy bread.  It's a sweet dish but I think most modern palates would be okay with it.  If you like honey BBQ, this is a bit tamer than that.

The Challenge:Foreign Foods

The Recipe: The Neapolitan Recipe Collection, Terence Scully (trans.)

The Date/Year and Region: 15th Century, Naples

How Did You Make It: see above

Time to Complete: a little over an hour

Total Cost: $4 for the steak, $5 for the prunes but I didn't use them all, $3 for the raisins that I still have a ton of, 50 cents for the onion that I only used half off, $6 for the wine. Everything else, I had on hand. Maybe about $8 considering a lot of the ingredients I'll use again?

How Successful Was It?: (How did it taste? How did it look? Did it turn out like you thought it would?) Pretty good, actually. I'd really like to try it with rice. What I loved about it was the smell! If you want your entire kitchen to smell divine, cook this. Cinnamon and cloves with sugar in red wine? Yes, it smelled like Thanksgiving to me. :-)

How Accurate Is It?: Okay, so....the red wine we have today is pretty much nothing like the wine they had. Ours is bitter and way way WAY too dry. There isn't much I can do about that but it reacts well to help overcome the fact we also don't have verjuice anymore. So that kind of balances that out. (verjuice being sour grape juice) The meat is grass fed so that's pretty good. Raisins and prunes have yet to change. So, despite cooking this in an electric oven and using tin foil to cover it, I'm saying this is pretty accurate. :-)

Modern Sewing

I've been doing a bit of modern sewing lately due to work and just not liking my current summer wardrobe. So first, work clothing!

Both the purple sleeveless and the aqua sleeveless knit dresses are from Simplicity 9103.  I've used this pattern a few times now (my pink knit dress, my black knit dress, and I have a long purple one with sleeves from this pattern).  It is really simple and is very easy to dress up for work (jacket and scarf!).  I took out the leftover purple knit this morning for a new shrug and realized I had enough for an entire dress instead.  I shortened the pattern by only an inch for the "A" look just due to the amount of fabric I had.  It still comes to just above the knee - making it great for pretty much anything.  The dresses always come out well (okay, so I do edit them and make the neckline higher) and they are just comfortable to wear.  Plus, no ironing.  Woohoo!

The teal shrug is from Simplicity 1961.  It takes a ridiculous amount of fabric to make but it does look almost 1920's inspired on.  Seriously, the purple knit above took about half the amount of fabric as the teal shrug.  But the shrug looks really amazing on so...

In other mundane sewing, I decided to try something I saw on pinterest.  I have a ton of old t-shirts that I love but are now clearly ten years old.  So, I decided to try and revamp them by adding a bit of contrast.  This is the first victim.

I have a lot of fairy t-shirts that I've worn since college, really. I love them. However, the cut to clothing has changed and it's starting to show how old these t-shirts are. So, time to make them look new again.

I bought a remnant of purple knit from Joanns. So far, this purple knit has been quite versatile! Not only did I use it for the inserts to this t-shirt, but it also became bias trim cuffs for a jacket I was mending. I still have some leftover and it was only a 1/2 yard to begin with. I'm thinking it might be patches for future items.

The inserts really are just triangles cut to go into the sides of the t-shirt.  Taking apart the t-shirt at the sides was interesting.  They were serged.  I do have a serger but it's evil.  My singer has a stretch function and it works perfectly fine for knits.  Just taking apart the serged edges took a while.

However, once that was done, sewing the inserts in was a breeze! This is over the purple knit dress. I might make the next inserts more diamond shaped to have more of a drape at the sides.

Still, this works.  My summer wardrobe will have a bit of a longer life now.  :-)