Modern Clothing Post

I apologize for the horrible Iphone picture.  I'll get another one when I go to get my real camera.

I've been looking at a lot of the bohemian style clothing and more homemade modern clothing.  This is my attempt at it.  I knitted a yoke of pink yarn I had in the stash and then sewed on a half circle for the top.  The bottom is just a simple ruffle and I added pockets.  All the fabric was stash fabric as well.

For the front yoke:

Cast on 42 stitches

Row 1:  Knit one, y/o *k2tog, k2tog, 2 y/o* ending with a 1 y/o 1k
Row 2: 1P, 1K, 2P *1k, 1p, 2p* ending with a 1K, 1P  Basically, you want to knit the first y/o and perl the second part of it followed by 2 perls
Row 3: 1K, 1P *slip 1 knitwise to cable needle, 1K, Knit the one on the cable, 2P* end with a 1K, 1P
Row 4: 1P, 1K, 2P, *2K, 2P* ending with a 1K, 1P

Repeat the above twice.  Then finish off the first 4 stitches, slip the next 8 to a needle, finish the next 18, slip the next 8 to a needle, and finish off the last 4.

For the straps:

Pick up either of the needles with 8 stitches.

Row 1: 1K, y/o, k2tog, k2tog, 2 y/o, k2tog, 1k
Row 2: 2P, 1K, 3P, 1K, 1P
Row 3: 1K, 1P, slip 1 knitwise to the cable needle, 1K, Knit the one on the cable, 2P, 1K, 1P
Row 4:  1P, 1K, 2P, 2K, 2P

Repeat until desired length - about 13".  Do the same for the other strap.

Back yoke:
Cast on 4 stitches. Knit on the 8 stitches from the first strap, cast on 18 stitches, knit the 8 stitches from the second strap, cast on 4 stitches.  (42 stitches)

Row 1:  Knit one, y/o *k2tog, k2tog, 2 y/o* ending with a 1 y/o 1k
Row 2: 1P, 1K, 2P *1k, 1p, 2p* ending with a 1K, 1P  Basically, you want to knit the first y/o and perl the second part of it followed by 2 perls
Row 3: 1K, 1P *slip 1 knitwise to cable needle, 1K, Knit the one on the cable, 2P* end with a 1K, 1P
Row 4: 1P, 1K, 2P, *2K, 2P* ending with a 1K, 1P

Repeat twice and finish.  This will not go under the arms but adds straps to the blouse.

Medieval Gingerbread!

Pictures later.  My camera is 30 miles away right now....

For an SCA event, I made medieval gingerbread.  In order to get it as accurate as possible, I looked at the following recipes and websites:

Gyngerbrede
Gyngerbrede on Medieval Cookery


From these websites, I focused on two different recipes:

Source [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, T. Austin (ed.)]: .iiij. Gyngerbrede. Take a quart of hony, & sethe it, & skeme it clene; take Safroun, pouder Pepir, & þrow þer-on; take gratyd Brede, & make it so chargeaunt þat it wol be y-lechyd; þen take pouder Canelle, & straw þer-on y-now; þen make yt square, lyke as þou wolt leche yt; take when þou lechyst hyt, an caste Box leves a-bouyn, y-stykyd þer-on, on clowys. And 3if þou wolt haue it Red, coloure it with Saunderys y-now.

Source [Curye on Inglish, Constance B. Hieatt & Sharon Butler (eds.)]: To make gingerbrede. Take goode honye & clarefie it on þe fere, & take fayre paynemayn or wastel brede & grate it, & caste it into þe boylenge hony, & stere it well togyder faste with a sklyse þat it bren not to þe vessell. & þanne take it doun and put þerin ginger, longe pepere & saundres, & tempere it vp with þin handes; & than put hem to a flatt boyste & strawe þereon suger & pick þerin clowes rounde aboute by þe egge and in þe mydes yf it plece you &c

In the Curye on Inglish recipe, the recipe specifically mentions "long pepper" versus pepper. Long pepper, which I happened to have around thanks to my recent shopping at Pennsic, is different from regular old peppercorn. It was what was used in many pre-15th Century recipes. Because I had it around and since at least one recipe calls for it, I used this redaction:

2 cups of Panko bread crumbs, crushed
1 jar of honey
about a tablespoon of ground long pepper
2 tablespoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
a few strings of saffron
Cloves to put in a few of the gingerbread balls once they were "red"
Ground sandlewood (Saunderys) to make it red with extra cinnamon

I boiled the honey, skimming it to get it clarified properly. I then mixed in the cinnamon, safforn, ginger, and long pepper before adding the bread crumbs. I took it from the heat before adding the bread crumbs and quickly mixing those in. Once it was cool enough, I created round balls out of the honey/breadcrumb mixture. They didn't always want to stick together well but it tasted great to me.

I would then roll the gingerbread through a mix of 2/1 cinnamon and sandlewood. After that, I placed a clove at the top of a few of them for an added look more than taste.

The "medieval fireballs" were a hit at the event. As I was leaving with the dish, and only a couple left, I did have the baron take another one so that alone told me how good everyone else must have thought they were. :-) Pictures of the gingerbread as soon as I get my camera back!

 Alright, pictures!  This is the ground up bread crumbs.  I had to grind them up even smaller to make the bread crumbs the correct consistency.

 Seriously, this is what I used.  A true mortar and pestle.

 This is what Long Pepper looks like before it's ground to dust.

 And this is what Sandalwood looks like before I try to grind it to dust, give up, and throw it in the blender. :-)

The finished gingerbread!!!

HFF: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread August 24 - September 6

I'm going to admit this was a near total fail.  The picture above is the second attempt at marzipan.  I will say it tastes absolutely delicious and I'm probably going to crush it up to use it as a topping on apple pie but it looks like...well.  Yeah.

So...

The Challenge:

The Best thing Since Sliced Bread

The Recipe: There were several recipes.  15th Century Italian Marzipan, 1604 French Marzipan, 16th Century German Recipe, 16th Century English recipe on how to decorate Marzipan, 1520 Spanish Marzipan

The Date/Year and Region: 

The recipe I went with is later 16th/early 17th Century.  Marzipan was popular all over Europe.

How Did You Make It: 

I used a lot of almond meal, some homemade rose water, and powdered sugar. Really, that was about it. (more below)

Time to Complete:  20 mintues

Total Cost:  The almond meal was the same stuff I used in the last challenge so maybe $11?  The rosewater I made myself using rose oil I had on hand.  (more below)

How Successful Was It?: ...:-D  In terms of taste, it was great!  In terms of appearance, it looked sort of like cooked vomit and really there was no other way to describe it.  

How Accurate Is It?:  Pretty accurate except that it kept coming out looking like...that.  I know there must be something I'm missing and I think it's the amount of almond oil required based on the 16th Century recipe instructions.

The entire story:

So, I thought making marzipan with medieval gingerbread would be a great idea for an SCA event last weekend.   The medieval gingerbread (aka, medieval fireballs) came out great and everyone loved them.  The marzipan?  Wasn't fit for human consumption - although when my Mom came over, we both pecked at the bubbled over remains.  It was delicious.  

So the recipe:

This is an excerpt from Ouverture de Cuisine
(France, 1604 - Daniel Myers, trans.)
The original source can be found at MedievalCookery.com

To make Marzipan. Take almonds appointed as above, & flatten the paste as for making a tart, then form the marzipan as fancy as you want, then take sifted sugar & mix with rose water, & beat it together that it is like a thick batter, cast there a little on the marzipan, & flatten with a well held knife until the marzipan is all covered, then put it into the oven on paper: when you see that it boils thereon & that it does like ice, tear apart from the oven, when it doesn't boil, & sprinkle on nutmeg: if you want it golden, make it so.

My redaction:
2 cups almond flour
enough rose water to make a dough
1/2 cup powdered sugar (the kind I use does not have corn in it but tapioca starch)

another cup or so of powdered sugar
enough rose water to just make the powdered sugar turn into an icing.

The first time, I went all out and made little leaves and used my cake decorating kit to stamp out shapes - it looks fabulous going into the oven.  However, I had the oven way too high (350F) and it bubbled and burnt.   This second attempt was at 245F and it still bubbled but not burnt this time!

I think the reason the marzipan is bubbling is because there isn't enough almond oil in the dough.  Rather than pounding almonds into dust, I cheated and used the almond flour I had left over.  I'm going to try it again with ground almonds (blenders are awesome!) and see if it works better later on.

However, why I chose marzipan for this challenge to begin with involved a lot of research.  In the 15th century and early 16th century recipes, marzipan is not a decoration but a food for sick people.  By the end of the 16th into the early 17th century, it's clearly a decoration. So the attitude and even the way it was made changed greatly over the course of really less than 100 years.

In the 15th Century Italian recipe, for example, it calls for "capon" - or rooster/chicken for us modern folk.

Marzipan Dish. For ten servings of Marzipan Dish get one pound of marzipan and grind it up thoroughly and put with it a capon wing that has been ground up as much as possible; get crustless bread in the amount of an egg and soak it in lean broth; then get a little verjuice, a little rosewater, a little capon broth, and distemper everything together, and cook it gently on the coals with a little ginger; let it come to a boil or a little more, then dish it up with sugar and cinnamon on top.

Basically, it's a biscuit or cracker with sugar, almonds, and chicken broth.  However, by the 1570's, you have an English recipe explaining how to make marzipan gold:

This is an excerpt from The Treasurie of commodious Conceits
(England, 1573 - J. Holloway, transcr.)
The original source can be found at MedievalCookery.com

To gylde a Marchpane or any other kinds of Tarte. Cap. x. TAke and cut your leafe of Golde as it lyeth vpon the booke, into square peces like dise: & wt a Contes taylles ende moiste a litle, take the mold vp by the one corner, lay it on the place beyng first made moiste: & with another tayle of a Conte dry, presse the Golde downe close:

And if ye wil haue the forme of an Hert or the name of IESVS, or any other thing, whatsoeuer, cut ye same through a peece of Paper, & lay the Paper vpon your Marchpayne, or Tarte: then make the void place of the Paper (throw which, ye Marchpayne appeereth) moist with Rosewater, laye on your Golde, presse it downe, take of your Paper, & there remayneth behinde in Golde the Print cut in the said Paper.

The whole capon thing gets taken out. In modern marzipan, eggs are still used but they weren't in the 16th Century recipes. The 15th C ones still have an egg which shows another change in how it was prepared.

So, although my own creation was pretty much a failure, I'm sort of glad I went with this anyway.

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.