My little Viking Cap

What I wrote in my documentation:

Based on the Jorvik excavation, this cap is made out of brown silk with buttercream silk thread stitches. The linen twill tape was used based on speculation within the archeology reports due to stitches showing that some sort of tie was at the bottom of the cap.


The original cap is made from a single rectangle and then shaped at the crown to give it a curve. I pieced my cap due to the limited amount of fabric I had that looked correct for the 10th Century. Brown color, achieved with madder among many other popular dyes in the 10th century, is plausible as well as the soft yellow from lichen. Silk was believed to be imported from the Byzantines at this time.
The cap I have presented to the A&S is entirely hand sewn and uses the closest possible materials to the original artifact.

You can read more about Norse dyes here and see the extant cap here.  Since this particular competition was "Winner take all", I didn't want to have something that was completely awesome - since I might not win- but I did want something that was accurate, fun, small, and something that I wouldn't mind having in the garb closet but wouldn't mind loosing either.  However, I - and everyone else- really didn't have a chance since someone made an accurate bone comb.

The only way to have competed with that would have been to enter a fully embroidered, hand woven apron with complete documentation on the embroidery style.  Pretty much everyone else was wire weaving - which was cool but yeah, we never really had a chance.  ;-)  

Admittedly, the cap was out of scrap silk.  The silk originally was used for lining of bell sleeves in another gown I made last year.  However, I had enough to make a decent cap.  I still have some and might do another cap - but with purple silk thread because that would be awesome.  :-)

Beef Stoganoff (dairy free version)

I originally posted this - locked- on my other journal and didn't realize that until I went to search for it!

One of my favorite food before my food allergies got to the point of ridiculousness was beef stroganoff the way Mom made it. The problem was Mom used an instant onion soup (corn!) and sour cream (dairy!) so I haven't been able to eat it for a while. I finally gave up and decided there had to be a way to make it without dairy or corn in it. What I ended up with was actually pretty good - a bit sweet but that's because I screwed up with the sweet onions and accidentally adding vanilla almond milk. However, it still tasted fine. 

1lb of ground beef
1 can of beef stock
half a medium onion, cut up (or a half cup of dried onion minced)
1/2 cup of mushrooms, sliced
1 cup of noodles (I used lil shells but really, almost any kind will do)
1 cup of unsweetened almond milk
1/4 cup of flour (or more) to thicken the almond milk
1 teaspoon of rosemary
1 teaspoon of thyme
2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon of pepper

Brown the beef. Add the onions and mushrooms to saute them as well. Add the beef stock once everything looks cooked. Add the noodles and make sure they are covered by the beef stock. Cover the frying pan and let it sit on medium heat for at least 20 minutes.

In another pot, a few minutes before the noodles are done, pour the almond milk and flour together. Stir it up and make sure it thickens. Add the spices as it begins to thicken over a low/medium heat. 

Take the cover off the frying pan and let it simmer for a couple of minutes.

Add the white sauce you made in the other pan to the beef and noodles in the frying pan. Mix it up well and cook it another five minutes. Serve. 


I've since made it several times unsweetened original almond milk and it's delicious. :-)

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.