guenievre

Still, all in all, Crusades wasn't bad, really. Ages ago, nikulai had asked me to cook dinner for the collective Royalty at Crusades, and I've been looking forward to it for a while. And there was going to be a FitzSunnyOaks Party Cabin. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty awful, several people were sick and/or otherwise not there, the pre-cook for dinner didn't happen as efficiently as I hoped so we didn't go up on Friday, overslept on Saturday so left home @ 8, and took 7 (!) hours to get to site (did I mention the rain?). Rawr. Also, I can't decide whether I'm glad or not that I didn't take my armor - we only got there in time for one battle, a 1 hour res battle, which looked very fun but very... aggressive. I'm not sure I'm practiced enough for that level of game, as none of the battles @ Pennsic, that I fought anyway, were in that sort of close quarters.

Still, enough complaining. soucyn got to fight a little, which I'm glad of as I was feeling VERY guilty about not going up Friday night. The Royals seemed to enjoy dinner, and I talked ramblingheritic and his lovely lady into bringing the dishes home with them so I could get offsite and down to kfitzwarin's for some Laurel-time. Had a lovely brunch the next morning with them + geniealisa, puck_eater, and siobhan_sca, and even got on the road at a reasonable hour. Though N wouldn't let me stop at G Street Fabrics. ::pout::

Came home, poked at some fabric with the idea of making some new stuff for WoW, went to bed.

Where did my weekend go again?

So soucyn mentioned that I made a nifty pie for Celtic Cattle Raids, but said I had to talk about it. So I finally got my camera unpacked, and so now I can. One of the A&S competitions for this event was "Best Celtic use of a Cow - No documentation required. No further guidance provided." I hadn't intended to enter, because as y'all know, I Am Not Early Period and so the whole Celtic thing is completely foreign territory.
Then my muse decided to bash me about the head with a rolling pin on Friday. (Yes, this one - it kinda hurt.) 

So I came up with the idea to make a (14th century) beef pie with Celtic knotwork on it. Celtic use of a cow, right? And, being me (my motto IS "Nothing by Halves") I decided to gild it, as shown:

 

And for those of you who are *really* cooking people, here's the rest of the documentation (Normally I'd have more, but this was done on the fly while the pie baked. The pie was tasty, but could have baked a bit longer. Oh! And I finally got to use my 14th century pie pan by Eadric the Potter - quick review: it was wonderful. Between the butter in the crust, and the rough texture of the pie pan, the pie popped out of the pan *amazingly* easily and didn't stick at all.


( Still two pages worth of docs, thus the cut: )

Perhaps the kitchen gadget collecting has gone too far. I'm sitting here watching the Alton Brown episode on meatballs, and there's a brief digression on the methods one might use to grind the meat for the meatballs, if one's butcher isn't willing to grind lamb for you. He mentioned the KitchenAid attachment, and then said "I prefer the manual method", and holds up a big cast-iron meat grinder. As is my habit when Alton mentions a kitchen gadget I already have, I say "I have that!". (When he mentions an interesting one I don't have - which is very rare - I say "I want that!" but that's another story) At this point, my dear husband is like, "What the fuck? We have a meat grinder?" And I'm like, of course we do, didn't you realize this? This goes on for like 5 minutes before I finally just decide to prove it.

Now, admittedly, I haven't *used* the meat grinder - in fact it hadn't been taken out of the box...  But I was able to go over to the cabinet and pull out this:



This mystified said husband, who had completely forgotten I bought the grinder (impulse buy at a kitchen-store-going-out-of-business sale a few years ago, got 2 nice knives, the grinder and some random other stuff for <$100). Perhaps I really do have too much kitchen stuff though... (on the other hand, there shall be sausages for feast come July!). Still, I pulled this out from behind the also-rarely-used pasta machine...

Y'all know the drill (5 questions, let me know if you want me to interview you...)
These are from bunnyjadwiga.

( How would you describe your persona? )

( What's your favorite kind of bread? )

( If you could ask one cook from the past 3 questions, which cook would it be, and what questions? )

( What do you want to have achieved by the time you are 36? )

( What do you do for a living? )

So I was thirsty and went to get a Diet Coke out of the drink machine. I should have known it wasn't "good" coke when I opened it, as it fizzed all over me. OK, fine. Then I put it on my desk, where it promptly tried to turn itself over into my computer. (Obviously it didn't get the 'puter, as I'm typing this.) I've decided I must have a can of hyperkinetic diet coke on my hands... maybe it's the extra caffeine they put in the diet stuff...

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So why is it that whenever I have something that I *absolutely have to do*, that's when I have the least ability to focus on it?

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Meanwhile, I'm cranky today - yay sunburn. Oh yeah, and I was cranky / antisocial yesterday, so apologies to ramblingheritic,zihuatanejo,thatursula, and harleenquinzell, and of course my dearest soucyn who had to deal with me at dinner. Sorry! I should have just found another book, and stayed home with it. On the up side, The Fairy Godmother, which I read at Barnes and Noble while darklordmoeser and soucyn were at Sin City (which I decided not to see because of the gore factor, even though the cinematography sounded interesting), was quite good for Mercedes Lackey fluff - the story telegraphed what was going to happen at 30 paces out, but hey, the whole book was based on *fairy tales* - this is not a surprise. I quite recommend it, even for those who have sworn off Lackey because of the travesty she's made out of some of the Valdemar books...any of the ones she's done lately have improved. She is, of course, still fluff, and I don't think that will ever change, but that's good once in a while...

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Saturday was fun though - went to Novice Tourney, got to watch Girard fight. (Yay! and he even fought to win me a rose from Sir Bryce, who is doing the most gorgeous challenge in honor of his soon-to-be-wife. The odd part of this was when Bryce asked G to introduce him to the lady he was fighting for (me), he said he already knew me - and I don't think we had ever met before. Oh well, maybe my name had gotten to him some other way - there aren't any other Guènievre's in-kingdom that I know of - or maybe he was thinking of someone else. ).

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We interrupt this ramble to go "squee!" over the new cookbook that just got delivered to my desk. "The Quick Recipe", from the Cook's Illustrated people. I see much yumminess in my future!

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Anyway, so the real reason I went to the event was because Elchenburg Castle (which is looking much better!) is a great site for cooking in a primitive environment - and there was no feast planned for the event. So, I got to play with food - yay! I did both lunch and dinner for Girard and I, Jenny and Owen, Trephina, and their Excellencies. ( Cut for food info - this will get a bit long... )

So, let's see, the official KASF rundown.

Way too much of Friday night was spent baking and such. Made shepard's pie for dinner, turned out OK though there was something odd about the mashed potatoes that I couldn't quite pin down. It's not the first time it's happened to me, either - it's this vaguely... green? taste, like the potatoes were slightly undercooked, except they were falling apart so I don't think that's it. Maybe not enough salt? (was trying not to oversalt the potatoes since the stew they were going on top of was quite salty, having been made with canned (i know, i know) broth.
And, of course, there was the massive yeast failure. (well, it wasn't so much a yeast failure as a bakers failure - if you dont' put enough yeast, it won't work - the yeast were 'givin it all she got, Cap'n'..)

Anyway, I entered Mescelin Bread and the Bread Tart from Sabina Welserin in the Royal Baker competition. (Links go to M$Word docs on my website (which mostly isn't there yet) - if you can't read them, I can make them PDFs, I was just being lazy). If you have comments on the documentation, I'd love to hear them, as that has, in the past, been my bugaboo and I did *much* better this time. As far as the actual FOOD goes, well, the judging on that was interesting - I didn't actually *like* the bread, but it got better scores than the tart, mostly b/c I used the wrong crust for the tart. Oh well, at least I learned how to make a fairly good standing tart, lol...and the tart filling was GOOD (brynpobydd said she kept coming back and stealing bites of it, which made me happy - after all, I cook to make people smile). Need to work on a starter that DOESN'T die in my house - doing the "beer" thing didn't work too well, the bread had a slightly off taste which both judges noted. But at any rate, this was the first time I've ever entered an A&S competition and NOT been disappointed with myself. That was a nice feeling...

No, I didn't win - brynpobydd did, which is fabulous and way overdue, since the whole thing was her idea in the first place. The funny thing, of course, was that the two of us were the only people that entered - it's the Kberg bread show! And lots of people commented on Solvarr's bread marker - I think I've figured out how to fix the next one, too. (Yes, I know, I should post pics. But I haven't yet - there's a reason for that. Some of the things from Ymir hadn't been unpacked yet, and I had assumed the camera was there. It wasn't. Apparently we left it at Ymir. But, the SCA is a wonderful place - some honest gentle found it Friday night, turned it in, and it made its way back to us at KASF. Woot. yes, I know I should be less careless - but at least it didn't bite me in the ass this time) Speaking of ramblingheritic, congrats to the newest Pearl!!!!!!

Sunday was filled with WoW (we did the Stockades instance with Tom, Illyria is now up to level 33!) and then we went to see Constantine. Not a bad movie, but Marion and I both agreed it was TOO gooey. Oh well.

Then we ended up with another random dinner party - roast pork (wrapped in bacon, with thyme, salt and pepper) roasted with onions and apples, with a sauce of pureed apples and onions with cream. Yum. Oh yes, and zihuatanejo came over and taught me how to make Spaetzle. Yay. Now I need one of these, or maybe one of these - I'm leaning towards the latter, as I could make mashed potatoes with it too...

Note to self: Next time you throw a random dinner party, do it on a weekend. Or kick people out before midnight. Either, or, doesn't matter...

Oh well, 'twas FABULOUS. What I was thinking of as "2-3 people and some food" turned into I think 10 people, at its "biggest" point, 2 pans of lasanga, yummy cheese dip and bagel chips, garlic bread, baked apples, cheesecake, and a few bottles of wine, blackberry mead, and really strange/bad hard cider (it was Norman sparkling cider, and just tasted "off". I think it was that particular bottle, rather than the type though - it seemed like the cork might have gone bad). Lots of people showed up - zihuatanejo (J & O), evan_page,harleenquinzell,darklordmoeser, ramblingheritic,and island42 and his lovely lady Edela (Caroline) who NEEDS AN LJ. :-) (yes, I'm being as subtle as a baseball bat...)

And, even better, I managed to get at least a "proof of concept" of the baker's mark ramblingheritic made me. The yeast I had was more or less dead, so the bread didn't rise/bake properly and I took it out of the oven before it really had a chance to get done, but the mark did indeed make a permanent indentation in the crust. woot!

I've just been a posting fool today - but it really isn't that hard to cook naked - not sure why the "Naked Chef", of all people, has such problems with it...
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004160424,000.html