Category: Living History

Apprehending Chicken

On By kittycalashIn Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting, Research4 Comments
Living History Chickens. Don’t mess with them.

I have written in the past about the Living History Chicken, ripped and delicious, and the joys of making such a creature fit into a cast-iron pot. While “chicken ripper” might be the appellation you desire, it’s not what I want to be known for.

Last time, I dissed the modern ham as an item ill-suited to camp cooking (tasty, but it doesn’t look right). I have also seen hams on a spit cooked slowly (too high above) a fire, and heard a rumour about a very authentic ham-dining experience with a very authentic digestive result. That’s taking things farther than I care to take any regiment, so what to do?

Continental Army rations included, among other things, a pound of flour and a pound of beef a day per man. In Rhode Island at least, that beef might also have been fish, and I have seen chicken listed, too, as it is, technically, meat. Not wanting to inflict our fishy Ocean State customs on all comers, I think I’ll spare the regiments a pound of fish a day. But chicken? What to do? Hope to cook it?

Or maybe we should eat more fruit.The Afternoon Meal by Luis Meléndez, ca. 1772. MMA, 1982.60.39

One option is to rip the carcass apart (see above) and boil it. That would get the job done, for a bone-in chicken stew. However, I am thinking of string roasting chicken (or cornish game hens, since modern grocery store chickens are awfully large).

To be quite technically correct, I could only cook chicken for the Second Helping Regiment. They had a documented poultry thief among their number, one John Smith, who apprehended poultry if it failed to give the correct countersign when challenged. However a chicken is prepared, it will be a messy business, as we have no forks. It’s fingers, knives and spoons for us, as we have no forks. That does increase the appeal of boiling, since the meat would come off the bone more easily.

Drawing Beef and Flour

On By kittycalashIn Food, Living History, Reenacting
The Durham Ox: yet to come in 1778
Drawn meat: The Durham Ox.

Or beeve and flower, depending on how you’re spelling in 1778.
John Buss of the 10th Massachusetts complained mightily of the rations he drew, and the quality of the beef, pining in his letters home for cheese and cider. His affection for cheese has become part of the unit’s lore and an in-joke, so I did make certain to have plenty of cheese for Monmouth. Bread, cheese, ham, fruit in season, beef stew: yawn, after a while.

Trying to cook authentically in the field could result in dull, repetitive menus, recreating the soldiers’ experience, but unless everyone you’re feeding has signed up for that, you may have an unhappy crowd on your hands. Mostly they just want food, but people will grumble if you are cooking the same thing every week (and that opportunity exists). When I was a kid, my mother cooked chicken and broccoli every Sunday night, and to this day, I won’t eat chicken and broccoli unless it is in satay sauce.

Sorry, Private: not in this man's Army.
Sorry, Private: not in this man’s Army.

The 10th can count themselves lucky that they weren’t on the expedition to Quebec, when Newfoundland was on the 2nd Rhode Island’s menu, as well as squirrel-head-and-candle-wick soup. (Try explaining this Newfoundland business to your creative writing group. I tried historical fiction and got a reputation for being “dangerous,” and you can, too.)

At Monmouth, we served as another regiment’s….disposers…on Sunday morning, and were treated to the extra steaks they cut from a ham. Grilled and stacked on bread with hard cheddar cheese, this was delicious. Our conversation turned quickly to the question of grilling. After all, we only have kettles and sticks. I said I’d buy and carry a grate if they wanted ham so much, but the Adjutant proposed weaving a grid of green sticks and holding that over coals, and just brushing off the ashes when the meat fell into the coals. The minor detail left out is what we would use to retrieve the meat, though it must be a stick by any other name.

One cannot fry in or on tinware: the tinning will melt. We know soldiers carried as little as they could even in the regular infantry, so light infantry units were packing nothing but what they had to carry. No frying pan; no grate. Upon reaching this conclusion, we turned our sad-eyed stares on the other regiment with their table and stools and grill and ham, and were rewarded with another grilled ham piece each. Dogs have got a good thing going.

Begging and sharing aside, what about ham? The joke we make at home about ham being the natural prey of cats who butcher, brine, and cook the ham they beg for applies just as much to light infantry troops and their hangers-on. (They shouldn’t really have me along, but they are stuck and I’m pretty handy for getting the meals out, the canteens filled, and the wounds bandaged.) But a ham? Harder still to justify. Salt pork, yes; salt beef, yes. But the attractive and portable boneless hams at the supermarket are, sadly, more delicious than authentic.

One can take on the task of preparing meat properly oneself, in one’s copious spare time, but that won’t fix July and August’s meals. Staring sad-eyed at other regiments seems a parasitic and reputation-destroying plan. What to do?

Tune in next time for more adventures in historic meats!

Citizens of Boston

On By kittycalashIn 1763 Project, Events, Living History2 Comments
John Collet, May Morning, 1761-1770. Museum of London
John Collet, May Morning, 1761-1770. Museum of London

I find myself involved in an event scheduled for August 10 in Boston, though I know this could go awry because I worked for a number of years with DC, the organizer of this extravaganza. He’s got a style all his own, and for a taste of the madness, you can see him here (~5:26) with unmistakable and inimitable mannerisms, at Louisbourg.

While the Adjutant is arranging and training the militia, the event still needs civilians, and as the interpretive consultant, my task is to create the context of the day and hammer into DC’s head that when organizing something like this, you can hardly over-communicate, though having been on the receiving end of his phone calls, actually, you can… but that’s where I come in with the editor’s sharpened pencil and cut, cut, cut.

Mr S has signed right up for this event, though he lacks suitable garb, and thus it will soon be time to break out the wool broadcloth. I really liked Sharon’s waistcoat-conversion suggestion, and happily Wm Booth had a lovely dark-green wool remnant of just enough yardage for a skinny man’s frock coat that very morning. Add the brass buttons in the stash, and I thought we were off and headed for 1770 with a regression to 1763.

Except… in doing more looking at 1760/1763 images, I began to wonder if it was better to beat the green linen into an earlier coat, consider it a lesson learned, and move on, since it is only a one-day event. (I saw some small remnants of that same green linen in the Adjutant’s stash, and perhaps I can get them for cuffs.)

My logic is this: it can be tricky to walk a coat backwards in time, especially in sleeve width, and Mr S is in serious need and want of a lovely coat for Battle Road. (Except yes, heh heh, he needs it by July 14 for an event at Washington’s HQ in Cambridge. There’s not even time for gnashing of teeth!) I don’t think it means more sewing, really, it only means penance with alterations and begging for fabric scraps. It also mean focusing, and letting the Monmouth-acquired cuts on my fingertips heal.

John Collet, Scene in a London Street, 1770. YCBA, B1981.25.110

Mr S will be just one of a number of men who will be militia in the morning and civilians in the afternoon. In thinking about the Boston street of 1763, I’m reading the Boston Gazette and Country Journal (which DC had not done beyond the main articles…) and looking at images from London. Maybe the scene won’t be as chaotic, since it is a happy celebration, but it needs to be busy, and populated with men, women, and children of various ages, races, and class levels. There’s a nice way to search for “street” at the Yale Center for British Art, and you get a sense of the crowds and busy-ness of the 18th century street.

To that end, I have asked my silk-gown friends, and I plan to be the cherry seller. (I should so like to have that done by Sturbridge to acquire some patina, but doubt I shall.) For the Young Mr, I see runaway apprentices as a possibility. In the Boston Gazette of August 8, 1763, There is a 16 year old mulatto fellow, “large of his age,” who had on “a brown camblet coat with red lining, a white linnen and a mixt colour’d flannel vest” as well as a blue great coat with yellow metal buttons and leather breeches. There won’t be leather breeches by August, but a camblet coat lined in red may be possible.

To Wash or Not to Wash

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments
Mr S and his waistcoat at Monmouth
Mr S and his waistcoat at Monmouth

Sometimes I can almost hear, “Good God woman, what are you thinking?!” but so far I have only seen it in a man’s eyes. This is usually in regard to laundry.

I erred once in asking if one wanted his hunting shirt laundered, and I had planned only on cold water and hand washing, as the item seemed a bit crunchy and crumpled to my eye and hand. But, no, some other woman had washed that shirt some time ago, and it had taken considerable time—years—to reestablish fringe from fluff.

Well patinated now, formerly embarrassingly white.

Now, I give you Mr S’s waistcoat and overalls. Mr S’s waistcoat was completed on the New Jersey Turnpike in November 2011 while headed to Fort Lee. Since then, it has a acquired a smattering of powder specks, a patina of grunge, a stain or two of greasy beaver (curry, actually) and, most recently, spots of toothpaste. This is where I draw the line: the toothpaste spots must go, as they are inauthentic.

Shirts, shifts, stockings, aprons, and waistcoat

One doesn’t want one’s clothes too clean for reenactments or living history events: you’re “living” in the pre-detergent era, but that doesn’t mean you should never wash your clothes. We know that the armies employed women to wash clothing, and we know that linens–shirts, shifts, and drawers–were washed more frequently than outerwear like breeches, waistcoats, and gowns. It’s not so different from today, when we don’t clean business suits as often as we launder shirts or underwear. Still, we do clean our clothes, and there comes a point when those overalls will get washed. Right about when you figure you need gloves to handle them…