Tag: Food

Dirt Stew & The King’s Oreo

On By kittycalashIn Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting4 Comments
What Lights through Temple window Break?

What do you do when the kettle tilts off the pothook and spills onto the floor?
Scoop the food back in and keep cooking.

That’s how you make dirt stew, with just enough ash to keep the texture interesting at the bottom of your bowl, plus ham, onion, turnips, parsnips, potatoes and carrots. If you wash the inside of the kettle later in your motel bathtub, you will add to the list of very bad things you’ve done in the bathrooms of temporary accommodations.

On Saturday, the original event plan called for a camp kitchen demonstration; this was nixed because a long string of permissions could not be obtained in time, so we fell back on bringing the three sticks and two kettles. Outdoor fires of all kinds were nixed Thursday because of red flag warnings, and after downpours Friday night followed by rain on Saturday afternoon, we ended up cooking in the back room of the Temple building.

Third from the left, Mr S in the ‘Ugly Dog’ coat.

Some of us were too focused on getting food into the kettle to tidy up the surroundings, and that is why you need several people in any group: someone has to keep their head and clean up the wreckage of previous occupants. Fortunately for us, Mr McC managed that while the Young Mr swarmed around like a cat wanting its dinner, I cut vegetables and Mr S stewed about spilling the stew.

In the end it was a cozy evening boiling roots and hearing stories. I took no photos because that would have ruined it, but Mr S kneeling before the fireplace in the Ugly Dog coat and overalls as the last of the light came through the watery glass made a Vermeer-like and beautiful sight.

On Sunday morning, Our Musician Friend (who has turned his coat, and now sports yards and yards of lace and a bearskin hat nicknamed Lamb Chop), produced a package of Oreos from his haversack, and the Young Mr and I took the King’s Oreo with pleasure and no commitment.

An 18th Century Feast

On By kittycalashIn Food, Living History, Reenacting
from Jane Austen’s World blog

On Saturday last, we were delighted to attend a long-anticipated and much delayed birthday celebration for George Washington, combined with a quarterly unit meeting and workshop. We are multi-taskers, because it is pretty easy to talk and sew, and talk and eat, though sewing and eating is more challenging and potentially more dangerous.

I got some progress made on Bridget’s gown, Mr S started a knapsack, the Young Mr played video games with the other boys and they all took the adjutant’s dog for many walks. Our hosts have a very neat house with fireplaces that work, and a bee hive oven that works (those of us who live with Don Draper’s Ossining kitchen may be jealous) so are able to cook in an accurate and delicious manner.

Bridget’s dress, in process.

Honestly, I don’t know where all the food came from: I would not have thought the kitchen could hold so much, as I do not think ours could! Roast chicken, fish cakes, carrot pudding (of which I am quite fond), brown bread and beans, turnip sauce, more bread of a different recipe, a chocolate torte, onions and apples, and surely more things I have forgotten.

We had a lovely time, talked about a lot of things, and came home well-fed. On Wednesday, I made ‘buttered onions another way,’ since the Young Mr deigned to eat it, and thought it would be delicious another time. Apples and onions  go well with pork, and someday, when I have time, I’ll try Indian pudding. Just because I have a 1960s kitchen with all-electric appliances doesn’t mean I can’t try.

Shopping at Dobyns and Martin

On By kittycalashIn Food, Living History1 Comment
A Range of Goods, lately Arrived from Maryland.

In the not-too-distant past of up till last week, I was still under the impression that I would be doing two living history presentations on tea at the end of March, but through a series of maddening-for-a-colleague circumstances, that is not the case. To begin preparing for these programs, I had started secondary and primary source research on tea and tea parties, as you may recall. I also ordered some things from Dobyns and Martin, thinking how nice it would be for people to see and smell and sample historically correct teas.

Friday was a happy day chez Calash, coming home at the end of a long week to three days off and packages! Though I won’t need the teas for work, it does seem to me that they will be quite suitable for other living history presentations, and I can always ‘steal’ some from an officer if I get tired of the black market in shirts.

In addition to tea and lump sugar (which will fit nicely in Bridget’s pocket), I ordered soap. The lavender wash ball seems suitable for officers and the better sorts, while a cake of lye soap will vastly upgrade our dish-, self- and clothes washing in camp. While I’m game to make my own soap, a lack of ingredients and facilities hinders production.

Carrot pudding Trial One. Verdict: Too much nutmeg.

And, finally, the rose water. I’m looking forward to enhanced baking, a good activity in the weather we’ve had lately. While I don’t think the rose water would have saved the way-too-much-nutmeg carrot pudding, it will certainly be welcome in dishes future. I’m motivated to get a boiled pudding right, and in the field, because I know the Enos Hitchcock ate pudding and venison as a chaplain in the war.

Haversack Stashable Lunch Bag

On By kittycalashIn Food
Found in the clearance aisle at Home Goods.

Mr S destroyed his lunch bag (zipper failure) and since I sew in a pre-zipper era, I declined to hunt up a new zipper and set it into the weird amalgamation that is the modern insulated lunch bag. I can’t even remember how old that lunch bag was, but it might have been six years old. So out we went for cat food (which happens a lot) and a lunch bag.

Just don’t get caught with tinfoil and plastic baggies if you’re eating in breeches.

This one seemed like it would be too small, but it does hold his entire lunch. And then I realized it would fit nicely into a haversack if one needed to pack a cold lunch on a hot day. You just have to be stealthy when opening the thing, at least until the velcro gets linty and quieter. This bag is lined with freezable something that serves as the ice pack, which does save space and should be more efficient and safer on a super-hot summer day (I’m looking at you, Cambridge in July.)

And, as ever, if you wrap your meal in tinfoil and baggies, hide it from the public. The best way to use it at an event would be to pull paper- or linen-wrapped period food from its hidden, chilled (shallow) depths. If you are not in the army, it goes in your market wallet, linen bag, or basket, not your haversack. Now, perhaps those cats can help me silence the velcro.