14th Century Cooks' Play-date at Coronet

One of the ways in which I tend to diverge from a lot of my friends in the SCA is that for me the big, number one, most important and most fun thing I do in the SCA is try to understand historic cultures by trying to reproduce little bits of them. I'm not saying that other people don't think this is fun and important too, but it seems to come further down the list for most people. I don't come to the SCA for a "dream of chivalry"; I don't come to find "family" (well, except for my brothers, of course); I don't come for the partying; I come to do and make medieval things. Yesterday was the sort of thing I love to do in the SCA. Trying to learn more about the constraints and advantages of medieval cooking methods and equipment; comparing different possible interpretations of a single recipe; sharing and discussing knowledge and techniques in a situation that involves practical application without the looming pressure of a room full of paying diners. And the second most fun thing about the cooking (after the cooking itself) was the near-constant stream of people wandering through to taste the results.

Here are the recipes I did -- all from Sent Soví, no repeats of my previous experiments (although I brought the results of the arugula sauce for people to try). See previous postings for the bibliographic information.

( Mushroom Sauce )

( Carrots )

( Squash )

( Broad Beans (Favas) )

( Broom Pudding )

Overall Summary

I'm quite fond of the number of vegetable dishes in this book. It's also interesting to see several "patterns" of preparation applied to multiple base ingredients. I'm itching to do a distribution analysis of seasonings to get a big-picture notion of the rules of the cuisine. I keep getting the notion that some of the dishes labelled "sauces" are more in the way of side dishes -- or at least more of a condiment than a sauce, per se. It's also interesting to read some of the side comments on preparation and serving (like the bit about serving the squash with sour grape juice on the side, presumably to be added individually as people are served). All in all, the recipes seem more "talky" than contemporary collections from more northerly areas. Less someone's personal memory aid and more intended as actual instructions to someone unfamiliar with the dishes.

ETA: sarahbellem was taking pictures of the cooking, so they may show up online at some point.

Amusing and innovative iPhone apps

So sometimes I browse the app store just to see if I stumble over anything interesting or useful. Today I spotted an item in the "Staff Favorites" section categorized as "Lifestyle" and named "What's Invasive?" Hmm, I thought. Maybe something trying to raise people's consciousness about inappropriate requests for personal information? Warnings about the automatic collection of on-line data?

Nope, it's something far more interesting in terms of how smart-phone applications could be used. To quote the blurb:

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area needs your help to stop the invasion of non-native plants!

Do you visit the Santa Monica mountains to hike or walk or just sometimes enjoy getting out of the city? Do you want to help the Park Service maintain the natural beauty and habitat of native plants and animals?

You CAN help, by downloading the What's Invasive app and using your iPhone to take pictures of the top six most invasive plants in the area while you are in the park. Those photos are geo-tagged and time-stamped, and that information is then sent to the National Park Service so they can locate and destroy these harmful invasives before they get out of control."

Now that's thinking outside the box! (The programmer has a sense of humor as well -- the graphics crib from classic horror film imagery.) The credits note "This project is in collaboration with the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing at UCLA ..." so I'm guessing that it may be someone's student project. If so, I hope they got a good grade for innovative thinking. The weakest point in the strategy seems to be the necessarily highly-targetted market (people carrying iPhones while hiking in this specific park). On the other hand, given that the app is free (duh!) and that apps can be downloaded directly off the net, then simply promoting it at entrances and other key points of the specific park might be successful enough for the purpose.

It's definitely a nice break from browsing through endless app-clones.