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For Ermine_Rat
Mar. 17th, 2010 09:34 pmBehind the cut is a sketch and some notes taken on my 1999 European trip of a wooden candle-lantern with Gothic tracery cutouts at the Schleswig regional museum.
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Mar. 17th, 2010
Fixed the small rip in the tent roof -- although it almost took me longer to find it than to mend it. "Small rip at corner of roof." What could be more specific? It only has four corners. "At" is quite precise. I'd made a note in my to-do app back when the rip happened as I took it down last fall. And yet I looked at all four corners several times before I found it. Thought I was going crazy. Took the opportunity to do a couple other small mending jobs on clothes. (I hate mending.)
All the pre-cooking is done. On the one hand, I love doing "medieval cooking as performance art" at events. But on the other hand, my major secret to doing multi-dish dinners on a two-burner stove with precise timing (including getting to be a diner as well as a cook) is boiling bags. For the size of servings I'm generally dealing with, the quart size of freezer bags (not sandwich-type bags) works nicely, especially for anything with a semi-liquid texture. Cook it all up in advance. Cool slightly. Put in a freezer bag (but don't freeze!). About an hour before dinner, start heating water in the large pot (the one I use for heating dishwater) and put the bags in. Keep it to a low simmer, not a boil. When it's time to serve, just empty the bags into the serving dishes. Doesn't work for anything fried, broiled, or toasted, of course, but it makes the overall logistics much more manageable.
I did get mildly distracted again by making up standard spice blends. I now have about a five year supply of Powder Douce to go with my remaining supply of Powder Fort and yesterday's hypocras blend. That should keep me for a while.
All the pre-cooking is done. On the one hand, I love doing "medieval cooking as performance art" at events. But on the other hand, my major secret to doing multi-dish dinners on a two-burner stove with precise timing (including getting to be a diner as well as a cook) is boiling bags. For the size of servings I'm generally dealing with, the quart size of freezer bags (not sandwich-type bags) works nicely, especially for anything with a semi-liquid texture. Cook it all up in advance. Cool slightly. Put in a freezer bag (but don't freeze!). About an hour before dinner, start heating water in the large pot (the one I use for heating dishwater) and put the bags in. Keep it to a low simmer, not a boil. When it's time to serve, just empty the bags into the serving dishes. Doesn't work for anything fried, broiled, or toasted, of course, but it makes the overall logistics much more manageable.
I did get mildly distracted again by making up standard spice blends. I now have about a five year supply of Powder Douce to go with my remaining supply of Powder Fort and yesterday's hypocras blend. That should keep me for a while.