Tales of Brass

[eliskimo's friends,] Rob & Shawnee, adopted a little girl from an orphanage in Taiwan. Unfortunately, Katie was born with a malformed ear that will cause her increasing problems as she grows older. They are hoping to have surgery for her in May to correct the problem.

There is a bank in the US that is sponsoring a contest called "Get Ahead in 2010" and will be giving away $5000 to the story that gets the most votes. $5000 would go a long way towards Katie's surgery. Please consider clicking on the link I've provided below and voting for their story. (You can vote once a day between now and end of February)

https://getaheadin2010.usbank.com/Story/6487%20

I have to make one of these for a friend for Gulf wars.  Does anyone know where I can find a pattern?

http://www.elizabethancostume.net/wardrobe/blackcassock.html

http://www.extremecostuming.com/images/306_dutch_cloak_sketch.jpg

Without sleeves.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

Edit:  LIke this, too.  Without sleeves.

http://www.employees.org/~cathy/images/lant_roll1.jpg

Day tripped to Clothiers' Symposium with Dance Master/Baronial Archer Champion HL Donald MacDonald. I had been concerned about the roads, since someone I'd been looking forward to seeing, Nicholas from Grimfells, had said he wasn't going because of the snow. ( Cut due to length )

So, I am sort of starting to find out what I am good at.

Enthusiasm. Encouragement.

I've been thinking about what I'm going to do, ultimately, in my SCA life. The paths that have closed and that have opened up before me have surprised, disturbed, and delighted me, not necessarily in that order; sometimes all at the same time.

'Scuse me while I go mildly nova here.

I just learned from rhodri2112 that I can do recitations as an A&S project.

I can do El Cantar de Mio Cid.  Just the thought of this gets me all teary.

Here's my proto-documentation for y'all to read, if you like.  The pics were not included in the original.

Disclaimer: As this was a work in progress, my notes were much more sketchy and chatty than they would've been if I'd been Finished. ( Read more... )

Ok, it's Day One of Hemorrhage Week, and I'm feeling physically bad and mentally fragile, but--

1) I kinda have a girl crush on our current Queen. When she signs her missives to the general populace with "Love, Queen Magdalena," I believe it.

2) Just two notes on the Calontir cooking guild yahoo site have me a little shiny in the eyes. So much support and cheerful fellow feeling and encouragement.

One of the things the trip yesterday did, which I was hoping it would do, is further enrich the bond between me and my husband.

Queen's Prize Tourney absolutely enlightened him.

He'd been of the opinion that an A&S competition would be much more hardcore and rigid.  He had no idea that QPT would be so laid back, so friendly and interactive, as it were.  He didn't know that you could have the option of points and/or feedback, and I think that heartened him a great deal.

He also had been laboring under the misapprehension that the end product was the end-all be-all for A&S competition.  It was a lightbulb moment for him to realize that this isn't always the case--that depiction of the process that the entrant goes through is also important.  Now that he comprehends that depiction of the involvement, the participation, the dialogue between modern recreator and medieval creator is also very, very important.

It also didn't hurt that we spent the night at a food laurel's house (thank you, wombatgirl and rhino_boy !)

I'm so excited to see where he takes this. 

What a wonderful time!

More later.

All I can say is, King Manfred must've had a cast iron stomach.

So I'm in the process of constructing my first attempt at King Manfred's Torta, AKA Torta Manfredi, KIMH (Known In My House) as Awful Pie. 

1) Thank to the kindness of beccalynnlaw, I now have an awesome pastry blender.  I was a little hesitant at first, Luddite that I am, but I got to like it.

2) It took me a while to find lard.  I really thought lard would be a refrigerated product in what WASP Americans would think of as "wierd meat", but no, it was waiting patiently for me on the shelf below the Crisco.

3) I could not find gizzards packaged all by themselves.  I found packages of gizzards and hearts, and I thought, OK, maybe there's a half pound of gizzards in that, 'cause I hardly see any hearts.  Little did I know....

4) I love chicken livers.  I love it that you can buy an unvarnished, unapologetic tub of them for cheap.  Now I wish my whole family loved them.

5) Gizzards.  Prepping gizzards is the lame.  The recipe says to remove the membrane.  I was all "what membrane?"  Then, to my sorrow, I found out.  A lot of that half a pound of gizzards went into the dogs dish--yup, membrane.

6)  I did not want to use my food processor--I was afraid the liver would gum up the works.  So, chop chop chop.  My oldest took great delight in her disgust at watching me.  Chopping the gizzards is less messy, but slower.  At least for me.

So I'm thinking, sad to say, that much of my written work on this torta is going to be in the nature of questions, as this project has raised more issues in my head than it's settled.

So, we are now headed into the beginning stages of our push for newcomers this year.  I don't know if the Barony has ever really been so passionate and so concentrated about recruiting and retention.  Luckily we have some enthusiastic people who are at the forefront of this, and I intend to encourage them as much as I can.

One of the things that we have decided to do is set up a group, guild, household--whatever you want to call it--of newcomers.  This would be guided by the Chatelaine, the deputy Chatelaine, and myself (perhaps some others).

I know that many in Calontir are ill-disposed towards households (despite the fact that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one).  Some of the arguments against a newcomers' guild would that it might insulate them and prevent them from being able to mingle effectively in their barony and in their kingdom.  Another concern was that this would cause the majority of the work to fall on the Chatelaine, when the whole group should behave as ambassadors to newcomers. 

The majority of the folks replying to my initial post are of course in favor of being welcoming to newcomers, involving them, helping them get to events, inviting them out to food after fighter practices, etc.  And yeah, that works.  Certainly that's one way to do it, especially if you only have one newcomer, and a good history of retention of your newcomers.

One of the things we've run into--that I've seen in Vatavia (and I bet it happens elsewhere too) is the problem of this newcomer and that newcomer just falling off the edge of the earth.  Slipping through the cracks.  "What happened to John from Boeing?"  "I dunno.  We havent' seen him since May." 

My thinking is that if we have a Newcomers' Guild, it might be easier to catch people from slipping through.  In my experience, the people who stayed in were folks who had someone with them every step of the way--for about a year.  After a year, they've made enough friends, they have a good idea and understanding of how the SCA works, they can go out on their own, as it were.

Being a newcomer is hard.  I think a lot of us tend to forget just how hard it is.  I want to make it less difficult for our newcomers this year.  I want them to feel as if they too have a stake in the Dream, and that they are just as valuable as anyone else in the Kingdom.

And on a different note--experimentation is not wrong.  If this guild idea doesn't work out, what happens?  It doesn't work out.  No big deal, no damnation, no cries of "it didn't work out because it's not Calontiri," no eradication of the Chatelaine's office in the Barony.  We chalk it up to experience and we move forward. 

I was right about the egg whites.

I knew I was right about the egg whites when I pulled the damn thing out of the oven and it had broken apart.  It looked like an omelet with pretensions.

At first when I took a peek, about 20-15 minutes away from the alleged done time, I saw it had started to puff up.  That was when I began to worry.



 

You can see how it's already begun to brown, which the recipe says it's not to do.  So I put the tinfoil over it--bit it really didn't matter byt hat point. 

Here it is after I pulled it out of the oven and had gone ahead and sprinkled the sugar on it.



And then after a little while, it fell, like a souffle.  Or like how I think a souffle falls.



I tasted it--it had great flavor.  Sweet, but not so rich as a cheesecake.  It was fluffy.  And I knew for sure that's what the problem was.  See, in using the packaged egg white product, I made the mistake of going by the directions on the package and using amounts equivalent to an egg.  But an egg white is maybe half of an egg's content, if that. 

I took it over to teflonpaladin's house that night, and we all pronounced it very tasty, albeit a bit odd.

So I have learned something valuable about using packaged egg whites in cooking.  I've also learned about the tolerance of friends!This was a good experience, and I'm glad I did it.  After QPT, I will return to it to perfect it.

Next: King Manfred's Torta. 

Baking the shell for the Torta.  Cooking takes muscles, you know?  I rolled that sucker out until I had more than what was called for.  I hope it won't be too thin, but we'll see.  Also, sad to say, the recipe calls for an 8" pie plate.  But I only have a 9" pie plate.  Ce la guerre.  I was just pleased I could maneuver the dang thing into the dish.  And then aluminum foil over the pie crust, and beans on top to weight it down.

On to the filling!  Wouldn't you know, I forgot to set out the cream cheese to soften--and the butter wasn't softened enough.  I made do.  Once I got going with the whole creaming thing, it all softened up nicely. 

One Problem:  The cream cheese did not completely get integrated.  There were small lumps.

I thought, to save on wastage, that I would use non-dyed egg-white product in place of separated egg whites.  I'm not afraid of separating whites--in fact, I'm a dab hand at it--but I didn't know what I'd do with the yolks.  The only problem that I can see (so far) with using this product is that it increased fluid.

 Ad believe me, there was a lot of liquid!  After the egg whites and the milk, I had something that was somewhere between milk and eggnog for consistency.  And it was delicious.  Yes, I tasted it.  My kitchen, my immune system. 

It almost overflowed the crust when I poured it in, but not quite.  It's in the oven  now--I'll keep y'all posted.

So one of my SCA resolutions is to bear down on cooking. wombatgirl is helping to inspire me in this. Right now I'm working with what she calls "the blue bible," which is The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy by Odile Redon, FranCoise Sabban, & Silvano Serventi (trans. Edward Schneider).  There's a lot of good stuff in here, although when I finally sat down to read it, I got my nose put out of joint by this statement on the first page of the preface:
 

"Recipes too traveled, and some unquestionably came from abroad--even if, on weak evidence and on the basis of analogies with modern cuisines, the Arab roots of medieval Western cooking have sometimes been exaggerated."
 

I really don't think it has been exaggerated.  At least, from what I've read--but then I have a definite bias.

Anyway, so I'm learning about making tortas--savory pies.  I love a savory pie myself; it's like the medieval sammich almost.  And we all know that the sandwich is Nature's Perfect Food.  I am in the process of practicing on the Torta Bianca.  This is not a savory pie, but more of a cheesecake.  I personally don't care for cheesecake, but this seemed to be the simplest torta to start on. 

Last night I made the crust--I'd forgotten what butter tastes like, almost, as it's always margarine, margarine, margarine.  I'm always nervous about adding water to flour, but this time it seemed ok.

So there I was, with my cup and a half of flour, nine tablespoons of butter, cutting it together with a serving fork.  (I want a pastry fork.)  And then gingerly adding half of a third of a cup of water with a scant teaspoon of salt dissolved in it (I think it was less then that; we are out of salt, and that was all that was left in the saltshaker).  So I worked it all together with my fingers.  The book says "to combine quickly with your fingers, without overworking, just until the dough comes together."  Well, sadly, I am an inexperienced judge at this, so since the dough did not seem to be quite coming together, I added the rest of the water (the recipe said I could do this) and then it seemed to be just fine.  I smacked it into a "thick disc," wrapped it in wax paper closed with duct tape (how's that for SCAdian?) and it's now resting in the fridge, awaiting my labors today.

  The filling is cream cheese, egg whites, ginger, milk, sugar, and another nine tablespoons of butter.  The recipe calls for a topping of sugar and rose water, but I really really really don't care for rose water.  So I think I will just use the sugar.  I know, this violates my rule of following a first-time recipe exactly, but--not this time.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

A couple of pics from Crown, just for kicks.

The first is lizzamama and me watching the final bout.

The second is me with some mighty fine Hospitallers.


 

    

Ave Calontir!

Thank you so much for attending Crown Tournament in Vatavia. We know it was horribly cold, and in some spots the driving was tricky. So your appearance was treasured even more under these conditions.

The event was great, thanks to you, to the event stewards, to the feast stewards, to Their Majesties, to His Highness of the Midrealm, to the combatants and their consorts, to Their Highnesses--and to the gems in Calontir's crown: the good folks who worked their tails off.

Thank you and see you again around the kingdom soon!

In service,

Melisende de la Roche de Lionne

Baroness of Vatavia

 Hey, my wonderful SCA friends--

I know it's still the season of cold and challenging roads, and many of us just aren't up to SCA activities right now (which I completely understand). Hopefully this quiet time has been one of contentment, family blessings, and what my mother (Toda Galindez in the SCA) has referred to as "a romance with nourishment." But now I'm going to suggest that some of you turn your minds to your fellows and think about award recommendations.

There are many, many SCA people out there who are vastly talented--work until they sweat blood--and fight like lightning unleashed. Some of those folks, of course, are known to Calontir and have been recognized and spurred on by Kingdom awards. Others--not so much. Sometimes it just happens that a person has been working so hard, fighting so much, or doing A&S for so long that we assume they have X, Y, or Z awards, when it isn't so. In other cases, some folks are a bit newer, and have talent or heart to burn--and they need that encouragement, that vote of confidence, that letter of marque, as it were, to Go Be Awesome.

So I ask you, take this time to look around you, at your friends, at the people in your barony or shire whom you don't know all that well. Who has knocked your socks off in the past year? Who needs a nudge to move them into the next realm of shininess? I know that Their Majesties--the witty and gracious Magdalena and the manly and noble Hirsch *love* giving out awards to Calontiri.

So please, send in those award recommendations. Together we can lift the light of these dear people, who inspire us, to illuminate the land of Calontir!

Award Form:
http://www.calontir.sca.org/award/index.html

Description of Calontir Awards:
http://calontir.sca.org/herald/award-intro.html

List of Order of Precedence (so you can see who has what):
http://calontir.sca.org/herald/op/index.html

In service to Crown and Barony,

Melisende de la Roche de Lionne
Baroness of Vatavia

I never dreamed I would become such a clothes nut. Certainly it's not how I am in modern life.

What a relief to find that yes, my husband was right about the necessary under-camise for my gothic fitted gowns being in the trunk, since I have grown out of my bliaut and my green Norman just doesn't seem to be flash enough for an investiture. Thank you, Husby.

I'm a pretty easy-going person, really. I let a lot slide off my back after initial reactions of WTF! When it comes to me.

When it comes to me and my hat, still the same. I have no illusions about the brass on my head; it's there as a signifier saying I SERVE OTHER PEOPLE.

I don't use my hat to my advantage; I don't think it makes me any more special than Joe or Jessica Newcomer. (Busier, maybe, but no more special!) In fact, you're as likely to find me scrubbing pots in the kitchen as you are to find me on the Baronial High Seat.

Having said that: When it comes to mine--my friends, my companions, my mentors, the people who have guided me on the rocky path for the past 20 years--then all bets are off.

I shouldn't say that. I should keep my mouth shut and paste That Smile on my face and wave. But there are times when I do what I shouldn't.

If I find that you're responsible for a friend's pain, that you've said something so phenominally stupid, fecal-minded, and wrong, then I'm coming for you. It may be next week. It may be months from now. It may be a year.

My persona used to be Hiberno-Norse, and I was always struck by the shockingly succinct and gruesomely witty methods of murder they employed. I do miss those days, from time to time.

Your shoulders are cold. I'll spread you eagle's wings to warm them.