Lunch Break Papers

Over on the Book of Face I see people post links to a lot of free sites at the moment for reasons (in case I forget down the years, this is because of the corona virus). The usual problem of Facebook applies: It gets posted, and then you can't find the post again. So I am going to start collecting links over here for myself.

Open University free courses at https://www.open.edu/openlearn/

450 free Ivy League courses.

Internet Archive - a treasure trove!

Italian museums to virtually visit for free.

Virtual field trips

OpenCulture - a collection of links, have to look at it more - seems promising!

I have no TV - a collection of documentaries to watch online.

Culture! Quarantine Soirees and other free culture - operas, concerts, etc!

Cambridge University Textbooks free in HTML-format. Bloody hell. Free until end of May.

Digital Collection of the British Library

Someone's done a like list - online resources galore!

Open content on JSTOR, a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. They will also make more content available online in the coming weeks.

Berliner Philharmoniker virtual concert hall free for 30 days with over 600 concerts.

Theatre and dance to watch online. In some cases live.

Audible free children's stories and those for teens, and classics, and in different languages too.

Royal Opera House is streaming opera and ballet.

National Firm Board of Canada has lots of free films and documentaries.

I am sure there will be more over the coming days / weeks, so this will be updated as and when.

Again, so I don't have to hunt the internet for the recipe.

Equal amounts butter and sugar; 2-3 eggs; 1/3 more plain flour than butter + sugar; baking powder; caraway seeds; splash of milk; pinch of salt; ground almonds (if wanted).

ie

175g butter, 175g sugar, 225g flour.

Soften (melt) butter, put with sugar, mix until frothy. Beat in eggs (careful that the mix is not too hot or they'll scramble). Add flour and baking powder, caraway seeds and a pinch of salt. Add ground almonds if wanted. Add a dash of milk if the dough is too dry.

Pour in baking tin and bake 45-55 minutes until a toothpick comes out dry.

Re-activating this blog once again. Book of face is all well and good, but for recording thoughts (and being able to look back at them with some ease), this is far better.

Since my last entry, where I was looking forward to helping in a kitchen at a SCA event (which by the way went rather well), I've progressed apace in what has become my niche in the SCA - cooking. People like to eat, and I like to cook.
I have since been head cook at another event in Ireland (in the same kitchen I helped in so I knew the layout) and at a camping event. At another camping event which was "bring your own" I just played around with making stuff over an open fire. All of this culminated in being head cook at the 2019 Flintheath Yule Ball, cooking a four course feast for 80 people, which was the biggest learning experience I could have had.

Oh, and I am not a morning person and should not make breakfasts, for I will forget to salt the scrambled eggs. I've also discovered how important a good kitchen crew is - you can cook for a handful of people on your own, but not for 30-80. You need help. I've been lucky so far that I've had amazing people, without whom.

I may post details of the menus and tastes later; this is just to jot down what happened to me between then *points down* and now.

I made pies for the first time in 2018. Legendary. Made lots more since then. Love hot water crust pastry.

In non-cooking news, I moved from a one-bedroom, open plan living room / kitchen into a Victorian conversion house - large living room, kitchen, large bedroom aka guest and SCA room, small bedroom, large bathroom, and garden. It's slightly further to work, but price-wise very acceptable. And a lot more space!

Finally for now, I somehow managed to mess up my right knee, specifically the ligaments on the outside of said knee. I'm walking with a stick and a knee brace and hope this will heal soon because it's gorram tedious.

More later.

Roast beast (Turkey; I know it's not authentic but sue me. It was an inexpensive cut of meat. Could have used a small chicken.) which was roasted on a bed of mixed vegetables (carrots, celeriac, turnip, onion, garlic, with thyme and rosemary mixed with a bit of olive oil) and a slug of red wine.

Red cabbage cooked with a bit of red wine, bay leaf, redcurrant jam, ginger and cinnamon, lemon juice, and a spoonful of applesauce (could have just chopped an apple in there and will do that next time).

Czech-style dumplings (flour, egg, water, milk, small pieces of dry white bread).

The meat was nice and tender, and the flavours of the herbs and the wine came through. Perhaps a bit of red wine vinegar or lemon juice to add next time as the carrots and turnip made it a little on the sweet side.

Mashing some of the veg with the liquor (and perhaps a slug of cream) would make for an excellent sauce.

Red cabbage is a classic, but definitely use chopped apple next time, the apple sauce tastes strange here. Usually there's also some clove in there but the feast I was test-cooking for had a clove allergy, but if one ups the ginger and lemon juice it works just fine. I was told it tastes of Christmas. :)

All in all, very tasty indeed.

I might be re-activating this as a food blog. A medieval food blog, to be precise. Because reasons.

I am mad enough to do this: 100 Days of A&S Challenge.
(A&S, for those not au fait with SCA-speak, stands for Arts & Sciences, aka "everything that does not involve hitting other people with sticks or shooting things with arrows"; it can be anything from fibre arts, cooking, scribal arts, music, research in general, etc.)

Since there is a lot of stuff I want / need to be doing to prepare for this year's Raglan, the challenge seems like a Good Thing. We'll see.

Things to do:

Finish dress 1.
Start dress 2 (and finish it).
Finish embroidering a cap.
Research medieval music.
Try the leatherworking.
Start the learning of illumination.
Start the learning of medieval writing.
See what else is out there...

(originally posted June 2016)

taken from from Mark Grant: Roman Cookery, Serif 2008; original recipe by Anthimus in “On Foods”

200g lentils (he uses Puy, I used ordinary lentils)
1 tsp red vine vinegar (I only had white wine vinegar but I added a dash of red wine)
2 tsp sumac
1 slice of lemon
1 tsp olive oil
2 tsp ground coriander
salt

Boil the lentils in water for about 30 minutes or until tender. Drain off the water, add the seasonings, cover with water and let simmer with the lid on for about 20 minutes.

Add more vinegar, sumac and coriander to taste, a pinch of brown sugar to round it.

A nice, sour and spicy lentil dish. For meat eaters, I am sure some sausages on the side would do well. Serve with bread.

Tastes even better the next day.

(originally posted June 2016)

Taken from Jaqui Wood, “Prehistoric Cooking”, The History Press 2011.

100g oatmeal
100g flour (she calls for barley flour, I used plain white for the first try)
20g butter
salt
milk to mix

Mix the flours together, rub in the butter, add the salt. Mix to a soft dough with the milk.
Form into small (and flat!) cakes and cook on a hot griddle until firm and brown.

Has a nice, nutty flavour; goes well with butter and cheese. Also a good addition to a soup or stew.

Addendum: Upon experimentation, the butter is not needed, milk will do fine. The mixture mustn't be too dry. Seeds (nuts, sesame...) and flavourings (coriander, caraway, dried herbs...) can be added for taste variations.

I've been doing these a couple of times now on weekends, and they're really good.

I've just deleted my LJ.

I know everything I've posted in the past is here, as are all comments. It just feels very weird nevertheless. It was the blog I started with all those many years ago.

On another note, I am wondering if I should merge the wordpress account I am keeping for my SCA exploits with this journal here (not that the SCA wordpress has many entries anyway) to consolidate, as it were, my internet presence and blogging activity.

Since at the moment I have exactly one reader (Hello!) and am keeping the blog for myself, much in the way of an internal monologue, I think I'll do it. And make a SCA-specific icon too.

In other news, I've already got a bread on the rise, and plan to make some cake later (possibly seedcake unless maybe apple). Man I love having a three-day weekend.

Happy Birthday neddy_s!