Revisiting Oatcakes

(Heck, just revisiting FOOD!)

So, very recently an historic food blogger I read and admire added me as a link to her blog! And the link points out that I haven't written anything here for just over two years.
 TWO YEARS??? That's hard to believe.

Okay, maybe not so hard.
 I've always had the uphill battle, especially with this blog where I'd like to sound halfways intelligible, that experimenting with the food doesn't totally equate with having a post. Half the time I forget to take pictures. Or if I take them they need cropping and resizing and saving in their new and improved format. If I've made any notes, or used any references, I need to organize those. Or find them again.

 And suddenly time has passed, and I can't even quite remember the details. Or I did several experiments, or tried something that took several days, and it all starts to get a bit fuzzy and vague.

So, early in 2012 (or possibly the end of 2011) I tried some experiments that took a bit of time. I was playing around with some sprouted grain breads. (Kind of like watching paint dry!)(Or genetics.) And by the time I got to one end, I'd forgotten how the beginning had worked. I knew I'd have to go back and try it all over again.

[Actually, I'll have to go back and reread my blog now, just to see what I'd been thinking about back then...]

 But anyway, at the beginning of 2012, I'd had an idea of some things I wanted to try. Then life got busy.

There was a lovely trip down to Virginia that felt more vacation-like than I can recall in a long time. And more work. And then DARC was invited to Newfoundland and L'Anse aux Meadows again. Sadly, for me, it conflicted with some of my theatre work, and there was just no way to do both. So I contented myself with preparing the food for them to take away with them.

 Since we'd just done a trip in 2010, I had some current feedback about what had worked, and what hadn't, to which were added some roadbumps from the site management itself. In the long run, I opted for mostly historic, but with a bit less complexity, and hopefully easier to be dealt with at the far end by some of the team members who had other activities to handle as well, and trusted that the team would be well-fed and fuelled for the presentation days.
 There were some crazy days of trying to put this together, making more food ahead than I had in 2010, and in ways that would require less fuss on-site. There were already concerns from the site management about whether or not there even should be a foodways demonstration, although they agreed it's a very compelling part of the entire interpretive presentation, and that with the timing of the day, and lack of facilities near the historic buildings, a foodways program was important for the interpreters' lunches. But it made it even more critical that whatever we did should be as uncomplicated as possible.

 As soon as the team had left, I was immediately busy with the Young Company at the theatre. We had some excruciatingly hot weather, I had no time to think, let alone eat or think about historic food, and had some weird health stuff happen. Spent a day in the ER, missed my dress rehearsals. Never really did find out what the problem may have been, but since then have searched for doctors, been loaned doctors, found a doctor, seen specialists, had all sorts of tests, felt like an episode of House...did more shows, and eventually ran out of 2012.

 Then I kind of lost 2013 in a whirl of my marriage ending, more follow-ups with medical people, spending a week in hospital for something else, and doing a bunch of  tests to eventually determine it was a reaction to a prescription medication I'd started a few weeks before, went straight into another show, lost my mother suddenly, went home to see my family, scuttled medical procedures, packed, found somewhere to live, designed and costumed more shows, and pretty much have been moving ever since.

 And bang, two years shot! Well, as far as cooking has gone!

 And I missed it. Cooking and food research are just something I love. Cooking can be as much a form of relaxation and stress-management for me as listening to music I love, or sitting on the edge of a dock with my feet in the water. It's something that excites me and intrigues me. Keeps me sane.
 And now, seeing that it's just over two years, well I have to come back.

So. Those oatcakes I mentioned... Well, it's a challenge, because I'm still surrounded by boxes. I have a tiny little kitchen now. I'm not sure where anything is. Some of my tools haven't surfaced yet, or may be stored with friends...but it can't wait. I need to get doing this again. So today I did a quick cook. I've remembered to take some pictures. Most of the roads are closed by snow and snow squalls around here, so I'm not going anywhere... I might as well make a start!
 Stay tuned.

~v

A New Year

Apologies.
 Far too much passage of time. Without cooking. Without blogging about cooking.

 Even trying to fill some of the gap with the odd post about Victorian life wasn't really satisfactory. It certainly didn't fill my need for cooking, and only gave me a little exercise in researching. Quickly. And I'm not sure it was even starting to be helpful to my friends involved in the Victorian living experiment. It's more than likely that the aspects of such a project that *I* would fixate on are not at all what they're thinking about. :)
 Ah well. Quel surprise!

 I've often noticed that everyone has their own variations on even the obsessions we share!

 So, I had an unexpectedly busy fall. And actually it was a fairly unexpectedly busy year. I kept thinking there were inherent gaps, but somehow I never seemed to be in the middle of any of them. Part of this isn't helped by living an hour away from where I often work. Even quick, small jobs get travel time added on top....

 But definitely life has been very much back-to-back since September. And I've felt the lack of food time. A lot.
 So, there are a number of projects I need to look at. Some I need to re-look at, because I'd played with them a bit, made a few notes, but not written about them. And now I'm not quite sure what I remember, so I need to do them again. (Well, I needed to try some of them multiple times anyway...)
 And now I have some new things to plan for, and some new ideas to think about and some different things I want to try.

 And I may actually have a few minutes to do it in!

 So I started a small experiment today. An off-the-cuff, no special planning kind of experiment, which of course, just gives me a whole list of where I have to go next....

 Stay tuned, Bat Fans...

    v

REBOOT!

At least, I’m hoping…

So, yes, I’ve been quiet. It seems that when life gets busy, it gets really busy. And as time passes along, I forget how to make best use of the in-between moments.

Then it all gets complex because I feel that in this journal I’d like to be intelligible. I’d like to be organized, and put forth my arguments (or questions and quandaries) in a way that sounds like I thought about it. (Really, I do. Most of the time.) And for some reason, stringing words together in a way that seems like they’d be coherent to people doesn’t want to come naturally.
I’m sure that part of that is me overthinking. It must be. Because it does seem that most of the time, after I’ve stared at what I’ve written and tweaked it, and pruned and fluffed it, and rearranged it, it’s still pretty close to what I started with.

But I do think that what takes time is filling in the gaps, and the backstory. Tracking down references. Digging out quotes and concrete info, as opposed to just relying on what seems to be lurking in the back of my memory.

But maybe this year I’ll allow myself a bit more leeway. Maybe I’ll occasionally post a guilt-free ramble, and just not worry.

(Surely no-one out there would make the mistake of confusing me with a scholar, would they?)

Feeding Re-Enactors

Or how do we reset our modern sensibilities?

(expanded from the posting on the DARC blog.)

** Random thought warning: No guarantees of a beginning, middle, or end, here. It’s an ongoing discovery!**

Over the years of being one of the main food providers at the varying levels of demo that DARC takes part in, my biggest challenge has been mostly, finding the time ahead, in a life that’s pretty full of other activities or work, to get ready. Fortunately, I find that food fascinates me, and drying fruit or meat or vegetables, or making flatbreads ahead, and planning it all, amuses me. The one recent conundrum has been in crossing borders. All of a sudden I’ve lost my easy ability to prepare our own supplies to take, especially meat and fruit, and have to rely on local grocery supplies. (No, the Norse didn’t really eat pepperoni, but it was the only dried sausage available at your store!)

A number of years ago now, my husband gave me a food dehydrator, which sat for a while, until I finally discovered how truly marvelous it is. I’ve tried other methods of drying, but a dehydrator sure beats the oven, or the vagaries of sun and weather, or the klutzy feet of cats who just want to be a part of everything. Now I can dry foodstuffs all year round, for me as well as for camp purposes. And truthfully, I find that some of those stocks get used up in my daily kitchen before they even have the chance to be part of a period menu!

When it comes to a demo situation, it’s far easier to adhere to a more plausible menu of foodstuffs. On the one hand, I’m preparing it before the public, so my methods will only be the appropriate ones, especially as dictated by the cookware I’ll be using. And I find the people I’m feeding are far more accepting of whatever I give them, when it’s the oasis in a busy day of talking to the public. (Not to mention that after the demo, there’s a good chance we’ll be eating out somewhere, and they can suit their own tastes!)

However, there are occasions where we camp for ourselves. What then? We had already decided in our formative period, that morning was often a time of relaxed authenticity. Partly because some of us like our coffee in the morning; but also because that gave us a period of time in which we could discuss aspects of the whole process, and review gear, etc.

When it comes to food, though, beyond that pot of coffee, I truly prefer historical foods, and more appropriate methods. And when cooking for myself, that’s not really an effort. Historical food intrigues me, as well as the processes of preparing it. (Mind you, I occasionally stray out of one time zone a bit, if I really have urges for experimentation with some other things… I don’t get enough time cooking over fires to work my way through the entire list of things I want to try! Or favourites I’d like to revisit.) But I don’t think I’ve ever had any problems avoiding modern cooking or recipes. After all, this is my chance to escape all that!

I have found that when cooking for others, it’s much harder to toe that historic line. Or when cooking for a longer period of time. Our modern tastes, and sensibilities, and habits get in the way, no matter how much we try to suppress them. Not only will the varying ‘needs’ and requirements and differing senses of taste, and experience of the members of the group get in the way, I have my own perceptions of what constitutes an adequate meal, a balanced menu, and a need to please my audience. Even that is probably a far cry from a busy huswife concerned with making a timely meal from materials to hand.

It’s very hard to turn off our modern taste buds. Easier, perhaps, to follow a period recipe and accept the results. But in earlier period cooking, we’re working from known ingredients and methods, far more often than from actual recipes. There’s an automatic assumption that comes into play, about what we should be doing with those ingredients.

I often dry meat, for example. And while I’ve adapted the ingredients in varying jerky recipes to be something more in keeping with the spicings available to the Norse, it seems highly unlikely that they spent time adding flavourful marinades to meat they were drying as a means of preservation. A simple brining makes sense, because of the useful properties of salt. But plain brined and dried meat really just doesn’t cut it as a ‘snack food’ to the modern tongue. It works well as something for the soup pot, and I’ve used it as such. But for eating? Not so much.

Yet, in the real context, a bit of dried meat would probably have been quite the decent item to stave off some hunger, and the fact you had it at all would probably have been all that mattered.

I suppose I should be pleased with myself that I have tried the more logical ‘plain dried meat’ even, but the fact that I immediately opted back to a marinated jerky bothers me. That’s my 21^st century taste buds chiming in.

And so, when faced with a small crowd of people who find plain water something for washing with, not drinking, or a simple soup of dried vegetables or salt fish, less than inspiring, especially if it’s what you had yesterday and the day before, and the day before that…

It definitely becomes a bit more of a challenge.

Particularly when I want them to not feel cheated out of a real meal.

Consequently, we end up with far more extensive meals than I can imagine being the norm. Which, when paired with an inadequate knowledge of period furniture, means a more awkward serving setting. (And way more dishes to clean up!)

And more meals, period. What I’ve read of the Norse suggest a morning meal, and a nighttime meal. Now admittedly, I’m fairly used to a two meal day, and when I worked at my previous job in the city, often a one meal day! But many people in the modern day really are more familiar with three meals a day.

Even the modern perception of what constitutes a meal can get in the way. If the Norse might have been content with a bowl of broth or gruel for a morning meal, with perhaps a crust of bread or an unleavened flatbread to sop it up, why do we feel we cannot start our day without a buffet of tempting items? Sausage, bacon, fresh griddle cakes, fruit… I often make an attempt to offer up a bakepot of some grain porridge, but there are times where I’m the only one willing to give it a go.

Admittedly, the North American diet makes far too much use of meat. We’re spoiled by accessibility and modern methods of preservation. And quite probably, our ideas of a hearty breakfast don’t match with the workload we’re about to undertake in our day! But certainly our choices are not as likely in a culture without large-scale farming, or food-processing, or refrigeration.

And whether or not there were fewer food allergies in history, or not, certainly there are many more scruples about food today, as well as sensitivities, and food choices, and dietary concerns. All those factors can come into play, and then the whole game becomes more complex.

I was lucky recently, at least, in that it was only a very small group of people I was cooking for, which made the variables a bit more finite. Another friend ended up cooking for over two dozen people, and found that in many cases, the entire idea of period food had to be set aside for the sake of efficiency, and group and individual needs. Also, in her case, a goodly quantity of those two dozen people may have had little or no experience with period food, and might not have had the ability to adjust their expectations. For my part, I discovered that although I had a fair array of appropriate storage vessels, and a goodly quantity of period foods along, they got lost in the chaotic shuffle of making sure there was adequate breakfast, lunch, ‘tea’, and dinner that matched up with the varying needs people had brought with them, or the extra bodies that always seem to accumulate.

Certainly, I believe it to be a learned association of ideas: both surrendering what feels natural, and your regular expectations. Particularly when we’re basing the whole thing on extrapolation and conjecture at best. That’s a difficult step to take. I’d like to be able to do it more often, or at least make the attempt.

I find that some easy steps are to simply include only appropriate foodstuffs, even if sometimes the net is cast just a teeny bit wider; ‘to include Britain, as well as the Scandinavian homelands.’ This, to possibly give some scope for wheat as the primary grain, or allow us to include almonds and walnuts. Or to perhaps allow a treat from ‘far away’. (In the case of a few olives for a special snack.) I do end up playing a few mind games with my planning, if only because I live rurally, and don’t have access to preferable options. In cooking for demos, I sometimes build in a supply trip so I actually can buy and use barley flour, or hazelnuts.

[For my experimental cooking, I’m far stricter with myself. It actually ends up being more rewarding.]

Perhaps it might be worth another post just to muse about what might make for good re-enactors’ food?

Historic Food Out-dated?

Was having a visit with some fellow historic re-enactors last Saturday, well, a work weekend actually. But after the smelter was built, and we were sitting around, post-work, and pre-dinner, the topic of historic food came up.

There has been a discussion recently on a re-enactor list about food allergies, and how to work around them for feasts. Several times I almost made my own contribution to the conversation, and then deleted it. On the one hand, I tend to only be willing to go as far as denoting meat and non-meat dishes in a menu. I’m far too afear’d of the complex issues of food allergies to even feel comfortable giving assurances about something I’ve prepared by myself in my own kitchen, let alone in a rented kitchen with other helpers. Particularly true, as I learn more and more about all the variations of allergies. And unexpected links and molecular similarities… Eek! It just gets way too tricksy.

But that led us both to comment how on the one hand it becomes very difficult to try to reproduce any of the food from varying periods in history with any kind of attempt at veracity. And on the other hand, how it seems that not many people are even trying anymore.

In fact, I’m starting to wonder if historic cooking is becoming a thing of the past! (Now doesn’t that start to sound like something Carrie Bradshaw would be typing?)

When I first started in this whole re-enactoring thing (long, long ago and reasonably far away) we didn’t have a lot of resources. There was Pleyn Delit. And….hmmm… maybe there was Pleyn Delit. Certainly that was one of the most available books.

It wasn’t even till I’d been in Ontario for a time that others even crossed my path, though I was already on the lookout for them. But perhaps we would have been excused for using the same recipes again and again. Or filling in gaps with something conjectural, just to flesh out the menu.

But there are so many new places to turn to now for easily available information. I ended up having to move my historical cookery book collection out of my kitchen bookshelves because they take up so much more room now. And I don’t can’t afford to collect even a fraction of what is out there.

But it seems we were doing more historic cooking when we had fewer recipes to choose from. Instead, it’s appeared over the last few years, that ‘ethnic’ cookery has replaced any use of historic cookbooks. (Where once we could have pointed that finger at ‘traditional’ recipes as standing in for real history.) And recently, even ethnic food seems to be giving way to what more resembles fairly ordinary restaurant food. ???

So…is period food old-fashioned?

V.

Please Do Not Adjust Your Set...

Yes, I'm off to a slow start with this one! Sorry.
Perhaps it wouldn't or shouldn't be quite so difficult, and maybe it all just hinges on my perceptions (or possible misconceptions) of what you should write on a "public" blog on a specific topic, and how it should be framed and referenced.

My other blog had no illusions of being literarily or politically or grammatically, (or any of several other 'ally's) correct. It's just thoughts strung together. Stuff about the theatre I'm working with, pictures of critters, mutterings of hobbies.... basic random thoughts.

But here I'm finding that even a random thought feels like it should have a lot more behind it. More research. More basic explanation of what I was trying to accomplish. Some background to the whole experiment. And of course, that slows me down.

I'm sure at some point I'll find a balance, and it will be easier to decide what to post, and how to frame it, and to make it happen. After all, the whole point of this was to find somewhere to jot down some thoughts, let them out before my brain explodes. (Such a messy thing!)
There's no way at all I can wait until I suddenly achieve some kind of intellectual greatness; ain't going to happen, no point in waiting. Godot will get here quicker!

So, as long as you, my unknown, and probably lean, audience are willing to roll with the stylistic punches, we may be almost in business.

v

The Dagda's Cauldron

Because I'd mostly forgotten the Celtic legend until I was reading a book in this past year, that mentioned the myth...

an excerpt from the prologue of Lyn Hamilton's The Celtic Riddle:
"Now there was a god! An excellent one, by his own description. A giant, with appetite to match. It was the Dagda who had a cauldron in which pigs were cooked. This was no ordinary cauldron, nor ordinary pigs. Was always a pig ready, and the cauldron never empty, no matter how many came to dine. And, to top it all, the cauldron's contents were said to inspire the poet and revive the dead."

And it seemed like the right name for a journal about period food and cooking.

v