Utter madness

I have the fabric waiting for the following garb projects:

-Lightweight linen/cotton chemise for me
-Medium weight linen chemises for both Anne and me
-Yellow linen dress for Anne
-Teal linen dress for Anne
-Blue linen dress for me
-Green wool hosen and hood for me
-Possibly turning remnants of teal and brown linen into apron dresses for Anne. Possibly.

And I have just added:
-Brown wool to be used for a peasant-y dress for me
-Beautiful bright blue wool to be used for a dressier dress for me
-Red wool probably to become an open hood (for me)
-Mustard wool that may become hosen
-White wool to become... who even knows. But it was only $2/yard...

I can do it, really, I just need to quit posting on the dang internet and sew!

Sausages of three types

Today I made modern sausages (containing pork, pork fat, sage, salt, pepper, and mace). Then Claire came over and helped me make the Apicius sausages. The recipe ended up being:

1.5 lbs pork butt
A tiny slice of pork fat (pigs were fattier historically)
1 cup of cooked spelt
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup beef broth
~1/2 tsp salt (maybe more?)
~1 tsp pepper (maybe more?) finely ground

Meat and fat and grain and nuts run through KitchenAid grinder. Broth and spices mixed in well. Stuffed into casings.

Then Master Hrafnir Fiachsman came over and made a variant on an Icelandic sausage recipe, with chicken livers (and one wayward heart that came in the package!), lamb, oatmeal (steel cut), rye flour, and milk. I would like to say that I helped him make these, but pretty much I just showed him how to use the meat grinder and then stood out of the way. It was very exciting to watch, and he let me keep one, which I will be eating as soon as my lady is not home to be horrified.

This was a great day.

Project of the Day: Sausages!

I have some time off from work, so what better way to spend it than cooking? Today I will be making several varieties of sausage, starting with this gem from Apicius:

63 Another Sausage
Aliter

Work cooked spelt and finely chopped fresh pork together, pound it with pepper, broth and pignolia nuts. Fill the casings, parboil and fry with salt, serve with mustard, or you may cut the sausage in slices and serve on a round dish.

I got this from here:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Apicius/2*.html

Which notes the text is in the public domain (sweet!)

I'll let you all know how it goes.

Flax Failure

Not surprisingly, given my track record, I managed to kill my porch flax.

Damn.

And the winner is...

teceangl2_dmdt2008_20080802
Originally uploaded by rafaella13

These is HL Teceangl's ridiculously awesome winning entry from DMDT. She made tallow candles. How cool is that? No seriously, how cool is that!

The theme of the competition was The Art of the Everyday (that being the kind of thing I'm most interested in when it comes to the SCA, and someone being foolish enough to put me in charge of the theme -- BWA HA HA HA HA), and as you can see Tec just took that and ran with it in a fabulous way.

(This is not my photo -- it was taken by my Laurel, Mestra Rafaella.)

Eulalia is Judgmental

octavianus2_dmdt2008_20080802
Originally uploaded by rafaella13

I got to be a judge for Dragon's Mist's Arts and Sciences defendership over the last weekend. I had a very good time and feel like I learned a lot. The entries were all great: a knitted caul, a sampler of various Elizabethan embellishment methods, and, shown here, a bottle of blackberry wine. As you can see from my stern expression, I'm really putting this poor entrant through his paces ;-)

Actually, there was one more entry... stay tuned for the surprise ending, next post!