norsegirl

As usual, it's the night before an event and I'm up doing prep work WAY later than intended. Tonight it was getting everything ready for my "hospitality" tomorrow and experimenting with yet another medieval recipe.

This time I tried gingerbread. It's odd stuff.

Three recipes are posted below, and I kinda worked off these:
http://www.godecookery.com/ginger/ginger.htm
http://www.godecookery.com/chaucer/chfeas14.htm
http://www.godecookery.com/friends/frec134.html

My recipe had:
1 cup and a generous squeeze of honey
1 heaping-ish teaspoon each of dried ginger and cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper (I don't have any white or I'd have gone with that)
pinch of saffron
10 oz plain breadcrumbs (because that's how much I had in the container I bought)

It tastes a bit like baclava because of the honey, but not as good because it lacks the puff pastry and the nuts. The texture is kind of hard to describe but I know I've had it before... it's a bit like one of my corn muffins but less fluffy and more moist. Dense, gritty/grainy (which gives it a bit of chewiness, not like bubble gum, taffy or jujube chewy, more like dried apricot chewy, takes some effort to get through it, but doesn't bounce back or stick to your teeth) and moist and soft all at once.

I think next time I'd try white pepper, more ginger and cinnamon and maybe less breadcrumbs just to see what that would be like if it was gooier. For setting out on a table in the Texas heat all day I figured the more solid I could make it and the less melty, the better.

I found it interesting that not one of the recipes specified whether to use dried or fresh ginger. I might try it again with fresh just to see what kind of difference that makes and whether it even works.

Anyway, off to get some sleep so I can function tomorrow at least a bit.

I've long since determined that my introduction to Avacal was rocky at best. I happened to arrive at the height of my SCA activity and figured I could just relocate and keep things rolling along just like they had been. This was a faulty assumption. I have since learned a little bit about what NOT to do when moving into a new group, and I am applying that knowledge to try a different tactic here.

( thoughts on the politics of moving in the SCA )

In an effort to get more involved, this weekend I've decided to haul out the pavilion even though I have no intention of camping, setting up a table with snacks on it and a bunch of chairs and seeing if I can get anyone to come and sit with me and hang out and get to know the locals. I posted my intention to the baronial e-mail list saying I was hoping to meet the local A&S community and anyone else who cares to come out and socialize and make friends, and so far I've gotten a lot of positive responses and people saying "sounds like fun, I'll see you there". I figure you can't go too far wrong if you offer food.

I've never done this before, nor have I really seen it done anywhere outside a vigil... so I'm not sure exactly what I should put out or how much. On one hand I'd like to go with medieval fare as that would go with my whole "trying to integrate myself into the A&S community" thing, but on the other hand, I'd also like to try cheap, easy and finger-foody. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Non-period offerings:
- Veggies (carrots, celery and green pepper because they're cheap) and dip (mum's recipe)
- Pita wedges and hummus
- chewy trail mix/breakfast bar things (go to Second Cup and order the square that looks like it's made of corn flakes, I've figured out how to make those and they're damn good and tonight's batch was especially good)

Period ideas:
- Grapes if I can find some on sale
- maybe some sliced cheese? I'm not sure about this one as cheese isn't cheap and probably not the best thing to leave out in the Texas heat either.

Tonight I also experimented with a plausibly medieval recipe and made "Shrewsbury cakes" per the recipe listed here. Interestingly, their source was the Florilegium and their technique was completely different. I combined flour, sugar and nutmeg per their instructions and cut in the butter, while the original source recipe suggested creaming the butter and sugar, adding the rose water to that and blending the flour and nutmeg together and then combining the two. Since I did not use a food processor (don't own one and don't want one either) I probably should have gone with the original recipe's method. I also added a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract and a quarter teaspoon or so of cinnamon, just 'cause (the first recipe used those as substitutions, I figured why not add them too). And because it wasn't looking very dough-y I also threw in another tablespoon of rosewater. Finally, instead of cutting them into circles (boooring, and I don't have a circle cookie cutter, yes I know a glass will suffice, but where's the fun in that) I cut them into hearts, flowers and 5-pointed Texas stars (see, look, I really am trying to fit in). The end result was VERY CRISPY and rather sweet. The spices were quite subtle, but that may have been because I chose to test them with chai. Jason liked them well enough to eat two and thought they were a perfect pairing with the chai.

I'm currently poking around Goode Cookery to see if I can find anything else I have the ingredients on-hand to try. Mostly looking at hand-held desserts, so that knocks out all the cakes, tarts and puddings, which doesn't leave a whole lot. If I try something really good I'll report my findings. If you've tried something that worked out really well, please let me know!

As a host, is it my responsibility to supply plates of some sort and maybe napkins, or should people know well enough to bring their own feast gear if they want to put food on a plate? I don't have nearly enough feast gear to share with everyone, but I'm also not really into the whole paper plate thing as it spoils the ambiance, costs money, and isn't too hot for the environment. Also, this is meant to be nibbles, not a free lunch, so providing plates might send the wrong message. Would you provide plates or napkins?

I'm also wondering if I should bring my mosquito mesh to hang from the rafters and cover the table. It would keep the flies off the food (lots of bugs in Texas), but it might also look inhospitable and unwelcoming to human visitors. No, I don't own any of those neat little plate-covering mesh dome things, so that's not an option. Thoughts?

The television here continues to be incredibly depressing. Interestingly, I am less depressed by the news than I am by the ads. Kraft is bombarding us with ads for how wonderfully cheap all their processed food products are.

Get twice as much Velveeta for the same price as cheddar!
Get 3 bowls of fun and delicious Kraft Dinner for only $1!
We can make yummy grilled cheese from Kraft Singles for only a few cents!

(those slogans are about as close to verbatim as I can recall)

Uuuugh. As if that is a healthy way to eat. It's such a shame that the most affordable way to eat is one that promotes malnutrition. I was listening to a show on the public radio station that was expressing much the same idea. The city of Detroit has only 5 grocery stores! 5 grocery stores in the whole city! The reasons are complex. As the urban population moves out to the suburbs, there are fewer people to patronize the businesses. Fast food is cheaper than buying and cooking your own healthy alternatives, so the people that are left don't buy groceries. And finally, there is a lack of education and motivation in the population to cook and eat "real" food, partly because the big marketing machines that sell fast food have won. They were interviewing urban farmers who were reclaiming the empty lots left behind by the masses fleeing the city, initially just to feed themselves but later expanding and making a living by selling their produce at urban farmer's markets. They were thinking that part of rehabilitating the urban community (especially the black community) was by getting back to their roots in the garden. The community that controls their food controls their future was what one of them said. They also criticized a McDonald's ad that showed a guy burning toast and dropping eggs and in the end, the slogan "leave breakfast to the experts", which they thought encourages society at large to abdicate their responsibility for making choices about their diet. It was a very interesting story and it has me thinking of working on some produce in my yard.

Feeling pretty good today. I managed to clean out the game room almost completely. There is still one box of my crap to be unpacked and a few boxes of Jason's CDs, which I have decided are not my problem. The floor is all vacuumed and everything. I even cleaned the windows and dusted all the windowsills when I was done. Of all the rooms in the house, I think that one was the closest to being done. Or at least the one where I had the best idea of how I wanted it to look when I was finished.

This weekend I'm setting a lofty goal. I'd like to see at least one room done for every day off we have. Seeing as this is a long weekend, that should work out to 3 rooms. I think with Jason's help that is entirely possible. Not sure which rooms we'll pick. I think it is definitely time that the master bedroom and bath became the sanctuaries I know they can become. After that I'm not sure what is the highest priority.

I do need to get this all done and out of the way soon because we need to file our claim with the movers. We know they broke our TV and one martini glass, and somehow a couple liquor glasses appear to have gone astray. But there's one box unaccounted for, and of course the listing that they recorded is pretty much useless, so we need to unpack everything, have a good look at what did make it to try to figure out what didn't. I wish we could just put in the claims as we found stuff, at least for the obvious thing like the TV. But instead we get just one shot, so we really have to be sure of it when we submit it. And of course time is running out on how long we have to get this filed.

Moving sucks.

In other news I purchased a new cookbook last week and finally got around to trying one of the recipes yesterday. Persian cookbook and what I attempted was apricot rice (which I'm pretty sure is what's pictured on the cover, though it doesn't come out looking exactly like that if you follow their instructions). It produced enough food for at least 8 people, which is a little more than we were aiming for. It wasn't exactly how I imagined it would taste, but it's still pretty good. I might modify it (at least to cut down the volume of food produced) and try it again, but I'm not sure just yet. We'll try the leftovers tonight and see how they rate.

Last night I completed the baking of a cake for my bosses at work. As it turns out, all three of the senior people in the office here have their birthday the same week. I figure if I only have to do it once a year I can afford to pull out all the stops and make a great cake. Monday night I baked the chocolate cake from scratch and Tuesday night I did the layers and icing. The result is a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and layers of khalua coffee chocolate whipped cream. It's my signature dessert and I've found out that it only takes a few hours to bake and ice and isn't even a big deal if you spread it out over two nights. Jason thinks that alone should justify me making at least one a month. He was very disappointed to have to watch it go to work with me this morning without even leaving him a piece.

Incidentally, to anyone out there who occasionally bakes cakes, if you presently use mixes, try giving them up and making a cake from scratch. It really isn't any more effort. Instead of opening a box, you have to mix flour, sugar, baking powder and whatever flavouring you're using (cocoa, lemon zest, vanilla etc) and really, that's the easiest part. I did make cupcakes using the last box of mix I had bought last week and they tasted like vaguely lemon-scented sponges. Note that I said lemon scented, not lemon flavoured. The flavouring in commercial cakes is so minimal, and they're so light and fluffy that they mostly come out tasting like sponge. Cakes from scratch on the other hand are dense, moist and flavourful. Seriously, if you try it you'll never go back.

Anyway, last night I was doing the frosting and, as usual, beagles were in the kitchen helping out. As I was trying to get the last of the icing sugar out of the canister, it accidentally spilled it, right on the helpful beagle at my feet. Anna's back was entirely white with powdered sugar. I tried to convince Lizzy to lick it off her, but she was having nothing to do with that. "Nuh un mom, she'll bite me" was Lizzy's response as she fled the kitchen. That left it to the humans to clean the little beagle. Our solution was to moisten a paper towel and wipe her down. In seconds her fur was all damp and black and shiny and we figured it was done. Half an hour later she had dried, and all the fur was stiff like we'd gelled it. Yup, I frosted my beagle.

Food of the Gods I tell ya! And I'm getting tired of paying for them in restaurants, so I figured I'd try to make my own.

Recipe: Salad Rolls

1 package rice paper wrappers (they're round and look like tortillas or papadams, if you have a choice, get the big size)
1 package rice noodle vermicelli
several carrots
1 cucumber
medium shrimp, cooked and chilled
Lettuce (the Dole "simply lettuce" mix worked well for me)
President's Choice Memories of Thailand Sauce
President's Choice "Just Peanuts" peanut butter (I like crunchy but choose what you like)

1. Cook shrimp and chill if you didn't buy pre-cooked shrimp, cut in half lengthwise.
2. Boil water and cook vermicelli to desired softness. Rinse with cold water.
3. While noodles cook and shrimp chill, clean and julienne a few carrots. Also prepare the cucumber by peeling, removing the seeds and slicing a la julienne.
4. To soften rice wrappers, place a single wrapper in a dish filled with very warm water (choose one larger than the wrappers) for a few seconds, remove as soon as it is pliable.
5. Place noodles, lettuce, carrots, cucumber and shrimp in a line along the centre of the wrap, stopping an inch from the edge. Start to rill the wrap, fold the edges over and finish rolling, tucking everything in with your fingers as you go. The wrapper should stick to itself. Moisten it slightly if it does not.
6. Cut in half for nice presentation and easier handling.

To make the dipping sauce:
Mix Memories of Thailand sauce and peanut butter, we used equal parts, but mix to your taste. Add a bit of water until it is dippy, not gluey. Feel free to use a blender, we didn't bother.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. I think I might see if I can make these the night before and take them in my lunch to work. I'm concerned that the wrapper might get either stiff or gluey, so we'll see. I'll report back later this week on the success or failure of that experiment.

Didn't get a whole lot accomplished this weekend.

Achieved my Nether-ray mount on WoW (not much of a real-world achievement, but made me happy, so there ya go). Died a zillion times in our guild's first Shadow Labs run. Gave up after the 10th or so death on the second boss and decided next week we should try some place a little easier. Did some quests with my husband and he's only two weeks away or so from his dragon mount, which has him all excited. Actually didn't waste too much time in the virtual world.

Saturday I made my breakfast omelete cup things to bring to work this week. Putzed up the recipe and wound up making twice as many as I had intended to make (note to self, when making a half-batch, use 3 eggs, not 6). On the bright side, actually caught Jason (the egg-hater) eating one on Sunday.

Spent most of Saturday watching the "So You Think You Can Dance" marathon of reruns on Much Music (Jason and I both totally love this show) and then watched the finale of "Colin and Justin on the Estate" on HGTV, which was a real eye-opening inspirational show coloured with a bit of crushing reality. It's really interesting watching reality television that actually reflects some reality instead of a bunch of bored, bug-bitten, mud-coated beautiful people lounging around a beach in China for 6 weeks stabbing each other in the back for $1 mil. On the Estate is basically two designers going and spending 8 months working with a ghetto and trying to make it tolerable for the residents. They make some pretty great strides and accomplish some really wonderful things, but they also suffer a whole bunch of set-backs in the process. It was a fascinating show and I would LOVE to see a follow-up a year or two later. It feels like they're fighting a losing battle, but it could be a tremendous turn-around as well.

Ended the evening off playing WoW until 4am. And now we know when the daily quests reset.

Sunday morning woke up with the odd sensation of knowing that the day's WoW quests were already done and as a result didn't even turn the game on all day. Also crawled out of bed shockingly late (unsurprising with the late-night WoWing the night before). Spent the morning (what little was left of it) eating breakfast and watching S1 episode 11 of Rome. How much do I LOVE that series?

Finally got off the couch and showered Sunday at noon. Jason made plans to hang out with a friend so I hung around the house cleaning while we waited for him to come pick Jason up. I then headed out to arrive fashionably late at 2pm for our derby fundraising BBQ. We made a scant $136 on a day's work apparently, which has some girls miffed. Some of them feel it is too much work for that kind of money, and that they could have spent the day doing something much more productive (like sleeping - not making that up, someone actually said it) and that we are making too little money for the effort we're putting in. Seems to me we're making just about what we should. All we do is show up and the store wheels out a table, BBQ, cooler and all the food. It's risk-free, we pay for nothing up-front, and we take 50% of the money we collect. Some of them are upset that we only get 50%. I'm thinking that with no set-up, no clean-up and no risk, that's about right. And I'm willing to say "hey, between the two days we did it, that's $250 or so we didn't have before, and pays for a week's worth of practice space".

Anyone out there have any good ideas for fundraisers? We need to have about $4,000 by November for pre-bout expenses (Hall rental, liquor license, booze, posters etc) so we can hold our game in November against Calgary.

Ended the evening off making apple tarts for the office out of the free apples donated by one of my co-workers, Steve. Interesting making something out of apples other than the ones off Hjalti's tree. These ones were much harder and OMG SOUR!!!! The final product is a sweet-n-sour thing that is rather interesting, though I think I prefer Hjalti's sweet, eatin' apples for my baking. My poor, bent apple corer feels the same way.

Next weekend sister arrives, brunch at Bioware and 4-day weekend! Woo!

In other news, the bruise is much darker and more impressive today than it was when I photographed it, but hurts less.

On a whim I tried a new candy today... "Maynards Juicy Squirts Berry". They're essentially like gummy bears with a liquid filling. Like the subject line says... what was I thinking???? I'm an adult, I should know better than to buy candy for the gross-out factor. And these are indeed gross. On the up-side, the Sour Lifesaver Gummies aren't bad at all. And I found the Australian soft-eating liquorice I was totally addicted to over there is finally being sold here too.

Also feeling a little bummed today as Taste of Edmonton ended this weekend. I was getting rather accustomed to gourmet hot lunches in the park with delightful desserts to follow. Going back to home-made wraps is going to be quite the let-down. That said, I'm endlessly thankful to my husband for getting up and making my lunch in the morning.

Anyway, back to work, and throwing out bad candy.

My house smells like an Indian restaurant - yum. Tonight's experiment and notes for future preparation was as follows:

Basmati rice (the only type of rice we usually have on-hand. Prefer it to the East Asian rices)
Garlic Papadams (deep fried guilty pleasure. But at least I deep fry in canola) with Mango chutney
Curried zucchini and broccoli
First attempt at that and a roaring success - 1 cube Knorr chicken bullion in a little over half the suggested water, 2 tsp
curry and 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, thickened with a bit of flour. Fry veggies first in a splash of oil then add broth and spices and reduce.
Butter chicken
The paste was "Nana's All Natural" in a little glass jar. Much better than previous attempts with other brands. In future, use more chicken than suggested as there is enough sauce to drown double what we used and less water as it doesn't boil off and is a bit too soupy. I think this brand is only available at Safeway if memory serves.
Sugar coated fennel for dessert - I can't believe they had this stuff at Superstore for cheap! I love this stuff! Been happily munching away at it all week. Even tried it on the dogs. They ate it, even chewed it, but it did nothing for their breath - drat.

Also Febreezed the couch in an attempt to make it not smell like dog. Think I prefer the scent of dog honestly. I hate chemicals and perfumes. Why do I keep trying this stuff?

Anyway, off to play some Warcraft and digest. Soooo full.

The new bubbles don't work any better than the old ones. They get nice and jelly-like on the outside, but the inside just doesn't re-hydrate. So it's all unpleasant and hard/powdery/dry inside.

Additionally, the bubble tea powder we got SUCKS. Back to the drawing board...