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Apr. 21st, 2013
Riversdale Kitchen Guild
Apr. 21st, 2013 05:18 pmToday was my first go as a member of the Riversdale Kitchen Guild, a group that does historical cooking demonstrations at Riversdale mansion.
As I'm getting over the con crud (my never-fail panacea failed!) and I was out late Ben-festing* last night, I'm like to keel over right now. As I was the only other Guild member aside from the woman running it, it wasn't the best opportunity to have gone in civvies and said "I'm really just up to sitting attentively in the corner."
But no one came to see our demonstration of how to cook garden cuttings in the 1812 manner, so it didn't matter what I wore. On the plus side, it also meant that we got to eat every bit of the food. Health laws mean we can't give samples away, but we do have to leave bits out for people to see. Instead, we stuffed our faces and talked to each other.
What we did was:
- Start the hearth fire. This involved not just setting the fire, but snooping around the grounds to see what kindling sticks may have been knocked down by the storm of a few nights ago.
- Pull out of garden/scrape/destem/wash/chop (pick as necessary): carrots, parsnips, mushrooms, and kale for the barley and greens soup (the mushrooms came from the store; we do not go hunting those!); spinach for the florentine; and the asperagus.
- Cut and toast (with toasting fork, of course) slices of bread and butter for us
- Pre-heat the dutch oven with coals above and below
- Put the asparagus in a clay pan, cover it with butter melted in a pippin, and put it to roast in the dutch oven
-Accidentally knock down the soup while taking it off the crane to stir; swear a bit, check to see no-one was looking, scrape up the food that hadn't hit the hearth, add water, and put it back to cook
- Eat buttery asparagus on fresh toast that had been dipped in the buttery asparagusand try not to make piggy noises
- Saute the spinach in an iron pan on a spider, poke dents in it andovercook poached eggs in it
- Chat
- Discuss cooking and kitchens at Williamsburg, wild-catching yeast to make breadand look up the stuff we didn't recognize in the garden on my smartphone
- Eat the soup, decide it needed some form of spice**
- Eat the florentine.
- Clean up the dishes in the modern kitchen, scrub off the table, sweep the hearth, bank/kill the fire, put leftovers in the hidden tupperware, head home.
- Throw all the smoky clothes in the hamper and take a shower. Eye up the woodlot in the back yard, as oak is prime for making cooking coals
- Type it up for LJ and consider pricing dutch ovens and toasting forks
*I described it at 221BCon as "Five women in a basement watching Benedict Cumberbatch and trying not to lick the TV." There is also a huge potluck dinner and an ever-more-elaborate cake
**Don't make that face; it had been hot enough long enough to be sterile. Bland, but sterile.
As I'm getting over the con crud (my never-fail panacea failed!) and I was out late Ben-festing* last night, I'm like to keel over right now. As I was the only other Guild member aside from the woman running it, it wasn't the best opportunity to have gone in civvies and said "I'm really just up to sitting attentively in the corner."
But no one came to see our demonstration of how to cook garden cuttings in the 1812 manner, so it didn't matter what I wore. On the plus side, it also meant that we got to eat every bit of the food. Health laws mean we can't give samples away, but we do have to leave bits out for people to see. Instead, we stuffed our faces and talked to each other.
What we did was:
- Start the hearth fire. This involved not just setting the fire, but snooping around the grounds to see what kindling sticks may have been knocked down by the storm of a few nights ago.
- Pull out of garden/scrape/destem/wash/chop (pick as necessary): carrots, parsnips, mushrooms, and kale for the barley and greens soup (the mushrooms came from the store; we do not go hunting those!); spinach for the florentine; and the asperagus.
- Pre-heat the dutch oven with coals above and below
- Put the asparagus in a clay pan, cover it with butter melted in a pippin, and put it to roast in the dutch oven
-
- Eat buttery asparagus on fresh toast that had been dipped in the buttery asparagus
- Saute the spinach in an iron pan on a spider, poke dents in it and
- Chat
- Discuss cooking and kitchens at Williamsburg, wild-catching yeast to make bread
- Eat the soup, decide it needed some form of spice**
- Eat the florentine.
- Clean up the dishes in the modern kitchen, scrub off the table, sweep the hearth, bank/kill the fire, put leftovers in the hidden tupperware, head home.
- Throw all the smoky clothes in the hamper and take a shower. Eye up the woodlot in the back yard, as oak is prime for making cooking coals
- Type it up for LJ and consider pricing dutch ovens and toasting forks
*I described it at 221BCon as "Five women in a basement watching Benedict Cumberbatch and trying not to lick the TV." There is also a huge potluck dinner and an ever-more-elaborate cake
**Don't make that face; it had been hot enough long enough to be sterile. Bland, but sterile.