angharad_gam

 Things have been fairly quiet recently, in comparison to my last post (which I hadn't realised was quite so long ago). The talk went well in the end, and Fields of Steel was a great success. I managed to come through it not completely exhausted, which was not bad given I made 150 pies the day before the event actually started. 

We had a flying visit from my parents in the last few days of the school holidays, with my aunts from England in tow, so I took a couple of days off to play tour guide. I also made it to the ABC plant fair with dirtygreatknife .

Spring has well and truly sprung. The front garden was lovely for a short while, but is still in dire need of weeding. The vegie patch has been doing pretty splendidly this year, however, with peas and radishes in abundance and zucchinis, broccoli and tomatoes all doing well so far.

Erin has two days of school left now, and then she is finished with formal lessons for good (all being well). Her graduation is later in November. I think I am going to blub like a baby. It didn't bother me much when she started school, but it seems like five minutes ago she was a funny faced little bub with a crazy tuft of black hair, and now she is graduating high school!

I have another work trip interstate before then, and I will try and get to an event next month too, but aside from these things I am hoping for a fairly sedate run up to the end of the year. Then we are off to Queensland for Christmas. 

Anyway, to make up for months of silence, here is a cheesecake recipe. I adapted it from a 16th century Spanish recipe because I needed to use up some cream cheese, and blueberries are super cheap at the moment. If you don't fancy blueberries you could do the same thing with cherries or strawberries.

400 gms blueberries
3-4 tblsps sugar
500 gms cream cheese (I have an aversion to Kraft cream cheese, but if that's all you can get...)
200 gms sour cream
3 large eggs
1/4 cup caster sugar
200 gms arrowroot or digestive biscuits (gluten free work just as well as normal ones)
90 gms butter

Preheat the oven to 150°C. Place the blueberries and first lot of sugar in a small saucepan with a small amount of water (1-2 tblsps). Bring to a boil over medium heat then turn down to low and simmer for 10-15 mins or until the blueberries are soft and juicy. Set aside and let cool.
Place the biscuits in a clean plastic bag and crush thoroughly with a rolling pin. This is an excellent opportunity to relieve tension and stress, but be careful not to burst the bag. Melt the butter (30 secs in the microwave, then stirring away any remaining lumps will usually do the trick), and mix in the biscuit crumbs, combining well.
Line a 23 cm springform cake tin with baking paper. Press the biscuit mixture firmly into the bottom of the tin, forming a layer approx 0.5cm thick. Place the tin in the fridge while you do the next bit.
Place the cream cheese in a large bowl and stir a bit until soft. Leaving it out to come to room temperature can help a lot if it is quite stiff. Add the sour cream and stir/beat together (which it is might depend on how thick your sour cream is) until smooth and lump free. Beat in the caster sugar, then the eggs, one at a time. 
Pour this mixture over the biscuit layer in your tin. Scoop out about half the blueberries and approximately two tablespoons of their juice. Drop these into the cheese mixture in the tin in strategically placed blobs and swirl them around carefully with a knife or skewer. Place the tin in the oven and bake for sixty minutes or until the cheesecake is more or less set. Turn off the oven and let the cheesecake cool for half an hour inside. Then remove from the oven and pour the remaining blueberries and their sticky juices over the top of the cheesecake. Set aside to cool further, and ideally chill in the fridge for a couple of hours before serving.

If you want to make the 16th century version leave out the blueberries and sugar (all of it), and make smaller cheesecakes (these quantities are probably enough fot two) with a pastry not a biscuit base. Once the cheesecakes are baked pour 3-4 tablespoons of honey over the top of each, carefully so as much of it seeps in as possible. 

 ...when a combination of hayfever and the increased light in the mornings means I reliably wake up around 5:30am, regardless of when I actually went to sleep the night before. You would think that I would compensate by going to bed earlier, but that would be too much like common sense. So, sleep deprivation is the order of the day. On the plus side, the garden is awesome at the moment. Also, daylight savings came in this morning, which may help with at least one part of the problem. 

I have also been rather busy lately, but I am hoping that the period of busyness will more or less wrap up after I give my cooking class tomorrow, and to help that along  I am taking some time off work in the second week of the school holidays. 

I spent half last week at a Women in Maths conference. I was a bit nervous going into it, for some reason, but it turned out really well. There was a surprisingly large number of people there, the talks were interesting, and I met some really interesting people. Normally I only get to go to statistics conferences, so it was good to see what people are doing in other fields of maths and maths related subjects. I even went to a physics (well, technically astronomy) talk and was pleased I hadn't completely forgotten everything. 

I finished Mass Effect: Andromeda. That game has gotten a lot of flak and negative criticism, but on the whole I thought it was a perfectly fine and enjoyable game. I can see how it compares unfavourably to some of the other Bioware games - it didn't grab me anywhere near as much as the Dragon Age games have (then again I have always preferred fantasy to sci-fi) - but taken on its own merits it was ok (if not amazing). It kept me engaged through a fairly thorough and complete playthrough,  but I am in no hurry to play it again. So I am back playing Dragon Age: Inquisition again. Since I have now played the first two games I have been wanting to do a run through with the characters and choices I made in those games, rather than the defaults. It's weirdly satisfying being able to do this. 

I am really rather looking forward to having some time off. In the same week we shall be having my parents visit, celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary, and heading to the biannual plant fair with dirtygreatknife . It's going to be a good week.

So I had the feast dream last night. This one was a bit different from the usual one. Normally, in the feast dream, I turn up to the hall only to discover that I've somehow neglected to bring most of the food with me, or we don't have all the proper gear, or are in some other way seriously disorganised and we have to muddle through and scrape together what dishes we can. This time round I dreamed that I myself forgot to show up - or rather that I turned up to the event but didn't remember I was actually supposed to be cooking until the food started to come out. It's funny how these things seem perfectly normal in dreams.

Anyway, I thought I would post the planned menu for Baronial Changeover (5th April - there's still time to book if you are interested). This is what we'll be eating assuming that I don't forget to turn up (or catch 'everyone crammed into a tiny room at work so they can rearrange the furniture' crud (although I think it might be too late for that :-()).

First Course
Lombard pasties (chicken and bacon)
Spinach tarts
Sallat
Urchines (little meatballs made to look like hedgehogs)
Darioles (custard tarts)
Entremets (cheese, olives, etc)


Second Course
Potage d'Ognion (your basic (and original!) French onion soup)
Brouet de Cannel (chicken, almond and cinnamon soup)
Makerouns (pasta)
Pollastri Uva Negra (Roast chicken with Black grape sauce)
Haedus in Alio (Roast lamb with rosemary and garlic and a verjuice sauce)
Cavoli ala Romanesco (Broccoli)
Rapa Armata (turnips, but cooked like potato bake)
Cariota (roast carrots)

Third course
Strawbery Gely (yes it is period!)
Trifle
Bizcocho (cinnamon/anise cookies)
Caliscioni (marzipan pastries)
Tartis in Applis.

It's a bit of a mix of times and places, but I think it will work.

I have also been thinking a lot about garb lately. It's been a while since I've made any. Or at least, it's been a while since I felt like I accomplished anything by making any. There was an attempt at a new kirtle that just didn't seem to come out right, and a new shift that I've been noodling away at off and on for ages. But I think that putting all my garb books right there on the shelf, and reminding myself about all the fabric that I have (in the course of moving) has sparked the juices. There are three things urging me to make them right now, which means if I am careful (not to push it with the RSI) and persistent I might actually get one done in the next year. I think I've decided to go with a late 15th century gown. I bought a length of yellow-orange wool a couple of years ago that is an almost perfect match for a shade you see a lot in manuscripts of the latter half of the 15th century (which is not, of course, any guarantee that people were wearing that colour). I am not very keen on Burgundian, but I have long had a yen for a style that appears briefly and almost exclusively in England for a fairly short time in the 1470s and 1480s. There's a few examples of it illustrated here (most notably the portrait of Elizabeth Woodville).

I found a variant in a drawing from a brass (evidence for these kinds of gowns comes almost exclusively from brasses) in The Mediaeval Tailor's Assistant, which does not fit tightly to the torso, but falls into full skirt folds from just under the high-waisted belt. It's probably a more transitional form from the earlier Burgundian style, but struck me as a bit more middle class as well. I am finding myself drawn a bit more to middle class outfits these days as easier to pull off in a sufficiently authentic way than noble outfits. If I can't find anything more suitable I have some brown velveteen to use for the collar and cuffs.

I started drafting a toile this weekend. Because it has been a while and I am feeling a bit rusty I wanted to go slowly before hacking into my lovely wool. I haven't quite gotten the pattern right yet, especially the collar shape. I don't know why I am drawn to these off the shoulder styles. They are not suited to someone with narrow, square shoulders and a large bust ie me. However, having had a look around at some more images it is clear there is a wider range of variation there than I thought, so hopefully I'm not quite as far off as I thought. Anyway, I took some photos and I'll take some more as I go along, so there might be a dress diary in this yet.

Before Nostradamus was a visionary, he was an apothecary (perhaps he imbibed just a few too many of his wares), and he wrote a book of perfumes and medicines. Some kind person has translated it and now you too can make Nostradamus laxative rose syrup. It's probably better for you than the hellbears.

No, actually five. A meme, actually, from irreparable. If you want me to give you five topics/questions then say so in the comments.

My five:

1. What's your favourite board game?
It's probably a game called Arkham Asylum, which is a cooperative game in which the players travel around the town of Arkham trying to stop one of the Great Old Ones from arising (and destroying the world usually). Some people don't like it because the odds are stacked heavily against the players to win, but I don't mind that - it justs adds to the atmosphere. I'm also quite fond of Fury of Dracula and Cleopatra and the Society of Architects (but the latter may be because I usually win when playing this).

2. Which dance was the hardest to learn?
There's a 16th century Italian dance called Leggiadria d'Amore which I really struggled to get the hang of because it has an asymmetrical chorus (you do something on one foot that you don't do on the other). It's really screwy.

3. SCA
The most fun you can have with someone else's clothes on? There are some legitimate criticisms of the SCA as far as re-enactment goes, but for me it's still the main game because a) I like the flexibility to be 16th century one day and 12th century the next if the mood takes me, and b) it's the biggest game in town (especially in this town) and so you're more likely to find an event to your liking with people to your liking (or have the opportunity to cook for 150 people if that's your thing, and it happens to be mine).

4. What's your favourite thing to cook?
Ohhhh...this is a tricky one. It's difficult to tease out what I like to cook from what I like to eat. And there are so many excellent things to both cook and eat. Some days what I most want to cook is the thing I really want to eat. And sometimes my favourite thing to cook is something simple but done just right. And sometimes it's something amazing and virtuosic. So, picking some things at random ... hand-made pasta, tiramisu, pancakes, calisciones (fried marzipan pastries), falafel.

5. Statistics
A deeply misunderstood topic. I am constantly surprised by the range of uses for statistics and statistical methods, and constantly frustrated by their misunderstanding and misuse.

Tomorrow I go to work. Thursday I go shopping. Friday I am cooking. And then it's feast day.

I have this weird feeling like it's all been too easy, but I think it's just paranoia. I've done this too many times before.
Not too many times for something to go hideously wrong of course, but often enough that the planning stages don't really cause me much stress anymore. Except for the never-ending nagging suspicion that there will not be enough food. Which given my tendency to massively overcater is complete bollocks.

I thought I might post the menu, anyway. Excuse random sixteenth century style spelling.

First Course
A Sallat
Tartes of Cheese
Pork Y-bake
Hedgehogges
Sodde Eggs
Mortis (a sort of chicken pate)
Applemoys

Second Course
Great Pyes
Rostid Turkey
Prune Sauce
A Boiled Sallet
Peascoddes
Fried Beanes
Baked Oranges

Third Course
Strawberry Gely
A White Leach (a jelly of milk and rosewater)
Fine Cakes
Trifle
Ypocras

The Ypocras is not by me, but Elena le Breustere. Also there will be butter formed into the shape of suns in splendour, and prince-bisket cookies on the Yule tree. And a lot of marzipan subtelties in the form of fruits and flowers and so on, made by Fionn the current Innilgard A&S Minister. And cordials (lemon, pomegranate and cinnamon) by the Baroness.

And there will be masses of turkey because we bought it a while ago when it was cheap and assuming we would get 150, and we only have 120.

Possibly I should post these menus _before_ bookings close.