Food Storage (for Camping Events) #3 - Dehydrated Cinnimon Sugar Apples, dehydrated rice, and veggie stock

I decided not to post right away about my 1st attempt using the dehydrator a few days ago, which involved several bags of cranberries I found on sale at Woodmans, because I wasn't satisfied with the end result. I know one thing I learned, cranberries are horribly hard to dehydrate properly even if you mince them in the processor or blanch them on the stove. They turn it very hard and crunchy. I think they'll work fine in the pemmincan when I get around to making that. Right now they're in several small jars in my cabinet for short-term storage and experimentation. Maybe I'll look up some instructions on how to do cranraisins see if there's a middle ground to the drying process.

Today I started the veggie broth in the crockpot, prepping some rice to try dehydrated cooked rice to see how that works, and finally putting some cinnamon sugar apples into the dehydrater. I used my apple peeler/corer which worked pretty well, though struggled with these apples a bit I think because they were overripe. Maybe the galas don't work as well I don't know. It could be I just have a cheap peeler, and in that case I need to get something better when I can. I'll try some less ripe apples next time and see. I'll know by late tomorrow whether it worked or not.

Now back to the dehydrated cooked rice. I know it sounds a little odd, but I was watching some videos by some backpackers it seemed a cheap and easy way to create instant rice which I could just throw into dishes on the campfire to make them more filling, or rehydrate for a nice base for meals. Going to make some and then rehydrate a little to see how it tastes.

Tomorrow's exciting because as soon as the apples are done I'm going to clean out the dehydrator and prep it to make the powdered chicken stock. The stock from the two full crock pots worth of chicken has been chilling in the fridge for a couple days. I have already skimmed the fat off it once (got off nearly an inch of fat across the surface) and am sitting it in the fridge the 2nd time just to see if I get any more. It already has a very gelled consistency to it, but I'll cook it down a bit more just to be certain before placing it on the fruit roll inserts for the dehydrator.

Food Storage (for Camping Events) #2 - Period Pickled Eggs

Well I made 2 batches of chicken in the crockpot that were cooked so nicely they literally fell off the bone (yum!), and then used some apple vinegar to boil down the bones and skin to make stock. The stock is now cooling in the fridge so that the fat separates for removal before it is dehydrated. Once I dehydrate the batch, I'll post an update on that. if it works all have a great method to make chicken stock powder to take with me to camping events.

I began doing some research on medieval forms of preserving food since I'd like to have meals I didn't have to have a cooler and ice for that would last several days safely. Information on pickling popped up in knowing how much my family likes eggs, I figure that would be a place to start. Right now I'm just gathering notes on what I need since it'll be a couple days before I can actually do the pickling. It seems simple enough.

6 to 10 eggs, boiled and peeled (depending on the size of the jar)
1/4 tea. salt, cinnamon, coriander (the recipe calls for these spices, but the person doing it uses cumin instead of coriander. Knowing how well the 2 good together, I am thinking I should 1/8 teaspoon of cumin as well and see what happens)
glass jar ( I have a huge one that might work for this, might even fit his much as10 eggs, or I might just make a smaller batch and experiment with my half-gallon jar)

vinegar to cover (thinking to use apple vinegar for this)

I just have to boil the eggs, cooling them down enough to peel them. Then I roll the eggs into the spices (mixed up) and place them in the jar. I think just for the heck of it I might add some garlic and onions to the mix. Then I cover it all up with vinegar and put the lid on tight. The original website didn't say how long to let the eggs sit, but most the other places I saw said 2 weeks at least in the fridge before eating.

Easy Peeled Hard Boiled Eggs

Food Storage (for Camping Events) #1

Okay the school semester is over and I'm making plans for being able to camp with the kids at SCA events next year. I've traded with a friend for a modern tent (10 man, I traded a Doumbek for it). I still have to pick the tent up and make room to store it along with the rest of the camping stuff I'll be gathering over the next few months. Clearing out space in the attic over the next week or so. I have another friend offering me a couple cots. I've been gifted a lantern for outside (wood w/ candle) and an electric lantern for inside the tent (battery powered). Its a start. We don't have room to cart a lot, but I want to make sure we at least have what we need for my city kids to be comfortable and not cranky so more fun is had for all.

One thing I've thought a lot about is feeding ourselves there. One kid is a semi vegetarian (he eats fish only) and the other kid is a meat eater so not only do I have to consider their tastes/needs, I also have to find the best way to store the most (they are both around teen ages, so hearty eaters) without needing to use a cooler. I have been looking at several options. Dehydrated foods (hoping to pick up a dehydrator this week to start trying out some of this), vacuum sealing (I just bought a handheld sealer online along with attachments for sealing regular and wide mouthed jars), and pressure canned meats (need to get a good pressure cooker). With well stored dry goods, and along with the medieval spices research I've been doing (another post coming on that), I figure I should be able to have a good bit of versatility in my meal planning.

The first thing I think I'd going to prep is bases for soups and stews. For example chicken and veggie stock. Now I know I could just freeze them, but that would still required cold storage at events. For this reason I plan to experiment with making my own stock powders that I can just rehydrate as I need them. This is easy enough with the veggie stock because I can just dehydrate the veggies desperately and then mix them for powdering. The chicken stock option took some research because its need to be cooked to a liquid state and then gelled when cooled. I did find mention of removing the fat and then cooking the stock down to a paste that can then be placed on the fruit leather trays on a dehydrator. I plan to try this and see how it works. I'm a big fan of slow cooker meals so I have been looking at chicken recipes that I could later turn into batches of broth. I want to keep the broth simple so I can add whatever spices later I want to without flavors clashing. I found some good recipes for slow cooker chicken though I'd like to play with using more period spices then the recipes I've found call for. After the family is done with the chicken then I'll take to bones a make me some broth. :)

The best recipe I found was this one (see vid below) which uses apples as one of the ingredients which seemed much milder taste (I was thinking of the neutralish stock I needed for later) then the others which were using lemons. I don't have the chicken stock she asks for, but I do have some veggie stock left I think, so I'll just use that instead. I don't think I'm going to add the mushrooms this time. Thing #2 is not fond of them so since this is her first time having chicken this way best to add as many "preteen disapproved" things as possible. I'm also going to play with the spices a bit, maybe hit the Spice House today to get some of the period spices I've been wanting.

A People's History Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner - Documentary

I found a very cool documentary on Period food culture in England.

Identity by Design: Tradition, Change, and Celebration in Native Women's Dresses - National Museum of the American Indian

According to the book, Identity by Design, the decoration and design involved in Native American women’s clothing wasn’t just about looking pretty, there was symbolism in every choice they made in the creation of their dresses, as well as the clothing they made for their families. According to Rebecca Lyon, an Athabaskan/Alutiiq artist “Nothing is as personal as the clothes we wear. Clothing can be seen as the vessel that holds the human spirit.”

 Unfortunately for my research the above-mentioned book doesn’t go into Cherokee women’s clothing, but some of the useful over all information on clothing construction and design for the tribes I was hoping were close enough to the techniques used by my people so it would still useful information for my needs. One challenge I have come across even this text is the lack of artwork for clothing pre-1600s. Most of the drawings/paintings are group shots showing minimal detail in which people had very little to no clothing on. Unfortunately I cannot go around topless to SCA events, and most of the pictures of my own tribe in that time period looks as though the explorers visited these places during the warmer months, so very little example of the winter clothing worn. That said, some of the later period images are of clothing made the same way that people made it for generations, so as long as I am careful to avoid obvious changes made by later period exposure to non-natives, it should still be viable for my research.

As far as not having any Cherokee input when writing this book, I don’t know if that’s due to not having access to Cherokee artists for the project, or simply than not searching out slowly and art specialists from my tribe. The other tribes I know my people had contact with were the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and the Natchez, basically all tribes covering the southwest in precolonial America. Unfortunately, none of these tribes represented in this otherwise very interesting book. My goal was to look at the style of clothing and its construction, and see what similarities I could find, and that I could use.

There are several different types of dresses mentioned. The first is the side fold dress fit to be popular in the upper Missouri River Legion and the Western Great Lakes region of the northeastern plains. I know at one point my tribe stretched up that far so I wondered if they might have used this style of dress at all. After  studying the diagrams in the book and looking into my other clothing research images, I see no examples of the side fold dress among the Cherokee.

 The next style discussed was the two hide dress which seemed more popular among the tribes of the Plateau region from British Columbia into northwestern Montana. They mention Shoshone and Nez Pierce, as well as some Ute and Blackfoot use this style of dress. It wasn’t until after the Trail of Tears that the Cherokee and the Shoshone were close enough for regular contact. There is also a mention of the three hide dress which were used by both northern and southern tribes of the plains. This last one seems to have a bit of potential since it’s the most likely to have been viewed or the knowledge traded within the area my tribe is from. It involves two hides that create a skirt, and a third hide that makes a poncho or yoke top. The difference between the southern and northern versions is the North used more beadwork (I assume this made the dress warmer), in the South the top was more of a Cape the poncho. I assume by cape the mean it’s longer the back than the front because there still seems to be a front section.

 As much as I like this book I feel I need to try to find some comparisons to the techniques used within my own tribe for dressmaking to see how similar they are in style to the two hide or three hide dress variations. A lot of the mentioned Cherokee clothing I can find in other resources are the more modern cloth tear dress that is so popular among the Cherokee nowadays. That said I think I still found some useful information. I checked the white done skin dress made for me over 15 years ago that I thought I could possibly use for court wear and through what I learned in this book was able to identify it as a three hide dress. I’ll have to check the seams to see what shape they’re in, but it’s all handsewn using sinew, and I’ve already got some ideas on decoration that will not only be beautiful but will fit my personality and my inner spirit. Assuming it still fits me after this many years...

Update:  in the picture above is the dress with me in it. It seems as though fit though I imagine it will fit better with a better bra under it, and with some adjustment to the neck seems to ride a bit higher than I remember it riding. Most of the pictures in the book are not of somebody wearing the dresses, but the dresses on display, so hard to tell how the neck actually hangs on a person. All have to wait to get a better bra so everything is sitting properly before I make any adjustments to the neck if necessary.

Muromachi period

Okay going back to the research for my daughter's garb I think we've decided on being easy on ourselves and doing the Muromachi period. My daughter didn't seem too keen on the 12 layer royal outfits of the Henian period. I figure after spending two plus days researching the clothing of the period she wants her persona in, I should also gather some other info as well for her to get to know. 

What is the Muromachi period?  (thanks to the MMA)

The era when the Ashikaga family occupied the position of shogun (the clan occupied the shogunate for nearly 200 years). Rivalry between daimyo resulted in the Onin War (1467–77) and the collapse of the shogunate's power. This caused the Age of the Country at War, which extended from the last quarter of the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century.Despite the social and political upheaval, the Muromachi period was economically and artistically innovative.Contact with China, which had been resumed in the Kamakura period, once again enriched and transformed Japanese thought and aesthetics. One of the imports that was to have a far-reaching impact was Zen Buddhism. Although known in Japan since the seventh century, Zen was enthusiastically embraced by the military class beginning in the thirteenth century and went on to have a profound effect on all aspects of national life, from government and commerce to the arts and education.

Kyoto, which, as the imperial capital, had never ceased to exert an enormous influence on the country's culture, once again became the seat of political power under the Ashikaga shoguns. The private villas that the Ashikaga shoguns built there served as elegant settings for the pursuit of art and culture. While tea drinking had been brought to Japan from China in earlier centuries, in the fifteenth century, a small coterie of highly cultivated men, influenced by Zen ideals, developed the basic principles of the tea (chanoyu) aesthetic. At its highest level, chanoyu involves an appreciation of garden design, architecture, interior design, calligraphy, painting, flower arranging, the decorative arts, and the preparation and service of food. These same enthusiastic patrons of the tea ceremony also lavished support on renga (linked-verse poetry) and No dance-drama, a subtle, slow-moving stage performance featuring masked and elaborately costumed actors.

An example of a classy Muromachi Period lady, wearing a katsugu on her head Japanese

Painters of the Muromachi Period (1338-1573) The Chinese-art of ink painting was first introduced to the Japanese through trading during the Muromachi period. The first painters were the Buddist priests who taught Zen Buddism. They regarded these paintings as tools to spread doctrines. As they started to use painting as a medium in Buddism indoctrination, many art forms started to lose its Buddist quality, such as sculpture.

Famous painters of this period were Shubun (1500), Sesshu (1420–1506) and Josetsu (1425). Their inspiration was of landscapes. In this period, paintings on fusuma, or Japanese screen doors, started. Onkoku Togan was another great artist in this period. Inspired by Sesshu, his works include the fusuma paintings found in the Obai-in Temple in Kyoto. In this temple alone can be found 44 fusuma paintings done by him.

Boudicca

My son has shown an interest in Celtic as a persona for SCA, mainly based on his interest in the historical figure Boudicca. I am gathering what I can from him on her in hope of sparking further research ideas on his part.

Boudicca. Warrior queen (2003) [Subtítulos en español]

Killer Queens: Queen Boudicca, Part 1

Killer Queens: Queen Boudicca, Part 2