On Saturday, I'm helping pink_lady2 cook a dinner for 80 people, based on recipes from the Libre de Sent Sovi (a late medieval Catalan cookbook). My contribution so far has been to bake bread. The model I was using is the bread in the picture of The Last Supper, probably from the church of Santa Constanca in Linya Catalonia. It was also used on the cover of ( Read more... )

Absolutely bagged tonight, so I'm going to bed early. Technically, it's probably closer to "on time" but that's still early for me. But first, I am rendering duck fat. I don't need more duck fat for cooking, but I may experiment with using it for hand cream or something. It doesn't have a particular smell, and it is amazing on the skin.

I love summer, but OMG the garden and my CSA basket are exploding. And I can't resist a bargain... Yesterday's adventures included the purchase of okra because it was on sale. Which meant I needed to buy chicken and look up a recipe for frango com quiabo (chicken with okra, a traditional recipe from Minas Gerais, Brazil). I also have beets cooking ( Read more... )

Except for packing my stuff. Tomorrow is Bring on the Bay, a 3km swim in the Ottawa River. I have promised myself that if I finish in about an hour, I will sign up for the Riverkeeper 4km swim in two weeks. That one is much more challenging, as it is across and slightly up the river; tomorrow's goes into the centre of the river for part of the way ( Read more... )

Fancy had a 9 am appointment with the farrier so no swimming for me today. I might have tried to squeeze it in depite the gloomy weather, had I known the girl would bail on going for a ride afterwards. In fact, she didn't even crawl out of bed until after I had gotten home. She immediately headed out to do girl things with some friends. Chocolate ( Read more... )

I did actual sewing stuff on my machine yesterday, and started a new super secret knitting project today, but the real accomplishment has been sausages. The doctor should never have said I'm healing well, as I spent the whole day testing recipes. https://siglindesarts.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/i-made-sausages-and-boy-are-my-feet-tired/. I need to go ( Read more... )

Yesterday's headband:

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This isn't exactly sewing, but it is something I made and will be using next week. It is a sausage stuffer (basically a very primitive funnel made of cow's horn). I'm researching medieval sausages, and this is one of the tools I have been able to document. You can read about my sausage research here: http://www.siglindesarts.wordpress.com.


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For the past year, I have watched cortejo with a mix of pride and envy as she has deciphered a renaissance cookbook. I have several cookbooks I would like to do that to. I have tons of redactions from various cookbooks that have never made it anywhere. I have even started inventing recipes and WRITING THEM DOWN. Could I actually put together a whole ( Read more... )

This week I ( Read more... )