Let's get Medieval!

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erehweslefox

Sous Chef
Joined
May 20, 2016
Messages
578
Location
Hatfield, PA
Hey friends,

I'm an English professor and bookseller from Eastern PA. I love researching and reviving historical recipes, foraging, and particularly cooking and baking on an open fire (when I can).

I also cook in the house, I'm the main chef in our household, wife and I have a deal, I take care of the food, and she does the laundry. We tried alternating and, well, we have a lot of pink shirts that used to be white, and the local pizza delivery guy still got invited to the wedding. Decided to stick to what we prefer and do well.

So in the house, we love the slow cooker, our pressure cooker, a variety of cast iron. Tend to cook a lot of stews, big casseroles, stuff that can be portioned out and reheated. (we have hectic schedules, so we like things that can be cooked ahead and are grab and go).

Not to say we don't have a blow out every now and then, and just cook a ridiculous dinner.

Always trying to expand my repertoire of recipes and techniques. I've baked my own bread for quite some time (have a sourdrough starter that is ten years old, and has survived a move to Oklahoma and back), but recently been trying to figure out pies and pastry.

And, of course, we go camping once a month, so I always like suggestions for campfire cooking and food.

Hope to have some fun and share some recipes with you.

TBS
 
Welcome! It sounds like you have a lot of fun and have things to share. ?


Eat anything you want, but make it yourself.

Posting from the app.
 
Eat anything you want, but make it yourself.
.

Jen, love this. can I use it?

We had a health scare, and changed how we eat. Basically we had to drop our bad cholesterol and manage weight. I decided we were eating too much processed shite, and got a plan going where we only eat our own cooking and we try to cook from scratch whenever possible.

It is not absolute, we all love a muffin from the bodega, or as a treat a delivery pizza on movie night. I try to, though, make *most* of what we eat made in our kitchen, by me, from food I buy as best and green as I can.

Best,

TBS
 
Of course! The idea came from a nutritionist I visited years ago.

Mass producing food requires added salt, sugar and all kinds of other things we would not put in our food in our own kitchens.

So if you make it yourself, you are cutting out a lot of that... But also it may take the steam out of the desire for it. Soft pretzels anyone? ?

Amazing you have made this effort and transformation! This is not easy! ❤️


Eat anything you want, but make it yourself.

Posting from the app.
 
Welcome to DC. If you love historical recipes, then you should take a trip to Radcliff College in Cambridge, MA. They have a library that is dedicated to recipes written only by women dating back to the days of the Renaissance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radcliffe_College

DC is a fun forum. We have lots of laughs, share all kinds of information, and for some strange reason known to no one here, we tend to go off subject of a thread. It happens quite often. But we always get back to the subject at hand. I personally think there is a small gremlin in these forums that just love to play with us. So stick around. We love having you join us. :angel:
 
Rick? Is that YOU?

...I also cook in the house, I'm the main chef in our household, wife and I have a deal, I take care of the food, and she does the laundry. We tried alternating and, well, we have a lot of pink shirts that used to be white...
Himself (my hubby) has a cousin Rick in Allentown. Well, actually, he has a TON of relatives in the greater Allentown area. Rick tried doing laundry. Turned the family underwear pink, including his dear wife's expensive bras. He's banned from laundry, so he cooks instead.

Anyway, welcome to DC! I've done some cooking from The Williamsburg Cookbook and City Tavern cookbook, but I'm not skilled enough to cook the old way. Himself, who does only grilling and reheating in this house, is hooked on videos by James Townsend and Son. His business is basically supplying historical reenactors with the goods they need to carry on, but he has hundreds of cooking videos on Youtube.
 
Welcome to DC.

Along the same line as Jeni78's sig, some years ago I read that you should shop the periphery of the grocery store for a healthier diet.
 
Turned the family underwear pink, including his dear wife's expensive bras.

Well I am not Rick, but I do feel his pain. I did that myself.

See most guys can just roll into any Marshalls and buy underwear off the 'slightly used maybe defective' rack. I found out in the laundry fiasco, that one does not want to interfere with a woman's favorite bra. They are not like other pieces of clothing.
 
Himself has good ideas

Himself, who does only grilling and reheating in this house, is hooked on videos by James Townsend and Son. His business is basically supplying historical reenactors with the goods they need to carry on, but he has hundreds of cooking videos on Youtube.[/QUOTE]

Good videos. Figuring out how to cook an old recipe is difficult as they don't give you nice stuff like, well, measurements, techniques, temperatures, or times. It takes an understanding of kind of what they were after?

I posted somewhere here in joking about my grandmother's cooking, as she tended to freeze meat as soon as she got it, thaw it, boil it in salt, and serve it with potatoes and cabbage. But that was how one cooked in the blitz in London, 'cause you didn't know if you would have a kitchen.

Re eanactors can be an interesting bunch, I know a bunch of SCA and Civil War types, in fact I make a lot of hardtack every year for the Gettysburg meet.

Really to be honest, people in the past ate shite. But there are some awesome recipes that have been lost. Check out Dariana Allen's Forgotten Secrets of Cookery for instance.

I mean we don't eat some of the parts of animals that were considered delicacies, in the past, because ideas have changed, how messed up is that?

Cheers!

TBS
 
I have a paperback book put out by The Farmer's Almanac published in 1986. It is call Colonial Cookbook. In it are several recipes that James Townsend has on his site. One that caught my eye was Indian Pudding. Every Friday when I was in the third and fourth grade, it was on the menu. I tried it once and immediately spit it out. I have no desire to ever try it again.

Between the recipes the colonists brought to this country with them, and what the Native Americans taught them using the natural wild foods available, the early colonists ate pretty well. :angel:
 
I have a paperback book put out by The Farmer's Almanac published in 1986. It is call Colonial Cookbook. In it are several recipes that James Townsend has on his site. One that caught my eye was Indian Pudding. Every Friday when I was in the third and fourth grade, it was on the menu. I tried it once and immediately spit it out. I have no desire to ever try it again.

James Towndsend is a good reenactor. He is well known in that community. It both doesn't surprise me either that it wasn't right to modern taste, nor that a elementary school kitchen didn't execute it properly. (hate to say it, they probably just put the name on something they were turning out anyway)
 
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