Ars Gratia Artis

Michael’s home safely, and I’m glad to say that his weekend eventually began to look up. He brought me a present–a personalized, autographed picture of Robert Picardo, whom I have admired since Meg Mucklebones and China Beach, so when he became a cast member in the Trek franchise, it was a win for me. Apparently, Mr. Picardo digs the Meteor.

Schwa-eeet.

Cooking notes.

All the incredible plans for the 12 years’ worth of progress I was going to make on my infinite pile of projects boiled down to …

1. Enjoying the last delicious duck egg. And cleaning all the wax out of this brass… thing I found in the thrift store, this… thing that I intend to use as part of a medieval chaffing dish. So now that it’s clean, I have to try the theory I have … but that’s for another day.

2. Cooking carrots with cumin from A Taste of Ancient Rome–Apicus redactions. The only change to the recipe was the use of the last of the pickling solution from the pickled green beans I did some while back… oh, and I had all the majority of herbs called for growing fresh in the garden, and I had about of handful all chopped hen it was all said and done rather than the tablespoon of herbs called for in the receipt. Very nice, and good cold. That’s important for the eternal tourney meal project. The other dish is the meatball dish from To The Queen’s Taste. I’m half sorry to say that I had to use ground turkey as I had no ground beef, much less ground lamb as the recipe calls for; nonetheless, it was very good, and it also works very well as a cold dish. And the broth was delish.

3. Volume 2 of Take a Thousand Eggs of More, a sweetened rice dish (page 290, Rice) and another version of applesauce (page 276, Apples Royale). The second volume has no redaction, so I ended up cooking to taste. Which I rather wish I hadn’t, as it makes it difficult to share with other people. I did have a nice bag of ground almonds, though, and so discovered that it takes a damn lot of store boughten almonds to get the same flavor as a quick pour of almond extract. Well, yes, that’s obvious, of course, but it takes a damn lot. I slipped some orgeat syrup into the rice (ah the sweet serendipity of my love for Mai Tai’s) as the recipe called for sugar or honey, so I added the orgeat until I had enough almond flavor for my taste and then switched over to the honey. The rice is okay cold, better warm, needs some honey drizzled over it, and would be a wonderful breakfast with a little milk and some dates. As a dish on it’s own, it’s not bad, but.. well, dates are period, thank ghod. It’s a Pennsic breakfast for me!

I made the fast day version of the apples royale, so I used almonds, water, and olive oil instead of beef stock. For “good powder” I used cloves, ginger, cinnamon, mace. And a generous sploosh of white wine. It was nice; I was a little worried about how the olive oil would work, but I didn’t use enough to impart a taste, just enough to get the mouth feel of fat present in the dish.

4. And there was also progress on the painted patch (farther along than pictured above) and the whole insanity of cleaning out the spice cabinet.

Sum Phun We Hahd

Baby K, making sure I know how interested he is in taking up archery.

So, we headed out to the range, shot at targets, then walked around a dog park. And it was nice. And now I’m done talking. Except to ay that I got the invite for Wardrobe Refashion. Huzzah! I’ve got quite a list of things to redo.