April 21, 2009 @ 17:03

So this past weekend we loaded up and went to an SCA event with an on-site arts and sciences competition.  Teams would arrive on site and produce from start to finish their entries.  Any category, all comers, lots of cool stuff going on.  I have been researching and planning on working towards really perfecting sugar work in period method.  Early in the week however, the weather channel forecasted rain.  Sugar and rain are not friends.  So I brought some modern fixes for what I anticipated would be problems.  I also had totally fortuitously landed myself an awesome set of teammates.  Three new friends that are smart and funny and made the whole day a pleasure.  Fantastic folks who were able to think of great solutions at the right time and we pulled off the piece.  Just not the way we might have hoped in the beginning. 

When we arrived on Friday evening we walked up to the main competition area to see forges blazing and blacksmiths hammering, a woodworker with a man powered (built by himself I was told) lathe/saw, a stained glass artist beginning their piece, numerous seamstresses pinning and cutting and laying out fabric, a calligrapher cutting her own quills, a woman spinning linen, a team outfitting a youth combattant from head to toe in armour and heraldry, and a half dozen other projects intimidatingly underway.  It was magnificent.  We discussed our plans and it was decided that it would not be a good idea to try to build our sugar piece too early as the rain was steady.  We would begin first thing in the morning and do a straight through push. 

When we set up that morning the rain was still pouring.  We were crowded into a hall that was a bit too small for all of us, but the SCA as a whole is used to making it work and are nothing if not polite and accomodating to each other.  So we crammed onto a table and went to work. Sitting right next to the main door to the hall, we were continually bathed in damp cold air every time someone entered and left and between were washed with hot dry air from the heating vents.  Our sculpted leaves began to crackle.  I had bought the wrong adhesive for the tree mounting.  But we continued on.  Half the team made a dash to Walmart to buy the right adhesive and brought us all back lunch.  And then we got a lucky break.  The rain stopped and the sun came out and a nice dry breeze was blowing so we decided to move out side with our pavilion and finish up with more elbow room.  And frankly, more privacy.  I’m not really good in crowds.  That fishbowl feeling is not fun for me.  I had had a couple of conversations already with passers by who stopped to chat that had made me nervous.  Also in the course of the day I heard a couple of comments that I clearly wasn’t intended to hear.  They were not flattering.  I knew the piece had issues, but damn people. 

In the end, the parsley and raspberries and cloves that had been brought in order to make period food dyes could not be used in the loss of time.  I used modern food dyes and prepared myself for the judges wrath.  We completed our piece just 15 minutes before the deadline and submitted it and waited for our turn to be judged.  But suddenly, all the activities broke up and the judges went off to a scheduled meeting.  Someone told me that they were done.  It was over.  Our piece had not been judged.  I was not happy.  I had in the course of the day had a couple of conversations with judges as they made the rounds and checked on people.  We had openly discussed the flaws with our peice.  All I could think was that they had deemed us unworthy of even judging.  I barely managed not to cry.  I did however spew a bit.  Sometimes profanity will keep you from crying like a little girl, ya know?  I went back to our pavilion and half heartedly did some clean up and then went and waited for a turn to shower and change for the evenings activities. 

But then, a couple hours later, someone came up and told me it was our turn and to gather up our documentation.  The person who’d told me that judging was over had been mistaken.  And I hate to even admit it but I’d thrown our documentation away in my fit.  Luckily I had a second copy in the car.  I gathered it up and in a bit of a daze went to face the judges.  Thankfully with a teammate by my side.  When we sat down, I was just blown away.  They raved.  Apparently you learn invaluable lessons from watching Foodnetwork Challenge.  Sometimes, just finishing a piece on deadline is a major deal.  And one of the judges was a sugar artist.  She knew what the rain had meant to us.  I was able to pull myself out of my pity party and intelligently speak about the modern substitutions we had made in order to complete our piece on time.  I was able to speak to what would have been the better choices.  And in the end, we came away with a respectable 15 out of 20 score. I hope it was obvious how grateful I was for that.  And how grateful I was to our team. Hopefully only those who know me and love me got to witness my being a total tool. 

It was, in the end, a day spent with some great friends.  And crazy as we all are, we’re already talking about what to do next. Here are two of the fabulous three hanging the marzipan fruits from the infamous tree. 

Passer by:  Dude, you brought a tree? 

Me:  Uh, yah. 

Passer by:  What for?  (bewildered stare)

Me:  Well, to hang the fruit on, of course . . . 

March 01, 2009 @ 21:30

This past weekend I cooked for an SCA event. Saturday was Bear’s birthday, he turned fourteen, and he wanted to attend the event.  So I volunteered to cook.  Easy peasey, right?  I do this all the time.  No problem.  It started out well enough, but by the end of the feast, I was very ready to get out of that kitchen. Bear, little did we know, had in his ever easy going fashion made things easier on me.  Usually his way of never wanting anything special or complicated is tough.  It’s very hard to buy him gifts and know if you got it right because he’s so serene and never asks for anything.  So when he decided that for his cake he wanted cookies and cream but nothing special for the decoration, well, I was disappointed.  Little did I know at the moment that was a huge blessing. That and a staff of Nonnie, Trixie, Gabby and Cassie and a little help from a new friend named Neil.  They saved the day. 

We got off to a slightly late start on Friday night.  This is not my fault, it was karaoke night at a little bar just a few blocks from the house and well, when you’ve got out of town guests staying, you’ve got to be entertaining.  It’s your moral imperative as a hostess.  No, really.  You can look it up.  The plan was to do some cooking on Friday night.  So when we delivered all the food and supplies for the event’s food afterward . . .  around midnight, we didn’t stay any later.  But it was no big deal.  I am a very careful planner.  And when things go off target, I recover well.  In fact I had already scrapped plans for a very elaborate cake of St. George slaying a dragon because of last week being so turned upside down by Puppy’s med changes.  I was not going to spend every night last week sculpting a sugar George when I was needed elsewhere.  So the plan was scrapped and it became a simple simple cake of the Gleann Abhann arms.  And down and dirty quickie cake.  So with all the extra time I’d already built in and gained from easy cake plans, I had more than enough time to do everything.  Until . . .  oven failure.  By 1:00 Saturday afternoon I’d figured out that there was no way we were going to get the food done.  The bread was barely baking.  Each loaf spread out from nice fat rounds into almost focaccia flat disks.  And took an hour to bake when it should have taken 20 minutes.  The texture suffered.  It was more like an english muffin than soft dense yeast bread that we wanted.  My best guess is the the oven was baking at maybe 275.  With strange random bursts of full temperature.  One pan of carmelized onion tarts perfect, second pan charred crusts.  Worse?  I had eighteen whole chickens to roast.  There was no way.  There was just no way that we were going to pull it off as originally planned.  I immediately remembered a feast I had attended years ago where the ovens failed.  It is hands down the worst feast I’ve ever experienced.  Scary pink centered chicken.  Raw center dumpling things.  It was horrific.  It was unsafe.  In my opinion, it was a mistake of not recognizing the disaster in time.  Of thinking that it would somehow be okay.  Nuh uh.  Food safety just doesn’t have any room for maybes.  So I didn’t waste any time making my own decision.  In the end I had to scrap two dishes that were supposed to be oven roasted and rearrange the ingredients I had brought into an adjusted menu.  What we did?  Called Walmart.  By some miracle, they were able to get us rotisserie chickens from the deli in two hours.  We wiped out their stock for the day.  We sent the fresh chickens I had bought to be frozen for use at the next event.  And I suspect very few people were the wiser.  I even had someone send one of our group staff members in to the kitchen to request my chicken recipe.  Yah.  I told him the story and let him decide whether or not to tell it.  We got all the food out.  And then it started to snow.  So with the added fact that I had to work Sunday, we got out of Dodge as quickly as possible. 

The bright spot was between the last two courses, getting to make a fuss over Bear.  He was sung Happy Birthday by about 100 of our closest friends.  He deserved that and more.  Then after going home and cleaning up, I spent a perfect night drinking wine with my friends.  Listened to some seriously hilarious drunken ramblings.  And ended my day feeling better than I expected.  All disappointments considered, I slept like a stone and would do it all again next weekend. 

There was, however, one little moment on Saturday that made me so mad that I’m just gonna say it.  If you are a staff member of a local group who is hosting an event, and have come into the kitchen to ask for more tea to be made, take a minute to look around before you bark your order at the kitchen staff.  You might notice that they are working their butts off to make the meal happen in disasterous circumstances and that they haven’t had more than one person come in to help all damn day and that if you’ve had time to walk in and complain about something three times, you had time to do it yourself.  K?  I’m just saying . . . 

Here are the cakes.