After Abbey, and preparing for HA

 Packing the encampment down after the Abbey Festival was slower than usual because it was muddy and raining and we couldn't just dump gear next to whichever vehicle it travelled in (in preparation for it actually being loaded, in a somewhat tetris-like fashion) so it was well after dark by the time our entourage (2 utes with trailers, 2 cars with trailers and a wee small Mazda) got to my youngest daughter's place so we could hang nearly 100m of wet tent walls in her boat shed (and even then the damn things got a bit of mildew) and each took roofs home with us and spread them out.  Everything else got unpacked the following day - it was damp but not terrible - and then the massive washing and washing-up operation began...  The tentage (with the exception of the kitchen tent which is so smoked nothing would grow on it) got sprayed with a clove oil mix - it kills the mildew spores but doesn't get rid of the black spots (unlike bleach which gets rid on the black spots but doesn't necessarily kill the spores, and damages the cotton canvas into the bargain >.<) and once everything had been washed and dried and put away we were back to making things for the next show - History Alive, which was taking place about 2 months after the Abbey Festival.

September can be quite windy here, and our encampment was to be was on the 'open' side of the Abbeystowe field (we're usually nestled next to virgin bushland with tall trees, which really cuts down the wind problem), so there was a brief discussion about whether we needed to make up storm ropes for all the tents or not but in the end and mainly because of the expense) we decided we'd make do with the 40-odd metres we had on hand and keep an eye on the weather; I must note that about 8 years ago we were camped on that side of the field and after a rather windy night where the tent was 'breathing' like a huge beast we emerged to find one of the smaller Viking tents had been picked up and blown over a 1.5m fence into the the cow paddock...  

 

A friend of mine was running a workshop on medieval dental hygiene and one of the recipes called for rosemary charcoal, so I cooked her up some rosemary twigs in my charcloth pot and they turned out quite well :-)

I think it took about 20 minutes to go from bare twigs to smoking to smoke-dying-down then vanishing (at which point a coin covered the hole in the tin to stop any oxygen getting in) and after the tin cooled I took the lid off and voila - little charcoal sticks :-)  Evidently quite a few recipes for dentifrice/tooth powder call for some sort of charcoal, because it's slightly abrasive.

The kitchen burns kit (first aid) which lived in a plastic lunchbox in a basket with a whole lot of other modern stuff (flyspray, mozzie coils, surface spray, plastic zip-lock bags etc.) had to be found another home because the basket was getting over-full; I did up a little bentwood box for it so it could sit out in the open and not look out of place (and most importantly still be accessible); I cannot recommend the Soov spray highly enough - it has a bit of anaesthetic (lignocaine) in it and not only works well on burns but helps chafing as well ;-)

 

My second-oldest granddaughter was having a birthday around about the time we'd be doing History Alive, and she'd recently developed a passion for crochet and embroidery, so I did her up a sewing box with assorted bits and pieces...  As they grow up, the kids are finding the toys in the Kids' Tent a bit 'young' for them and so need other things to do over the reenactment weekend; I dyed up some yarn, grandpa and I spent some quality time with a plank and his thicknesser machine and made some tablet-weaving cards, and I carved her a little shuttle and a lucet (yes, I know they're not historically accurate, but the cord they produce seems to be and now she can make her own damn shoelaces ;-) )

About a week before we left for the show I came across a 14th century recipe for stuffed cabbage ('cabodge y-farcyd', from Richard III's The Forme of Cury) which seemed likely to have been appropriate for our period; I made a test one (with considerably less spicing than the original recipe called for because I wanted the kids to enjoy it) and it wasn't too bad, if a little bland; so i did up a mix of the filling with a little more flavouring and froze it - working with mincemeat in a camping environment, in a 30ºC kitchen, can be a recipe for all sorts of problems...

The recipe basically calls for a hollowed out head of cabbage, stuffed with a mixture of mince meat (ground beef, I think the Americans cal it), eggs, breadcrumbs, rice, salt'n'pepper, and assorted spices.  I left the onion out because a couple of our folk don't handle it well and substituted a bit of aji-no-moto.  Stuff the cabbage with the meat mix, whack a couple of leaves over the hole and tie the entire thing up in cheesecloth and boil for a couple of hours (for 500g mince).  The cabbage loses a lot of its flavour and oddly enough doesn't flavour the mince - I find it watery and a bit ick but evidently it went well wrapped around the chipolata sausages we served as well.

Preparations complete, we were ready for History Alive at Abbeystowe :-)