Marzipan Griffin

I'm currently in the midst of feast prep and thus continuing to be a bad blogger. So, I figured I'd let you see some of last year's feast.  I didn't get any pictures last year, but Mistress Birgit Birka snapped this one as I was starting to arrange my dessert subtlety.

I added some more "gold" to the nest before it was served, and the ramikin supporting the wings got removed as well as more mint being added, but you get the general idea.

The griffin itself is made from a honey marzipan. As it was mostly being used for sculpting and not much eating was going to happen, I used bulk almond flour rather than grinding my own. The colors were added with Wilton cake decoration dyes. The bluish things to the left are supposed to be roses. They didn't look too bad in person, but I was unhappy with the color. The queen on the throne at the time was anti-red roses. White wasn't working and the griffin was already yellow, so I tried for a pale blue hoping to have it look like a shadowed white and it just didn't work. The beak did look a great deal less ducklike and more eagleish from the side as well.

The gold (as griffins guard their nests of gold according to myth,) was candied lemons I'd made (very tasty,) purchased dates, shortbread cookies stamped with the Provincial device, candied chestnuts (soooo yummy,) and lemon curd tarts (you can just glimpse a couple of them under the mint up top.)

While I was running around like a madwoman getting feast done there was a shortage of A&S entries. Since I had documented several of the recipes for the comfits and crazy marzipan sculpting is totally period, this got entered at the last minute with a combination of verbal documentation and what I had written out for the recipes, and I won Provincial A&S Champion. My oldest daughter also did a little competing of her own and became the Province of Arrows Flight's bard.

Just to add to the crazy of the day, here's me getting my Golden Pillar (Artemisian AoA level service award.) I'm exhausted just thinking about it, and I'm just over a week out from doing another feast. Now, I better get back to making bread and prepping desserts. The weather is perfect for baking.

"Stained glass" at Toys For Tots

Even though I was the feast steward for my Province's annual Toys For Tots event this year, I had my fingers in a few other parts of the event. Several of us tend to hang out at the IHOP after fighter practice and some good ideas get mixed into the weird ones that pop up at 1 AM when all carbed up on pancakes. I'd been reading some of the earliest printed examples of fairy tales (because they are Italian and smack dab in the middle of my persona) and thought it would make a great theme for a kid centered event. We use one of the local Senior Centers pretty regularly for our events and I'd been trying to come up with ways to add to the decor. When I wrote up the bid for the event, I casually included that there would be stained glass windows as part of the decor with fairy tale themes.

Yeah, I always get myself into the best messes. But this one did at least have a giant tote of stained glass paints I got on super duper clearance behind the impulse. Thing is, they are formulated for use on glass. And I certainly didn't have the time to go in and put stained glass paint on the Senior Center's windows. I don't think they would have appreciated that particularly much either.  So I tried a few alternatives and settled on a thin clear vinyl to paint on.

The next issue is the fact that I've never painted any stained glass and I'm not much of an artist. I had grand plans of doing full panels involving the various fairy tales, but became disabused of that idea pretty quickly. I scaled back and decided to try doing one design that I'd use as a frame for all the windows. I then left a center medallion to put the stories in. Since stained glass was often painted, I took markers and drew the tales. Not remotely accurate, but nothing about this project is. There is also the great thing that the marker on vinyl is removable with some alcohol and we can use the painted frames for other themes by wiping off the marker.

So here's Jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty. I tried to introduce a swirling element into each panel to tie random items from the story together. Cinderella's pumpkin vine curls around the mouse and the shoe.

 The briars of Sleeping Beauty pull together the spindle, the bed  and the prince's sword.

Jack's beanstalk holds the singing harp and the goose who lays golden egg's nest. Jack's old cow is a bit more chipper than usual since the autocrat's device is a dancing cow and I put it in to make her laugh.

Rapunzel's hair tumbles from her tower and covers her comb, brush and a rampion or two.

I had some help from my friend's KyneWynn, Marguerite, and Eidou with the leading and then I spent a few evenings painting.

We attached the vinyl to the doors of the building with some electrical tape and called it good, but I'm hoping to improve on the idea for next time. I hope they were well received, but I was in the kitchen, so what went on at the rest of the event wasn't something I was much in touch with. Tabitha was kind enough to take pictures of the windows for me and well as keep an eye on my kids so they could enjoy the day. I can't express how grateful I am for that. I feel like it was at least a step in the right direction in decorating the site.

Regardless of anything else, however, as the expression on my little boys face says-- it was a fun event.

Making chardequince

A few years ago, I was sitting at fighter practice when a friend mentioned the fuzzy, hard, mystery fruit that one of their trees was growing. I just so happened to have been reading C. Anne Wilson's The Book of Marmalade, and thus could easily identify it as a quince. Before marmalade was made from oranges, it was made from the rather magical quince. The friends were kind enough to let me have the produce from their tree that year and since. I've had a lot of fun trying out some older recipes. They are moving next month though, so this will be the last year I get to play. That thought has made me sad enough that I've decided to plant my own quince tree. I'll have to wait a few years, but I know it will be worth it.

Quince aren't a popular fruit today, but medievally, they were known as the Queen of Fruit. They've been cultivated longer than apples. There are even legends that quince was the fruit that tempted Adam and Eve.
Full of tannins and pectin, quince don't get soft and juicy. They do get a beautiful floral aroma, however, and they smell amazing. They are a late fruit, not ripening until October and the first frosts. Cooking them is easy. Cutting them is not.

It takes a rather sharp paring knife. Much sharper than the poor neglected knives in my kitchen. I did have a sharpener in the back of the drawer, however, so that was easily remedied. The recipes I have for chadequince, the sweet and spicy quince paste I am making, calls for quartering the quince and then boiling them. I decided to do a finer chop, hoping it would make putting them through the sieve later easier.

The fruit in the picture has been cooking a few hours and is nice and soft. I'll put it through a fine sieve (and cheat a bit and put it through the food processor as well.) Then it goes back on the stove with equal amounts of sugar to fruit by weight.

There are a variety of recipes. I found several in the marmalade book I mentioned earlier, as well as here. There seem to be at least one in all my late historic cookbooks as well. I figured I'd try out a few options since I has quite a few quince. The first batch was sugar with heavy spices (clove, allspice, cinnamon.) I love the flavor, but was disappointed by the color. The spices turned the paste much more brown than I would have preferred. One of the best things about cooking quince is watching the magic of it turning color from the warm yellow gold of the fruit to a beautiful pink/orange/rose as it cooks longer.

For the second batch, I did something much more like Portugese membrillo. This form of quince paste is still popular for eating with salty cheese. It is the quince, sugar, and a bit of lemon juice and vanilla. I love the color, but the flavor isn't quite as exciting. Really nice though (at least from the spoonful I snuck as I filled the molds.

Chardequince was put into decorative boxes/molds in the Elizabethan period. Since I don't have any of those hanging around, I decided to try out some of my jelly molds. They are much larger and deeper than those made for quince, but I had them on hand. I'm hoping they'll look nice on my dessert table for the Fairytale Feast I am cooking for Toys for Tots in November. I've got them in drying out and setting now, so we'll see how it goes.

In the mean time, I made a small version shaped with a large cookie cutter to try. Not as decorative, but it is nice and thin and I put it in a warm oven to speed it up a little so it was set and ready to eat this morning after I made it yesterday. Here's the picture before I cut into it. It lasted about 5 seconds once my son tried it and shouted "Come on guys, it's CANDY!"

Fairy Tales!

Lion from a felted tapestry I made last year with the Fiore animals

Another reason I love my persona? It gives me an excuse to research just about anything. I'm helping plan (and doing the feast for) our local group's November event. It is always a toy-raiser for Toys For Tots and we try to have a compatible theme. This year we are doing a fairy tale theme. Since many of the most familiar tales we still know were published in the 16th Century by Italians, I'm in heaven. I took a class in college on the history of children's literature and as a result always thought fairy tales began with Perault. Even the WIkipedia article agrees (ha!) He was beaten to the punch by the appetite of the Italian presses for things to publish. Giovanni Francesco Straparola published his 2 part book of 75 tales in the 1550's. It includes the oldest version of Puss in Boots (Constantine Fortunato) as well as others. Perault borrowed many of them for his collection. Giambattista Basile's book "The Tale of Tales: Or entertainment for little ones" was published pothumously in the 1630's and includes Cinderella and Rapunzel. I just got Out of the Woods: The origin of the literary fairy tale in Italy and France, which discusses many of the themes as well as why these tales came out of Venice, and am currently consuming it.

I'm also trying to decide on a menu. I keep going back and forth between a feast selected from Platina's "The Temperate Voluptuate" in keeping with the Italian origins of the tales or if I want to pick and choose recipes from times and places based on individual tales.  Plotting it out is giving me something to think about as I keep embroidering away on my mermaid cuffs.  The new camera is here so I'll post pictures of my progress in just a bit.

And, just in case you happen to be in Utah November 9th, here's the event announcement.

We invite you to join The Province of Arrow’s Flight on November 9, 2013, for Toys For Tots, our Signature Event devoted to generosity, history, fairy tales, and the child in all of us.

Rapunzel, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, The Goose who laid the Golden Egg, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. The stories charm every child anew and yet are timeless. Legend goes that Emperor Constantine’s mother Bertrada of Laon was called Regina pede ancae or “Queen Goosefoot.” She was known for her stories and love of children and as her tale evolved the nickname shifted to “Mere l’Oye” or Mother Goose. 16th century Italy finds the first publication of The Pleasant Nights by Giovanni Straparola and The Story of Stories by Gianbattista Basile where old tales, including those just mentioned, are first collected and published.

Bring your favorite tales to tell for the bardic and participate in storytelling and crafts based on stories throughout the day. Participate in our I Spy scavenger hunt, finding characters and treasures hidden in the stained glass decor. Youth, heavy, and rapier fighters can save the fair maiden, foil the dastardly witch, and create their own legends in scenarios based on classic stories. While away the afternoon by attending some wonderful classes on fairy tale subjects, or teach your own, then end the day with a sumptuous feast featuring subtleties like 4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie and Cinderella's Coach as well as seasonal favorites like gingerbread and baked apples.

Also planned: lunch fundraiser, youth activities, contests, games, prizes, and more. Watch for details!

Directions: From I-15, exit 278 for American Fork Main Street, turn East. Drive for 1 mile and the destination is on your right.