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Winter came to the DMV...
Jan. 25th, 2024 11:28 pm... and now it is gone again.
(Note: "DMV" is the local abbreviation for "District, Maryland, Virginia." It has nothing to do with anyone's Department of Motor Vehicles.)
Last week we had two winter snowfalls, each leaving about 3 inches of the white stuff behind. This may not sound like much, but we haven't had a full inch of snow for 700 days or more, even while other parts of the mid-Atlantic region were getting snowed upon. TV meteorologists were calling it the "snow hole." But, of course, the grass is green again. Tomorrow the temperature will probably hit 70.
I'm actually working on an A&S project for my next SCA event. It is ... bread! This Saturday's event has the theme of "Holiday Court of Volodymyr the Great," because my friend Mistress Arianna is running the event and she has been fixated on Ukraine since the Russians invaded in 2022. So the setting of the event is Kyiv in 988 CE and Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavych is celebrating the holidays with a grand feast. Bread and salt are the traditional hospitality gifts in Slavic culture, so there is a bread competition. And I just happen to own a book called Food and Drink in Medieval Poland. Not all the recipes sound that great to modern humans (stewed pig tails in gruel, anyone?), but the book happens to contain a redacted 14th-century recipe for "Wroclaw trencher bread." Two weeks ago I made a test batch and it was pretty good. Now I'm making a second batch, using the same "thick beer" starter. This time the proto-dough doesn't seem as much of a "slurry" as it did the first time around, so I added a bit more of the starter (which has probably been slowly evaporating in its cloth-covered jar). At least it seems to be expanding overnight. Tomorrow morning there will be more kneading and pounding and rising and baking....
(Note: "DMV" is the local abbreviation for "District, Maryland, Virginia." It has nothing to do with anyone's Department of Motor Vehicles.)
Last week we had two winter snowfalls, each leaving about 3 inches of the white stuff behind. This may not sound like much, but we haven't had a full inch of snow for 700 days or more, even while other parts of the mid-Atlantic region were getting snowed upon. TV meteorologists were calling it the "snow hole." But, of course, the grass is green again. Tomorrow the temperature will probably hit 70.
I'm actually working on an A&S project for my next SCA event. It is ... bread! This Saturday's event has the theme of "Holiday Court of Volodymyr the Great," because my friend Mistress Arianna is running the event and she has been fixated on Ukraine since the Russians invaded in 2022. So the setting of the event is Kyiv in 988 CE and Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavych is celebrating the holidays with a grand feast. Bread and salt are the traditional hospitality gifts in Slavic culture, so there is a bread competition. And I just happen to own a book called Food and Drink in Medieval Poland. Not all the recipes sound that great to modern humans (stewed pig tails in gruel, anyone?), but the book happens to contain a redacted 14th-century recipe for "Wroclaw trencher bread." Two weeks ago I made a test batch and it was pretty good. Now I'm making a second batch, using the same "thick beer" starter. This time the proto-dough doesn't seem as much of a "slurry" as it did the first time around, so I added a bit more of the starter (which has probably been slowly evaporating in its cloth-covered jar). At least it seems to be expanding overnight. Tomorrow morning there will be more kneading and pounding and rising and baking....
