Today at a Household gathering I cooked my "Meal for Three or More" for the Forester level requirement.  Because I was going to be cooking for several hours, and because it was on someone else's property and I did not want to scorch their lawn, I chose to bring a portable firepit and coal table.  In addition to my small cast iron dutch oven and griddle, I got to test out my new clay cookpots from Feed the Ravens.  

fresh I filled the clay pots partway with water and sat them under the edge of the firepit to allow them to slowly come to temperature.  Thermal shock can wreck terracotta and I really like these vessels and I am hoping to get years of use out of them, so I was very cautious.

When I had a bed of coals I moved some using a shovel to the coal table and then I used a trivet from Rabenwald Metalsmything to hold my small dutch oven.  I added a half stick of butter and a large onion (I chose vidalia because I have less issues eating those that most other types).  Once the onion was soft, I chopped up 2 lbs of parsnips and added them, as well as some salt and put the lid on.  I periodically added more coals to this area of the coal table to keep the dish cooking.  When the parsnips started to dry out, I added about half cup of wine and cooked till tender.  At that point I added Sour Grass (Sheep Sorrel), but you could use Blood Sorrel if you have a high end grocery store near you, or just a spritz of lemon or even some sumac to get the sour, lemony taste.  When it was almost done I added about a quarter of a cup of bread crumbs to thicken the sauce.

The larger clay pot housed a barley and mushroom dish.  I wanted to get the barley soaking as soon as possible so I coated the inside of the pot with olive oil, added a cup of barley, and then a carton (32oz) of beef stock and a sprig of fresh thyme from my garden.  I used my griddle to saute a very large leek (white and light green parts only) and added that to vessel when I moved it to the coal table.  I could have but the leeks and oil in the clay pot and started them there, and then added the barley and broth as well. 

Basically, I just kept heat against this pot and stirred it occasionally and added salt as needed.  When the barley was half done, I tossed in an 8oz container of white mushrooms and an 8oz container of baby portabellas and a handful of parsley leaves.  It took over an hour for the barley to completely cook.  I did add a touch more water towards the end to keep it from sticking and burning inside the pot. This dish was a huge hit with most of the folks that tried it.  I would absolutely just make this as a winter comfort food!  

The small clay pot got a half stick of butter, then 2 chopped apples and a half stick of ceylon cinnamon.  As those cooked down, I added two more apples.  When it was cooked I added a couple of tablespoons of honey and stirred it in.

Finally, I griddled up some pork medallions.  I only used salt on these because I was serving them with a choice of the apples or a medieval green sauce.  The green sauce was parsley, ginger, salt, verjus and white wine vinegar.  It should include bread mashed into it but we do have one gluten free person in the group and I wanted her to be able to eat as much of the offerings as possible.

I think the food was well received over all.  It was definitely enough to feed at least a half dozen people if this was all that was offered, maybe more.  As we had other food at the event, I think maybe 8-10 people at least got to try the food.

I will also say that having the coal table can be life saving on one's back.  I spent 3.5 hours from start of the fire till the last dish was finished.

Disclaimer: I am an amateur at woodscraft and herblore.  Nothing below should be taken as advice or recommendations.  I am merely experimenting.  Please do your own research before consuming or using any plant for medicinal purposes.

​I have been putting off making spring greens and cheese pies again because I have been a bit on the strugglebus lately and while I have the oompf to go out and gather, I don't have it for making the crust.

I finally caved and bought puff pastry crusts and decided to just roll with that.  For these experiments, its the greens that matter anyways.

So today I gathered more ​Garlic Mustard (and murdered even more of it, as it is horribly invasive), Cutleaf Toothwort, Dandelion Greens, Wild Garlic, and Chives that escaped my garden.

The Wild Garlic is what we called Spring Onions or Onion Grass when I was growing up.  In the photo you can see the tiny bulbs on the ends.  I also had chives that escaped my garden and it was pretty cool to compare the two side-by-side.  The Wild Garlic had a mini version of a garlic bulb that even had little "cloves".  The leaves are round and the stems hollowish.  The runaway chives are solid throughout and look like a mini leek.

The Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is a new one to me this year and I am beyond delighted.  I found several areas where it grows, including one that is very heavily covered with it (and loads of mayapple as you go further down the hill).  This plant is a native, so not something I am looking to harvest for my SCA Apothecary (which has a 14th century English focus), but for my general Forestry and plant stuff?  HECK YES.  Want to read more about it and some uses for food?  This is a great entry from Forager Chef about it.
​

So I tasted the leaves and yes, peppery!  It reminds me of a strong arugula, to which it is related, so no surprise.  This plant is a bittercress and is in the mustard family.  It had some bite!  Supposedly the root tastes like horseradish, so I plan to dig some up at a later time to check it out.

Today, however, I tossed some in a salad with some store-bought lettuce (mine in the garden is too young yet), a chopped chive and some parmesan and Italian dressing and it was absolutely excellent.  We are cooking a rib roast tomorrow and my partner wants to use the leaves to dress leftover beef sandwiches on Monday.  I am looking forward to it.

​

For my hand pies, I sauteed the bulbs from the Wild Garlic in some butter, then added the greens.  I did not cook the greens terribly long, and then had melted cream cheese in another pot that I added to it and a handful of parmesan and a sprinkle of salt.

I cut the two sheets of thawed puff pastry dough into 9 squares each and laid half on a buttered pan, topped with a dollup cheese/greens, wet the edges of the pastry and placed the top over it and pressed the edges down.  I brushed butter on the top and baked them at 400 for 15 minutes.

The greens are concentrated and POTENT.  I used a little over half the block of cream cheese and almost as much cooked greens, but I could easily have used half the the amount of greens (which were, by volume, predominantly the toothwort and garlic mustard).  The pastries are still very good, but I would definitely cut down the next time and it honestly didn't need the added salt either.

And of course, I always have help no matter what I am doing outside.

I decided on a male persona for my Forester work mostly because I like the clothing and I really like the idea of chausses because the chiggers in the summer here are just off the charts annoying.  I do plan to make 14th Century English women's clothing as well (mostly because I can get away with sandals that way at Pennsic, and because I have always loved that classic 'medieval' look).

But it is interesting that, in period, both roles that I am pursuing, Forester and Apothecary, could be held by women during the Middle Ages.  I had already read a fair bit about female apothecaries but the following article was posted to the Atlantian Forestry group on Face book discusses female Foresters in the 13th century in England.  This is key because it gave me better insight into how the position of Forester in Fee worked, and that my persona idea (being trained as an apothecary in London but returned to the family home to take over the Forester role after the plague wiped out my persona's father and older brother) is actually viable and not as convoluted as it sounds.

The article is HERE for those interested.  

This fall I harvested some dried mullein stalks to coat with flammables and attempt to use as torches.  I read in several "articles" online that mullein torches were used by the Romans.  Why the quotes?  Because not a one of those actually cite a viable source for that information.  I do not know whether it is legit or not (Roman period is not my research thing), but folklore also refers to these as "witch candles" so I thought I would give it a test regardless.  I will note that in On Simples, attributed to Dioscorides there is a reference to Mullein being used as lamp wicks and it is also called "lampwick", so that I will definitely be checking out in the future as well.

So last month I coated some of the stalks with wax.  Because of the cost of beeswax and my desire not to waste any, I chose not to fill a tall vessel and dip the stalks.  Rather, I melted a small portion and dipped the tip and just ladled the liquid wax over the rest and watched it soak in to the very dry material.  Modernly you can find mullein candles from neopagan vendors who very heavily coat them, truly making them candle-like in appearance.  They sell them as a less appropriative replacement for white sage for smudging (not a bad thing at all).

The initial test had a 3 inch flower head that gave me 5.5 minutes of well-lit burn time.  I used approximately 1.75 ounces of wax to coat the 4 stalks I had (3-4ish inches).

​Because wax likely had better uses than a quick burning torch in period, I decided to look at other viable options for this process and purchased some beef tallow and used up some expired olive oil and also vegetable (soybean) oil that was left over from frying schnitzel.

For this round I used 4 inch plants, all dressed in the same fashion (with the tip held in the oil and oil ladled down the stalk until it was well coated).  I labeled them and stood them up as I did before, lit the tops and timed them.

While the lengths of the flower heads on these were all similar, they were not exact down to the millimeter and I had no way to check for density, so some might have been heavier than others.  So this truly is not scientific, but still gave me a feel for how well the different fats performed.

In the image below, the wax is on the left, tallow, then olive oil and the vegetable oil on the far right.  The wax caught most readily and produced the most light for the duration of it's burn.  It is the only one that really acted as a "torch" for the entire duration.

The tallow performed well, but the bright light it started with settled down to something a bit better than a really good candle.  The two plant oils were more candle like until the last 5 minutes of their burn time.

At the end of ithe beeswax burned brightly for 18:42 (18 minutes, 42 seconds).  The tallow burned for 27:26 and the vegetable oil burned for 25:38.  The olive oil was burned for 21:01, but I also had to relight it at one point because it was very much struggling to really get going.

Also, I had a helper, because of course I did.  He feels that I finally have set the appropriate alter for his divine presence.

For the SCA Foresters' Guild there are requirements to progress from one rank to the next.  Æthelmearc currently is falling under the East Kingdom and the Checklist, as well as other pertinent documents with rules and regulations, can be found HERE.  

Once you swear the Forester's oath, you can work towards different goals within the guild.  This is one thing I love about some of the guilds within the SCA.  They give you tangible goals, AND have people willing to jump in and help you along the way.  (Another great guild with goals is the Company of the Silver Spindle in Atlantia.

 I took the Oath at Pennsic and now am starting on working towards Underforester.  For this you need to start a fire, cook a meal for one, have some green garb and participate in camping (yes, Pennsic camping counts).  Most of my garb is green, but the Forester kit I am building out has that goal in mind.  Currently I have green chausses and hood, along with a brown wool and blue linen tunic.  Eventually I will have a green wool and a green linen tunic as well.  I have cloth for two green cloaks as well, I just need to get them cut out.  

The next rank is Forester.  For this you need period gear and equipment (working on it).  Period shoes (have them).  Full forester garb (technically have that except that cloak that needs cut out, BUT I want to revise the garb I made this year already).  You need to be helpful and cook for a group over a fire.  And you need to start a fire with a period method.  I have done this in the past several times with flint and steel, but my technique is, um, rusty.  I also started a fire with charcloth and a magnifying glass at the Shire Day in the Park this past June.  I tried to do it today, and got the charcloth to catch and started to get my nest going but the flax that I was using as the base of the nest was not catching.  Like, it was REALLY, not catching.  It came from a very damp room and I think that it might have taken on moisture?  I used this same flax years ago with no issues but it honestly did not want to take right away even with a lighter (which I ended up using just to keep things moving.

So, enough about what went wrong, lets talk about what went right!  I had a great time.  I chose a semi-flat spot near a fallen tree in an area where there is no grass or other growth to worry about burning.  I also opted for Safety First and had a can of water and a fire extinguisher stashed nearby.  We live in the woods, it is autumn so leaves are falling, and we have not had rain in several days.  I also used some stones to build a small firebreak on the downhill side from where I was working.  

​You can see my staged area below, as well as the stages of my fire.  I had wood ready, and yes, I did use a few sticks of fatwood.  I currently do not have period cooking pots, but did use a small dutchoven, griddle and a little clay vessel I made myself (it is actually a pinch pot for early Celtic stuff, but it is what I have).  I have two trivets from Rabenwald Metalsmything but only needed the shorter one for this project.  I used a tent stake for lifting the pot around and removing and replacing the lid.

So, what was I going to make?  I wanted to do more than just make random food to fill a checklist.  I wanted something period appropriate to my persona.  So, my assumption here is that I would actually be traveling from London where my persona's uncle lives, back to his own home in York, and realistically, I was not traveling alone as that was very much asking for trouble.  We would have more than bare minimum gear with us.

So my personal checklist is:

• Period food items for my persona
• At least somewhat period methods of cooking/compiling them
• Ingredients that would be in season at the same time

​
In the end I opted for a:

• Dish of parsnips and onions
• Apples with cinnamon and honey
• Flat breads (rye and oat)
• Cheese (for this I opted for Brie that I had at home already)
• I choose to go vegetarian for this as, in additional to Lenten Fridays, there were many days during the 14th Century in England where meat was not allowed

My foodstuffs can be seen below.  Most of these vessels are NOT period to my persona, and while some are close (the glass containers), I would not be slinging those around during travel.  I would also definitely not be traveling with two heavy mortar and pestle sets, but I needed to grind the cinnamon for the apples so took them outside to work on while the fire was reducing to coals.

While the fire was making coals for me, I went ahead and started the onions in the pot with butter.  This is a modern sweet onion as I have serious sensitivity to onion and do not react to this type IF it is cooked until completely dead.  I also have some apple and butter in the earthenware pot.  I have not fire tested my own pottery yet, so did not want to sit this directly in a bed of coals at this time.

When my onions cooked down some, I added the chopped parsnips and continued to cook those close to the fire, stirring often.  When the fire died down enough, I moved the Dutch Oven to sit directly over coals.

Once the parsnips started to soften a little and the onions were VERY cooked, I added white wine, water and a bit of salt.

While this was cooking I mixed up a little olive oil into the rye and oat flour with a touch of salt and a small amount of honey.  I formed these into little patties and put them on the griddle that I had preheated with butter.  For the griddle I am using the low trivet and it is placed directly over coals.

Did I mention the apples were taking forever?  I was not quite ready to explode my drinking cup with high heat, so I ended up finishing the apples on the griddle with the flat breads.

Before dumping them from the cup onto the griddle I stirred in a bit of the cinnamon I ground.  Part of my research on medieval apothecary revealed that the cinnamon sold in the US is typically cassia, a similar plant, but not true cinnamon.  I do, however, keep celyon cinnamon sticks in the house as I have a friend who is allergic to cassia, and I ground one of those for this project.

To finish off my main course, I added the foraged sorrel as well as the harvested chives and parsley to the pot, along with a little more water and wine.  Then I did a very period thing and thickened the whole thing with bread crumbs (from old bread that I foraged in my kitchen).  I believe that bread, a staple of the medieval diet, could easily be bought in towns we would pass through, and eventually one might have an older hunk not really suitable for a meal, even while traveling. 

The photo to the right shows the veggie dish right before I added the lid and set the whole thing over coals to finish it off.

So how was it all?

Honestly?  It was excellent.  I forgot to add the honey to the apples so drizzled it on at the end.  (My persona, as an apothecary, would have ready access to both honey and several types of sugar, so sweetening a dish is not unreasonable.)

The parsnips and onions were quite savory and had an almost lemony twang with the addition of the sorrel (locally called "sour grass").  The bread crumbs thickened the broth so that it clung to the vegetables making it more "main course" to me than it would have as a soup.

The flat breads were good, but a bit crumbly.  They might be made better with a different source of fat (butter, tallow or lard), which is something I can experiment with later.  I went with the olive oil because I had it handy here.

And yes, I had help from local wildlife with my meal prep and with helping eat the rind from the Brie!

​Also, I did this in garb!

I am continuing to build out my Forester kit.  As I read more about the 14th Century, I am fleshing out bits of the persona, and have chosen 1450ish as my time period.  Initially I thought I would go a little earlier, but I didn’t want the first round of the Great Plague to land on me (given that I am still living the current plague), so am opting for just past that catastrophe.

As noted before, my location will the the Forest of Galtres in Yorkshire.  My persona is educated and had studied with an uncle in London to be an apothecary before opening a shop in York.  He was recalled to the family manor in the forest to take up the work of Forester there as the other male members of the family were taken by the plague.  The family is not noble, but has a well-to-do estate and also owns an apothecary in York.

So far for my kit I have created wool tunic and undertunic which you can read more about HERE.  Because I was originally planning to be a little earlier, I am now going to bring up the hemline just a touch on this tunic, as well as the cobalt linen one that I made for warmer weather.

As you can see here the Chausses are finished and I have made two pairs of braies and purchased third.  I am not entirely happy with the two I made, so will need to revise those.  

After wearing the chausses for an evening, the thick stretched out immensely, so I want to alter those and properly add eyelets for the points.

I made a linen hood as a prototype and have wool to make another that will be lined with linen.  I dyed some additional cloth to make a Bocksten cloak as well.

The next tunic will have set-in sleeves, but will otherwise be very similar.  I want another set of chausses as well, and I might pattern them a bit differently too. 

At Pennsic I purchased 14th century boots that you can see here.  Next up will be a belt (I am wearing my Viking one here), for which I have already purchased the hardware.  Eventually a pouch will be made or purchased.  And I need to research proper garters.  These are merely wool twill tape.  I do love the red against the green though, so might stick with that color for this item.

I also have a passable drinking cup.  I am going to start collecting some appropriate cookware as well, and am working on building out a period fire-starting kit.

And yes, still more herbs!  I have projects planned and the research is ongoing and I have to say that I am immensely enjoying all of this!

​

This project is a threefold project for me.  Firstly, I have joined the Æthelmearc Foresters’ Guild and part of that involvement is to create a kit for a forester persona.  Secondly, I signed up for the Atlantian Persona Development Challenge, which is sponsored by Their Majesties, to develop or expand your persona’s kit by creating 4 new items.  Despite missing the first deadline, I hope to continue to share my work towards this and am therefore combining items 1 & 2 in this document.  Finally, I am attempting a serious round of stash busting here and this kit will be largely comprised of stash items.

This documentation is somewhat sparse for me, but in order to meet the project deadline, I will be rolling with this and can update later as needed.
 
For the purpose of the Atlantian project the specifics are (this might alter over time as I do more general research on the profession and period):
Time: 1335 CE
Location: Forest of Galtres in Yorkshire, England
Persona: Forester (profession), male – More detailed information has not yet been determined
 
For the tunics, I looked first at existing items that could be used as a source.  None exist from Enland at all, so I had to range further for examples.  Many of the garments such as the Tunics from Kraglund, Moselund and the Guddal tunics all skew too early (none date later than 1165) and are from Scandinavia.  There are shirts that belonged to St. Louis (French, 13th c) and Francis of Assisi (Italy, 13th c), and others of similar provenance.  Many of the Greenland garments do fall into the correct time period, as does the Bocksten Tunic from Sweden.  Because I wanted to move forward with this project swiftly, I chose the simpler Bocksten garment as my base rather than the examples from Greenland which often exhibit more complex tailoring.
​

The Bocksten Tunic
This garment is dated to 1350-1370 from Varberg, Sweden.  The find consisted of a tunic, hood, hosen, cloak and accessories.  Details are as follows (based on information in Clothing the Past.

• 2/1 twill wool that was fulled
• Currently yellow brown outside and reddish brown on the interior
• The original fabric was 21.6 inches wide
• The garment had no shoulder seams
• Lighter area at the waist shows that a leather belt was work with it
• There are gores in the front, back and sides
• There are triangular gussets under the arms
• Length is 90.5 inches
• Width at hem is 98.4 inches
• Sleeve lengths – 24 for the right sleeve, 23.4 for the left
• Wrist circumference is 8.6 inches
• Neck circumference is 32.2 inches
• There is no thread left, so the presumption is that is was linen
• One selvedge the length of the body was preserved

​Personal observations:  One thing that I noticed while looking at more detailed images of this tunic (something that has become a ubiquitous garment in the SCA) is that the sleeves, while having a straight edge where it meets the body panel (i.e. no curved sleeve cap), they appear to still be inset into the garment itself (we see this with very early tunics like Lendbreen as well).  This sent me out to look at how different the sleeves and the armscye can be even amongst samples from a similar time and place (for example, some of the Greenland garments have shaped sleeve heads, but the armscye itself is not cut away). 

Another observation had to do with the sleeves themselves.  I was taught nearly 30 years ago that a rectangular cut tunic had sleeves that look like the first diagram below when flattened out.  Over time, I altered that to have the square gusset sit flat against the sleeve body and taper from that point to the wrist (center image).  The Bocksten tunic does not taper until past the elbow.  This allows one to have a narrower sleeve in the upper while fitting well in the lower arm than my typical model does.
 
Another, slightly eerie, observation is that I am very similar in size to the Bocksten man.

 
The Textiles
While there are no existing tunics from England for this period, there are a range of textile fragments.  The following information on textiles come from Textiles and Clothing 1150-1450.

• Tabby is the most common wool weave through the 14th century – first half of the 15th
• Z/S (Z spun threads for the warp with S spun for the weft) are more common than use of Z or S in both systems (Z/S is more suitable for raising nap in the fulling process, which creates warmer cloth)
• 2/2 and 2/1 twill wool does show up in my chosen period and while not as prevalent is tabby, it was also not uncommon
• 2/2 twills were almost always Z spun yarn in both systems, with balanced weaves
• Wool textiles have a broad range in density of the weave
• Linen did not typically survive well but the existing fragments from the 2nd half of the 13th century show 56 threads to the inch in one system with an average of 50 in the other, those from the last quarter of the 14th century are 50 in one system and 48 in the other

 

Resources

Note that these are all resources that I have pulled to review for this ongoing project.  I last read some of them many years ago and plan to reread in their entirety as I work through this project.

Backhouse, Janet. Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter (University of Toronto Press), 2000. https://amzn.to/43stevi 

Carlson, Marc. “Some Clothing of the Middle Ages”, 2006. http://lib.utulsa.edu/speccoll/marccarlson/cloth/bockhome.html
 
Coatsworth, Elizabeth and Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Clothing the Past: Surviving Garments from Early Medieval to Early Modern Western Europe (Brill), 2018. https://amzn.to/46VHkbx​
 
Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Frances Pritchard and Kay Staniland. Textiles and Clothing 1150-1450 (Boydell Press), 2006. https://amzn.to/3Q3WMw3
 
Egan, Geoff and Frances Pritchard. Dress Accessories 1150-1450 (Boydell Press), 2008. https://amzn.to/3NZF2iC
 
Forest, Maggie. “The Bocksten Tunic”, 2003. http://www.forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/garments/bocksten/bocksten.html,
 
Fransen, Lilli, et al. Medieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns (Aarhus University Press), 2010.
 
Gutarp, Else Marie. Medieval Manner of Dress: Documents, Images, and Surviving Examples of Norther Europe, Emphasizing Gotland and the Baltic Sea (Gotlands Fornsal), 2001.
 
Houston, Mary G. Medieval Costume in England & France: The 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries (Dover Publications), 1996.
 
Newtown, Stella Mary. Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Boydell Press), 2016. https://amzn.to/3rwnoeY
 
Østergaard, Else. Woven into the Earth: Textile Finds in Norse Greenland (Aarhus University Press), 2004.
 
Thursfield, Sarah. Medieval Tailor’s Assistant, 2nd Edition (Crowood Press), 2015.  https://amzn.to/3NV2P3w
 
Vedeler, Marianne. “Klær og Formspråk i Norsk Middelalder” (Universitetet i Oslo), 2006.
 
“The Bocksten Man Find”, Hallands Kulturhistoriska Museum.  https://museumhalland.se/en/the-bocksten-man/
 
“The Luttrell Psalter”, British Library. http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages/?id=a0f935d0-a678-11db-83e4-0050c2490048&type=book
 
“Men’s and Women’s Accessories of Medieval Romanesque Period - 11th - 15th Centuries Pattern” La Fleur De Lyse Patterns.