This weekend, our local SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) group hosted a medieval and reniassance dance event. We had classes (4 tracks) during the day, followed by a feast and a ball in the evening.

I taught one of the classes, organized a dessert revel during the ball, and made a large cake for the latter--which is what I was busy doing on Wednesday through Friday of this past week.

If you'd like to see the cake in question, it's here:

[www.geocities.com]

I should mention that this was not the only subtletie present - there was also a brownie battle scene rendered in marshmallow ghosts and trees, peanut butter cup trees, plastic swords, and so on. There's a pic here:

[www.geocities.com]



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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

Well, what do you know?

[images.art.com]

Impressive cake, btw. Was that jumbo-sized?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I hate it when Magda shows us pictures of her cakes ... pictures are no bloody good ..... God, I'm hungry (and on a piggin' diet) .....

(PSD supports Coventry City, btw, in case anybody didn't know.)



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

They do now, obviously. In my defence I was indoctrinated from an early age, and I'm not going to start supporting a different team just because I'm now old enough to realise how useless they are.

Surely a piggin' diet would involve much more pigging out?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Which reminds me. In Another Place it was suggested that re-enactors were probably the best equipped people to survive the Collapse of Civilisation as We Know It*. Possibly medieval dancing is not one of the core skills for survival, but do we have among us any of the skills that might be needed?

I ask because I'm damn sure I don't, and I need to know who to hang out with in case of The Worst.


* - not to be confused with Arkansas, which is civilisation, but not as we know it, Jim.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

erm, theoretical knowledge of how various stone age peoples managed to live should come in useful. I've never tried cooking meat by putting hot stones into the water to heat it (useful if you don't have a pot you can put directly over the fire), but that's the sort of thing I've read about.
There's a lovely Star Trek (classic) novel, called 'Uhura's Song', where Checkov turns out to have unexpected skills at building huts from reeds and flint knapping. His ethnology teacher had made them learn the skills to they would know that primitive did not necessarily mean inefficient.

Well, it was a fairly good sized. The foil covered board it's on is 20x20 inches, and the 2 layer cake was about 4-5 inches tall.

And yes, elephants supporting towers of various sorts are very common in heraldry, including the arms for Coventry:
[www.exponet.co.uk]
And other places:
[www.civicheraldry.co.uk]

Jon, if you ever happen to be in Michigan, let me know ahead of time, and I'll bake you a cake. I'd offer to ship you one, but even if it got through customs it'd be mangled as heck and moldy by the time it got there. Not a very appealing prospect, I'm afraid.



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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

I'm absolutely useless at DIY, so the decline of the power drill will not come as a great shock to my system.

I can make fires, catch food, navigate, mend clothes etc. I'd probably do quite well. I'm even reasonably good at cross-stich, although I'm not sure it's a necessary survival skill.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

*ping* light bulb goes off over head ..... iirc the recipes for your cakes are on your site, are they not? ..... shall get Claire to make one.

Oh, drat. Forgot about the diet. (sigh) .... and as for getting to Michigan .... I'd be hard pushed to get to Sheffield at the minute. Bills, man. Capitalist oppression, yeah.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Actually, it occurs that a useful thing to know in the event of The Collapse of CAWKI would be how to contact Ray Mears and Phil Harding (for the flint-knapping). Oh, and if you knew how to get hold of Steve Irwin, you could eat him.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Cooking with stones works remarkably well, having tried it once. Potatoes work well if you bake them in a pile of fire-heated stones - just make sure the stones are quite big and the spuds wrapped in foil and you should be okay.

Carp smoked over an open apple-wood fire taste delicious.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Flint-knapping is, I suspect, a lot harder than it looks. It's basically banging rocks together though, isn't it?

I was always impressed by Ray Mears making a fire out of birch, then a cup out of it, and then finally using the cup to heat some sap from the birch to make birch tea. Very economical.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

next time you have a barbecue, put a whole egg in the embers (once everyone has finished eating) and stand well back. Should go with a nice bang.

I too am reasonably useless at DIY. Though I did finally get our new floor laid at the weekend. jolly nice it looks too.

Lecture on practical archaeology. Pat Phillips recounts experiments on French dig using fire pits to cook food. Results for first two pits OK. Results for third and last somewhat dubious, owing to amount of wine downed by archaeologists during evening of experiment.

Wine? Was that historically accurate?

EDIT--> I know that alcohol consumption has a noble history, but how would you go about brewing given stone-age technology?



Post Edited (03-31-03 17:21)

PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Um .... chuck some fruit in a big pot, squash, drain, and wait to ferment. Woudn't keep, mind.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

it's how to avoid vinegar that's the problem, as far as I can see.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I suspect early man was fairly undiscriminating .... no Oz Clarkes here. More Rab C Nesbitts.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Prehistoric string-vests? I can see how they'd be an evolutionary throwback...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Apparently the Apaches could brew some kind of alcoholic spirit from the local cacti. Probably tasted awful but made a change from peyote.