Postby Cat » Thu Jan 03, 2008 1:24 pm
And more- some that we used in the Iron Age group I was in:
Stewed nettle tops: pick nettle tops (the top few leaves) WEAR GLOVES!
Boil in stock until a dark green mush. Tastes ok, is very good for you! Serve with a little butter or gravy. (Makes me fart like a badger.)
New cheese: Leave milk to stand for 12 hours in the warm, covered OR add a little of the nettle juice to new milk. When it separates, tip it into a clean cloth and let it drip. The curds will be good to spread on your bread in 12 hours. You can add herbs or honey or blackberries to this cheese, it is lush.
Sourdough- this is natural leaven for your bread. Sometimes you will get a batch of dough that will spontaneously ferment-it is worth leaving some dough a day or so to see if it will. You can keep a piece of this sour dough in a cool place and use it to leaven your bread on camp. Work it into your fresh dough, and leave to prove.
Berries and honey. Leave black or blue berries and honey in a warm place for a day. It ferments a little, and ends up as a 'jam' to use on your oatcakes. Very nice indeed! This is also good with the new cheese.
As far as basic camp cooking of meat etc goes, a lot of places used one cauldron, with broth in in which they boiled up the meat, veggies and sometimes a bag-pudding too. Some early societies used pot-boilers to heat this, rather than putting it over the fire- this is where you heat stones in your fire, and drop them into the cauldtron to keep the water boiling.
OOoh, and then there's fish baked in the fire, in clay.
God, I've rambled a bit! Experiment, and have fun! Good luck!
http://www.
blood.co.uk. You get biscuits and everything.
A'Stanley A'Stanley!