What we do at Demonstrations for the PublicFor the last few summers I have been privileged to help with the SCA demonstrations that happen at the Upper Canada Village's Medieval Festival and the Osgoode Medieval Festival. We demonstrate "Medieval Daily Life" there, with our first focus on cooking (since we need to eat) and also on cloth and clothing manufacture, whilst another group focuses on throwing machines (trebuchets and catapults), archery and armoured combat. The archery group, ably led by Lord Edhan, began our association with these festivals, and he decided to portray a group of archers on their way back to England from Crecy (1346). When he invited us to help round out the demo we decided to stick to their time period and wear Early 14th Century Working Class Clothing. We decided to prepare and display Foods from Northern Europe so that we would all have good things to eat for the weekends we were there. We spend a lot of time cooking at the festival as cooking by the fire takes a little longer that cooking at home. We make bread and a ricotta type cheese over the fire at the demos and we always receive lots of questions about the recipes so I am including them here. We also cook three meals a day for the participants helping at the demo. I am including some of our favourites in the Recipes section. |