I find when Im cooking or doing some cleaning (washing dishes, washing out clothes, etc) I tend to get watched a lot. I have to be careful though as a lot of spectators want to open the lid on my pots to see what Im cooking.. I dont like them that close to the fire, plus it makes it hard to keep something cooking when it gets open every few minutes. Im always asked what Im cooking... I try to be very careful to make sure its things that were available and cooked then (Im still learning.. yes I know lasagna isnt.. but that was a Friday night dinner with noone there).

I find my children love doing the chores while we are at an event. I dont know how many times the boys asked if we needed water yet... though it might also have something to do with the fact that they were getting wet!! And washing dishes is always so much more fun when its outside!

Speaking of which... where to get period appropriate wash tins and buckets?

Dulcie,

My wife and I have gone through some of our books and gone to some of the museums and historical societies and then were able to find some at the antique shops and auctions that were pretty close and reasonable in price.

Quote :

Charles Heath wrote : About 3 million B.C. a fellow by the name of Hank Trent wrote a nice article for either CCG or CC about a weekend of foods that need no ice, no fridge, no cryogenic (hey, Ted Williams!) storage. This eliminates all but the most basic of beer coolers for each of the tents in 'streamerland, and provides for better food safety.  This information has been hashed about online for well over a decade, so it need not be beaten to death here for the 800 millionth time.

Please 'hash' it out. I did a series of Google searches and couldn't find his list of food other than a great salt pork recipe...

At the Chikamauga LH we had beef on the hoof issues Saturday night and it stayed edible through Saturday, it became a little suspect on Sunday.

By the way if you have Publix supermarkets, the ones down my way have their annual stock of the real deal dry cured bacon sold at room temperature in the burlap bags. They also have dry cured hams the same way, hack of a lot easier to stock up than make your own.

Of course there is fresh seasonable veggies and although you can't get perfectly authentic tins, caned goods did exist.

Quote :

TomTownsend wrote :   Please 'hash' it out. I did a series of Google searches and couldn't find his list of food other than a great salt pork recipe...

Charles wasn't kidding. It really was written B.C. Before computers.

But really, the solution is simple. Research whatever the people you're portraying were eating in the historic situation. With a few obvious exceptions, that'll give you food that can also be stored, prepared and eaten when those same conditions are recreated.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

Quote :

hanktrent wrote :   But really, the solution is simple. Research whatever the people you're portraying were eating in the historic situation.

Oh man, research?? I wanted it handed to me... <wink>

We attempt to limit the visible anachronisms during spectator hours, this is after all, acting/theatre. Events run from Friday morning through Sunday Afternoon during a 9-5 kind of time frams (like a Ren Faire). We don't go for 30 hours straight and call it quits.....( or 4-7 days straight and call it quits). Locals (which at a local event can be a horde) often go home and come back in time for morning Parade/drill (which they MUST attend or they cannot carry a rifle onto the battlefield). Most spectators realize that this isn't a campaign portrayal. We show them how company streets were laid out according to Dan Butterfield (the arranger of modern Taps, even our generation realizes that Rod Stewart didn't 'compose' Hand Bags and Glad Rag (nor did Bill Chase for that matter!)). Our midwesterners have always done the heavy shelter half thing (usually one TFG per Tent, not half)....most spectators appreciate the fact that we carried premade forked sticks into camp instead of cutting down Forest Preserve lilac bushes, stole a fence rail, or cut up a bush per event. We have a seperate Civilian/Military camp site (no families camping on the military streets! and no flat galbes front porch flies).....they even have an RV, propane gas tank, TV, Wireless Laptop setup, etc......spectators know that civilians lived in houses or Plantation homes, not tents....Gone With The Wind images abound. Often times there is a surviving 1840
s home on the event premises, maybe even used in the Underground Railroad....you steer the Moms there and they can learn about how Civilians lived, made clothes, cooked, etc.

We usually have a couple messes that simply throw down and do it right.....we steer the masses to the messes and the Missus will ask them about cooking and sleeping, Jr. will ask if that's a real fire, and Dad will talk about how they slept in the cold at the Bulge or Frozen Chosin or in the Monsoon up in I Corps. Some of our 'boys' can relate (usually the TFG as opposed to the 20 year old hard corpse) as they were veterans and faced hostile fire themselves.

We have a few guys that bring along the museum.....we usually set these up in a demonstration area or up near the front of the streets.....you can tell the gun guys from a mile away....and it only takes a few wipes of a rag to get rid of the smudges....don't you just like picking up weapons and feeling there heft?

Saturday Nights many events have tours.....so the anachronisms are again tucked away..... me, everything is exposed under a common fly for all musician's so the cooler is in someone's A shaped tent in the back.....unless of course it's a Makers Mark kind of weekend.

We have a harder time explaining one handed mounted carbine fire from a moving horse or why more officer's/NCO's don't get wounded....or why casualties occur mostly towards the end of the battle...than we do about anachronisms in camp. Believe it or nuts but most people know they didn't have red coolers back then (they were only in Blue or Gray right?).

One issue we can't get around.....why so many stripes and bars for so few rifles..... that's a real problem at MOST events I've been too..... 3 companies commanded by a Major or Light Colonel or a Full Bird? Who's zoomin' whom? What's wrong with a Senior Captain in Charge?  

--Last edited by RJSamp on 2008-03-08 11:54:17 --

Quote :

RJSamp wrote : One issue we can't get around.....why so many stripes and bars for so few rifles..... that's a real problem at MOST events I've been too..... 3 companies commanded by a Major or Light Colonel or a Full Bird? Who's zoomin' whom? What's wrong with a Senior Captain in Charge?

The Problem RJ that I've witnessed with "to many Chiefs," no one wants to give up that cherished rank.  I would suggest a numbering system.  For how ever many soldiers you have on the field determines the ranking system, but nobody ever listens to my suggestions.  I am so unloved.  

--Last edited by Parault on 2008-03-09 17:55:24 --

The First Battalion, ANV has a policy that every officer and NCO must bring a private's kit to every event. If the numbers don't justify the rank or we get combined with another unit, the surplus officers and NCO's become privates for the weekend. Oh yeah, this policy includes the Battalion Commander.    

 

Linda:

Didn't feel picked on.

The reason I don't cook during the day when the spectators are around is I'm soldiering.

I either cook a days ration either the night before or the morning of the event.  Sometimes I'll cook the whole thing on the first night.  My basic ration is twice smoked bacon and hardtack.  the bacon will last several days in the heat without cooking but it is just easier to have it all out of the way.  If I want it hot I just reheat it.

Last year at an event on Saturday night I took the units ration of ham, potatoes, carrots, onions, borrowed a dutch oven from one of our civilians (in exchange for a dinner invitation) and made a stew.  Would have showed any psectators how we did it they were just long gone by that point.

During our school presentation program we cook all day to show th ekids but during an event, I am just to busy soldiering to do a cooking demonstration.

My day begins before dawn with wood and water detail and then I have to ready to move out on 10 minutes notice.  can't be cooking around the fire all day with a schedule like that.

Bob

Quote :

Bill wrote : I was just reading "Confederate Commissary General" by Jerrold Moore. It seems the meat coming in from England, both salted and canned, sat in Nassau for the better part of a year before it actually got into the Confederacy. The meat was shipped to Nassau on big merchant ships, but the Blockade Runners could make more profit on other cargo, so the meat just sat in warehouses. The stuff must have been nasty by the time the soldiers finally got it.

It became known as Nassau Beef.  It was apparently not of good quality even before sitting in warehouses.

There are two types of anachronisms in my book:  Those that are modern and would never have been seen in a CW camp and those that are period correct, but incorrect for a given place and time.  I try to avoid the former, with the occasional lapse of keeping an egg carton under the blanket edge with gear stacked over it, and eliminate the latter when the event requires it.

However, when it's an ahistorical mainstream event and not on hallowed ground, and I'm more interested in showing the public a broader view of soldier life across the span of the war, I'll take tentage that shows a variety of types and some other items not necessarily correct for the "battle" we are supposedly fighting.

As for cooking when the spectators are there, it seems they are generally present from about 9 am to 5 pm.  I tend to have a noon meal, and it's a good time to combine cooking/eating with some public edjumacation:  Yes, it's a real fire; yes, I am going to eat that, would you like a taste; no we are not sending out for pizza after you leave, etc.

Even if I'm trying to be period correct, there are usually anachronisms all around anyway.  I'll explain that some reenactors are more strict in their interpretations and impressions, and it's a hobby like any other in many ways.  I don't dwell on it, and move the conversation on to more pointed things.  

--Last edited by flattop32355 on 2008-03-31 22:52:16 --