Recipe from Cookery and Dining in Ancient Rome

I know that since reading about the Romans' habit of eating stuffed dormice a few years ago y'all have all been dying to try it for yourselves. Well, today I came across an authentic Roman recipe.

STUFFED DORMOUSE

IS STUFFED WITH A FORCEMEAT OF PORK AND SMALL PIECES OF DORMOUSE MEAT TRIMMINGS, ALL POUNDED WITH PEPPER, NUTS, LASER, BROTH. PUT THE DORMOUSE THUS STUFFED IN AN EARTHEN CASSEROLE, ROAST IT IN THE OVEN, OR BOIL IT IN THE STOCK POT.

From the aforementioned cookbook by Apicius, Book VIII, Chapter IX.

The translator adds this helpful note:

Glis, dormouse, a special favorite of the ancients, has nothing to do with mice. The fat dormouse of the South of Europe is the size of a rat, arboreal rodent, living in trees.

Galen, III, de Alim.; Plinius, VIII, 57/82; Varro, III, describing the glirarium, place where the dormouse was raised for the table.

Petronius, Cap. 31, describes another way of preparing dormouse. Nonnus, Diæteticon, p. 194/5, says that Fluvius Hirpinus was the first man to raise dormouse in the glirarium.

Dormouse, as an article of diet, should not astonish Americans who relish squirrel, opossum, muskrat, “coon,” etc.

You're welcome.

:-D

Wordless Wednesday: Thanksgiving preparations

A Synchronicity of Dormice

This afternoon on the way home from church, we were talking about a list of 100 foods you have to eat before you die I'd seen online. "Is squid on it?" Elaienar asked. Well, of course. You can't have a weird food list without squid can you? Actually, thinking over it, it's not so much a weird food list as a regional food list. There were several Southern classics that aren't a bit weird -- fried catfish, fried green tomatoes, Moon Pies. Okay, that last one is wierd, but only because the recipe has deteriorated in the last half century. My daddy gave them up back in the 70s and I'm pretty sure that S'mores were invented to replace them.

After I mentioned that squirrel was on the list (I haven't eaten it, but some of my children have, in addition to possum, which wasn't on the list, and frog legs, which were), #1 Son shared with us his latest tidbit of bizarre information: The ancient Romans ate stuffed dormice. None of us had ever heard that before and of course we all thought it was pretty funny.

Then, after lunch while reading The Count of Monte Cristo, I came across this passage from chapter 61:

"...by-the-by, sir, do you think dormice eat [strawberries]?"

"Indeed, I should think not," replied Monte Cristo; "dormice are bad neighbors for us who do not eat them preserved, as the Romans did."

"What? Did the Romans eat them?" said the gardener—"ate dormice?"

"I have read so in Petronius," said the count.

Isn't it fun when things coincide like that?

I found of blog full of bizarre history that tells more about Romans and dormice:

Despite sumptuary laws forbidding the practice – dormice were an indulgence – they were fattened in gardens and kept in winter in a glirarium (a large ceramic jar) to prevent them hibernating (and becoming thin…). They were then cooked, stuffed with pine kernels, garum, and ground-up dormouse meat and pepper and were by all accounts delicious.

You can read the whole post here. I think I'll be spending some time browsing this blog -- any place that calls itself a bizarre history blog is definitely worth looking into.

Foodness

This afternoon my son made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, but it was too hot to turn on the oven, so we just ate the dough raw. :-)

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Owing to a late spring and an even later start with the garden, we just got our first tomatoes today. I'm telling you, I bit into one and thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

If you ask me, the only reason even to have summer is so you can eat fresh, warm-from-the-garden, home-grown tomatoes. Without growing your own tomatoes you're just getting hot and sweaty for nothing.

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This morning Mike and I went to an Amish grocery store we'd heard about. They have spices in large quantities for really good prices, so I stocked up on a few things I was out of -- celery seed, turmeric, paprika -- and bought a quarter pound of parsley, because you can never have too much parsley.

I also bought, for the first time ever, a tub of lard. I used it to cook our salmon patties for supper tonight and they turned out well. I'm glad to have another fat to add to my inventory. I've read that animal fats are the best for frying in since they can take the heat.

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We're raising ducks for the first time and several of them have turned out to be males, so we should have plenty of duck fat this winter. Sally Fallon says duck fat is the best thing in the world to cook potatoes in.

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My two oldest are in town tonight and they're going to go by the big grocery store while they're there to see if they can buy some things that I'm not able to get in the stores in our rural county: cream of coconut, macadamia nuts, instant espresso powder, plus a couple of other things. Tomorrow I'm going to make either Mystie's Intense Coffee Ice Cream or Coconut Macadamia Ice Cream for our Sunday treat, depending on which ingredients they're able to find. We bought the cream this morning from the man who butchered our pig a few years ago.

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While we were in Amish country we also bought a gallon of milk from pastured cows from a man we get milk from when our goats aren't producing enough, or when I want cow milk. (We would have bought the cream from him too, but he was out, and sent us to the butcher.) I'm going to try making yogurt with it because I don't like the way our goat-milk yogurt turns out.

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My sous chef and I have been in a food rut for the last year -- kind of bored with everything, not interested in coming up with meal plans, wondering why we have to eat every day anyway, let alone three times every day. Today, I'm loving food again.

I like it better this way. :-)

Making cheese

Whenever our goats produce more milk than we can drink or give away, I like to make cheese.

Over the years I’ve tried making Gouda, Mozerella, Ricotta, Queso Blanco, and Cheddar, but I don’t really like the way these turn out with goat milk. The variety I have the most success with is a soft, spreadable cheese, like what you might buy in the grocery store labeled “Chèvre.” It’s also the easiest to make since it sets up overnight, then in the morning all I have to do is strain and season it, and it’s ready to eat.

I’ve also tried to make Feta on several occasions. It’s a much more complicated cheese, involving cutting and cooking the curds, draining, cutting, salting, aging, and brining. So far I have not had a single successful batch, but I’m trying again because I love Feta and it’s meant to be made with goat milk.

Today I’m going to see if the batch I started two weeks ago is ready to be brined. The last time I got to the brining stage, it hadn’t dried long enough and the blocks of cheese all dissolved within a day of being put into the brine, so I’m going to make a small batch of brine and put one block into it, and see what happens. The rest of the cheese will have to wait in the fridge.

Summer blessings

Summer is not exactly my favorite season, but I do LOVE summer food -- all the raw milk I can drink, fresh home-grown tomatoes, watermelons...

I also love Mexicany food -- beans, salsa, avocadoes. Granted these foods are available year-round, but they just aren't the right things in the winter. In the winter you want your food to keep you warm, not cause you to break into a sweat or otherwise cool you down.

Another yummy summer food is smoothie made with yogurt, coconut milk, and frozen fruit -- my favorite combo is half strawberries and half peaches.

Then there's curried dishes. My current favorite curry is salmon cooked with coconut milk, red curry paste, and various chopped veggies, served over rice.

What's your favorite summer food?

Meal planning

We’re trying to learn to eat more seasonally as part of transitioning into growing as much of our own food as we can. My gardening skills aren’t very good, to say the least. We generally succeed at a tomatoes, and last year we had a bumper crop of turnips, but everything else we plant usually fails for one reason or another, but it’s spring and there’s always hope. So I’m still thinking that some day we’ll be able to grow more stuff (and even if we don’t we’re trying to buy more from local farmers), and when we do that we’ll need to be used to eating what’s available in the garden.

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There’s a cook book I’d love to get some day: Simply in Season. That website posts a new recipe each week — this week’s is spring greens salad, and the page includes recipes for five different dressings. That’s a site worth bookmarking.

Another helpful site is Eat the Seasons, which lists what’s in season each month and has links to several recipes.

Checking out those lists on occasion gives me fresh ideas for meals. I’ve been in an awful rut lately, owing, I think, to the way we’ve changed what we eat. Up until the last couple of years I always planned meals around a chunk of meat (plus had occasional meatless meals) but with trying to raise our own meat or buy it locally, that just doesn’t work out since we only have meat available a couple times a week.

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Speaking of planning meals around a chunk of meat — a neighbor had more ducks than he wanted so he gave us a couple of young males last month that we’ve been saving for Easter dinner. They’ll be butchered this afternoon and I’m going to marinate them in lemon juice till it’s time to prepare them. I’ll be roasting them, so I can do all the prep on Saturday then turn on the roaster before leaving for church Sunday. For the rest of the meal, I took my cues from the list at Eat the Seasons and checked my cookbooks for recipes.

Here’s the tentative menu:

* Avocado Grapefruit Salad (from Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions — sliced avocados and grapefruit sections served on a bed of lettuce, topped with homemade dressing and green onions)
* Roast Duck with bacon-rice stuffing and giblet gravy (from Good Housekeeping’s All-American Cookbook)
* Asparagus with sesame seeds (also from Nourishing Traditions — sauteed in olive oil then baked with shallots, served with a squeeze of lemon juice)

What kind of wine would be best with that?

Elai is going to make a chocolate mousse for dessert.

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What are you eating this month?

Favorite summer salad

Chop one medium tomato into chunks and put into bowl.
Add an equivalent amount of black olives and one or two ounces of crumbled feta cheese.
Sprinkle on a tablespoon or two or minced onions and some basil, then drizzle on a little cold-pressed flaxseed oil and extra virgin olive oil.

Toss and enjoy! Makes one main dish serving.

Father's Day dinner

My hubby is a meat and potatoes lover, but we don't often eat that way, so as my gift to him today I made a meaty dinner especially the way he likes it.

Flank steak
mashed potatoes and gravy
green beans
Vidalia onion pie
zucchini salad
biscuits
fresh strawberries and whipped cream for dessert

I was a little nervous about making this steak because my steaks always turn out tough, but I followed the directions for flank steak in my circa 1950s Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, and it was perfect!

Score flank steak; dip into flour; brown in hot fat. Season. Add 1/2 cup hot water; cover; cook over low heat or in moderate oven (350°) till tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

I browned the steak in butter in my iron skillet, sprinkled a little salt and pepper on it, then covered it tightly with foil and put it in the oven for a little less than two hours, since it was so thick.

The gravy was made from the all the pan drippings plus the water from cooking the potatoes.

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Here's my Vidalia onion pie recipe:

4 medium Vidalia onions
1 stick of butter
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp of freshly ground pepper (I use McCormick's peppercorn medley)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, divided

Preheat over to 450°. Thinly slice onions and cut into quarters, then sauté in butter until soft. Mix together eggs, sour cream, salt, and pepper. Pour 1/2 of sautéed onions into each of two pie pans, the pour half of the egg mixture over each. Top each with 1/4 cup of Parmesan (or more if preferred). Bake in 450° oven for 15 minutes, then turn down to 350° and bake till golden brown and set - about 15 minutes. Makes 16 side servings, but in our family, some of us eat about three servings. ;-)

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The zucchini salad was modified from one found in Nourishing Traditions since I didn't have all the ingredients. Put 2 Tblsps of Lemon Pepper seasoning into a bowl and cover with 2 Tblsps white wine and 1/4 cup water; set aside. Quarter four zucchinis and slice thin. Add to seasoning mix: 1/2 extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 tsp sea salt, 1 Tblsp flaxseed oil. Mix well, then place zucchini into a bowl, pour dressing over all, stir gently, and let sit at room temperature for a few hours before serving.

Cheese, glorious cheese
Last week I made a hard cheese using the directions to one of the recipes that Sora linked in the comments below. Not having cheesepress, I hung the curds in a bag for about half an hour to let some of the whey drain out so it would solid enough for me to contrive something. After draining, I laid the bag on a wooden cutting board and re-wrapped the curds and shaped them into a flat wheel about three inches high, then pinned a length of cheesecloth around it, to help it hold its shape. Then I covered it with another wooden cutting board and began stacking weights from my son's weight set on it, to gradually increase the pressure to 30 pounds.

It wasn't too bad, but since the whole arrangement was tipped a bit in order to let the whey drain off, the weights also slid off a couple of times. By the next day I had a cheese that was generally round, only with one square corner where it had managed to ooze out from underneath the band.

I cut the poor misshapen wheel into quarters and salted it in order the begin the air-drying process. A couple of us tasted a sliver of it before drying and it had a fine, mild flavor, which was good, since my daughter had wanted me to make a Gouda-like cheese. After two or three days of turning and salting and air-drying, I wrapped it in waxed paper and put it into the fridge to age. Now begins the long wait - I won't know if this is really a good cheese until the sixth of February at the earliest!

My dear husband, seeing the ugly cheese, promptly ordered me a cheesepress, and some wax. Waxing the cheese was a lot of fun.

I've also recently made another batch of soft cheese - some of it molded for two days to make it into a log with a more tart flavor, and the rest of it bagged for a few hours in order to make a very soft cheese with a milder flavor. I put fresh chives, parsley and cracked pepper into the molded cheeses, and all of that plus fresh garlic in the bagged ones. These have turned out really well.

Two of our does were bred back in September and we'll be drying them off the end of this month - their kids are due end of January/early February. The other two does, and the doeling are hostessing another buck this month, and if all goes well, their kids will be due around Easter.

I should have enough milk to make another couple of batches of cheese before drying off the first two, but for most of the winter we'll only have enough milk to drink. I'm thinking about buying milk from the grocery store to make cheese over the winter, so I can be more experienced when it's spring again and we'll have milk coming out our ears.
;-)

If you've been watching my NaNo meter, this will explain why the numbers haven't been going up.
=8^o

Farm food
Last Friday night we had our first frost, so Saturday morning we picked all the green tomatoes off the plants. We have a grocery bag full of of them and yesterday I fried some for breakfast. They're easy to make and so delicious. You just slice them about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick, then sprinkle a little salt and pepper on them, dredge them in flour and fry them in butter. Be careful to watch the color as you're cooking them so you only have to turn them once. It messes up the crust if you turn them more than that. They are so nice and juicy and quite spicy/tart, and go really well with scrambled eggs and grits.
:-)

This is classic Southern food, but the first time I had them was four years ago when we had our first really good crop. In years prior to that the plants had already quit bearing long before the frost came.

On another front, I'm trying to learn how to make cheese, and have not been terribly successful. So far I've done panir which turned out pretty well, cottage cheese that was rubbery, feta that I didn't salt long enough before brining so it never got properly hard, and herbed chevre that tasted good but was crumbly rather than spreadable. And my three or four attempts at ricotta haven't turned out very well - it's so tart.

In every case it seems that my problem was timing, generally letting something sit or drain too long before moving on to the next step (except in the case of the feta, which should have sat for one more day before brining). Last week when I tried another batch of chevre, I set the timer for every step, and everything went well, until I checked my recipe the morning after letting the cheese drain in a bag overnight to see when to take it out.

*Sigh*

Chevre isn't supposed to be bagged and drained, it's supposed to go straight to the molds from the pot. Cheese-making is definitely not for the scatter-brained.

Today though, I took it out of the fridge, crumbled it up, added chopped fresh chives and freshly cracked pepper, stuffed it all into the molds, and put it back in the fridge. Maybe it'll get solid enough that I can take it out of the molds and have a sliceable cheese. But if not then we'll just use it crumbly. It tastes fine - it just doesn't have the texture I wanted.

I guess we're really rednecks now
My son killed a raccoon - put an arrow through its head. He's out skinning it now. This is so exciting, it's his first kill and everything and you won't believe what I did.

I offered to cook it for him. Seems a pity to waste all that meat.

So, I'd appreciate tips on tanning its hide and on cooking the meat.
:-D

Cold and flu season
In the comments to the post below, Kat mentions a comment I made at Christina's blog, asks me to share resources I've found helpful in doctoring my kids, so I though I'd repost my comment from Christina's here, and answer the question in a new post, since y'all can see that I'm woefully lacking in blog topics lately. ;-)

But first, an obligatory disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor, nor do I play on on the internet - I'm just sharing what has worked in my family - you know the drill, so please use your own brains when taking care of your kids. Thanks ever so much. :-D

You’ve reminded me that I need to make my fall batch of garlic oil, which I use for ear troubles - the warm oil is soothing to an achy ear, and of course the garlic is antibiotic.

Crush four cloves of garlic and let them lie exposed to air for at least 10 minutes (this allows their healing properties to develop). Place into a glass jar and cover with 1/4 cup of olive oil; cover and let sit at room temp for one or two days. Strain out the garlic, then cover and place the oil in a cool, dark cupboard. It will keep for six months. To use, warm a few drops just until body temperature (test it on the inside of your wrist first), and place two drops in each ear, even if [only] one ear is feeling bad. Stuff some cotton ball in to keep the oil in for a few minutes. Repeat twice a day for no longer than four days.

Actually, I don’t think I’ve used this remedy much the last couple of years - not since I learned to use hydrogen peroxide in the ears for any kind of ear or sinus/throat trouble - but I like to have it on hand, just in case.

One of my children was bothered by the garlic oil, so I used witch hazel on her and it seemed to work just as well for her as the garlic oil did for my others.

Our kids have tended to have croup a lot and I’ve learned to keep eucalyptus oil on hand at all times. I sprinkle it on their pillows and pjs when it seems that they’re starting to have any trouble, and it keeps it from getting bad - usually they only have it one night. My now-11-year-old was hospitalized with it for three nights as an infant, so I got serious about finding something I could do at home to help and this has done it.

We’re generally pretty healthy, but have tended to get some kind of stomach bug once every three years or so, and this is our first year with our dairy goats, so it’ll be interesting to see how half a year of drinking raw goat milk affects our resistance to things this fall/winter.

(Further disclaimer: whenever I post a link to something, unless I specifically say so I'm in no way implying that I endorse every single thing you'll find there. I have found these resources to be helpful. Please use your own discretion.)

The recipe for garlic oil came from Encyclopedia of Natural Health and Healing for Children, by Marcea Weber, and is a wonderful resource. Lots of old fashioned home remedies and herbal remedies, plus homeopathic and Chinese medicine (neither of which have I tried before), and indications that it's time to see a health care professional.

The hydrogen peroxide idea came from Dr. Mercola - you'll have to provide your email to be able to read the article. His website is a great one for nutritional information and he has more info on vaccinations.

I don't remember now where I learned to use eucalyptus oil for croup, but I use it for every respiratory ailment we have - seasonal allergies, chest colds, that sort of thing. I have a steam vaporizer for each bedroom and I use them a lot, especially in the winter when the house is so dry, with a few drops of eucalyptus oil if anyone seems like they need it.

Probably the most important thing I do though, regarding my children's health, is to make sure that they eat well (I try to be careful about sweets, though we always have a treat on Sunday, and most everything we eat is homemade), play and work hard, rest well, and dress warmly. I'm rather an old-fashioned mother when it comes to dressing small children in particular. My kids run around barefooted most of the year, but as it starts getting colder I make sure the little ones have on a couple of extra layers of clothes - the little girls wearing leggings or thick tights under their dresses - and keep their ears covered and their feet warm and dry. Also, I try not to let the house get overheated in the winter, keeping it somewhere in the 65 - 68 degree range.

And of course, wash your hands!
:-)

The exquisite frustration of slow food
Generally speaking, my experiences with slow food have been satisfactory - whole wheat bread made from soaked flour is very tasty, soaking oats to make porridge has been a notable success, and so has making my own ketchup, using homemade whey from homemade yogurt - but sometimes things just don't go as well as I'd hoped.

Friday evening: Take a quart of fresh goat milk and decide to make Devonshire cream. Strain it into a clean ceramic bowl, cover and set in a warm place for twelve to twenty-four hours per recipe.

Late Saturday morning: Place dish on wire frame inside of a waterbath canner filled so that the water comes halfway up the sides of the dish. Turn stove on low to begin the long slow process of bringing the milk to a boil.

Saturday noon: Check water temperature and turn up another notch. Repeat every hour or so throughout the afternoon.

Saturday, 5:30 pm: Notice that cream is beginning to undulate as it should.

Saturday, 6:15 pm: Check cream again and realize that it has taken over twenty-four hours to get to this point, but so far it looks like it's going to turn out well.

Saturday, 6:20 pm: Step out of the kitchen for a moment.

Saturday, 6:25 pm: Return to kitchen to find a spoon in the dish and the cream stirred back into the milk.

Saturday, 6:30 pm: Recover from volcanic eruption and decide to procede, hoping it isn't ruined.

Saturday, 8:30 pm: After keeping hot for two more hours, cover and set in a cool place.

Sunday, 8:30 pm: Over 50 hours after the process was begun, take the bowl to the kitchen counter, uncover, and skim off the cream. Inspect. Sniff. Taste. Discover it's a failure.



*sigh* I suppose I'll try again sometime... Maybe next week.

Maybe it'll work this time

I can’t tell you how many posts I’ve started and not finished over the last few weeks.

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This week we’ve made pumpkin butter and ketchup - with canned pumpkin and tomato paste from the grocery store, but I use fresh whey with both of them and let them sit at room temperature for a couple of days before refrigerating so the lacto-bacilli have time to do their stuff.

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We killed several chickens last weekend - it’s the first fresh chicken we’ve had in awhile, but doing several on a hot day is NOT a good idea. Every fly in the county came to the feast.
:-p

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Speaking of hot weather, today it was 96° in the shade. That’s just too dang hot.

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School is still going fine. One completely new thing we’re doing this year is learning French. I’ve wanted to learn French for years but when I was in high school my daddy wanted me to take Spanish. I don’t regret that since it made Daddy happy, but since this is something I’m good at, something I enjoy doing, and we can finally afford to do it, I talked to Mike about it and he said, “Go for it.”

We’re using The Learnables, and though I can’t vouch for its long-term effectiveness, after almost six weeks using it I can say that I really like it and it seems to be just what I needed. There’s a lot of listening, which I think is crucial for training the ear. I’m almost finished with Level 1 and will start Level 2 as soon as it arrives - hopefully by the end of the week. The children are moving much slower than I am - it will probably take them 30 weeks to finish Level 1 - but they look forward to the lessons and have started using phrases they’re familiar with when it’s appropriate in daily life.

Only the younger four are studying French with me - the older three are learning Japanese, and because they use it so much most of us have picked up on a few simple phrases, like greetings. It’s kind of funny to get up in the morning and hear one person say, “Bonjour,” to which his sibling replies, “Ohayo!”

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After debating whether to replenish our fox-destroyed laying flock last winter, we finally got tired of not having our own fresh eggs and bought several new layers this summer. We have eight now, which is just barely enough to feed us, but nowhere near enough to have any for sale. Mike has several coworkers who want to buy free range eggs and would buy from us if we had a large enough flock. As soon as we finish the fencing to keep them away from our yard and porch I think we’ll buy several more.

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Have I mentioned that we have a pig now? The woman who bought four of our goats a few months ago gave us a pig as partial payment. The whole deal was bartered, with us getting our lawn mower repaired as part of the bargain. It was a nice way to do business.

Oh, the pig’s name. My eldest daughter wanted to name him and I told her she could as long as she kept in mind that we’re going to be eating him. I suggested “Pork Chop” and “Ham Hock” as possibilities, but she decided to go with “Lambchop.” She has a rather unusual sense of humor.
:-p

The coolest thing about having a pig is never feeling guilty about cleaning out the fridge and having to throw things out.

“Ha!” I say to myself. “I haven’t wasted these leftovers by letting them get a little too old. I’m just turning them into bacon.”

Now all we need is a dog to eat leftover meat and we’ll have it made.
:-D

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Well, it’s getting late and I’m ready to go to bed.

Good night all, and please keep praying for rain. We’ve still only had four or five inches since I started tracking it back in April.