I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on t he PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Cooking with the Kids The venison edition Our shire (Flintheath) has a monthly combination of A&S day, martial practice and business meeting at a local village hall. We've been doing these 'Flintmoots' for over three years now (my notes suggest the first was November 2022), and when we looked at the hall, I noticed that there was a kitchen and immediately said words to the effect of, 'Great, I can cook!' Within a month or two of that first meeting, it became clear that I was not the only one interested in cooking. We had a gang of four tweens, say 8ish to 10ish, who also wanted to cook. I thought, and still think, that this is great. So I started planning the cooking around things that would be interesting and fun for the kids to make, and which would also scale to a kitchen crew which, while small in stature, was often large in numbers for a small kitchen. That was, as I say, over three years ago, so I probably should start calling this cooking with the teens, but 'Cooking with the kids' rolls off the tongue more easily. In any case, last weekend was another Flintmoot potluck. As fate would have it, one of our Flintheathens had some venison to contribute, so medieval venison was going to be on the menu! Roo broth Take the lire of the boor oþer of the roo, perboile it. Smyte it on smale peces; seeþ it wel half in water and half in wyne. Take brede and bray it wiþ the self broth and drawe blode þerto, and lat it seeth togydre with powdour fort: of gynger oþer of canell and macys, with a grete porcioun of vyneger with raysouns of corauns. Curye on Ingysch, Forme of Cury, Hieatt and Butler, p. 101, #16 Pretty straighforward - take the flesh (lire) of the boar or roo (Roe deer), parboil it, simmer it in water and wine. Thicken with bread crumbs and blood, season with poudre fort of some kind, add a bunch of vinegar and currants. Which is pretty much what we did. We used pretty much straight ginger as the seasoning, and used dried blood mixed with bread crumbs as a thickener. We didn't use much so the broth was quite thin. It was delicious, and did taste strongly of the 'great portion' of vinegar. We had anticipated this, so we made some frumenty to go with the broth. Frumenty To make frumente. Tak clene whete & braye yt wel in a morter tyl þe holes gon of; seþe it til it breste in water. Nym it vp & lat it cole. Tak good broþ & swete mylk of kyn or of almand & temere it þerwith. Nym ȝelkys of eyren rawe & saffroun & cast þerto; salt it; lat it nauȝt boyle after þe eyren ben cast þerinne. Messe it forth with venesoun or with fat mouton fresch. Curye on Ingysch, Forme of Cury, Hieatt and Butler, p 98, #1 The broth with the frumenty was absolutely fantastic. Acid, cut with the sweetness of the currants, over the frumenty. So good. Usually this would have been enough for us to make, but this was a potluck, so we wanted to push the boat out a bit. We also made some meatballs. Sawge yfarcet. Take pork and seeþ it wel, and grinde it smal, and medle it with ayren & brede ygrated. Do þerto powdour fort and safroun with pynes & salt. Take & close litull balles in foiles of sawge; wete it it with a batour of ayren & fry it, & serue it forth. Curye on Ingysch, Forme of Cury, Hieatt and Butler, p. 135, #168 Again, pretty straightforward. We started with pork mince and simmered that quickly, rather than cooking some pork and then grinding it. Eggs and bread crumbs were added to get the texture to where meatballs could be formed. We seasoned it with salt, pepper, and ginger. I had brought some sage, but the leaves were small enough that wrapping the meatballs in them would have been very fiddly indeed. I also didn't have much luck with the batter. As a result, we just made the meatballs, topped with them with a leaf or two of sage, and fried them off. Pretty good, and pretty easy. The abandoned egg and flour batter got a bunch of sugar added and cooked as a panckake sort of thing. Waste not, want not, you know. We also made some jumbles as a dessert-like addition. I've written about jumbles before, in 2004, and have used slight variations on those recipes ever since. We made the second and third recipes, although without almonds in the last one. (I think we got the rosewater right in the last version, which is nice since a little rosewater goes a long way.)