Cooking and talking at Tuna Ting

It was time again for the local medieval fair in Borlänge - Tuna Ting. And this time I was going to stay overnight, and not only that I was actually on the program demonstrating historical cooking and doing the fashion presentation.

Once again I borrowed the tent from Monica and Niklas, as in Leksand, but this time I decided to take as much stuff with me that I could have the tent open without showing off any modern stuff too clearly.

This is the interior of the tent. I'm having a tarp under the carpets. All the carpets are auction finds, there are three of them two are handvowen and I haven't paid more than $15 total for them. People don't want to buy for carpets that are a bit worn, but I'm happy to take them so I don't have to worry about them getting dirty. The box is a late 17th/early 18th century box from the same local auctioneer. It's also a bit chipped and the metal in it has been replaced in modern times, so once again I got it really cheap. As a bed I'm using a garden chair from IKEA. I'm short so it's long enough for me, and I don't need a pillow since it's enough to just angle the headrest. On the bed I have a rug that my mother was about to throw out, but I stopped her. When I sleep I put sheepskin over the bed, then I have a modern sleeping bag and a wool blanket. In the day I hide my modern bag with clothes and the sleeping bag under the bed.

My cooking station was built up from Monika's things, but I had bought a small kettle and an assortment of wooden boxes and pottery bowls.

I spent most of the fair at this station. And since this was my first time of demonstrating cooking, and really my first time cooking properly on open fire there were definitely lessons learnt. You need to be at least two people. One person preparing the food, and one person tending the fire. On Friday Tom was the firemaster, and on Saturday and Sunday Mattias did the job. It also takes a lot more wood than we had planned to keep a fired hot enough to cook food continuosly on it.

Photo by Marlein/Linnea

The second thing was that we need more buckets of water. We had one for washing the dishes, but you need three. One for washing, one for rinsing and one so that we who are working at least can get the worst of the soot from our hands easily.  The third thing is that I need to make smaller portions, I always cook too much food but without a fridge or freezer close by it's a lot harder to save the leftovers. I also need to find recipes that are quicker to make. Now it was a lot of time just waiting while standing by. In fact on Sunday when I improvied a knödel-like doughball from leftovers people got a lot more interested than when when we were just cooking stews.

Cooking on a campfire takes time. So basically I woke up in the morning, started with lunch, washed up after lunch then it was just to start with the dinner straight away. My most popular dish was my boiled pudding, inspired by this recipe. It's very filling so we also had it as a snack on the day after to nibble on.

Yummy, yummy. Photo by Tom/woodsling

I also made the fashion presentation. And it was really fun. We had models from different eras of the Middle Ages and I tried to speak of fashion as a general thing, where did the influences come from and what was it likely that people in the area could be wearing, and of course some of the main changes in style, rather than going into specific styles for every year. Thanks to the models that volunteered and mad it possible to show off clothes from the Viking Age and into the early Renaissance..

12th century

14th century

16th century

Friday night was a wonderful Swedish summernight. A bit chilly but light and it was cozy by the fire.

Photo at just past midnight.

On Saturday we were lucky. There were really bad thunderstorms around us, but they missed our small area, we only got one big shower of rain and some thundering. It could all be waited out inside Monika and Niklas' big tent. Sunday was a bit colder, but overall we had perfect weather for a fair, neither too cold nor too warm and just some sprinklings of rain on Sunday.

I didn't have anything new to wear, since I'm busy with Obelix, but with a shortsleeved working dress and a long sleeved warmer dress it is enough to stand all kinds of weathers. I will definitely work on improving the cooking demonstrations in the future.

Overall Tuna Ting is a cozy event, it's small and mostly geared towards families with smaller children, but us in the camp have such a nice time together that we don't need anything else really.