Port and Crackers? Why not Grape Juice and Wonder Bread?

A handful of people have asked about the name of my blog. Why do I call it Port and Crackers? Why not something else? Of course the obvious answer is because it is my blog and  I can call it whatever I bloody well please. The more rational answer, and slightly less inflammatory, would be that I am an Anglican. Port and Crackers is, as you might guess, a reference to the elements of Holy Communion. I am a priest and I celebrate the Holy Communion at least twice each month and generally more than that.

Most Christians (all Christians for the vast majority of Christian History) use wine for Holy Communion. The rationale for this is simply that Jesus used Wine at the Last Supper/First Communion. There are of course some modernist American Protestants that argue that Jesus didn't use wine but rather the term "wine" in scripture actually just means "fruit of the vine" or grape juice. I simply invite those people to keep grape juice from autumn until Passover using 1st century technology without letting it become wine.

Anyway, as an Anglican it is our tradition to use Portwine. For many centuries the English pretty well stayed in a perpetual state of war with Spain and France. The English have always been good at making beer but Wine making was left to the continent, and rightly so. If you're at war with France and Spain where would you expect to get your wine from? Portugal of course! What sort of wine is made in Portugal, you ask? Portwine! The only sort of wine that could be readily obtained in England for many years was Port so naturally it was Port which came to be used in English churches.

Port has a litany of other benefits for use as a Communion wine though. (It is certainly a better idea than Sherry!) Port wine is almost exclusively red, and as you might imaging red wine has always been favored for Holy Communion. Who knows why? Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that blood is red. (Yes. That is sarcasm, thanks.) Port is also a fortified wine, which has distilled grape spirits added to it for flavor, preservation, and to increase the alcohol content (usually to between 18-21% Abv). Now I do not believe that there is a single documented case of anyone ever getting sick from the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, in fact I personally consider it heterodox at best for someone to believe that you can but... The simple fact remains that we live in a world full of paranoid people who are terrified of germs and disease. As Anglicans we practice communion by letting everyone drink from the chalice. Using a wine of 18%+ ABV makes it pretty certain that no germs an be passed around. Some Anglicans even allow people to dip their host or bread in the wine rather than drinking it (though this is a far less sanitary practice than drinking from the chalice). I promise that most people have dirtier fingers than mouths.

Either way, Anglicans generally use Port. I am an Anglican. This is my blog. I decided to call it Port and Crackers.

I'll explain the "crackers" bit later. :-)

A 19th Century Christmas Pudding in 2014

My wife (whose blog can be seen HERE) and I are avid living historians. What that means is we dress up in old timey clothes, go various places, and recreate historical events or situations with great emphasis on historical accuracy in every detail.

As you will see when you visit my wife's blog the focus of her (and by extension my own) research is food. She is a bit of a celebrity in LH and Reenacting circles for her historical cooking. Occasionally she gets invited to sites and museums to cook this or that in a historical context or setting. Even more occasionally I get to tag along. In December of 2014 she was invited to cook at the 1897 Poe House in Fayetteville, NC for their Christmas program. The original plan was for me to drop her off and go on my merry way but that didn't happen. I stayed and helped her in the kitchen. As we cooked we both realized that we had forgotten some of the ingredients for our Christmas pudding and home was over an hour away. Needless to say running home was out of the question so... In true 19th century fashion we improvised!

Using our combined working knowledge of historical cookery we began mixing. Butter, sugar, flour, eggs, this, that, a pinch of something else. Now there is always that one person who lives by a recipe but neither the wife or I are that person. We know our ratios, we know what tastes right with what, and we know what doesn't. So using that basic culinary know-how we made a batter that "looked right" and tasted nice. Into the baking tin, and into the oven it went. As it baked we worked ourselves up a bit. The waiting is ALWAYS the most stressful part of cooking with us so to pass the time I made a sauce for the pudding. After all, no pudding is really complete without a sticky, sweet, delicious sauce!

The time had come... The pudding was ready so out of the oven and onto the plate. We tapped the tin a few times and PLOP! There stood the most beautiful 19th century creation of culinary joy that we had ever created, and we knew from the moment we saw it that it would never be replicated. I covered it with that sticky saucepan of golden syrupy goodness and it was ready to eat. Everyone who tasted it approved. All that was left at the end of the day was a sticky plate with a small puddle of sauce in the middle.

It was a Christmas Miracle!

If you would like to see the original post on the wife's page you can HERE!