After a busy few weeks, I’ve been playing catch up on my Historic Food and Feasting course. Last week, I wrote up my efforts at making Tarte Owt Lent from Week 1. This week will be a bit of a veritable treat of recipes from weeks 1 and 2, with week 3 hot on their heels.

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I picked up a copy of Clarissa Dickson Wright’s A History of English Food recently. I’ve always had a lot of time for Clarissa, having come across her first as one of the Fat Ladies and subsequently on other food programmes. She struck me as very knowledgeable about animal husbandry and history, as well as food preparation. She was also refreshingly unpretentious, unlike so many TV cooks, and totally devoid of fluffiness, always a plus point as far as I am concerned.

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As another Costume day at school dawns, you find me frantically putting finishing touches to the outfit and dressing the Tudor girl. Costume day has sometimes been a royal pain in the proverbial (particularly back in the days when you were only given about a week’s notice to frantically knock out a suitable period outfit), but on this occasion (and despite being very busy) I’ve loved it. Tudor is one of my favourite clothing periods (along with Medieval and Victorian) as it has such a variety of sumptuous loveliness and lots of interesting underpinnings and accessories. DD and I had lots of fun making and stuffing the bum roll and selecting pearls, trims and fabrics for the outfit. Sadly, I didn’t have time to make her a penner for her quill and ink, but we managed the rest of the outfit just about in time.

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If you are following my progress on the Historic Food and Feasting course, you’ll know that I am now up to Week 4 on this blog. We’ve looked at the sort of foods eaten during the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and George I, the latter including the introduction and rise of chocolate. This week is the turn of George III. Yes, the mad one 🙂

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I know you’ve been waiting in breathless, drooling anticipation for this post about…chocolate!

As part of the Historic Food and Feasting course, we covered the arrival and subsequent popularity of chocolate, imported to Britain from the newly opened up New World in the early 18th century. We are not talking about the bars of confectionary that we think of as chocolate today, however. Until the 19th century, chocolate was drunk, much like tea and coffee. Indeed, there are many similarities with coffee in particular, insofar as it is made from ground roasted beans.

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Kenilworth Castle

A while ago I mentioned that I had signed up for a short course on Historic Food and that began a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I’ve been off trading at Kenilworth Castle and then the Chalke Valley History Festival, respectively, for the last two weekends and frantically trying to finish my Victorian outfit for the latter in between the two.  I promised you an update once I’d started and here it is.

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As you may know, I have something of an interest in historic food. I’ve made dishes from Richard II’s cook’s book A Forme of Cury, early editions of Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, recipes from the two World Wars, Medieval Poland, and a whole host of others across several centuries. Some I have taken from copies of the original texts, others have been aided by the research of the likes of  Clarissa Dickson Wright, Dorothy Hartley and a whole host of historians throughout the ages, professional and amateur. You’ll find some of my efforts on the virtual pages of this very blog.

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So with Christmas over and the New Year beckoning, it must be time for the annual roundup. Of course, creeping senility means that my memories of this year go all the way back to…oh, last week some time. With that in fragile mind, I’ll begin with Christmas and see if anything less recent hoves into mind.

We had a fairly sedate Christmas this year. No panics, no arguments, no over-indulgence, no leftovers (apart from some salmon from Christmas Eve) and no excesses*.

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You know how when you hear a snatch of a tune that you know well, even if your attention is elsewhere, some bit of your brain recognises it and immediately sits up to take notice, as if you’d heard your name spoken? Well, I was pottering away on the computer with the TV on in the background, using my built in mental ad filter (the one that allows me to totally tune out all forms of advertising unless I choose to look/listen), when I suddenly caught just such a snippet. It was very subtle and possibly even being spoken over, (my filter was still on for that irrelevant bit, so I can’t be sure), but I caught enough to recognise it as Siouxsie and the Banshees. It amuses me hugely that the rebellious punk bands of my youth are now regarded as suitable soundtrack material for marketing. The funny thing is the often huge inappropriateness of the songs.

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It was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that we set off to spend the coldest, snowiest Easter week for years in the Alps North Wales.

You can see my confusion…

Llanberis pass

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