34. Host a renaissance feast

It's a really good thing I have weird friends that are 100% down for my strange preoccupations. Because making a bunch of renaissance food is one thing, but you have to have people to share it with as well!

The Renaissance era around the world (1530s) was a crazy time for changing tastes and new ingredients, and I've always wanted to really eat the food that would have been served back then. So onto the list it went! Since I wanted to share this bizarreness with folks I invited friends who made and brought their own renaissance recipes to share. We ended up with a wild collection of flavors (and a list of things I'm not going to recommend we try again!). So I'm going to share a list of the things we had at our fest and some pics for fun!

Shrub (blueberry and orange) - Shrub is still made and drank today, it's a fruit vinegar concoction that is seen as a healthy drink. It's...weird. We ended up cutting it with club soda (and maybe some vodka) to make it a bit more drinkable

Manchet - This is a dark bread that was quite dense. Not a ton of flavor, but probably good with soups?

Coffyn pie - I made this with a steak and ale pie recipe so that we got to actually enjoy it, but the real feat was the coffyn (lid) itself, that I spent a lot of time designing and building so that it would look like a real tudor center piece

Pottage of Beans (Kayden) - Tudors didn't trust vegetables so this pottage is sort of a pureed consistency that was intended to help with digestion. Kayden did a great job with it!

Marchpane - The precursor to marzipane, marchpane is an almond flavored cake that was highly decorated. I painted mine in red and white icing and dusted it with edible gold powder for added glitter. It actually tasted great!

Wafers - I couldn't quite get a read on these, but they were almost good. I ended up cooking mine in my pizzelle iron (which was a great decision), but I didn't want to get them as crunchy as the recipe seemed to suggest because I wanted them to have a little more flavor. Could have used something more as a sweetener, but it was a good beginning...?

Boyle Chikins with Hearbs - While it was very historically accurate, it really didn't have a ton of flavor. I didn't use rosemary due to Kayden's allergy, but I'm not sure that it would have saved the chicken either. Just needed a lot more flavors than would have been historically used.

Ipocras (Ariel) - Spiced wine! Can't go wrong!