Showing posts with label sugar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sugar. Show all posts

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Holidays - modern and medieval

I don't know about you, but I'm gearing up for cooking out with my friends over the 4th of July weekend.  There's nothing so satisfying as a well-grilled burger with chips and good coleslaw and fabulous baked beans.  Not to mention all the tasty desserts people manage to come up with (I'm an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie girl myself).


So it always makes me think - what did medieval people do?  For sure not grilling burgers, especially in Sicily, although the classic movie shot of Henry VIII (was it Charles Laughton?) who was gnawing on a huge animal bone and throwing it over his shoulder ...


But Ysabella and Family weren't doing that, I don't think, although they may have been roasting bits of fried meat as snackies, they certainly had veggies galore and salad stuff (do you think they made honey mustard dressing?  probably not ...) and had lots of desserts made - at least in Sicily - from almonds, pistachios, sugar (yes, they grew sugar there) some of them called Chancellor's Buttocks and Virgin's Breasts.  I leave it to your research ingenuity to find those ...

Sailfish steaks in the market

Vegetable market in Sicily

Peasant dance in medieval times, with aprons

Sunday, July 6, 2014

While we're on the subject of food - medieval Corleone and Sicily

If you're wondering about medieval food in Sicily - I ran across this wonderful article that talks about the Arab history in Sicilian cuisine - lemons, oranges, sugar cane, sherbet and sorbets and a few other fascinating things - check out this link - as you know, Corleone is the setting in Book #3 of The Vespers Trilogy that Ysabella & Co. flee to after the cataclysm of Aragon and Angevin in Palermo.


Check out this link - https://www.academia.edu/2292026/Food_in_medieval_Sicily