Vegetables in the Middle Ages - and corned beef and pastrami

So I open up my email and there's this terrific article from Medievalists.net so feel free tocheck out cooking in the Middle AGes. Not that I'm obsessed with food or anything since I've come back from Chicago, having stuffed my face with steak, pastrami, corned beef, gyros - Greektown for the latter, Manny's and 11th Street Dinner for corned beef and pastrami and I HIGHLY recommend Benny's Chop House for steak with impeccable service and probably the best Caesar salad I've ever had in my life - that's why vegetables are somewhat on my mind (along with other Good Eats). Vegetables in the Middle Ages Image Vegetables: A Biography, by Evelyne Bloch-Dano, offer the stories of eleven different vegetables - artichokes, beans, chard, cabbage, cardoons, carrots, chili peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, peas, pumpkins, and tomatoes - offering tidbits from science and agriculture to history, culture, and, of course, cooking. Here are a few excerpts from the book that detail their history during the Middle Ages. Read More

Drinking Water in the Middle Ages - Another Myth Exploded

From buttons to water - here's another interesting link exploding a common belief people have about the Middle Ages - that they didn't drink water! What about all those references to "watered wine" because few people drank straight wine. But also, cool water in the summertime? Especially in Sicily, where it's not only hot, but two hundred years of Arab occupation produced scores of irrigation and fountains. And let's not forget the need for water because of all the public baths. Yes, people, bathing in the areas that have known Roman occupation was frequent and every town of a fair size had a public bath. Palermo had many. Anyway, check out this terrific article on water at http://www.medievalists.net/2014/07/09/people-drink-water-middle-ages/

OK, yesterday I went on the radio - KRZA - and talked about our Vespers Trilogy, writing, e-publishing and researching a historical novel.  It was a blast!

Next week my co-author and I will be at the Tucson Book Fair at the Sisters in Crime booth, selling our books so stop by and see us!  I'll have some free biscotti for you ...

I'd like to know from readers out there just what books you're reading that are set in the Middle Ages.  Give me a critique, a list, whatever.  With my heart set in Italy, I usually pick up books from that region, but the overwhelming percentage, of course, are books set in England.  I did love Philippa Gregory's Tudor series and I think she envisions new twists on well-known stories, which is not easy.  Her characters are complex and she makes them interesting.  We think we know these people from their well-publicized histories, but she was able to show us different facets of how she imagined they acted.  However fictional they might be, they are always plausible and fascinating.  Not an easy task.

Another author I was talking about with a friend was Sharon Kay Penman, whose Sunne in Splendor just blew me away.  she again creates vivid and plausible characters and weaves in the time period seamlessly so that by the end of her novels, you feel you've been there.

So stop by and see us at the Tucson Book Fair - happy reading!!