I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on t he PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Feast Planning During Plague Years Feast of the Humors Part the Third Course the First The first general decision, pending enough small ramekins, is to keep the general spicing fairly minimal and allow people to spice themselves at table. A lot of recipes call for things to be hit with spices just before being served, we'll just outsource this to the diners themselves. Ditto sauces, in some cases. Onward! Here's the rough menu for the first course from last time. chicken (warm and dry), exact dish TBD Pears (cold and dry), there are several good pear dishes that come immediately to mind - in syrup, in confyt, and so on. Spinach (cold and moist), dish TBD Turnips (warm and moist), dish TBD Time for some brassing of tacks. Dish one: basic roast chicken. This will be a dab of olive oil and a bit of salt. It will need a sauce, of course. I think perhaps a cameline. Sauce camelyn for qualys & othir maner of foules and fysch. Take white bred & draw hit in the maner of sauce gynger, with venyger, & put thereto poudyr of canell, a grete dele, & poudyr of gynger & poudyr lumbard. & draw hit aye, & yf thu wilt, draw a lytyll mustard therewith, & seysn hit up with sygure that hit be doucete. Salt hit & colour hit with safron.('An Ordinance of Pottage', Hieatt, p 81, #115) The sauce is thickened with bread or bread crumbs, simmered with vinegar, cinnamon, a little mustard, some sugar, and salt. I will omit the saffron, as is my usual practice. The interesting bit is the poudyr lumbard, which is another pre-made spice mix. To be the best of my knowledge, we don't have any clear sources which specific what goes into it. However, I have a thought. There is a recipe for Leche Lumbard in Curye on Inglysch (p 112, #68) which calls for sugar, salt, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. If I guess that there is some overlap between the lumbard named dishes, then Lombardy Powder might contain cloves and ginger. This makes it start to look much like my poudre forte, which is clove, ginger, and pepper. At the very least, that sounds like a reasonable medieval flavour profile, so I'll go with that. Once again, this can be pre-made and heated up as/if needed. Dish 2: Peeres in confyt Take peeres and pare hem clene. Take gode rede wyne & mulberies, oþer saundres, and seeþ þe peeres þerin, & whan þei buth ysode take hem vp. Make a syryp of wyne greke, oþer vernage, with blaunche powdur, oþer white sugar and powdour gynger, & do the peres þerin. Seeþ it a lytel & messe it forth. ('Curye on Inglysch', Hieatt and Butler, p 129, 'Forme of Cury #136') I doubt I will use mullberries, but they are there for colour mostly since saunders is listed as a substitute. The recipe calls for Greek wine or vernage, in either case a sweet wine, probably white. A point of interest is the call for white powder ('blaunche powdur') or sugar and ginger. Recipe 16 from 'Goud Kokery', also found in Hieatt and Butler on page 153, is for 'blawnce pouder' and it consists of sugar and ginger ground together in the ratio of half a pound of sugar to two ounces of ginger. Given all that, this is pretty straightforward. Best of all, some or all of it (nearly) can be done ahead of time. The syrup can certainly be made ahead. The pears could also be made ahead if one was so inclined, meaning that all that would need to be done on the day would be assembling and giving it a quick simmer. Dish 3: Spynoches yfryed Take spynoches; perboile hem in seþyng water. Take hem vp and presse out þe water and hew hem in two. Frye hem in oile & do þerto powdour douce, & serue forth('Curye on Inglysch', Hieatt and Butler, p 140, 'Forme of Cury #188') This calls for bunch spinach, to be cut in half, but that is probably not in the cards. Essentially then, this is just wilting the spinach in a little oil - probably with a pinch of salt. Powder douce on the table as noted above. Dish 4: Rapes in potage Take rapus and make hem clene, and waissh hem clene; quarter hem; perboile hem, take hem vp. Cast hem in a gode broth and seeþ hem; mynce oynouns and þerto safroun and salt, and messe it forth with powdour douce. In the self wise make of pasturnakes and skyrwittes. ('Curye on Inglysch', Hieatt and Butler, p 99, 'Forme of Cury #7') This is pretty straightforward: the recipe calls for parboiled turnips (rapes/rapus) to be cooked in broth with onions, saffron, and salt. To keep it vegetarian, I'll just cook it in salted water with onions. I'll skip the saffron for reasons of economy, and as noted before, there will be powder douce on the table for those who wish it. The recipe also works for parsnips, skirrets(and probably carrots), and we might have to make do since in the past, turnips have proven harder to find than one might expect.

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