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 Fourth Course the Second As a reminder, the idea is to keep the general spicing fairly minimal and allow people to spice it themselves at table. Likewise, sauces on table or delivered separately. Onward! The second course, as per previously, looks like this, in rough form. Sawgeat in ymbre day (warm and dry) chickpeas (warm and moist), Chiquart has a chickpea dish for invalids, but there's also a chickpea dish in Apicius that I love. dates (cold and dry), some good options here. Lechy frys in lentoun, Rissoles from Le Ménagier, or something called Brineex from An Ordinance of Pottage. Decisions, decisions fresh cheese (cold and moist), a cheese tart of some kind, almost certainly Decisions needed to be made, and so they were. Dish one: Sawgeat Sawgeat. Take sawge; grynde it and temper it vp with ayren. Take a sausege & kerf hym to gobetes, and cast in a possynet, and do þerwiþ grece & frye it. Whan it is fryed ynowȝ, cast þerto sawge with ayren; make it not to harde. Cast þerto powdour douce & messe it forth. If it be in ymbre day, take sauge, buttur, & ayren, and lat it stonde wel by þe sauge, & serue it forth. ('Curye on Inglysch,' IV:169, Hieatt and Butler) As discussed, I'll essentially make a baked sage omelette with butter. In lieu of sausage, I'll spice it lightly with the ingredients that I put into a lucanicae sausage, such as I use for glires falses to wit: some salt, pepper, and cumin. (The sage will stand in for the herbs in the sausage recipe.) The poudre douce will be on the table. Dish two: Chyches Alexandre Chyches. Take chiches and wrye him in askes al nyȝt oþe;er al day, oþe;er lay hem in hoot aymers. At morowe waische hem in clene water and do hem ouere the fire with clene water. Seeþe; hem vp and do þerto oyle, garlek hole, safroun, powdour fort and salt; seeþe; it and messe it forth.('Curye on Inglysch,' Hieatt and Butler, p114, 'Forme of Cury #73') This is very similar to a recipe in Apicius: faseoli uirides et cicer: ex sale cumino oleo et mero modico inferuntur Which can be translated as Fresh black-eyed peas or chick peas: serve with salt, cumin, oil, and a little pure wine. ('Apicius,' Grocock and Grainger, pp 218-219, #5.8.1) I think that cumin goes so well with chickpeas, that I will use it instead of poudre fort in the chyches, although it will be on the table for those who would like it. Canned chickpeas mean that I can skip some of the intial steps, and just give it them a quick simmer in some olive oil, water, garlic, salt, and cumin. Dish three: Rissoles for a fish day ... And nota, in Lent, instead of eggs and cheese, use whiting and cooked water parsnips, chopped very small, or the flesh of pike or eels, and chopped figs and dates. Item, commonly rissoles are made of figs, grapes, roasted apples, and shelled nuts to imitate pine nut, and powdered spices; and the dough should be very well saffroned. Then fry them in oil. If it needs a thickener, starch binds, and rice also. ... ('The Good Wife's Guide: Le Ménagier de Paris,' Greco and Rose, p 319, #600) Riffing off this, dates, roasted apples, and rice, squished together and fried. For spices, cinnamon, sugar, and just a pinch of salt. Depending on the kitchen, I might bake these rather than fry them. (A kitchen visit is in the cards - already been scheduled, in fact.) Dish four: a cheese tart To make a tart. Take 4 handfuls of chard, 2 handfuls of parsley, one handful of chervil, a spring of fennel, and two handfuls of spinach. Pick them over wash in cold water, then chop very small. Then crush up two kinds of cheese, one soft and one medium, and mix together with eggs, both yolk and white. Add the herbs to the mortar and mash everything, and mix in some powdered spices. Or instead first grind two pieces of ginger in your mortar, and then grind in the cheeses, eggs, and herbs. Then toss some grated aged hard cheese, or another kind, onto the herbs. Carry to the oven to have it made into a tart and eat it hot.('The Good Wife's Guide: Le Ménagier de Paris,' Greco and Rose, p 315, #290) This looks a little similar to the Sawgeat, only with cheese and fewer eggs. I may not do three kinds of cheese, but I will probably do two - maybe cheddar and ricotta. To keep it gluten-free, I'll do it crustless. The greens will be whatever is available, in season, and therefore presumably reasonably priced. For spices, ginger seems right. I'll do a little salt, and I think some cubebs or grains of paradise. Le Ménagier uses both of those, and I have some cubebs I've been wanting to use.

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