Forme of Cury Transcription

Photograph: University of Manchester John Rylands University Library

I've recently added a transcription of Forme of Cury to the website. This transcription (based on John Rylands University Library, English MS 7) is not really a huge contribution to the field of food history. After all, John Rylands University already has put the images of the manuscript online, and Pegge's edition of Forme of Cury is already available online as a PDF of the printed book, and as plain text.

Still, as I noted in an earlier post, there are some differences between this manuscript and the Pegge edition, so having the information in a form that's easy to work with should be beneficial to the serious medieval food geek.

I'll be indexing the text and adding it to the Medieval Cookbook Search soon, and in a week or so (with luck) will cross-reference the recipes with those in the Pegge edition.

Kalendarium Hortense - September

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of September.

The Belle-bonne, the Williams, Summer Pearmain, Lording Apple, Pear-apple, Quince-apple, Red-greening ribb'd, Bloody-Pepin Harvey, Violet-apple, &c.

Pears.
Hamdens Bergamon (first ripe) Summer Bon Chrestien, Norwich, Black Worcester, (baking) Greenfield, Orange, Bergamot, the Queen Hedge-pear, Lewis-pear (to dry excellent) Frith-pear, Arundel-pear, (also to bake) Brunswick-pear, Winter Poppering, Bings-pear, Bishops-pear, (baking) Diego, Emperours-pear, Cluster-pear, Messire Jean, Rowling-pear, Balsam-pear, Bezy d'Hery, &c.

Peaches, &c.
Malacoton, and some others, if the year prove backwards, Almonds, &c.

Quinces.

Little Blew-grape, Muscadine-grape. Frontiniac, Parsly, great Blew-grape, the Verjuice-grape excellent for sauce, &c.

Berberries, &c.

Gen Con and Pennsic

I'm still trying to recover from my week of Pennsic followed by 4 days of Gen Con (talk about culture shock), but I think I'm finally up to writing a bit here about how it all went.

Pennsic
For those who haven't heard of Pennsic, I've been describing it to my co-workers as a cross between Woodstock, A Renaissance faire, and a conference of academic historians.

This year was pretty good. The weather was reasonably cool and dry (soggy start and hot finish notwithstanding), and I didn't get sick at all this year. I spent lots of time taking classes and just hanging around with cool, geeky people.

The big focus for me this year was on book binding. I've been wanting to try making books for years, so I was thrilled to take classes on the subject and to talk with people who do it.

Best of all, I got to bring home some equipment for binding books! I suspect a new project will be coming along shortly.

Gen Con
As I have for the past few years, I sat on some of the Writers' Symposium panels, and I gave a two-hour seminar on medieval European cuisine.

The seminar was to a surprisingly large audience - they moved me from one room because we'd gone over the 100 person capacity. The audience was agreeable, interested, and in a good mood. They seemed to enjoy it, and I received a few compliments here and there, so as far as I can tell it went really well. I'll have to come up with a good topic for next year.

The Writers' Symposium panels were lots of fun, though surprisingly I did feel a bit out of my element on the panel about dragons.

Again, I spent a lot of my time hanging out with geeky people and learning cool (to me) stuff. I didn't buy as much stuff this year as I have in previous years - that's a good thing.

Kalendarium Hortense - August

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of August.

Apples.
The Ladies Longing, the Kirkham Apple, John Apple; the Seaming Apple, Cushion Apple, Spicing, May-flower, Sheeps snout.

Pears.
Windsor, Sovereign, Orange, Bergamot, Slipper Pear, Red Catherine, King Catherine, Denny Pear, Prusia Pear, Summer Poppering, Sugar Pear, Lording Pear, &c.

Peaches.
Roman Peach, Man Peach, Quince Peach, Rambouillet, Musk Peach, Grand Carnation, Portugal Peach, Crown Peach, Bourdeaux Peach, Lavar Peach, the Peach Des Pot, Savoy Malacoton, which lasts till Michaelmas.

Nectarines.
The Muroy Nectarine, Tawny, Red-Roman, little Green Nectarine, Cluster Nectarine, Yellow Nectarine.

Plums.
Imperial, Blew, White Dates, Yellow Pear-plum, Black Pear-plum, White Nutmeg, late Pear-plum, Great Anthony, Turkey-Plum, the Jane Plum.

Other Fruit.
Cluster-grape, Muscadine, Corinths, Cornelians, Mulberries, Figs, Filberts, Melons, &c.

Gen Con Seminar Schedule

In just over two weeks (and three days after I get home from Pennsic), I will be Participating in the Writer's Symposium seminars at Gen Con. I've gone to this convention for several years, and given talks on medieval cooking for the past three or four (I'm losing count).

On Thursday evening at 8:00 p.m. I'll be giving a 2 hour talk about medieval cooking ("Getting Medieval with Food"). This will be a sort of general overview, geared towards fantasy authors and game designers who want to make the food in their work more realistic. Here's the description from the Gen Con events catalog:

SEM0903050 - Getting Medieval with Food
Fantasy games and novels are commonly set in a society based on medieval Europe - except for the food, which is commonly way wrong. Learn how medieval English and French cuisine worked as a system. Topics will include medieval ingredients and preparation methods, the structure of medieval feasts, finding medieval recipes (or making them up), and common myths about medieval foods. 08/13/2009, 8:00 PM - Marriott : Indiana Bllrm D

I'm also very likely to ramble a bit, allow myself to be side-tracked by questions, and maybe even rant.

I'll also be part of the following panel discussions:

SEM0902995 - Food for Thought
A key ingredient to believable characters and stories is food. Heroes, villains, and the supporting cast have to eat from time to time. How can you enrich your writing by adding a dining experience or two? What does food say about the world you've crafted? 08/15/2009, 12:00 PM - Marriott : Lincoln

SEM0903002 - Hunting Dragons
Why has going after dragons been so popular in fiction? Our panelists discuss classic dragon hunters like Beowulf, Saint George, and Bilbo Baggins, in addition to how the hunt has changed over the years. Learn how to shape the classic story into something fresh and exciting. 08/15/2009, 3:00 PM - Marriott : Santa Fe

SEM0903003 - Stealing History
Why recreate the wheel each time you create a story, character, or world? Yes, you can build your knighthood or priesthood or religion or society from scratch, but taking what's historically known and warping it might fit the proverbial bill and depth and believability. Join our panelists for a discussion on how we can mine our own rich history for characters, backgrounds, worlds, cosmology, scenery, and more. 08/15/2009, 4:00 PM - Marriott : Santa Fe

On the whole, I expect it to be lots of fun.

What a Difference a Word Makes

I've been spending a good amount of time lately looking at the John Rylands University images of their copy of Forme of Cury (I know, what a surprise) and comparing it to other versions. There are lots of differences, but they're usually minor changes in spelling, with the occasional dropped or added word here and there. Sometimes those dropped words can have a huge impact on a recipe.

A perfect example is the recipe for Payne ragoun. The Rylands manuscript has the following:

Tak hony suger cypres & clarifye it to gider & boyle it with esye fyre & kepe it wel from brennyng & whan hit hath y boyled a whyle tak up a drope ther of with thy fynger & do hit in a litul water & loke yf it hong to gider & tak hit fro the fyre & do therto pynes the thryddendel & poudour ginger, & stere it to gyder tyl hit bigyne to thyk and cast it on a wete table, lesche hit & serve hit forth with fryed mete, on flesch day or on fysch dayes.

Compare this to the version transcribed by Samuel Pegge in 1780:

Take hony suger and clarifie it togydre. and boile it with esy fyre, and kepe it wel fro brennyng and whan it hath yboiled a while; take up a drope therof with thy fyngur and do it in a litel water and loke if it hong togydre. and take it fro the fyre and do therto the thriddendele an powdour gyngener and stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik and cast it on a wete table. lesh it and serue it forth with fryed mete on flessh dayes or on fysshe dayes.

Weird spelling and ampersands aside, there's not a huge amount of difference between the two ... except for one word. The Pegge edition leaves out the word "pynes". The omission of this one word turns the recipe from pine-nut brittle into spice candy, and hides any connection to similar recipes for "Pynade" in both Forme of Cury and Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books.

Interestingly, the word "pynes" is included in the edition of Forme of Cury that appears in Hieatt & Butler's Curye on Inglish (I haven't had a chance to check which manuscript that transcription was based upon), so a correct version of this recipe has been available for quite some time. Still, I'd hazard a guess that the Pegge edition is the one most often consulted (because it is available online for free).

So what's it all mean in the grand scheme of things? Probably that one should always check multiple sources whenever possible.

Kalendarium Hortense - July

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the section titled "Fruits in Prime, or yet lasting" for the month of July.

Apples.
Deux-ans, Pepins, Winter Russeting, Andrew Apples, Cinnamon Apple, red and white Juneting, the Margaret Apple, &c.

Pears.
The Primat, Russet Pears, Summer Pears, green Chesil Pears, Pearl Pear, &c.

Cherries.
Carnations, Morella, Great-bearer, Morocco Cherry, the Egriot, Bigarreaux, &c.

Peaches.
Nutmeg, Isabella, Persian, Newington, Violet muscat, Rambouilet.

Plums, &c.
Primordial, Myrobalan, the red, blew, and amber Violet, Damasc. Denny Damasc. Pear-Plum, Damasc. Violet, or Cheson-Plum, Abricot-plum, Cinnamon-plum, the King's-plum, Spanish, Morocco-plum, Lady Eliz. plum, Tawny, Damascene, &c.

Rasberries, Gooseberries, Corinths, Strawberries, Melons, &c.

Even More on "Forme of Cury"

On Monday I griped a bit about the lack of a way to link directly to the John Rylands University Library images of "Forme of Cury". There are some things that I can't just leave alone, and seeing as I'm somewhat of a web geek, I did what I could to correct the situation.

I put together a web page of links to the manuscript images. That way others can have some place to link to that provides clear and simple access. Note that the images are still hosted on the John Rylands University Library's servers (I'm not violating their copyright). This means that they could easily fiddle with their servers or add some kind of authorization process that would break the links, so I don't know how long this page will be useful.

More on "Forme of Cury"

So the latest big news in medieval cuisine is that the John Rylands University Library in Manchester has made images of their copy of "Forme of Cury" online.

One oddity though about the BBC news story on this event is that there is no link provided to the images. There is a link in the sidebar to John Rylands University Library (and their "Medieval Collection") though, so perhaps it's there.

Nope.

The images are indeed there, and can be viewed free of charge - so I guess I really shouldn't complain - but the university has them (and all their images of other beautiful manuscripts) tucked away behind some clunky code. There is no clear and simple way to link directly to them (it apparently can be done - folio 4, verso - but it's not clear and simple). Instead you need to go to the Rylands Medieval Collection website, click on the link for the Insight Browser (the page says you can use the username 'uman' password 'est1824'), and then find the manuscript (it's reference number English MS 7). Then you can look at each page, one by one.

Really, I'm very happy that they've gone to the effort of digitizing this manuscript and putting it online with FREE access. What keeps echoing in my mind though is the bit from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the demolition orders were on display in the cellar in the back of an unmarked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".

What's wrong with this Picture?

Ok, take a good look at the image below ...

Now let's think about how people really use refrigerators - assuming of course that we're talking about people who cook rather than those who open and heat. No, I'm not talking about how freakin' empty this fridge is, or how clean it is, or even the lack of mysterious containers of food leftover from some forgotten meal in a previous decade. What really stinks my cheese here is how the clueless engineers intended the fridge to be used.

Let me give you a hint. You're going to make beef stroganoff, or maybe grill steaks, or Thai curried chicken, or whatever, so you get the meat out of the freezer to thaw overnight in the fridge. Where do you put it?

Do you see the problem now?

Food safety guidelines have stated for the past million years that raw meats should NEVER be stored above ready-to-eat foods. Yet the bottom of the fridge is specifically set up with bins for fruit and vegetables (my fridge at home helpfully has the bins labeled, with a special little sliding lever to switch from "Fruits" to "Vegetables" - one's vented, the other isn't, I can't remember which is which though). So the frozen meat is set on the lowest open shelf where it can drip bacteria-laden grossness all over those nice grapes or apples or salad greens (my fridge at home helpfully has that little sliding lever and vent to allow the meat juice better access to the produce). I suppose you could rinse the produce with bleach before consuming, but that doesn't sound like a very safe idea either.

Here's a model from a different manufacturer:

This isn't an isolated thing. I can't remember ever having a fridge that didn't have produce drawers at the bottom. Are the people who design these things completely clueless, or do they just not think? Maybe they're all vegetarians?

As to the cause of this rant, suffice it to say that I had to sanitize the bottom of my fridge and pitch all sorts of leftovers that I'd been saving for the next nuclear apocalypse. Time to re-organize, re-purpose, and re-label.

Medieval Catering

So here's the fun news: on Tuesday I cooked for the OSU Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

They did an interview with me last year for their newsletter (Nouvelles/Nouvelles) and I'd been in contact with them off and on.

So when they asked if I could prepare some medieval dishes for their end of year get-together I was thrilled. I planned out a menu that would have a good number of dishes so they'd be able to get a sense of medieval French and English cuisine. Here's what I selected:

Twisted Bread of Milk and Sugar
Marmelade of Quinces
Pumpes
Spinach Tart
Rysschews of Fruit
Pegions Stewed (actually chicken)
Compost
Stuffed Eggs
Breny
Gyngerbrede
Sugared Walnuts
Snowe
Wafers
Hypocras

Kristen was kind enough to make some of the dishes (the bread, wafers, and breny) and also take a day off from work to go to Columbus with me and serve. Things wouldn't have gone nearly as smoothly without her help (especially as my dishwasher died on Sunday in the middle of preparations). She drove down to Cincinnati in the morning, and we loaded up the van and left just after noon for Columbus. It's a two hour drive, with nothing but flat farmland on both sides, ending in a twisting route through OSU's campus. We found the building where the party was going to be held about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Then it was unload, park, and get to work. We were just getting the last dishes plated and out onto the buffet table when the guests started showing up.

The food was very well received, with a couple of surprises. The stuffed eggs always do well, as do the pumpes, but I'm not used to people being that excited about the compost. The average American just doesn't seem to go for pickled root vegetables. Maybe academics have more adventurous palates than lesser mortals. Maybe the vegetarian students were really hungry. Whatever the reason, they ate more of it than I expected.

Oddly, the big winner was the hypocras. I'd never worked up a proper recipe for it before (don't ask me why), but they'd requested some kind of medieval beverage, and hypocras was the easiest of the alternatives. Because the party was held on campus, I had to make it a non-alcoholic version - essentially grape juice and powder douce with a little vinegar added to make it taste more like wine.

The only glitch in the whole thing was that there was waaay too much food, which made it all cost more than it should. This was due to a combination of things, including an overestimate of the number of guests (50 instead of the 30 that showed up) and my typical tendency to overfeed people. Got to watch that for future events.

And there's the good news: the CMRS director, Richard Firth Green, seemed very happy with how things turned out and asked if I'd be willing to do similar events in the future. I, of course, said "Yes!"

Kalendarium Hortense - June

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of June.

Sow Lettuce, Chervil, Radish, &c. to have young and tender Salleting.

About the midst of June you may inoculate Peaches, Abricots, Cherries, Plums, Apples, Pears, &c.

You may now also (or in May before) cleanse Vines or exuberant Branches and Tendrels, cropping (not cutting) and stopping the second Joynt immediately before the Fruit, and some of the under branches which bear no fruit; especially in young Vineyards when they first begin to bear, and thence forwards; binding up the rest to Props.

Gather Herbs in the Full to keep dry; they keep and retain their vertue and sweet smell, better dryed in the shade than Sun, whatever some pretend.

Now is your season to distill Aromatic Plants, &c.

Water lately planted Trees, and put moist and half rotten Fearn, &c. about the foot of their stems, having first clear'd them of weeds and a little stirred the earth.

Look to your Bees for Swarms and Casts; and begin to destroy Insects with Hoofs, Canes, and tempting Baits, &c. Gather Snails after Rain, &c.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

NOT The Medieval Diet™

Got a lot I'm up to (more on that later this week) so I haven't posted much lately, but a friend just sent pointed out a website that I must comment on.

I've talked about the Medieval Diet™ before. It's a very rich and complex topic, and there's a lot we can learn from medieval Europe about healthy eating. This site however has nothing to do with medieval Europe.

Apparently the site was designed (if you can call it that) by one of those sad individuals who think that liberally sprinkling words like "ye" and "verily" through a text make it sound more medieval. There are no medieval recipes in their medieval diet and no information on what was eaten in medieval Europe. I'm surprised they didn't spell it "mid-evil".

Oh, and from what I can tell the advice given isn't all that good from a dietary viewpoint either. Sad. Just plain sad.

Modern Mystery

I've got all sorts of medieval things in the works ... but none of them are ready for the light of day. So as a diversion, I present you with a modern mystery object.

I really don't know what this thing is - my best (and obviously inaccurate) guess is that it's a cow-lip-stretcher.

It's about 6" long, appears to be cast stainless steel, and was manufactured in the early-to-mid 1900s. It has no identifying markings. It may have been farm-related (our family had a farm in the distant past, and I think that's where my dad got it).

My brother thinks it was used for skinning animals. I like the cow-lip-stretcher idea better.

My apologies for the poor quality of the images - I took them with my cell phone camera in poor light.

Anyone out there seen one of these before?

Hitting the Sauce Again

Yesterday evening I put the recipe for Sauce for Stekys on the website. This was the indirect result of a puff-piece in the New York Times about "new" cuts of beef.

The Times article essentially talked about a marketing push by the US beef industry to sell inexpensive cuts of beef. While most (all?) of these cuts have been around for a while, they were rarely used in the US. So the beef industry renamed them and is presenting them as the next new thing.

Marketing antics aside, money is tight nowadays, so a cheap but still decent cut of beef sounds like a good idea to me. That's why when I was shopping for groceries last week, and came across a "Flatiron Steak" (sometimes referred to as a "butler's steak" in Europe), I went ahead and bought the thing without any idea of what I'd do with it.

According to the instructions on the package, it was suitable for broiling or grilling, and then should be cut across the grain. No problem. I decided to brush on some olive oil, salt, and pepper and broil it, and serve it with asparagus and herbed pasta.

Of course I can't leave it at that. I worked out any new recipes in a while, so how about a nice medieval English sauce to go with it? A quick search of recipes in "Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books" had me settled on this recipe:

xxxj - To make Stekys of venson or bef. Take Venyson or Bef, and leche and gredyl it vp broun; then take Vynegre and a litel verious, and a lytil Wyne, and putte pouder perpir ther-on y-now, and pouder Gyngere; and atte the dressoure straw on pouder Canelle y-now, that the stekys be al y-helid ther-wyth, and but a litel Sawce; and than serue it forth.

Wine, vinegar, verjuice and spices - nice and straightforward. No verjuice on hand, so I'd have to use a little lemon juice. Hmm. Likely to be runny too - there's nothing in the recipe that acts as a thickener, and cinnamon in unthickened sauces sometimes makes them turn out kind of strange - almost stringy. Ok, so I'll thicken it. I could use wheat starch or rice flour or even eggs as a thickener, but my favorite medieval thickening method is to use bread.

This has to be the coolest trick in the medieval cook's repertoire. You soak the bread in a liquid like broth or wine for a while, strain out the solids, and then cook the liquid with the desired spices until it thickens. Need it to be thicker? Use more bread. The neat part is that while flour or starch thickeners can cause lumps, and eggs can cause the sauce to curdle if overcooked, using bread like this is amazingly tolerant of adverse cooking situations (like cooking in a large pot over a fire with no temperature control). It simply doesn't make lumps or curdle.

So that's what I did. The flatiron steak turned out perfectly, with a convenient gradation of doneness from medium-rare to medium-well. It wasn't as nice as a fillet mignon, but it was certainly better than some cheap steaks I've had. The Steky Sauce? Cindy proclaimed it to be "Yummy" and the kids both liked it. I'd call that a win.

Kalendarium Hortense - May

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of May.

Sow sweet marjoram, Basil, Thyme, hot and Aromatic Herbs and Plants which are the most tender.

Sow Purslan, to have young: Lettuce, large-sided Cabbage, painted Beans, &c.

Look carefully to your Melons; and towards the end of this Month forbear to cover them any longer on Ridges wither with Straw or Matrasses, &c.

Ply the Laboratory, and distill Plants for Waters, Spirits, &c.

Continue Weeding before they run to Seeds.

Now set your Bees at full liberty, look out often, and expect Swarms, &c.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

Food Related Painting of the Week

January: A Kitchen
Antonio Tempesta (Italy, Florence, 1555 - 1630)

January: A Kitchen
(from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

It's been a while since I babbled on about a painting, so it's about time for another.

A few days ago, someone (thanks, Johnnae!) posted a link to this etching to one of the mailing lists I follow. There was a brief discussion about the items and equipment being used and the thread died down. Basically it centered around the spigots at the sink on the left, and the women nearby apparently plucking poultry. Those aren't what first caught my interest in this image.

The first thing I saw was the stark division of the kitchen.

The table in the center splits the kitchen in half, and separates the functions of cooking and service. It also serves to keep servers, dishwashers, and other non-cooks out of the way of the cooks (and vice-versa). This is surprisingly similar to my preferred setup for cooking medieval feasts (and how many - most? - modern restaurant kitchens work as well).

The second thing I saw was that the dining setup wasn't what I expected.

I'm used to seeing either a U-shaped arrangement of tables with the feasters sitting around the outside, or (in smaller or less formal settings) a single table with the feasters sitting around it. Here the tables are set out as one very long table, and it's hard to be sure but I think the feasters are seated only on the side at the far right. On the left side, opposite the table, is what I believe to be a side-board. It has big serving platters on display, and would probably also have an array of sweets or the like set out during the feast.

After these I started looking at smaller details.

Various pots and pans are being stored on high shelves over the sink. Presumably this would help keep them clean and out of the way. Similarly, there are a couple of cooking implements being stored on the hood over the fire.

The food on the plates (bowls? they look kind of deep to be plates) about to be served is covered with another plate. Is it to keep stuff from falling into the food? I don't think so, because the food on the flatter plates isn't similarly covered. Perhaps it's to keep wetter foods from sloshing, or maybe to help keep the food warm until it reaches the feasters.

I initially thought that the things sticking out of the meats being roasted over the fire were the small skewers that help keep the meat from sliding around and to turn when the spit turns, but it looks like they're still on the meat that the cook is putting onto the table to be served. So I suspect those are pieces of fat inserted into the meat to help keep it moist (a process called larding).

Finally, an odd little detail: on the table in the lower right corner of the image is a small round thing that looks like a drawer knob. Is that really a drawer? I don't think I've seen drawers in medieval artwork before, but then again that's not something I've been paying attention to - up until now.

It Must Be Spring!

Looking out the kitchen window this morning, I noticed something looked odd with my quince tree.

Yes, those beautiful pink blossoms are blooming! (Ok, so the picture above is one I took last year - I didn't have enough time this morning to take a new one. I'll try to take some new ones soon).

There are a lot more blossoms this year than last - which only makes sense given that the tree is about two feet taller than it was last spring. Hopefully I'll have better luck and actually get a couple quince from it this year.

More Thoughts on "The Medieval Diet"™

It's been far too long since I posted last. Things got a bit nuts for a while there - a royalty lunch to cook, a feast to help with, taxes, vacation, minor illness, yadda yadda yadda. It's amazing how life can get in the way of the important things in life. Anyways, I thought I'd give a short update on this dietary experiment I've been toying with.

A while back I posted about the similarities between the diet in medieval Europe, the "Flexitarian" diet, and the advice of modern nutritionists. For the past couple of months I've had my family eating roughly according to the following guidelines.

1. No meat (other than fish) on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays
2. Lunch is the main meal, dinner is smaller
3. Meat portions are small (~4 oz.) with the bulk of the caloric intake coming from other foods
4. Seasonal, locally grown fruits and vegetables
5. Carbohydrates from a variety of grains and tubers
6. Reduced intake of sugars

Note that I used the word "roughly" above. There were occasions where we swapped the menus for a couple days of the week - usually due to having stuff in the fridge that needed to be cooked before it spoiled. However overall we had more meatless days than the required 3 out of 7 per week (vacationing on the Carolina coast was a bonus - it was more like 5 out of 7 days without meat).

The seasonal vegetables part has actually been kind of fun. I end up buying what's cheaper and having to be a bit creative with it to keep things from getting dull. Of course every now and then I need to resort to frozen veggies out of expediency. Mind you, it's spring. Living on seasonal produce will likely be much harder in the winter.

Was the produce locally grown? Probably not. I just don't have time to go to the farmers markets and such, which leaves me with what's available at the grocery. It probably was all trucked in from hundreds of miles away.

The biggest problem of course is having lunch be the main meal of the day. This has been a total failure so far. The kids are in school and I'm working a traditional 9-5, so we can't get together for a big, home cooked dinner in the middle of the day. I suppose I could pack a larger lunch and go light on supper, but somehow that just doesn't click with me.

Still, we're eating a better balance of foods overall with less red meat, and I'm losing weight (veeeery sloooowly). I guess it's one of those cases of incremental improvement, so I'll keep working at it.

Kalendarium Hortense - April

The Kalendarium Hortense was published by John Evelyn in 1683. It contains instructions for what a gardener should do throughout the year. The excerpt below is the list of what is to be done in the "Orchard and Olitory¹ Garden" for the month of April.

Sow sweet Marjoram, Hyssop, Basil, Thyme, Winter Savory, Scurvey-grass², and all fine and tender Seeds that require the Hot-bed.

Sow also Lettice, Purslian, Caully-flower, Raddish, &c.

Plant Artichoke-slips, &c.

Set French Beans, &c. And sow Turneps to have them early.

You may yet slip Lavender, Thyme, Peneroyal, Sage, Rosemary, &c.

Towards the middle of this Month begin to plant forth your Melons and Cucumbers, and so to the later end; your Ridges well prepared.

Gather up Worms and Snails, after evening showers; continue this after all Summer rains.

Open now your Bee-hives, for now they hatch; look carefully to them, and prepare your Hives, &c.

¹ - Olitory: of or pertaining to, or produced in, a kitchen garden.

² - Scurvey-grass: Cochlearia species; a.k.a. Scurvy grass, Scurvygrass, or Spoonwort.