About_Me

God Ye Good Den Sweet Lords and Ladies:

Welcome to the Current Middle Ages portion of The Questing Feast. Here in you will find recipes appropriate to our play. Some are of great and boring authenticity; others are designed to be delicious while producing the appropriate allusion. I hope you will pop back now and then and watch it grow.

A Bit of History:

When I came to my first event, back in AS III, there basically was no attempt at extending what we did to food. There were costumes and there was the fighting, of course, and there were two pavilions; that of House Havn and that of House Eastmarch. My father was an amateur historian and a gourmet, however his period of preference were “The Classics.” However, with his help and knowledge, we began work and by the time I went to my next event, my picnic basket was replete with whole grain bread, pasties, homemade pickles, little cheese tarts and Banbury cakes.

Things proliferated and soon I was preparing 12th Night and other feasts for the populace of the West Kingdom with the aid of a plethora of eager young people; many of whom are now renowned peers of the land.

I became inactive somewhere around AS X and have only just returned. My event of reentry was Beltane AS XLV as the guest of their Excellencies, Earl Kevin and Countess Patrice. And so here I am again, jumping in with both feet.

My credentials to speak on this subject:

During my absence I became a published cookbook author, food stylist and food photographer. I also began working on an independent studies program on the “The Origin of Cuisine” with encouragement from Professor Carl Sauer in the geography department at Cal Berkeley just prior to his death.

Since then I have taught classes on the Origin of Cuisine at the University of California Extension in Berkeley, at the California Academy of Sciences and at the Oakland Museum. I represented the West Coast of the U.S. at a seminar on the origin of regional cuisine hosted by Christ Church College, Oxford, England. I taught workshops on Western U.S. cuisine at the International Food Fair in Dijon, France and I was invited to host a seminar on Elizabethan Dining by the Folger Shakespeare Library.

My studies have lead me more towards the dining habits of the lower and middle classes Medieval/Renaissance period than that of the upper classes. I soon became tired of reading rehashed versions of “The Forme of Cury,” “Delights for Ladies,” “Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books,” “The Good Housewife's Jewell” and Gervase Markham's “The English Hous-wife.”

Having the great good fortune to for a number of years been able to travel extensively in The British Isles and Europe I began searching for other sources of information. As a result I discovered that, if you know where to look, even the lower classes were impassioned record keepers. In village churches I found records of what was served at village Fiets, weddings, wakes and local saint’s day celebrations. In guild halls there were detailed accounts of the meals served at guild functions; for food, wine and ale. I was even fortunate enough to have been allowed to peruse the old record books in some country manor houses of the obligatory feasts served to their agricultural workers at traditional holidays like May Day and Harvest Home. I have drawn more on these references for my work than of the standard publications, for I found the foods of the country people far more interesting. I hope you will enjoy what you find here and gain perhaps a bit of a new perspective on the art of feasting in the Current Middle Ages.

I thank you for your interest

Mistress Geraldine of Toad Hall, Baroness Bufo

OL, OP, OGP, AA, OWS, QoG

Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Society for Creative Anachronism may wish to visit The Current Middle Ages and find out what it is all about.