Feast Day

We had our third annual All Hallows' Eve feast last week. This year it was a Renaissance Feast, and we welcomed the Locksley children back to our home. (You may recognize them from our trip to the Renaissance Faire earlier this year.)

Grace at the main table

The toddlers' table

Despite the Renaissance theme our menu ranged far and wide, and we didn't worry much about authenticity. After last year's feast we knew we wanted to scale down, so we limited ourselves to two main dishes that we knew we could cook.

Cooks in the kitchen

Good, stiff mashed potatoes

The menu looked like this:

First Course (Appetizer): Homemade bread and gourmet cream of mushroom soup, right out of the Cambell's can (yeah, we kind of cheated on that one). Lemon squash from the Narnian Cookbook to drink--it's a lot like lemonade, but more bitter because it's made of a puree that includes the peel.

Second Course (Main Course): Baked ham and cottage pie, which is just like shepherd's pie--meat, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and cheese--except that it uses beef instead of mutton. To drink, ginger beer from Ingles.

Third Course (Dessert): Turkish Delight and champagne. Okay, so it was sparkling juice really, but it makes a good substitute.

As the night wore on we also had oatcakes and Halloween candy with hot cider.

We decorated the dining room with wall-hangings and curtains to cover the bookshelves and other unsightly objects (computers, CD's, you know the sort). The tableware was goblets and wooden bowls (which contributed their own flavor to the soup). We did use forks; the Locksleys had to learn how to use them, but they caught on quickly. The food was good, the feast went well, and I may say with certainty that the Locksley children had a lovely holiday.



Previous feasts: last year and the year before that.