M'lords, ladies and gentlemen... dinner is served

Remember that Greens Party ceilidh back in Feb? Well I got chatting to the organisers (as one does) and they mentioned that for their next fundraiser, they wanted to do something really different: a medieval feast.

My heart soared - these are my kind of conscientious hippies!

Did they want helpers? I enquired. "Yes please".
And recipes? I don't have many books here, only those I've bought in the last 12 months, but...

what???

I was in.

Best of all, they'd found a thatched hall, with original oak timbers thicker than my head (and that's saying something!). Ironically, I'd been to a yoga class there just weeks earlier, and said to my friend Lynne 'I have to run a feast here one day... it would be so great!'

Re-enactors reading this will understand - this was hard, hard work. Regular feasters are used to cooking dinner for 50-80 people, and know that it needs long hours, lots of preparation and abundant cookware. Cooking for Greens people is always a bit more challenging, because 50% of people are vegetarian, there are always a handful of vegan, gluten-free and/or other allergies/dislikes/intolerances.

In 14 dishes, we catered for them all. Herbed cheese with nuts and dried fruit. Mushroom pasties, fried fig and onion pastries. Stewed rabbit (or lentils) in sweet and spicy red wine sauce. Roasted goat (or chickpeas) with pepper sauce. Asparagus. Chaals' infamous 'jazeer' carrots. Spring greens with nutmeg. Pear tarts and almond cream. With the exception of some soy cheese and gluten free flour, we did the lot using period ingredients (although some of the pagans might have baulked at having to request a 'lenten' or 'pious' diet when asked if they would be feasting or fasting... teehee!).

I am forever endebted to Kats and Mina, complete strangers to me at 4pm, who worked tirelessly in the kitchens, along with Aly, Ants and other people whose names I never knew. To the jesters who kept folk entertained when the carrots took forever to cook and our awesome MC, Bob. And to the abundance of birch, rubarb, elderberry and other exotic wines, sourced (almost) locally from Banbury. Ask Anthony about them - he held down the bar for a while... and by the end of the night was holding it up too! Last thing before sleep, he was giggling something about teaching children how to swordfight between refilling his glass. I think that means he had a good time.

The applause of 70 satiated diners as we bowed to "Lord" Matt at the end made it all worthwhile...

If you're interested, it looked like this... http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z27/alyd_photos/

We were barely recovered on Sunday night when we had to pull our fingers out for a gig at the Folly. Actually, Ants wasn't recovered, but he fronted anyway, for our first gig with Jules Dickinson, a local teacher, composer and guitarist who we've gotten to know of late. He's opening up a whole new world of material that I'd never have tried to sing otherwise - Sandy Denny, Joni Mitchell. Cool. The punters liked it too...