Eat, Drink, and be Merry essays

Eat, Drink, and be Merry essays In a time of no forks, many spices, and wooden plates, the people of the middle ages loved their food. To them food and drink were not only a necessary part of life but also a form of entertainment and a good excuse to get together and socialize. Even though they had knifes and spoons, the forkless civilization tended to use there hands and "fingers a great deal" (Food). They also used wooden plates, or sometimes day old bread as plates when meats were served in order to soak up the blood from the meat. As for preparing the meals, a big rule to medieval cooking was to add so much spice to completely mask the original flavor of the food. Many of the spices that they used are still used today. For instance, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, saffron, and even sugar was a spice and a treat for them. Since social status determind how will the people ate, lords were fed very well. This was true all through out the year, including the winter, when meat was scarce and crops were not growing. Infact, meat was apart of their daily diet "principally beef, followed by pork and mutton, with game and poultry [last]" (Singman) drinking ale and or wine with their meals. They also had dairy and vegetables, but they were not favored. The upper class could afford to preserve meat year round and could buy spice for tasteless food or food that is about to go bad. As for the peasants, or lower class, it was the opposite. Meat was really was pretty expensive and was not rally apart of a peasants diet. Their main food was grain, rye, oats, barley, beans, and peas, since wheat was also relatively expensive. With their meals they usually had ale, or some sort of juice, sometimes fermented. They also a had a soup called "pottage." The villagers ate pottage "nearly every day" (Hinds). The basic ingredients to this "meal-in-a-bowl" (Hinds) is sprouted barley grains, peas, salted pork or bacon, onion, garli ...