Tuesday, December 16, 2008

A MEDIEVAL YULETIDE FEAST


The small, private school my younger daughter attends had their
annual Christmas event on Sunday night. It was a Medieval Yuletide
Feast and set in the 12th century. The schoolroom was decorated
and changed into a castle complete with bearskins and flags.



The school is vegetarian, so those of us that supplied the food had
a bit of a challenge coming up with traditional foods that would have
been served back then--but without meat. And to add to the fun, 
we were eating without any utensils since they hadn't been invented
yet in the 12th century!

These were "Boar's Heads" made from red cabbage, radish noses and olive ears. The inside was scooped out and filled with dip for the surrounding vegetables. You can see the bread behind it and to the right some of the Plum Puddings that I made. They were supposed to be flaming, but how do you flame something that you can't put alcohol on????


Here we are served the infamous wild Tofurkey (tofu turkey for the uninitiated), Wild rice complete with feather and Herbed salad. We also feasted on  "meat" pies, nutballs in sauce beef barley soup without the beef and drank hot wassail.

My daughter "Lady V" getting ready to sing her solo, What Child is This?


The kids all juggled colorful scarves for us while we ate. The Yuletide Feast was the time for the lord of the manor to reward his people with the best food and best entertainment.


Here are all 6 students entertaining us while we continued to eat and eat. We were told that in the 12th century we would have had the option of throwing rotten food at the entertainers if they didn't please us.


The kids served us all the food and did a fantastic job!



The kids researched their ancestry and made flags depicting their family's coat of arms and crests. This is my daughter's flag that she made. The yellow represents the viking side of my family, the blue represents the shield side of my husband's family.


A lot of hard work went into preparing the classroom to look like a 12th century castle.


We were entertained by many talented musicians dressed in colorful costumes from the period the kids were studying. The trumpet player was actually inside the turret where you see the little window. When we all sat down to eat he popped out and started playing.

A great time was had by all and I think these kids learned a great deal about the Medieval Period!



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Soooooo cool.

Laura ~Peach~ said...

how cool is that!

To answer about mom and christmas... they have a huge christmas party where family brings in gifts and if able are there to spend time with... they provide gifts for those without family, they have a big christmas lunch (lunch time is always the big meal of the day there) and of course mom spends alot of time on the phone. She gets depressed but physically she is unable to go out to anyones homes if she were invited to go... Dewayne (the guy who used to rent her basement) goes everyother week to see her and brings her food and he will be going there with gifts and food for her. My Aunt goes each week if she is able to get out, the ice storms up there right now are keeping her inside unless one of her kids or grand kids come to get her she is 76 and does not need to fall on the ice... nope that would not be good.
anyway mom will complain alot and I will feel for her but this is one of the many things totally out of my control and one that is 100% following her wishes... we tried for years to get her to move down here where she would be closer to us but she did not want that.

By the way thank you for asking mikes family rarely asks and he gets angry at them for the lack of caring... but like all things there is more to that story.... HUGE HUGS Laura

Debbie in CA : ) said...

grand idea on someone's part. i looooove those boar-head dip bowls. we were vegetarian for 10 years -- never bought tofurkey.

Tracie said...

Lokks like a lot of fun glad you had such a great time.

Tracie

Janette said...

What a great party! Fun school!

Anonymous said...

Tell her this was so awesome! And if I had attended, I would not throw rotten food! I am sure her solo was wonderful. Thanks for sharing this neat evening.