Weekly Wrap-Up -- Hectic, Crazy, With an Elegant Finish

What a week!  I knew it was going to be busy going in: two birthdays (a birthday luncheon for a dear friend AND Tiny Girl's ninth -- I cannot believe it -- birthday); two meetings; a doctor's appointment; Girl Scouts troop meeting chez nous; book club; kids club at church; two cars in the shop at separate times; a visit from my folks for the big birthday; our usual activities; delivering Girl Scout cookies; and other things I know I'm forgetting.  Then the hot water heater blew, leaking water all over the garage and finished basement.  Himself stayed home from work that day and got to know our wet-vac really well.  Ergo, we only had about two and a half days of lessons this week.

The highlight, however, was BIG.  Another homeschooling family, who also happen to be great friends of ours, invited us to a medieval feast.  We all dressed up and dined sumptuously on period delicacies.  Jennifer, who is a trained chef, researched the recipes on the Godecookery.com website.  Here's the menu of what we sampled, complete with their medieval spellings:

• First course: Lombard Soup, Shrymps with Sauce Gingyuer, Eles in Grave, and Tart de Bry
• Second course: Bake Metis, Conys in Hogepoche, Buttered Wortes, and Mushroom Pasty
• Sweets: Frytour Blaunched, Apple Muse, Perys in Confyte, and Gyngerbrede

I found everything delicious; the children had their favored dishes and their not-as-favored dishes.  My girls opted for chicken over the rabbit (conys), but I tried rabbit for the first time and thought it was tasty.  In case you are wondering, Jennifer substituted tilapia for the eels.  The gingerbread was quite different from what we expect nowadays; it was more like a sticky candy than a cake.  The meat pie featured ground veal and pork with dried fruits, a combination new to me.  And the pears in confit were my favorite.

After we dined, the children treated the adults to a play.  The plot was sketchy at times, but the swordfighting, which was abundant, was exciting.  The evening was the perfect wrap up to our medieval studies!