There is more than one time of year that makes my taste buds start to stand at notice. One of these is when the turning leaves signal that it’s time to start cooking all those hearty soups and stews and baking warm apple pies and pumpkin specialties. It is a time for cider and donuts at the local Cider Mill as well as hot dogs and hot coffee along side of the local high school football field. It is also the time of the year when there are Renaissance Faires in my area, bringing a whole other set of interesting food choices.
Growing up, whenever we had a carved turkey, the dark meat (specifically the leg) was always the last thing to go but when you go to a Renaissance Faire suddenly this is a food to covet. It just seems right. There is something appealing about any food you can eat at the Faire that doesn’t require utensils. And I think there is something very primeval in our nature that yearns for an excuse to eat food like a caveman. Hence there is many meats sold on a stick in addition to the turkey leg.
The food at the Renaissance Festivals varies a lot and can be anything from great to ordinary. You can usually find one of my favorites, the bread bowl, but sometimes the soup inside is something from a can and other times it is really good homemade chowder. It is a gamble the first time you order it but if it is good you can count on coming back for more next year.
More often than not, the food that is served at the Faire is just a normal item with a Renaissance name. I can understand this, after all they cater greatly to the family crowd and most children are not adventurous with their food. They want pizza and chicken fingers. They do not really care if you call their wings “dragon wings” and their fries “French Fryes” but those of us adults that attend appreciate at least pretending that these things might have been available in merry old England. Of course, Ye’ Olde in front of any food makes it authentic period fare.
One of my favorite items at a Faire I often go to is Jester Chips. Jester Chips are a long, thin, spiral cut potato fried crispy like a potato chip and although I have seen them elsewhere they are hard to find so I indulge when I can. I like to get those items that you can’t find everywhere to make the experience seem more special. At a couple of the Faires I have attended they have a theme food item sold through out the land. I have not been able to figure out the historical significance of the giant deli size pickle but you can get them at the Faire. I will have to check with a culinary anthropologist on that but my guess is that pickling would have been a popular form of preservation in times when refrigeration was not prevalent. That’s my answer anyway and I’m sticking to it. But, I never saw anyone in a Shakespeare play chomping on a fat deli pickle.
Historically, again I need my culinary anthropologist, I suspect the bulk of what they ate on a regular basis in the Renaissance times would be quite unpalatable to our modern day tastes. I suppose it wouldn’t earn the Ren Faire people much return business but in Ye’ Olde days they ate a lot of foods that were near rancid and would certainly never turn down a piece of stale bread. They did not have that luxury. I wonder sometimes with the economy being what it is currently if we might soon not have that luxury either.
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