SC - Re: coronation menu (long)

[Audrey Bergeron-Morin]

Olwen wrote:
>By the looks of the menu reciepts, how in the heck did anyone stay 
>thin?  One bite of each?

Walking, walking, walking, and more walking. Want to go somewhere? 
Most likely you walked. Even nobility did a lot of walking. Few 
people could sit around on their duff (well, maybe if they were 
Scottish :-)

And at a huge feast, most people didn't eat all the dishes, just the 
ones that were near them. And often only small amounts. If you look 
at late Renaissance portraits - when painters are actually painting 
from life - you'll see that most of the notables are not fat - a few 
here and there, and England's Henry VIII is famous for, uh, living 
large, but most people didn't do a lot of sitting.

Also meals - from what i can tell, they tended to eat two per day, 
and perhaps a snack or two. And those feasts whose recipes we so 
often use, were not necessarily daily fare. So probably they ate less 
and moved more than we do. Additionally, i'm guessing that meat 
animals were not as fatty as those we have now that have been bred to 
be big and put on weight fast.

Anahita
who still needs to read those books on Medieval eating and feasting 
and fasting such as:
"Holy Feast & Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women"
"Feast & Fast: Food in Medieval Europe"
"Food & Feast in Tudor England"
any other good ones?