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I have evil cohorts.

In the years when Women's History Month had a vast array of glorious online activities, I begged bribed and extorted to get my cohorts involved. We had some amazing discussions, as historians and editors and fiction writers and feminists and various other odd bods came together and talked women's history (and it's all still online, somewhere - what a worrying thought).

One of the most dedicated of my cohorts (and more medieval than purely evil) is Elizabeth Chadwick, novelist extraordinaire. And lo, here is her bright new and shiny blog, complete with picture of William Marshall (deceased): http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/

Go ye forth and annoy her! Just don't tell her I sent you.

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Here is a pretty picture: http://expositions.bnf.fr/gastro/grands/130.htm

Note the size of the chickens (I am assuming they are chickens) and the size of the loaf of bread (I am assuming it is a loaf of bread, too, just because rash assumptions are the order of the day). Now think of the average supermarket chicken. If you buy a kosher chicken then maybe a smaller-than-average one (on an unrelated note, when I was in my teens we used to buy our kosher chooks from "Eat More Kosher Poultry", and they were *enormous*). Also think of your average loaf of unsliced bread.

I look at the picture and posit possible changes in breeding and cooking habits and eating habits. Easy enough and the stuff that historians who look at the culinary side of thing like to do. No sweat.

I do wonder, however, what those changes mean for an historical novelist. If our modern writer of things around 1500 used that picture as inspiration for a dinner scene would she (or he, let me be fair) demonstrate internal agitation by having the diner rip apart a whole chicken with his hands and devour it with the whole loaf of bread? And in writing this scene, how do they indicate the *size* of the chicken and bread without spoiling the drama of the image or breaking the fiction of being in the past?

And to conclude (and I am teaching-deprived - sorry), here is another pretty picture: http://expositions.bnf.fr/gastro/grands/131.htm

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When you have all finished laughing at me, try this link: http://www.nd.edu/~medvllib/daylife/tac1995/80r.html It is the third link I forgot to post in my last entry, but referred to in my comments. I suddenly feel very absent-minded (either that or stupid, take your pick).