Today I would like to extend a warm welcome to Anna Belfrage at my book blog! She is the author of the recently released historical fiction novel, Like Chaff in the Wind and is currently touring with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. After reading her guest post here at Books, Belles and Beaux, please enter for a chance to win a copy of Like Chaff in the Wind. (International giveaway!)
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED -- THANK YOU.
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This post is mainly going to be about food. (I think. My
posts tend to live a life of their own at times. ) I am a food person. Don’t
get me wrong, I’m a whole lot of other things person as well (mainly books
& tea ) but food is definitely a top priority for me, which is probably why
I find it so interesting to discover what people ate back then – you know,
before the advent of basic joys such as ice cream and Feta cheese.
Still life by Willem Claeszoon Heda, depicting a feast most
seventeenth people could but dream about.
As
a child growing up in Latin America, I always found it strange when my parents
sighed and spoke of food they were missing.
"Herring," my father would say. My mother would sigh and nod. Inevitably,
this would lead to a long list of all the foodstuffs they missed, now that they
were so far from home.
It's strange, how much of "home" is defined by food, isn’t it? Milk
abroad never tastes like it does at home, neither does the bread or the cheese
or the… The point I’m trying to make is that should you be yanked out of
context, away from home, you'd definitely miss food! Ask Alex(andra) Graham, my
rather reluctant (if by now reconciled) time traveller; she has a list as long
as her arm of all the edible stuff she longs for.
And
there you are, happy landing on a chocolate bar ...
sang Shirley Temple, her face dimpling into a glittering smile. Except that if
you're transported back to the seventeenth century (like Alex) you can forget
about chocolate. Ha, says the well informed reader, chocolate originates from
Mexico and had therefore already been "discovered" by the Europeans.
Dear reader; I'd like to see you drink a mug or two of this chocolate drink
without having your mouth shrivel into a desiccated raisin. Chocolate in the
seventeenth century was very rare - even in Spain. And where it was used, it was
prepared as a drink so bitter it would make modern day chocolate freaks weep.
In general, anything with sugar in it was rare; sugar was a luxury commodity,
so whatever comfort food the people of the seventeenth century resorted to in
periods of angst it was probably far healthier than what we binge on today.
For
the coffee and tea addicts among us, I have bad news. Coffee was a futuristic
dream outside the larger cities and tea had only recently begun to make its way
to Europe, this thanks to the Portuguese. Not until the Restoration would tea
become a common beverage in England.
Coffee,
tea and chocolate side by side, represented as exotic and new-fangled drinks.
(Philippe Sylvestre Dufour)
But
hey; most of us can live without chocolate, or coffee or tea. Absolutely
(however depressing the thought) but how about a life without potatoes? Pasta?
Pizza? Tomatoes? Oranges and bananas? Avocados - can anyone live without
avocados? Once again, the well informed reader might protest; the Spaniards
came upon both the tomato and the potato in South America back in the fifteenth
century. Yes, they did, but for some strange reason these plants were often
considered poisonous (to be fair, some members of the solanum family are poisonous) and not until the late eighteenth century
was the potato to become a staple crop in Northern Europe.
So
what did they eat then, these people that were deprived of so much of what we
enjoy and like today? Was it all porridge and pea soup? The quick answer to
that is ... YES. For the majority of the population, porridge was the
cornerstone of their diet. And what was left over at one meal was reused in the
next - or the day after. Yummy, yummy; cold, solidified porridge is just the
thing to set your saliva flowing, right? This rather dull diet was complemented
by bread, beer, the odd piece of smoked and salted meat or fish, eggs while the
hens were laying, vegetables such as onions and carrots, turnips, cabbage and
kale - and even more beer. But
mostly it was porridge. Very much porridge.
Alex has days when she daydreams about chocolate
cake, about crisp French fries and juicy hamburgers. She closes her eyes and is
whisked back into a reality containing salads and baguettes, antipasto from
Italy and steaming Thai curries. She opens her eyes, and it’s back to porridge
and rye bread, to an existence where cooking is a long, tedious process with
not a tomato in sight. Does she mind? Of course she does, but given the choice
between going back to her time or staying with Matthew, she would choose her
man any time.
“Dead easy,” she says when I ask her.
“I can live without tomatoes and bagels. I’d die without him.” Her eyes drift
over to where her husband is busy with his horse. She laughs. “God; did I just
say that? Makes me sound like quite the clinging little wife, doesn’t it?”
“Yupp.” I grin at her and she sticks
her tongue out. Out in the yard Matthew laughs, and Alex whips round to look at
him. Her entire body softens, the slightest of smiles tugging at her mouth.
“I guess I am,” she says in a voice so
low I have to strain my ears to catch it. “He’s all I need, all I want, however
hackneyed that might sound.” For some seconds she is sunk in contemplation,
studying her man. His tall frame dips and turns as he unsaddles the horse, the
low winter sun throwing elongated shadows that dance round man and beast. She
calls his name and he turns, breaking out in a smile. Their eyes meet. He
straightens up, places his hand over his heart and mouths her name. Blood
rushes like wildfire up her neck, her cheeks. She throws me a look. “I’ve never
thanked you, have I?”
“Not as such.” Mostly Alex has
harangued me about my temerity in having her torn from her comfy modern day
life to the far more primitive and dangerous existence in the seventeenth
century. I clasp her hand – well, try to; the woman doesn’t exist except in my
head.
“But you know, right? That not a day
goes by without me giving thanks for him.” She leans against the doorpost, eyes
stuck on her husband.
I just nod. “Now, back to this food
thing…”
Alex laughs, a loud bubbly sound that
has Matthew raising his head in our direction. “Not comfortable with the mushy
stuff?” she teases.
“Not unless it’s mushy peas,” I mumble.
“This post is supposed to be about food, okay?”
In
Like Chaff in the Wind, Matthew
Graham suffers the iniquities of being sold as a slave, which has anything but
a positive impact on his diet. Porridge becomes gruel, meat a rare food group
that mostly appears in the guise of salted pork, bread and other baked goods rarely
grace the table, and fresh fruit … forget it! In combination with exacting days
on a tobacco field, it quickly reduces him to a walking wreck, a shadow of his
former self.
Alex,
of course, has no choice but to go after him. She needs her man like fishes
need water, like we all need air. He is the pillar of her existence, the rock
of her life, and without him by her side she fears she will shrivel up and die,
wafting away like an ephemeral dust cloud. And during her perilous journey to
find her man, let me tell you there are plenty of days when she would have
murdered for a Snickers bar – or a Big Mac. Instead, all she got was biscuits
with weevils and – yupp, you’ve guessed it – porridge.
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GIVEAWAY!! THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU.
The publisher has one paperback copy of
Like Chaff in the Wind for my giveaway -- open internationally! For a chance to win,
simply leave a comment with contact information. (No contact information = no entry). One entry per person, please. Winner will be randomly selected and announced April 8, 2013.
Good Luck!
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU.
