Of Fools and Pineapples

Dear Reader, I woke to a Monday dusted with snow and I huddle up with coffee and the lovely blanket that my friend Amy over at Crochet Hon made for me, whilst adding the finishing touches to a dystopian cover I’m making for a client.

Hubby is making scones and scents of orange marmalade on newly baked bread invade every nook and cranny. Good food is central to human well being, and it’s also something that I allow a great deal of space for in my novels. I scour through 18th and 19th century cook books, drooling at some of the recipes, being repulsed by others.

Here’s an original recipe from ‘The Accomplisht Cook’ , R. May (1660) for Norfolk fool that I served my characters in ‘Oaths of Affection’.

To make a Norfolk Fool.

Take a quart of good thick sweet cream, and set it a boiling in a clean scoured skillet, with some large mace and whole cinamon; then having boil’d a warm or two take the yolks of five or six eggs dissolved and put to it, being taken from the fire, then take out the cinamon and mace; the cream being pretty thick, slice a fine manchet into thin slices, as much as will cover the bottom of the dish, pour on the cream on them, and more bread, some two or three times till the dish be full, then trim the dish side with fine carved sippets, and stick it with slic’t dates, scrape on sugar, and cast on red and white biskets.

Personally, I much rather eat than cook, but maybe I can persuade hubby to make it. Maybe I can bribe him with a poem… or perhaps the promise of not writing one will be more effective.

Dear Reader, I am sure you can tell what an accomplished writer I am by the rhyme I made the other day: “Honey, honey, little fart, you are so dear to my heart…”

Hubby wasn’t impressed. What? It was cute!
No? Well, here’s a haiku instead then.