Happy Holidays 2014!

'Tis that time of year yet again fellow Rennies...Christmastide and the new year along with plenty of family, feasting and fun. Here then is the annual music post with some festive tunes to help add to the mood. Enjoy, and Season's Greetings!

Happy Valentines' Day!

Some Celtic Love Songs courtesy of AccuRadio...enjoy, and may today be a great one! :-)

Historical Disney Princesses-Pt. 1

The wonderful artist Shoomlah has made some pictures of Disney Princesses with more historically accurate depictions of their most well known outfits and the results are fantastic! Take a look below at the ones most appropriate for this blog, and don't forget to check her out and show her some love!

Maid Marian

Maleficent: early to mid 1400s

Sleeping Beauty: circa 1485

Snow White: 16th Century Germany

Happy Holidays to all my fellow Rennies out there! Wishing you and yours the merriest of seasons and remember: we're getting all that much closer to faire time! :-D Here's my post for some Celtic holiday music...enjoy!

Medieval/Renaissance Cooking

I have discovered I have an affinity for cooking...I thus far have 8 books on various topics as well as 6 based on drinks. I love the idea of cooking foods of bygone eras, though admittedly, it can be a bit harder to find some of the ingredients needed. I also have to be in the mood to put in the time and effort lol. I recently added the wonderful blog Inn at the Crossroads, which is dedicated to the food mentioned in the popular "Game of Thrones" series, to the links page (so be sure to check it out!), and they have put out a cookbook that corresponds with it. I've tried only a drink from there (which proved to taste quite interesting), so I can't say how I found some of the recipes, but a majority look very good. Should you want to try your hand at a culinary time trip, I poked around Amazon and found a nice selection of cookbooks, some of which they say delve a bit more into the historical aspect of food in that era. There's probably more than I can hope to own that I've listed here, but hopefully there will be a few beneficial to folks out there, and who knows, I may be able to add some to my collection one day...per usual, should you try any of these, do share how it went!

• Cooking in Europe, 1250-1650
• Medieval Celebrations: Your Guide to Planning and Hosting Spectacular Feasts, Parties, Weddings, and Renaissance Fairs
• Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks
• Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony
• To the King's Taste: Richard II's Book of Feasts and Recipes Adapted for Modern Cooking
• The Medieval Kitchen: A Social History with Recipes
• The Medieval Cookbook
• Food & Feast in Medieval England
• Medieval Cookery: Recipes and History
• Food and Cooking in Medieval Britain ~ History and Recipes
• Food and Cooking in 16th Century Britain: History and Recipes
• All the King's Cooks: The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace
• Food & Feast in Tudor England
• Tudor Cookery: Recipes and History
• To the Queen's Taste (Elizabethan Feasts and Recipes Adapted for Modern Cooking)
• Sallets, Humbles & Shrewsbery Cakes: A Collection of Elizabethan Recipes Adapted for the Modern Kitchen
• Shakespeare's Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook
• The Shakespeare Cookbook
• Dining With William Shakespeare
• Cooking with Shakespeare

And, of course:

• The Unofficial Game of Thrones Cookbook: From Direwolf Ale to Auroch Stew - More Than 150 Recipes from Westeros and Beyond
• A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook

Happy Holidays 2012!

Huzzah and a very happy, festive, and safe holiday season to you and yours! To help keep the spirit going, here's last year's post with links for some music...enjoy!

My Story Series

Dear America goes rennie! Well, kinda...seems like the folks over at Scholastic UK were inspired by our series and have not only published a few of the ones we have, but have made their own. The series is called "My Story" and like Dear America are presented in diary style. They run from ancient Egypt to the 20th century, but here I shall present to you the ones set in the Medieval and Tudor Era...I hope to get my hands on them sometime soon as I am a big fan of the Dear America books:

Catherine of Aragon (1501) (aka My Tudor Queen)
Anne Boleyn and Me (1525) (or this cover)
Or you can get them in one book called Tudor Stories for Girls
Henry VIII's Wives (1536)
Lady Jane Grey (1547)
Bloody Tower (1553) (or this cover)
To Kill A Queen (1583) (aka The Queen's Spies)
And a few for the guys:
Viking Blood (1008) (or this cover)
Agincourt (1415)
Armada (1587)

Happy Reading! :-)