Renaissance Pleasure Faire programs

After three years, it's once again Faire season! In honor, these are all the programs I've saved from every Faire I've attended, though for 2016 I turned up just as it was closing but they still gave me the program... I'm very much looking forward to hopefully attending this year! 🙂

Update: I attended! 😁

(I had one, but lost it, so luckily I found this one...I went on the 17th)

Well Met review

  The Renaissance Faire—a 50 year-long party, communal ritual, political challenge and cultural wellspring—receives its first sustained historical attention with Well Met. Beginning with the chaotic communal moment of its founding and early development in the 1960s through its incorporation as a major “family friendly” leisure site in the 2000s, Well Met tells the story of the thinkers, artists, clowns, mimes, and others performers who make the Faire.
  Well Met approaches the Faire from the perspective of labor, education, aesthetics, business, the opposition it faced, and the key figures involved. Drawing upon vibrant interview material and deep archival research, Rachel Lee Rubin reveals the way the faires established themselves as a pioneering and highly visible counter cultural referendum on how we live now—our family and sexual arrangements, our relationship to consumer goods, and our corporate entertainments.
  In order to understand the meaning of the faire to its devoted participants,both workers and visitors, Rubin has compiled a dazzling array of testimony, from extensive conversations with Faire founder Phyllis Patterson to interviews regarding the contemporary scene with performers, crafters, booth workers and “playtrons.” Well Met pays equal attention what came out of the faire—the transforming gifts bestowed by the faire’s innovations and experiments upon the broader American culture: the underground press of the 1960s and 1970s, experimentation with “ethnic” musical instruments and styles in popular music, the craft revival, and various forms of immersive theater are all connected back to their roots in the faire. Original, intrepid, and richly illustrated, Well Met puts the Renaissance Faire back at the historical center of the American counterculture.-Amazon review

I've had this book for a good while now, and would recommend it for anyone want a comprehensive history of the faire and a good read for off faire days when you're missing it!

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: circa early or 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