Announcing Historical Foodie Fridays

Epicureanism is a very old philosophy that extolled, among other things, the virtues of pleasure. Too often, history is viewed as a dry and painful intellectual exercise–and I’ve often argued that historical fiction should be fun. It’s not fiber, after all. To that end, I’d like to begin sharing the tastes and pleasures of generations past.

When George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones hit the small screen thanks to HBO, my family made a tradition of cooking some old world dish to enjoy with each episode and it made the experience that much more vivid. With that in mind, I think authors might enjoy creating some recipes or menus that would make a nice accompaniment to their own books!

My own novels are set in the ancient world, in Rome, Egypt, Greece and North Africa, so I plan on sharing delicious Mediterranean recipes that the ancients may have savored. And if you have a recipe to post that evokes the foods available during the time period during which you write, I invite you to post on my blog.

To that end, I’ve set up a spreadsheet. This is how I will be handling all requests to guest post on my site until the end of the year, so if you’d like a slot, sign up now!

(Also, for the historical sticklers out there, stuffed grape leaves may well have been a food that my characters ate during the Augustan Age, but they would not have had the lemon garnish available to them until much later.)

And…Tasty Tuesdays!

As the feature is already so popular, I’ll add more slots for Tuesdays where you can share recipes from your time period.

If you’d like to participate, sign up here on this spreadsheet!