Thursday, November 04, 2004

Eat! The Trouble With Blood

Like many Americans these days, I fancy myself a fairly adventurous cook. And I've produced some (overly) ambitious stuff in my cramped kitchen, like quail in rose-petal sauce and chicken livers and eggs in aspic. So when ARCHAEOLOGY asked me to fix up some ancient menus, I figured, no problem. I'll hit up the Greeks and the Romans and that will be that. But I had no idea what I was getting into. Because it turns out Apicius, first-century A.D., isn't the unchallenged king of the ancient culinary world, after all.


Get the recipes here! Please do not send us any turnips in blood. We get those around the corner at a Tunisian deli and we're sick of them.

Drink! Cathedral revives beer tradition

Canterbury Cathedral is reviving the ancient monastic tradition of making beer available within its precincts.

The Kent cathedral is selling a bottled bitter which is made by local brewer Shepherd Neame according to a 300-year-old Kentish recipe.

Canon Richard Marsh said beer was made on site by the monastic community in Canterbury between 1100 and 1538.

He hopes Cathedral Ale "will remind people of the fun and friendship of a visit to the cathedral".


Be buried! Loggers uncover Caddo's oldest cemetery

A cemetery that holds the remains of many notable pioneer Caddo Parish families, long swallowed up by dense woods just west of Greenwood, has been revealed by nearby logging _ exposure that has historians and archaeologists worried.

The Whitworth-Forest Park Cemetery "is very important for several different reasons," said cartographer Gary Joiner, who visited the site on behalf of state archaeologists and plans at least one more visit before submitting his report.

"This is a family cemetery from the very early 1800s. This is a pioneering family cemetery. These people were out on the west edge of Louisiana, before Shreveport was even a town, and when this was the western boundary of the United States. At the time it was established, this was perhaps the westernmost cemetery in the United States."