Welcome to the kitchen, where you will find feast documentation and research, and a few random recipes.  Some research notes and comments may accompany the descriptions.

The Feast of Saint Patrick - 14th Century English, 3/17/01.  This was my first feast.  I worked entirely from modern recipes provided in the cookbooks.  At this time I was able to verify that the modern recipes were reasonably accurate.  There is a single French dish in this feast, which could probably be expected at this time in England.  The title links to the recipe book; the menu and introductory notes for this feast are in separate documents.

Encampment at the Castle III - 15th Century English, 6/21/03.  For this feast I worked entirely from reproductions of period sources.  The recipes came from either Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks or Curye on Inglysh.  This feast was produced on a site with no kitchen facilities.  There was electricity available.  The kitchen was constructed from a 10' x 20' garage tent.  Several large charcoal grills and a wood fired hot smoker were used for the preparation of the meat dishes.  Most other cooking was done in electric roasters.  Pies and baked goods were done during the previous week, and arrived on site cooked.

Encampment at the Castle IV - Cæna Bacchatio, 6/19/04.  This feast was taken primarily from Apicius, The Roman Cookbook.  This dates it at about 200 CE.  This feast was produced on the same site.  By this time I had a 90,000 BTU professional camp stove.  The charcoal grills were used, but not the smoker.  As with the 15th century English feast, baked good were prepared in advance.

Encampment at the Castle V - 15th Century German, 6/18/05.  For this feast I worked from translations of Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin and Das Buch von Guter Spise.  There is a single recipe from Apicius because I could find no German mustard recipe.  This feast was produced on the same site with no kitchen facility.

Encampment at the Castle VI - 7th-9th Century Anglo-Saxon, 6/17/06.  There was no period source material available for this feast.  The dishes and menu were based on archeological evidence, literary references, and what was known about the eating habits of the Roman culture that preceded them and the Germanic cultures that followed.  Much of this feast was devoted to reproducing the ceremony involved in the Anglo-Saxon feast.  Much of the research material came from A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food Processing and Consumption, and The Mead-Hall, Feasting in Anglo-Saxon England.  Again the feast was produced without a permanent kitchen.

Encampment at the Castle VII - Russian, 6/22/07.  This was not a true period feast.  Many of the dishes are mentioned in the Domostroi and most of the recipes came from A gift to Young Housewives written in the latter part of the 19th century.

Encampment at the Castle VIII - 17th Danish, 6/21/08.  This feast was drawn from the only known available Danish cookbook near period.  Koge Bog was printed in 1616 and as such is not technically period, however it is quite likely that the dishes in the resource were being prepared before 1600.  Good news for this feast was that the site changed; bad news is that it's just as primitive.  We still had to build the kitchen.