Hello everyone!

Just wanted to update you all to let you know that A Feast of Folklore is one step closer to being in your hands. I have completed writing it and submitted it. This means that editing and the other stages of getting a book published can begin. I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I have had in researching it. There were almost too many folklore food facts to fit into the book…

Hello!

Just wanted to let you all know that A Feast of Folklore has reached its crowdfunding target. I cannot thank you enough for all the support you have given and without you it would never have happened. Everyone at Unbound has been incredible in helping this book get over the line. 

Now it is time for me to put all the research I have been gathering from old books of folklore to good…

Hello!

It has been a little while since I last posted an update. Please forgive me. I fell a little ill last year but thankfully I’m back up to full speed and ready to get to work on this book – which may be soon as we have just crossed the 90% mark on the crowdfunding! Thank you so much to everyone who has pledged!

I thought I’d have a little look at some of the folklore cures that people have…

Hope everyone is making some pancakes tonight.

Here are a couple of tips from British food history to make the day even more festive!

First when you toss your pancakes make sure there are real consequences to messing it up. It used to be that whatever happened to your pancake you had to eat it. Yes, from the floor. Yes, even if you had to wrestle it from the mouth of your dog. As one folklorist…

Hello all!

It is cake month. At least it is according to the Anglo-Saxons. They called February “Solmōnaþ” – meaning something like “Month of the Hearth Cakes.” These were cakes that were baked on the hot stones around the fire. The Venerable Bede writing in the 8th century said “Sol-Monath can be said to be the month of cakes, which were offered to their gods.” If you lack gods of your own who…

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone is ready for Christmas and has stocked up on food. You might, or might not, like to try this bit of foody folklore to get your party started.

It used to be a tradition to hide a dried bean and a dried pea to the fruit cake to be eaten on Twelfth Night. Whoever got the slice with the bean in was crowned the king of the feast, and the pea decided who was the queen…

Looking through old books of folklore I found a few references to witch cakes. If you do a quick search online your likely to find cakes covered in lurid green icing and a little woman in a pointed hat. But the witch cakes made in the past were just a bit different - and probably not ones you'd want to eat.

One of the first mentions of witch cakes comes from the Salem witch trials. When the young…

Hello All!

Thank you everyone who has supported A Feast of Folklore so far. It really means a lot that so many people seem interested in the topic!

While I’ve been working on this book I seem to keep coming across food being used in folk medicine. In the past people must have used anything they had to hand to ward off illness and obviously food was easy to get. But did any of it work? In the…