Food History

I think I might have given the same recipe in two quite separate posts. This is the result of pure tiredness. Rather than do a careful check and delete a post, I will leave it and give you an extra post now. Writing is easier than careful cross-checking.

No biscuits and scones to replace the possible duplicate (though I’ve still got lots of recipes and mentions in literature I haven’t posted yet), but some thoughts on what food the tired ought to eat. Maybe thinking about foods that create alertness will help.

Using Medieval foodways as a guide, fatigue might be due to an imbalance in the humours or a body overburdened by … whatever. I’m not at all certain what bodies get overburdened by. Anyhow, if it’s overburdened, you want light food and a cleansing diet acording to Medieval theory. Things like fennel that help purify the system. Or hot pepper that warm it and help drive impurities out. And you want a hot bath strewn with appropriate herbs.

If you want to use food to balance your humours and create more energy, it becomes more complicated. If you have an excess of sanguinity (my face is red, maybe that’s the problem with me?) you want cooling food. Cucumbers, perhaps. Cold cucumbers, straight from the refrigerator.

Using food as an aspect of medical treatment was not uncommon in the Middle Ages.

We do it today. Especially when we’re tired. Food and drink as instant cure-alls. Different medical principles, same urgent desire to get some energy back into a fading day.

Sometimes we eat energy bars for the calories or the fat or the instant glucose kick. Sometimes we drink energy drinks for the sheer glucose kick. We use them as proof of the correctness of medical theory the way people did in the Middle Ages except - instead of the humours - we look to restore vitamin levels and feed ourselves minerals and amino acids and tricksy herbs with useful side effects.

I’m not a doctor, but it looks as if a vitamin drink with lots of minerals and guarana, accompanied by an iced cucumber salad should do *something*. If it doesn’t kill me, you’ll see me tomorrow, hopefully more alert.