Food History

I am having the most fun you can have and still call it work. I only got in a few minutes ago and am still all abuzz. It may be the chocolate we ate for dessert, of course, or the coffee I had afterwards, but mostly it’s the food and the company. The food is the bit you’ll want to hear about.

Tonight was the last of the tests for the Regency Gothic Banquet. Our consensus is (the main testing team and myself) that if the hotel accepts the menu as is, it will be a very special evening.

The soup was delectable and the meat frabjous. The salad was just as delightful as the first time round and all of the accompanying dishes worked rather well.

The moment I get the final recipes in modern form from the various cooks, I can put the menu together with the recipes and my diagrams of the table setting and it’s over to the chef. Vegetarians and coeliacs will have plenty to eat. No recipe has been bastardised to reach this stage. Life is just very good :).

I’ll post the menu when the chef has made his changes (hopefully small) and you can see for yourself what we’ve been eating. Then you’ll have to wait until October, when you’ll get all the recipes. Then you,too, will be able to sigh at the simple pleasures of the table.

The other thing I’ve done tonight that’s rather late eighteenth century in feel is read the latest issue of New Ceres. I was the initial creator of the world they’re using for the online magazine and the new stories are rattling good reads. I keep telling people that it costs less than a cup of coffee and a piece of cake to read the new issue. My favourite story is by Lucy Sussex. If Lucy has written a bad story I have yet to discover it - she is one stylish writer.

I do adore the New Ceres universe. I imagined it through food, of course, and the food on the planet is life or death. This issue is more about love and death on the planet, and how the secret police handle illegal technology. The food is there, in my mind, just as a draft New Ceres high society menu is sitting on my computer, waiting for me to finish the chapter of my New Ceres novel. While I work on other things, the project gets more exciting and better writers than I am develop the world in different directions. I had to mention it tonight, though, because the coincidence of writers doing amazing things using my foodie planet while I work on this Regency Gothic Banquet for an SF convention is just very amusing.

food history, recipes tests, SF writers, Conflux, Regency Gothic, banquet, New Ceres