Feast Thoughts

Lady A'isha and I are cooking the feast for the Harvest of Souls on October 14, and I am being importuned to announce the menu. Well, well. Announce the menu. I suppose I should do that.

The theme of the event, it appears, is the Seven Deadly Sins. Further, I was asked to reprise something I've done for two previous HoS feasts, an aphrodisiac theme. So let's see here. The Seven Deadly Sins are:

Lust
Gluttony
Greed or Avarice
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride

Typical foodstuffs that the medievals would have thought arousing:

Fruits: pomegranates, figs, quince, peaches, perhaps apples.
Vegetables: onions, peas, carrots, asparagus, truffles.
Herbs: myrtle, marjoram, vervain, rosemary, mint.
Spices: nutmeg, saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, juniper.
Seafood: (almost all seafood is good!) oysters, lobster, scallops, anchovies.
Meat: steak, rabbit, lamb, boar.
Fowl: birds of all kinds.
Nuts: hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, almonds.

And, of course, honey.

What kind of dishes will we have to have for a feast? Some delicacies for the table to begin and a subtlety to end. A salad, a soup, a chicken dish, a meat dish, some sort of seafood dish, some veggy dishes (I like to be in the 30% - 50% range for dishes vegetarians will eat).

How many dishes? Seven sins suggests seven dishes, but this is a little low for a feast. Double it? Whew. 14 dishes is a bit much. Maybe if we count some low prep dishes.

These are my initial thoughts, more shortly.