Saxon Stuff

Today was supposed to be all about Saxon cooking ...mostly involving barley...
We went to a Home Ed History session a few weeks ago about the Saxons and we always set ourselves some sort of follow-up project afterwards. Such as a trip to see Roman mosaics and the Roman theatre at Verulamium (now St Albans) after a session on the Romans  and some cave painting with natural pigments from the garden after a session on prehistoric peoples.
So we researched Saxon cooking which was hard to summarise except noticing a lot of use of barley so we decided to grind some grain up into flour, using a homemade quern and make Barley Buns but in the end when doing more research online into the Saxons we took a diversion and discovered an amazing Saxon hairstyle called a Suebian Knot..as worn by Germanic warriors of the 1st century and also discovered on bodies of so-called Bog Men (naturally-preserved human bodies found in the sphagnum bogs of Northern Europe which have retained skin, internal organs and often hair).
It was allegedly used to make the wearer appear taller and more awe-inspiring on the battlefield....so we found some styling instructions(!) and without further ado we got the children all Knotted Up and photographed them for the timeline our group is putting together of all that we have covered. But then the hairstyles were making them too warlike and we had to quickly un-Knot them again....! So the Barley Buns are a project for another day since we have now done our Saxon homework!
And today we are now cooking 'Roasted Marvels' from a Jane Sen recipe book which are an old favourite...well with the grown ups anyway...the doubters are having pasta animals (with Marmite)...not many Good Mummy points for that as they had pasta yesterday except that this pasta contains OAT FIBRE!!! So we're hoping that Pony likes oat fibre! We had to hide the box of the chocolate soya milk this morning to make sure she approached it without prejudice as it was a NEW KIND..but we got away with it so we're feeling lucky!
The Roasted Marvels are a kind of filled pepper but not the stodgy kind of old that you ate through your vegetarian years and makes your heart sink into your boots just looking at them...NO these are just lightly filled (not STUFFED!) with a mixture of cherry tomatoes (from our garden as it happens although they weren't actually meant to be cherry ones??) garlic (double), onion, fresh basil, courgette, soy sauce, black pepper and a sub. for the honey in the recipe - we like to use golden syrup.
At the start of the book it says 'There are no recipes for dishes in this book that contain any animal products', but there are several recipes containing honey...JANE! BEES ARE ANIMALS!!.
Although 'More Healing Foods' is a lovely book, apart from the honey issue, I must end here with a warning as the book does contain a recipe on p153 for Date and Malt Loaf which is made with 1lb of pitted dates (arrghh) which I suppose is fair enough since it IS a date loaf but also 1 PINT of Earl Grey Tea...AVOID AVOID AVOID!