A Literary Feast

Since the Flyers didn’t make the playoffs, HBO has given me a reason to live through the next two months: season 5 of Game of Thrones premieres tonight at 8:00 p.m. Hats and horns! I hear rumours that the plot diverts from the novels this year, which it pretty well must, as the fifth book was published in 2011, the show has been roaring along, and the sixth book is still pending. I’ve also heard that GRRM has stepped away from the TV series to focus more intently on getting the darned novel done, and has blessed the show’s producers to take the story where they will.

Ter and I are planning our annual Thrones feast for the first episode. This year it’s honeyed chicken and buttered veggies, with frozen blueberries with sweet cream for afters. The recipes are taken from A Feast of Ice and Fire, a way cool book even if you don’t cook because it features quotes from the written series. The cookbook’s authors – foodies and chefs themselves – pored through the first four volumes (Dance with Dragons hadn’t been published yet) in search of meal descriptions and set out to create “real” versions of the fantasy food. Turned out that much of the fare in GRRM’s books has reasonable facsimiles in history, so the cookbook includes both the historical and modernized versions of each recipe. Lazy bum that I am, I find many of the modern versions too labour intensive, so the sweet cream for the blueberries is actually a medieval custard known as crème batard, or “bastard cream”, which is ironic considering that it’s a dish served at the Wall, where Ned Stark’s illegitimate son is in residence.

Okay, this post may be too specific for a non-Thrones reader. To recap, one of my favourite shows, based on my favourite work of one of my favourite authors, resumes tonight and I am there. Oh, and the Wall I mentioned? In the novels, it stands seven hundred feet tall, built of ice and snow to keep the terrors of the northern wilds at bay (a fantasy version of Hadrian’s Wall), but believe it or not, there is also a Wall here in Victoria. It stands about seven inches tall and is made of brick. It’s where I have coffee with my wee sister and my boy sister every week; last Thursday, the wee ’un emailed BS and me: “I might be a bit late today; can I just meet you guys at the Wall?”