Roman Villa -- Reconstructed for you... MooPigFowl Barbecue, Apicius, and Bog Butter

Ancient FAQ -- You are what you eat?


We journey East from Texas, to the boot heel of Italia; make a left and go 5 hours at 120 km/h to Roma; then head to all the ancient evidences that people lived before us.

MooPig has a logo that is a pig inside a cow. It is irritating for many reasons. The commingling of farm animals that are slaughtered for our protein... well mixing pork and beef might make some of us gag. That is the point, though. You have a difficult time getting that image out of your head... no?

Ahhhh... so we made you look. Good!

In our secondary researches we cross many odd things like our selves, as I am sure you too find solace that you are not alone in your downlow existence. MooPig is not alone in its unfathomable state of symbiosis that is probably a smorgasborg for trichinosis.

Here is the reason for our hog hardheadedness; our reason for existence -- well documented in this little resource site: [clik HERE] Roman Villa -- the Reconstruction.

Please note in the eating arrangements it is not unlike the current bedroom community setup we have in USA. Look especially at the banquet demands placed on itself by the rich elite.

Food for Rich Romans

There weren’t very many rich Romans. Most people were poor. But some rich Romans were REALLY rich and they liked to show it by having a lot of slave cooks make them very very fancy dinners, and then inviting a lot of their friends over to eat with them. They tried to serve food that was unusual or very expensive or very difficult to make.

In fact, these things were more important to rich Romans than food that tasted good! We know about rich Romans eating whole plates of peacock tongues, for instance.

"One complicated meal involved stuffing a chicken inside a duck, then the duck inside a goose, then the goose inside a pig, then the pig inside a cow, and cooking the whole thing together." [YIKES!!!]

Sometimes they would send slaves running up into the mountains near Rome to get snow, so they could have slushies even though there were no refrigerators!

Rich Romans liked to use expensive spices that traders brought from thousands of miles away. Cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and cloves came all the way from India.

We know some of the recipes rich Romans liked from a Roman cookbook written by a man named Apicius in the time of the Roman Empire .... Apicius’ cookbook still survives today, and you can find some of his recipes online...

Food For Poor Romans or Ancient Germans: BOHEMES !!
Food is one of the most important ways that people can show what group they belong to: we eat this kind of food, and our enemies, those people over there, they eat some other weird kind of food that we wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

The Germans and the Romans felt just this way about each other's food. Romans drank wine with their meals, and used olive oil to cook with and as soap and shampoo and moisturizer. But Germans drank beer with their meals, and used butter to cook with and to clean themselves with too, even though the Romans said it made them smell funny.

The main reason for this was that the hotter, drier climate in the south made it possible to grow grapevines for wine and olive trees for oil, but in Germany it was easier to grow grain and there was plenty of pasture for cattle as well.

So people drank beer, because you make beer out of barley, and they ate butter, because butter comes from cows' milk. Probably the Germans also ate more milk, cheese, and meat than the Romans did, because they kept cows.

This may explain why Romans like Tacitus describe the Germans as being larger people than Romans: they had more protein in their diets while they were growing up.

French people, who tend to be small, are always telling me that the reason Americans are so oversized is that they drink too much milk when they are children.

Crocks, coolers, dishes

"Our peatlands are a history book. Peat is renowned for preserving the organic and inorganic remains of settlements, including tombs, farms, trackways, implements and bog bodies. Perhaps lesser known is its ability to preserve environmental information in datable deposits of pollen and volcanic ash. This information is of international significance and could possibly assist in predicting future climate changes (Environment and Heritage Service)."

Bog butter is famously ancient butter found buried in centuries-old layers of Irish peat, in wooden containers. Although archaeologists aren't sure of the reasons it was buried, it shows that the people who made it knew it must be packed away from contact with air, and kept cool.