Renaissance Festival Food -- Huzzah!

divemasterking2000

Old-fashioned root beer -- is it fit for a king?

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This weekend is your last chance to visit this year's Florida Renaissance Festival in Deerfield Beach. There you can practice chess or archery, watch jousts with live horses, listen to live music, witness artisan glass blowing, be shocked by magicians and humored by actors,  -- and you can eat. But what exactly is Renaissance-inspired food? Bobby Rodriguez, producer of the festival, says that the festival's shepard's pie, scotch eggs, and huge smoked turkey legs all give a nod to real feast food during the Renaissance. You can also try the Queen's buns from bakery ovens, love knots (pretzels), and mead (honey wine), which is a particularly popular Ren-Fest drink.

The festival offers a wide variety of more typical fair food including funnel cakes, hamburgers, quesadillas, soda, cider, and frozen mojitos. You can visit the pub that's on the fairgrounds and toast your friends and family -- or (depending how into it you are), the royal court.

Also, at a vendor known as Sir Munch a Lot, you can satisfy those State Fair cravings by biting into deep fried Twinkies or deep fried Snickers bars. There's also fried green tomatoes and chocolate-covered bacon (gotta get all those food groups in). Visitors who crave sweets can feast on homemade ice cream or visit a candy shop that specializes in homemade fudge.

Rodriguez says his own personal favorites are, "an 18-inch sausage on a stick or a turkey leg with a yard of dark ale."

See for yourself if the fair is "suspended between myth and history" as it claims, or if it's between manageable gluttony and all-out food coma. Hip! Hip! Huzzah!