Mosaic of Justinian I and Some of His Court (Byzantine Emperor who tried to reconquer Fallen Western Rome; lived from 483 AD to 565 AD).
BreakfastMuscat Grape Juice Spiced with Aniseed (instead of muscat wine)
Dried fruit
Bacon with Honey
Black-eyed Peas with Honey and Vinegar
Fine Mastic Biscuits Preparation Time: 20 Minutes
No Marinating Needed
Muscat Grapes courtesy of KetaiBlogger
Wine Goblet courtesy of OSCAL
Dried Uncooked Black-eyed Peas
Ingredients and Shopping List:
Aniseed Spiced Grape Juice:
1 glass of Regular or Muscat Grape Juice (Muscat grape were the grapes of choice for this empire. This kind of grape juice can only be bought at home brew wine-making stores. It can't even be bought at health food stores. Its sweeter than the Concord Grape Juice available at the grocers. Muscat grapes are used today to make raisins. The healthiest grapes are grapes with seeds. Grape seeds are very healthy for the immune system).
a pinch of Crushed Aniseed (Aniseed prevents bad breath, aids digestion, and prevents flatulence that can happen when eating beans).
Dried Fruit:
1 cup of Dried Fruit of Any Kind
Bacon:
2 slices of Bacon
1 Tablespoon of Honey (Raw honey is more nutritional than regular honey but should never be fed to children under one year of age, the elderly, or those with a compromised immune system. Raw honey is available at the health food store).
Black-eyed Peas with Honey and Vinegar:
Mastic Biscuits:
1 cup of Bisquick Mix or its generic equivalent
1/4 teaspoon of Crushed Mastic, Crushed Boswellia (Frankincense) or Gum Arabic Powder (Mastic is a Byzantine spice that prevents tooth cavities. Its is available at the health food store. Boswellia and Gum Arabic Powder are cheaper substitutes that are also available at the health food store.)
Equipment:
1 Wine Goblet
Microwave
Wax paper to cover microwaving food
Microwave-safe plate
Microwave-safe bowl to cook the black-eyed peas in
Mixing bowl
Rolling pin or glass
Cutting board or plate
biscuit cutter or top of glass
Oven or toaster oven
Instructions:
Follow the instructions on the Bisquick box, but mix in the mastic at the end of the instructions. Put a little Bisquick mix on the cutting board of plate. Spread it all around. Put a little Bisquick mix all over the rolling pin. Take the dough out of the bowl, and put into a big ball. Roll into a flat circle with the rolling pin. Cut out Bisquick and put them onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 375 Degrees for 15 minutes according the to the Bisquick instructions.
While the biscuits are baking. Cover the bacon with wax paper and put it into the microwave for about 2 minutes and microwave until crisp to your liking. Pour honey over bacon.
Then, in a microwave-safe bowl mix the ingredients for the black-eyed peas, cover with wax paper, and microwave them for about 3 minutes.
When the biscuits are done, you can put them on the plate hot. For a more Greek flavor sprinkle olive oil onto the biscuits, for a more Roman flavor, add butter. (Most Byzantines actually said 'Hello' in Greek, from Greece, but some in Latin, from Rome, because they were their own unique hybrid of both cultures).
Add the dried fruit, the bacon, to your plate.
Pour the muscat grape juice or regular grape juice into your wine goblet. Mix in the crushed aniseeds.
Eat, and you will be transported back to Byzantium for just a few minutes.
Note: The brain food in this meal is the grape juice.
Note: Mastic is the sap from the mastic tree of the Mediterranean area. It has natural antibiotic/antiviral qualities that prevent cavities, cure some peptic ulcers and other digestive system disorders, reduce cholesterol level, and protect the liver. Mastic biscuits can be eaten to relieve upset stomach, but there is little modern research on its effect on morning sickness. It hasn't been shown to be safe for pregnant and lactating women. It was widely used and prized as one of the many valuable spice trade items in the Byzantine Empire. It is still used to make health-food gum today.
Note: Whole wheat Bisquick is healthier than white flour Bisquick, but the rich in Byzantine probably ate white flour biscuits and the poor probably ate whole wheat biscuits.
Note: For a more brain healthy version of this meal, you can include a little yogurt.
Note: The Byzantines started to eat sugar and white flour, more than the cultures before it, even though sugar and white flour were quite expensive then. This move from raw honey to sugar and brown flour to white four was a very bad food choice because the increase in the use of sugar and white flour in history, coincides with the increase of death by stroke in the brain, or heart attack; first for the rich, and then for the poor (when sugar became inexpensive and easy for the poor to get).
LunchMastic Spiced Grape Juice
Chicken and OlivesSalad with Yogurt and Dill DressingGrouta (Wheat pudding with Carob Chips, or Raisins, and Honey) Preparation Time: 20 Minutes - 1 Hour and 15 Minutes
No Marinating Needed
Ingredients and Shopping List:
Byzantine Spiced Grape Juice:
1 glass of Regular or Muscat Grape Juice (Muscat grape were the grapes of choice for this empire. This kind of grape juice can only be bought at home brew wine-making stores. It can't even be bought at health food stores. Its sweeter than the Concord Grape Juice available at the grocers. Muscat grapes are used today to make raisins. The healthiest grapes are grapes with seeds. Grape seeds are very healthy for the immune system).
a pinch of Crushed Mastic, Crushed Boswellia (Frankincense) or Gum Arabic Powder (Mastic is a Byzantine spice that prevents tooth cavities. It is available at the health food store. Boswellia and Gum Arabic Powder are cheaper substitutes that are also available at the health food store).
Chicken and Olives:
1 can of Chunky Italian-style Tomato Soup (or if you can't find that 1/2 can of Vegetable Soup + 1/2 can of dices tomatoes + 3 Tablespoons of Italian Dressing).
1 can of Pre-cooked Chicken
1/4 cup of Green or Black Olives, (green olives are more authentic)
Salad with Yogurt and Dill Dressing:
1 package of Pre-made Salad
1 container of Plain Yogurt
1 teaspoon of Dill, fresh or dried
Grouta:
1 cup of Brown or White Microwave Rice or if you can clean and cook them, wheat berries, or if you can cook it, pearled barley (wheat berries are available at health food store, pearled barely is available at a Kroger grocers, not Walmart).
1 cup of Ready-to-Eat Vanilla Pudding
1/4 cup of Raisins or Carob Chips (available at some Kroger grocers and health food stores)
1/4 cup of Nuts, your favorite kind
1/4 teaspoon of Cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon of Honey (optional. Raw honey is more nutritional than regular honey but should never be fed to children under one year of age, the elderly, or those with a compromised immune system. Raw honey is available at the health food store).
Equipment:
1 wine goblet
1 microwaveable bowl for the Chicken and Olives
Wax paper or microwave-safe lid for microwaving food
1 cup for the dressing
1 plate for the salad
1 bowl for the pudding
Instructions:
If you are cooking the wheat berries, rice, or barley cook it first, otherwise just use the already cooked or microwave rice. White rice will take about 20 minutes to cook. Wheat berries, pearled barley, or brown rice will take about one hour. 3 cups of water to one 1 of barely. 2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice.
Chill the muscat grape juice or regular grape juice about a hour before, or not (since it probably wasn't chilled in the Byzantine era.) Pour the grape juice into the goblet and the pinch of mastic to the grape juice.
Mix together in a cup the yogurt and dill.
Put the salad on a plate, and pour the dill yogurt dressing on the salad.
Mix together, in a bowl, all of the ingredients for the Chicken and Olives cover with wax paper or microwave-safe lid, and cook it in the microwave for about 4 minutes.
Put the Chicken and Olives on the plate next to the salad. Keep the wheat pudding in the bowl. Get the spiced grape juice.
Eat.
Note: The brain food in this meal is the olives and lean chicken.
Note: As the people of India use betel leaves today, the Byzantines used salad after a meal, to help with digestion, and/or settle the stomach.
Note: Mastic is the sap from the mastic tree of the Mediterranean area. It has natural antibiotic/antiviral qualities that prevent cavities, cure some peptic ulcers and other digestive system disorders, reduce cholesterol level, and protect the liver. Mastic biscuits can be eaten to relieve upset stomach, but there is little modern research on its effect on morning sickness. It hasn't been shown to be safe for pregnant and lactating women. It was widely used and prized as one of the many valuable spice trade items in the Byzantine Empire. It is still used to make health-food gum today.
Lenten* DinnerGrape Soda Pop Spiced with ChamomileSweet and Sour Yellow Fish Soup Black-eyed Peas with Honey and Vinegar (The Byzantines were not as avid record keepers as the Greeks and Romans, so it is very difficult to find a Black-eyed pea and honey-vinegar recipe that one can say with any certainty is authentically Byzantine. But history records show that they liked this dish. The best I could find was a modern Greek recipe that may be similar).
Preparation Time: 40 Minutes
20 minutes of marinating required for the Sweet and Sour Yellow Fish Soup
Caution: This meal contains chamomile, Valerian, and spikenard essential oil. Any of these alone can make you very sleepy. Don't drive or do anything that requires alertness after eating this meal. 
Modern Greek-style French Yellow Fish Soup looks something like this -- Courtesy of Stu Spivack
Shopping List and Ingredients:
Soda Pop:
1 can of Grape Soda Pop preferable Zevia, the healthiest pop on the market (available at the health food store).
1 cup of Chamomile Tea
Sweet and Sour Yellow Fish Soup:
1 small any type of gurnard fish cleaned, scaled and trimmed (ask your fish clerk to do this for you)
1 small mullet fish, cleaned, scaled and trimmed (ask your fish clerk to do this for you)
1 pinch of Saffron (Optional. Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, but is famous for giving food a yellow color and unique flavor. The Byzantines were the first to use this spice in food. If you decide to use saffron the strings are better than the powder because sometimes the powder if fake saffron being sold as real saffron. If you decide not to use saffron, your fish stew will be fish stew without it. It will just be sweet and sour fish stew).
3 1/2 teaspoons of Red Wine Vinegar or Pickle Juice
1/2 teaspoon of Allspice
1 Tablespoon of Honey (Raw honey is more nutritional than regular honey but should never be fed to children under one year of age, the elderly, or those with a compromised immune system. Raw honey is available at the health food store).
1/4 cup of Chopped Baby Onion Tops or Scallions
1/4 cup Mushrooms (Still not sure what kind of mushrooms the Byzantines used, please comment if you know...)
1 can of Chunky Italian-style Tomato Soup (or if you can't find that 1/2 can of Vegetable Soup + 1/2 can of dices tomatoes + 3 Tablespoons of Italian Dressing).
1/2 cup of mussels (Very Optional. This ingredient wasn't included in the authentic historic version, but it is included in modern versions. Use only if you have the cooking skill to properly handle mussels).
Salt and Pepper to taste.
Other Optional Spices: 1 capsule of Valerian and 1 drop of Spikenard essential oil (both expensive, and both not available at Walmart or King Soopers -- both will make you sleepy. Use with caution if you have a heart condition).
Black-eyed Peas with Honey and Vinegar
1 can of Black-eyed Peas
4 Tablespoons of Parsley
5 Tablespoons of Olive Oil
3 Tablespoons of Red Wine Vinegar or Pickle Juice
3 Tablespoons of Honey (Raw honey is more nutritional than regular honey but should never be fed to children under one year of age, the elderly, or those with a compromised immune system. Raw honey is available at the health food store).
Salt and Pepper to taste.
Equipment:
1 wine goblet
Microwave
1 bowl for soup
1 bowl to mix the black-eyed peas in
1 plate to put the black-eyed peas on
Instructions:
About an hour before the meal, put the soda pop into the refrigerator, or not, since it was probably drunk warm in Byzantium. When ready to mix 1/3rd camomile tea, 2/3rds to the pop. This drink may make you sleepy.
About 20 minutes before meal, cut the gunard fish and mullet fish into 1 inch chunks and marinate in 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar or pickle juice for 20 minutes.
If you are adding mussels boil them in tomato juice, vinegar, and salt until they open. Throw away the ones that don't open. After they are well cooked add them to the rest of the ingredients in the soup. Be sure to handle them properly because these types of seafood can cause an upset stomach quicker than other kinds of foods, if poorly handled).
Rinse off the fish chunks and microwave them for about 4 minutes.
Pour the chunky Italian vegetable soup into the bowl (or the vegetable soup + the chunky tomatoes + the Italian dressing into the bowl). Add the saffron, allspice, 1 teaspoon of vinegar or pickle juice, and honey. Add scallions and mushrooms. Add the fish chunks. (Add the mussels if adding them). Cover with wax paper or microwave-safe lid and microwave for about 3 minutes. Set aside.
Mix together in a bowl all the ingredients for the black-eyed peas and honey vinegar. Microwave it for about 3 minutes.
Add the black-eyed peas to a plate. Put the bowl of fish soup on the plate. Get your spiced wine.
Eat.
*Lenten means during the season of Lent. The season of Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter when Byzantine Christians often spent their free time in fasting, self-denial, introspection, and repentance. During this season, alcohol was often replaced by soda pop.
Note: The brain food in this meal is the fish.
The Byzantines just didn't record a lot of their activities, they were more doers than recorders, so Byzantine jokes are hard to find. I only found one, instead of an entire link's worth.(Constantinople is the name Constantine the Great gave Byzantium when he moved there).
Jokes and funny stories are not what comes to mind when people think about Byzantium but even so, if you search really hard you can find some. The historian John Skylitzes writes that after a grain shortage in Constantinople the Emperor Nicephorus Phocas tried to make a handsome profit by selling the grain in the Imperial grain stores at black market prices. His greed became the butt of jokes for the people of the city. He wrote down one of them:
Once, when the Emperor had gathered his troops in a field to train them, an old man came and stood among them trying to pass as a soldier. The Emperor noticed that and said to him:
- How can you, an old man, think you can pass as one of my soldiers?
The old man responded:
- Oh, but I'm much stronger now than when I was young.
- How is that?
- Well, when I was young I needed two mules to carry one nomisma's worth of grain, now in your reign I can easily carry two nomisma's worth on my shoulders.
From:http://www.allempires.com/Forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26787&PID=508549
The greatness and wisdom of Byzantium is somewhat forgotten amongst the controversies of the ages. In particular, the controversies surround exactly what Byzantium should be called. Byzantine contemporaries called themselves Romans. They didn't think of themselves as a separate empire from the Roman Empire. After 308 AD, most of them thought of themselves as the Christian version of the pagan Roman Empire and after 1054 AD, they thought of themselves as the Eastern Orthodox Christian Roman Empire. (For the sake of simplicity I will be using AD instead of CE this time).
There are non-Christian powers that don't want it known that the mighty, rich, paragon of success, known as the Byzantine Empire, thought of itself as a Christian Empire. For some reason they don't want it known that a Christian empire was the envy of the entire world for about 1850 years. As result, some US citizen think that the US is the first country where Christians have been notably allowed to worship freely without persecution. But, in Byzantium they had annual parades dedicated to people freely dancing down the streets, singing only Christian praise songs, and they had church services where entire towns of 10,000 people were baptized on the same day.
In the past, there have been Christian powers that didn't want it to be known that Byzantine Empire thought that the Roman Empire never fell, it just moved, and they were what was left of it. They wanted everyone to think that Eastern Byzantium (Eastern Rome) and Western Rome were two completely separate and different countries. They wanted everyone to think that Western Rome was evil, and that's why it fell, and that Eastern Byzantium (Eastern Rome) was good, and that's why it was so rich. Well the pagan Roman Empire did only last for about 500 years, (which isn't very long for an empire); probably in part because of its greed and its cut-throat inhumanity to human beings. Eastern Rome lasted for about 1800 years.
Thus we have this nice little politically correct name for this empire, the Byzantine Empire, which they didn't call themselves. Since we can't agree to call them what they called themselves, the Roman Empire, they would probably rather have us call them the New Christian Roman Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Christian Roman Empire, or something like that. Such names would better lead to the telling of their real story than the name of the Byzantine Empire has.
In fact, history records that, when asked, a Byzantine preferred to be called simply a Christian. On the first day after the Fall of Byzantium, Sultan Mehmed II, the Ottoman ruler who conquered Byzantium, asked the most eminent Byzantine to survive the war, the Byzantine prisoner Genniadius, "Who were the people of this crumbling city, and what exactly was their faith?" Genniadius the theologian replied, "You may not call me a Greek, because I do not believe as those ancient pagan people once believed. You might call me a Byzantine because I was born in this city, but I prefer simply to call myself, a Christian." So they thought of themselves as Christian Romans.
And, these Greek-speaking Romans (Western Romans spoke Latin), these Christian Romans of the Eastern Rome, were quite impressive, to say the least, even though they did have some counterproductive dietary quirks that they have passed down to our generation, (like a bigger sweet tooth than any other empire before them).
So this is what really happened. By 98 AD the Roman Empire was larger than ever before, and it began to have more poor citizens than ever before. It seems it had become just too large to govern. They just couldn't collect enough taxes, from conquered nations, to feed everyone they wanted to feed. In 326 AD, Constantine the Great (or Constantine I), the first Christian Roman emperor moved the capital of the Roman Empire from the Western city of Rome to the Eastern city of Byzantium, in an effort to further unite the empire. He took with him the Roman trade route connections and most of the Roman inventors, but he left behind a succession of emperors who were to govern the Westren European countries from Rome. But, without the trade routes and inventors, these emperors were unable to reinvent their economy, so they remained poor and pitiful, and by 475 AD, (149 years after the move), they lost possession of them, including Rome and Italy, to the Barbarians.
The empire had become so sprawled out that it had barely been able to hang onto some of these counties anyway. And without the trade route connections and inventors that Constantine the Great took with him, countries like Italy were not able to build up enough wealth, or ingenuity, to sustain an effective military. But the Eastern European countries like Byzantium, were quite economically viable without the trade route connections, or the new influx of inventors. So losing the trade routes and inventors made Western Rome too poor to fight off the Barbarians, while gaining the trade routes and inventors just made Byzantium (Eastern Rome) richer.
After the Fall of Western Rome, the Roman Empire (the Eastern part that was left) became smaller and easier to manage. The left behind Western European regions had fallen into the turmoil of; warring Barbarian conquerors, small unaligned rich villas, sparsely populated towns, and then warring city-states. They also consequently fell into ignorance of the Dark Ages. In the meantime, Byzantium (Eastern Rome) and its Eastern Europe countries continued to rise in peace and prosperity, under the Christianized versions of Greco-Roman classical wisdom. They became richer than the Western Roman Empire ever was, without nearly as much wild extravagant living. The quality of life there far surpassed what many had even thought to be possible.
The Renaissance Period of Western Europe set into motion, in part, as a result of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I mustering up the military might to regain some of the parts of Western Europe, that emperors, who were left behind, had lost after the capital was moved. During his Western European conquest, in 552 AD, Justinian I reconquered Dark-Ages Italy from the Ostrogoths (who were a group of Barbarians that had since become civilized). Eventually, centuries later, after the Fall of Byzantium, in 1453, the expert Greco-Roman wisdom of Byzantine scholars (who were refugees that had left for Italy right before the Fall of Byzantium) seeped back into Italy and then from Italy throughout Western Europe. During this time, throughout Western Europe, the expert wisdom and monumental marble architecture of Byzantium replaced the amateur superstitions and wooden buildings, (that sometimes collapsed while still being inhabited), of the Dark and Medieval Ages. Western Europe leaped from being a collection of illiterate multilingual masses to including a small collection of educated, Micheangelos, Leonardo de Vincis, Donettlos, Raphaels, and Dantes. Their ignorant era was over, and the prosperity of the Renaissance was upon them.
Byzantium fell in 1453, when it was sacked by the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire. In around 1379, Byzantium had tried to save itself from the Ottoman attack, that it saw coming, by rejoining the (Western) Catholic Church, (that they had split from in 1054 A.D.), and gaining the military assistance of its medieval Western European Crusaders. But, the Ottoman knew they were trying to do this, and before the rejoining with the Catholic Church could become politically beneficial to them, the Ottoman attacked. When the Ottoman attacked, Byzantium was weak and crumbling shadow of its former self because it still hadn't recovered from the devastating looting, pillaging, and plundering, from 1204 A.D. to 1261 A.D., by the medieval Western European Christian Crusaders of the (Western) Catholic Church. A stunning amount of the resulting loot, that represents only a small portion of the vast wealth of Byzantine, is still held today, at a Catholic church in Venice, Italy. Also, when the Ottoman attacked, Byzantium had been further weakened by from the civil war that broke out, in 1379, over their attempt to seek military aid from the Catholic Church's Crusaders (yes the very ones that had just plundered them in the the first half of the 1200's). Byzantium fell to the Ottoman after only about 57 days of war.
The massive amount of inventing stopped, and eventually the prosperity of what had been Byzantium dwindled, to what is now Southeastern Europe and Turkey, etc... (So, after the Fall in 1453, Christian were granted freedom to worship in order to keep them from successfully rejoining the Catholic Church's Crusaders and overthrowing the New Ottoman Empire, but now, in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), in modern times, Christians no longer are free to worship without express permission from the Muslim government. They are sometimes harassed, they sometime face trails and jail time, and they are sometimes beaten, just for their faith.)
But, these controversies hide the ancient wisdom of theses Christian Romans.
Started by the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, Byzantium had chariot races next to palace, in the Hippodrome of Byzantium, instead of the man-eating lion gladiator sports at the old pagan Roman Coliseum. The inhumane gladiator sports did continue in Western Rome until 536 AD, well after the Fall of Western Rome, even though they were first declared illegal in Western Rome in 399 AD. The emperor and his family attended the chariot races to be with his people, which were seen to be more like his extended family than his subjects (sort of like the Egyptian pharaohs and US President George Washington). Before the move to Byzantium, the emperor unified the empire by issuing his Edict of Milan, in 313 AD, which stopped the religious persecution of all kinds, in all of the empire, east and west. Byzantium (Eastern Rome) took a posture of being a strong peaceful nation instead of a warring nation that had to keep conquering other nations in order to keep collecting enough taxes to survive. Instead, they relied on inventions, and trade to survive. They further Christianized their calendar and holiday, ridding themselves of some of their more inhumane lore. And they simply, by many accounts, became kinder and gentler than pagan Rome, although they were still violent by modern standards. So here some wisdom from Constantine the Great:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
Found Sunken Byzantine Ship
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sFJe4J5Z68
Byzantine Gold Coins, Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibFygagzbMgByzantine Gold Coins, Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ADh3JXCr0MByzantine Gold Coins, Part III
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTH59d9uoQw&feature=related
As far as I can tell, it seems Byzantine women were very modest, and didn't wear much make up, if they wore it at all. If you know different, please comment. There is a controversy about them covering there faces (like Muslim women) before the were conquered by the Muslims (of course being conquered by a Muslim nation the Ottoman, such controversies are likely to occur). As far as I can tell, they really didn't wear their faces covered.
They did wear their heads covered, and Western Roman women did not. They wore head coverings that looked like Catholic nun coverings to various kinds of turbans. Their purses were hidden within the folds of their ankle-length Roman-style-dresses and hardly ever showed.
http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Costume_History/romanesque.htmpfm
