> Life in the 1500s: (or "The Good Old Days")
(I rearranged the comments so as to respond to the ones I am interested in
first)
> Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid
> content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food. This happened
> most often with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes... for 400
> years.
Tomatoes came from the New World, and so were not generally available in
the 1500s. Europeans thought that tomatoes were poisonous because the
plant is clearly a close relative of nightshade (it's true - don't eat
the leaves!).
> Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood
> underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the
> pets...dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs lived in the
> roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip
> and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs."
I can see cats, but dogs? How would a dog get from the roof to the ground
and back? Most ordinary people had working breeds of dog, which are large
and heavy, likely to collapse the roof.
> The cooking was done in the kitchen in a big kettle hanging over the
> fire.
When did the switch from cooking outside to cooking in a kitchen occur?
Presumable kitchens were not practical before the chimney was invented,
sometime in the time period of 1200-1500.
> Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in
> May and were still smelling relatively good by June. However, they were
> starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide their
> body odor.
If people thought that they needed more baths, why didn't they take them?
Especially if you were getting married? The romans took alot of baths,
so the concept wasn't new.
Off topic Brian
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