Ancient Egypt Feast

I decided to cap off our holiday weekend with an Egyptian feast. We are enjoying our study of Egypt in homeschool, and I was pleased by the amount of help I got in planning and executing this fun event. Since the feast came at the end of a long weekend, and at the tail end of August's budget, I had two main objectives: to keep it simple, and to make it frugal. So, there was nothing particularly elaborate, and we didn't agonize over authenticity.

The menu, which ordinarily would be the crowning jewel of a feast, was actually very simple. My boys are pretty picky eaters, and I couldn't afford to prepare a bunch of fancy foods that I knew they wouldn't eat. Ordinarily, I would take the opportunity to prepare something new for them to try, but in keeping with the "fast and cheap" theme, we kept the viddles bare bones. I found a recipe for an Egyptian chicken marinade on the Internet. (Recipe at bottom of post.) Although fish was the main staple of their diet, the Egyptians did have some poultry, and I knew that would go over well in this house. I satisfied the "fish" requirement by serving shrimp cocktail. Nile shellfish. :) We also had beans, bread, both fresh and dried fruit, and red "wine" in the form of Tiger Woods Gatorade. I feared they would turn their noses at the date cookie recipe that would have cost me ten dollars to make, so I embraced the hokey and served a pyramid made from Fig Newtons for dessert instead! We did eat everything with our fingers, but I bent the rules and let us sit in chairs for our meal.

Dressing up was a big hit for the boys. I wrapped strips of bleached muslin around their waists and secured them with a few safety pins. They made necklaces by covering pieces of cardboard with aluminum foil, gluing sequins on for "jewels", and stringing them on yarn. I also painted heavy eye make-up on them, which was tradition then for both men and women in Egypt.

We had three activities at our feast. First, we made a Senet board game and printed instructions from the Internet on how to play. Then, I printed a Sumerian word find from my Story of the World Activity Guide and we had a contest to see who could find all the words first. Lastly, we had a mummy race. We had two teams. Oma and Hannah ("The Sphinx-ettes") had to wrap Hayden into a mummy, and Buzzard and I ("The Nile Wrappers") had to wrap Max. Oma and Hannah were the first to empty their toilet paper rolls, but their mummy had bare knees. This was definitely a highlight for the boys.

Sometimes I am tempted to skip homeschool projects because I want to make them into such a big deal that they become intimidating. Our feast was a good reminder to me that the boys are certainly old enough to have a say in the planning, and that keeping it simple means that they can do more of it themselves (and therefore learn more), AND it is less stress on me. Good times.

Ancient Egyptian Chicken Marinade

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2T cumin

1/4 white onion, grated

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 t cayenne pepper

1/4 t black pepper

1/2 t salt

Marinate chicken tenders for several hours, then grill.