Imagine, one morning you wake up in an unfamiliar place. You wake up not in your home, but on a straw mattress in a cold, almost bare room. You wake up in Europe in the year 1250 AD. You are in a middle class home in the Middle Ages. Having little knowledge of the medieval culture, you may have a few questions. What do I eat? What do I say? What do I wear? What do I do if I get sick? What do I do for fun? Going through a day in a foreign time and place can be difficult. However, knowledge of on the food, vocabulary, clothing, medicine, and recreation of the medieval will help you through a day in the Middle Ages.
             After waking up in your unfamiliar setting, the first meal you will get is breakfast, served after morning mass. This is a small snack that consists of a hunk of bread and some ale or cider.1 After breakfast, dinner is served sometime between ten o'clock and noon. This is the largest meal of the day. Supper is another light meal served near the time of sunset.
             The table at a meal is covered with a tablecloth that has on side reaching all the way to the floor. This is the side where places are set, the extra cloth is used as a napkin. Instead of plates, day old flat pieces of bread, called trenchers, are used. Hollowed out pieces of round bread are also used as bowls. Each person also has several knives, each knife used for different foods. A spoon is placed between two trenchers. There are no forks. Between two trenchers, there is also a two-handled bowl filled with soup or stew. This is shared by the two people, as are a cup and the spoon.
             Before dinner, everyone is expected to wash their hands. This is just one of several manners you should remember to follow. A lot of the manners are similar to courtesy that is expected today. Such as, no talking with food in your mouth, no elbows on the table, no belching, and no wiping your mouth on your sleeve. Others are more unique ...