Since a lot of you readers are involved in Living History or Archaeology in some way, this might be interesting for you: Roeland Paardekooper is looking for a discussion about food. Here's his request for submissions:
 

For a BBC program in 1954, Sir Mortimer Wheeler tasted a reconstruction of the Tollund Man’s last supper, which turned out to be a tasteless mush. This led him to announce: "I believe that the poor chap of Tollund committed suicide because he could stand his wife's cooking no longer!"

While archaeology inspired cookery is an important and attractive way of involving the public, it also has some drawbacks. How authentic can we be? What about health and safety? Should we only cook what the public will like? Please discuss the questions and issues with ancient cookery that often arise, either when cooking as demonstration or experiment. Send your reply, between 100 and 400 words to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

And if you like, post your reply in the comments to this post as well - then we can have a second discussion here as well!

There's a conference in planning for 2013 about the connections between material goods from the Middle Ages and Gender. Now that's an interesting topic!

From their website with info about the conference:

The Conference will consider the gendered nature of social, religious and economic uses of ‘things’, exploring the way that objects and material culture were produced, consumed and displayed. Papers will address questions of gender from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, embracing literature, history, art history, and archaeology.
Themes will include:
• adornment, clothing and self-fashioning
• the material culture of devotion
• objects and materialism
• the material culture of children, adolescents and life cycle
• emotion, intimacy and love-gifts
• entertainment and games
• memory and commemoration
• pleasure, pain, and bodily discipline
• production and consumption
• monastic material culture
• material culture in literary texts

 The CfP is open until September 14, and the conference takes place in January 4-6, 2013, in Bath.

Well, I'm too old for this - but maybe it's interesting stuff for some of you?

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies
Volume 8, number 1 (2012)

Call for Papers: General Issue
SUBMISSION DEADLINE for Vol. 8, no. 1: 15 August 2012

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies is a refereed, peer-reviewed, and born-digital journal devoted to the culture, literature, history, and society of the medieval past. Published semiannually, the journal collects exceptional examples of work by graduate students on any theme, discipline, subject, and period of medieval studies. We also welcome book reviews of monographs published or re-released in the past five years that are of interest to medievalists.

Our upcoming issue will be published in the autumn of 2012, and we are now accepting submissions on any topic of medieval studies. Possible topics may be drawn from any discipline: history, art history, archaeology, literature, linguistics, music, theology, etc. Work from every interpretive angle is encouraged – memory, gender, historiography, medievalism, consilience, etc. Most importantly, we seek engaging, original work that contributes to our collective understanding of the medieval era.

Contributions should be in English and roughly 6,000 - 12,000 words, including all documentation and citational apparatus; book reviews are typically between 500-1,000 words but cannot exceed 2,000. All notes must be endnotes, and a bibliography must be included; submission guidelines can be found on our website: www.hortulus-journal.com. Contributions may be submitted to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and are due August 15, 2012. Queries about submissions or the journal more generally can also be sent to this address.