Love 'em and Libum
Ho ho. A little Latin humor there. In an uncharacteristic attempt to be like one of those homeschooling Catholic mommybloggers who posts pictures of beautiful craft items or baked goods, accomplished by her well-groomed eight children in an immaculate house (wearing clean clothing even) between their studies of Latin and medieval history, as a tie-in to our whirlwind tour through world history we have baked Roman libum.

Libum is a kind of hard-baked mini-cheesecake, flavored with bay leaves and soaked in honey. The photo here shows exactly how they came out in my imagination. I would have taken a photo of how they came out in actuality, but "cheesecake soaked in honey" was a phrase ensuring their demolition shortly after their existence was announced. I am pleased to say that Middle Girl did all the work except the putting-into and taking-out-of the oven, which partially accounts for their less than photo-perfectness. The lack of crucial culinary details in the recipe, which came from Calvert's workbook accompanying Hillyer's Child's History of the World, was also an element. But really, there's not so many ways you can combine ricotta cheese, flour, egg, and honey (and one bay leaf) that will not be popular with the populus.

Note: The Calvert workbook is really quite good, the first half being fill-in-the-blank outline pages for each CHOW chapter, and the second half being a wide variety of auxiliary activities designed for those with no instinct whatever for craft/activity tie-ins. At $33 new, I found it was worth the $17 I paid for it used.