We've been immersed in Ancient Rome over the past few weeks. When Ruth and Pete at Myers-Insole Local Learning CIC asked us to cater for their company's 10th anniversary they made a request that we cooked vegetarian Romano-British food. Loving a challenge, there followed several weeks of research into what food was available and how it would have been cooked. Admittedly we imagined that the clever Romans would have smuggled a few amphorae of olive oil and olives into Britain but we were amazed at how you could trace modern Italian food back to many early dishes and how delicious they were. Around sixty guests tucked into the spelt and flat breads and pulmentum or relishes at the anniversary celebrations at Hamilton House in Stokes Croft. This week we're cooking many of the recipes with year 5 at St Michael on the Mount School. We'll be sharing with them some of the fascinating facts that we found out, including that Romans had their own fast food restaurants called 'popinae' which served takeaways of sausage and fried fish. The above photo shows 'placenta' - cheese and honey pies being 'built' by year 5 at St Michael's.