The women's ties to the show don't end there. On a page of their blog labeled Dear HBO is an appeal: "Nothing in the world would make us happier than having a cameo on the show. We're thinking we could bring a certain pigeon pie to a certain wedding in season three/four."
In June they'll get close, when they head to Comic Con to meet the Game of Thrones cast. They're most excited about Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, but Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) also get points for hunkiness.
Though their interest in the show remains a constant, their ardor for its food hasn't. For more than a year now, Lehrer and Monroe-Cassel have subsisted almost entirely on Westerosi fare."We have to eat it because we can't afford not to," Lehrer says. She admits to being a bit burned out. Sometimes, she says, while their housemates are enjoying the spoils of their labor, they sneak out of the kitchen. "We go hide in the basement and eat a slice of pizza," she says.
After cutting the meat from the pig's face and filling the skull-shaped sugar mold with custard and pomegranate seeds, it comes time to dispatch the eel. Lehrer takes it out of the freezer, where it's been sitting for two days, swathed in a paper towel. She plonks it on the counter and gingerly peeks inside.
"Oh no, blood!" she says, noticing a splotch of brownish goo trickling from the eel's gills. Blood, Lehrer has learned, is a sure sign that whatever creature she's cooking hasn't been gutted. She looks stricken.
"I'm going to cry," she says, looking stricken. "I don't want to."
"Oh, Sariann," Monroe-Cassel says. "You can do it."
Lehrer dives in. "I'm definitely in anatomy mode right now," she says, slitting the eel from throat to tail and divesting it of its intestines.
"Off with its head!" Monroe-Cassel says.
"This is obviously a group effort," Lehrer says, and cuts.
A Feast of Ice and Fire: the Official Companion Cookbook | Bantam | May 29 | 220 pages | $35
