Sunday 30 May 2021

music for grocery stores

We really enjoyed this ambient soundtrack, via r/ Obscure Media, to accompany one’s shopping list in this 1975 muzak selection Sounds for the Supermarket. The track titles that I suppose match the arc of the hunter-gatherer quest and could be suited to some independent gaming adventure are a bit strange and evocative: Mister Satisfied, Mister Lucky, To a Dark Lady, A Touch of Class, Harvey Wallbanger, Delicate Treasures, Departure, etc.

Tuesday 27 April 2021

the planet on the plate

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are directed towards the announcement of one influential cooking website that going forward (the policy change has been essential in effect for over a year to overwhelmingly positive reception) won’t promote any new recipes with beef as an ingredient—the decision based on sustainability and “not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offender.” Rather than being anti-cow, Epicurious—whom hope others follow—acknowledges that giving up meat alone is not a panacea for our predicament and that in a broken food system, soy, seafood and most everything else is potentially problematic but it’s definitely a start and a signal to the industry at large.

Tuesday 6 April 2021

the antoinette perry award for excellence in broadway theatre

Founded by theatrical producer Brock Pemberton and namesake of the above director, actor and guild administrator who had recently died, the first Tony Awards ceremony occurred on this day in 1947 and are the fourth achievement of a EGOT—someone who has won all four industry honours, with the Emmy for a television role, the Grammy for musical accomplishment and the Academy Award (Oscar) for film.

They are the national equivalent of the UK’s Laurence Olivier awards (originally the Society of the West End) or France’s Nuit des Moliรจres. Held in the Waldorf Astoria, the prizes included a scroll of achievement, a cigarette lighter and an article of jewellery, with the Tony medallions not introduced until two years later. This first class of winners included Ingrid Bergman, Patricia Neal, Elia Kazan, Kurt Weill and the proprietor of Sardi’s restaurant for decades of unstinting hospitality for theatre people.

Wednesday 24 March 2021

kartoffelbefehl

The last of fifteen so called potato decrees, also known Circular-Ordre, was issued on this day in 1756 by Friedrich II to encourage the cultivation (see also) of the food crop in the Prussian provinces addressed to the landholders of Silesia. Spurred on by a famine in Pomerania in 1746, government administers enforced the planting of potatoes for human consumption and for livestock and enlisted itinerant pastors known as “tuber preachers” to monitor implementation and compliance and teach farmers how to grow them and cook them. Reportedly, in order to reduce scepticism and encourage people to eat this strange, New World vegetable by planting a patch of land with them on the palatial grounds of Sanssouci, guarded by soldiers to pique the curiosity of neighbours and farmers, a bit of reverse-psychology and overlooking the pilfering of the potatoes.

Friday 12 March 2021

isogloss

Via Language Hat, we are referred to a cartographic website called mapologies that specialise in linguistic, dialectical demarcation (see also here and here), like the Apfel-Appel line. It was not only engrossing to see the shifting sentiment, etymologies and root languages (like this toasting map of Europe) but also the distribution of use for a certain item or animal, like the multiple Spanish words for popcorn across the language’s Sprachraum, as attested by the saying “No two popcorns are called the same,” unsurprising as maize is native to the Americas but nonetheless the variety is striking.

Monday 22 February 2021

5x5

vanishing london: the Topographical Society laments and documents changes to the city—1900 to 1939 

a murder of crows: a captivating thread about accidentally creating a fiercely loyal avian regimen 

kaitenzushi: a 1948 proposal to move diners from course to course  

genius loci: an investigation into the character Tom Bombadil from the Middle Earth legendarium 

forwarding address: moving a Victorian mansion in San Francisco

Friday 12 February 2021

the one that got away

Via our peripatetic companion, Things Magazine, we learn about a centuries’ old Japanese method that fishermen used as a means of recordkeeping for logging their catch that is still employed though somewhat rarefied as an art form. ้ญšๆ‹“ (gyotaku, from fish + [stone] impression) is a printmaking technique which renders caught subjects as printing plates, brushing them with ink and carefully pressing a rice paper sheet over it. Details about the fish species, location and other conditions were captioned with the image along with an authenticating, notarising seal and traditionally a few gyotaku exemplars were prepared and dispatched to sellers as way of evaluating the quality of the harvest, which could also be thought of a regulatory measure to “brand” stocks and mitigate over-fishing. The detail transferred in the anatomy of aquaculture represents one of the first large scale nature studies.

Thursday 11 February 2021

8x8

penne, named for the nib of a quill: a trilingual exploration of past etymology—see also 

i’m live—i’m not a cat: kitten-filter mishap for attorney’s teleconference is could become this era’s poster image 

so this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause: the honourable senator from Naboo was the deciding vote that allowed the Palpatine to become Emperor as explored scene-by-scene by a group of screenwriters constructing the finest Star Wars story that will be never made
 

opmerkelijke zaken: mushroom bricks, bricks reinforced with plastic waste plus more from the peripatetic Pasa Bon!  

pelagic zone: winners of the 2021 Underwater Photography contest announced 

cosy web: the Multiverse Diary project, a collaboration that celebrates the old school blog and wiki aesthetic for branching out  

pov: Ancient China on Rome, the Islamic world on India and other historical perspectives narrative on Voices of the Past 

uunifetapasta: where the phenomenon of TikTok Pasta came from and where it might lead

Saturday 30 January 2021

pigs is pigs

The Friz Freleng short first released on this day in 1937 relays the seemingly insatiable gluttony of one Piggy Hamhock (Porky’s brother, though last seen in this cartoon) and the hardship it has caused the family.

Falling into a food coma after receiving chiding and warnings from his mother that he needs to reform his eating habits, Piggy has a fugue-like dream that he is lured into the laboratory of a mad scientist, who subjects Piggy to a force-feeding by a tireless machine. Piggy waddles away but on the way out the door, takes a drumstick, which proves too much. Awakened from the dream, Piggy is relieved that he is back home and unharmed but devours breakfast without restraint—apparently none the wiser for his experience. Though Freleng’s cartoon shares the same name it does not tell the same story about a rapidly reproducing pair of guinea pigs whose numbers soon grow out of control from a 1905 Ellis Parker Butler work—which went on to inspire a Disney animation in 1954 and the 1967 “The Trouble with Tribbles.”

Thursday 14 January 2021

munchies

Though one might have the inclination to dismiss these findings as patently obvious, a US academic study shows a correlation between legalisation of recreation cannabis consumption and junk food sales—up to five percent. Whereas most accept that marijuana in itself is harmless if not beneficial, it does have unintended after effects that confirm stereotypical beliefs about smoking. As a counterbalance that rather tips the scales in the opposite direction, there is also as much as a twelve percent dip in alcohol sales found in the same jurisdictions. The snacks and drinks lobby peddled state legislatures with opposing overtures.

Saturday 9 January 2021

refectory

Via friends TYWKIWDBI and Nag on the Lake, we find ourselves transported to the monastic complex of the town of Alcobaรงa, a Cistercian community famed for its gastronomical and vinicultural excellence and founded by Portugal’s first king Alfonso Henriques, which features among its Gothic elements a dining hall whose entrance is preceded with the rather abstruse admonishment: Respicte quia peccata Populi comdeitis—that is, Remember you eat the sins of the people. 

Otherwise perfectly proportion, the communal area has direct egress to the kitchen, which according to popular legend and rather practically, had a door to discourage gluttony, either measured for self-catering or as a monthly check on one’s girth with the passage two metres high but only thirty-two centimetres wide, a model pants-size for many though the cloth and cowl could be quite concealing in any circumstance. Perhaps we are misinterpreting the whole intent of this narrow doorway and it was rather meant to shame those who were not committed devoradores de pecados.  According to current lore, those who could not pass needed to diet until they could sidle and squeeze through. 

Saturday 12 December 2020

sant kaourintin

First bishop of Quimper and patron of the west coast of Breton, Cornouaille (†460)—cognate with Cornwall just across the Channel, as well as of seafood, Saint Corentin is venerated on this day. Considered one of the seven founding evangelisers of the peninsula and counted as part of the pilgrimage circuit Tro Breiz (see link up top), Corentin was living humbly as a hermit, tending a fish in a fountain, which according to legend would offer itself to Corentin, who would take a small morsel for sustenance which would miraculous regrow without harming the fish (depicted in his iconography along with a bishop’s mitre), when as his reputation for humanitarian acts and humility preceded him, he was created bishop at the order of King Gradlon of Ys and dispatched to be concecrated by Saint Martin. Corentin’s companions were Saint Tudy of Trรฉguier and Saint Guรฉnolรฉ, founder of Landรฉvennec Abbey.

Friday 11 December 2020

7x7

repetition: an exploration of built-environments as an audio-visual landscape of infinite regression  

a pigment of our imagination: the illusory nature of colour  

nationally determined contributions: European Union agrees to more than halve its carbon emissions by 2030—via Slashdot 

awesome sauce: a safari-pak of canned-meats from 1967 

road gritters: track Scotland’s fleet of snow-plows in real time by name  

training a generation of future karens: this scholastic kids books series are clearly coding adults as happy and confident with their life choices as monsters and misfits—via Super Punch 

a universe of imagination: revisiting a classic and inspiring documentary (previously) on cosmology on its sixtieth anniversary

Saturday 24 October 2020

8x8

bongo cat: a joyous, simple noisemaker—via Boing Boing  

der orchideengarten: Austrian fantasy-horror revue that prefigured and informed Weird Tales and related properties  

backscatter: spooky, simple photography techniques and visual effects to haunt one’s Halloween picture portfolio 

porto-potty: Austrian postal service issues a special, rather expensive toilet-paper stamp whose proceeds go to charities benefiting those impacted most by COVID-19 

llama glama: a llama-based webfont—via Pasa Bon!  

smitten kitchen: for this US Food Day (made-up as a counterpart to Earth Day but never really took off) a look into the recipe library of Georgia O’Keeffe plus others  

clean up on aisle four: glass-floor of a supermarket in Dublin reveals a millennium old glimpse of Hiberno-Norse history (see also here and here

flags and drums: young brothers in Pakistan play BBC News theme on the table

Wednesday 14 October 2020

i’ll have what she’s having

Waxing nostalgic for the days when we could eat out, Nag on the Lake directs our attention to a series of phrases wait staff may have once (and will have to contend with again, God willing) bemoaned over but are now missing their guests presented on vintage pre-printed dining ledgers.  Click through to check out more graphically enhanced ephemera from Laundry Room Studios.  What familiar inanities and declarations from the before times are you missing right now?





Saturday 3 October 2020

zwiebelzopf

Visiting a small harvest festival nearby held on Germany Unity Day, H and I looked for some autumn accents for the house and found several stalls selling traditional onion braids (Zwiebelzรถpfe). 

Sometimes also incorporating garlic bulbs, the braids adorned craftily with dried wild flowers were not customarily only for decorative and storage, preservative purposes but moreover for the notion that the power of the talisman would stave off illness and harm from hearth and home. Right now we can all use all the help we can muster. Singly, onions were worn as amulets in medieval times to ward off the plague, and a New Year’s Eve custom (divination from onions is called cromniomancysee also) in various regions, especially in the Erzgebirge, called for the dicing of an onion into twelve sections and sprinkling each bowl with salt to forecast the precipitation for each month of the year to come as the moisture drawn out of each section by the next morning would predict that month’s rainfall.

Monday 21 September 2020

empire shops

Though the above euphemism for a colonial goods store (ultramarinos, comptoir des colonies, coloniali), a nineteenth century speciality retailer that sold non-perishable items like coffee, tea, spices, tobacco, etc. as opposed to butchers, bakers and green-grocers, has fortunately fallen out of common-parlance, retained through the 1970s when most former colonies were achieving independence, it is still present, fossilised in some unexpected places, like in the name of our local chain supermarket, an affiliate of the large co-op Edeka, founded in 1898 as E.d.K.—that is, Einkaufsgenossenschaft der Kolonialwarenhรคndler im Halleschen Torbezirk zu Berlin (Purchasing Cooperative for the Traders of Colonial Wares of the Halle Gate District of Berlin), phonetically abbreviated (see also) out of necessity.

Monday 31 August 2020

petit gรขteau

Via the always fabulous Everlasting Blรถrt, we are treated to the highly satisfying comparison thread we didn’t know we needed in English actor Tom Hiddleston juxtaposed with the almond meringue confection macarons (macaroons—French words borrowed into English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were given an –oon ending) that mirror his wardrobe. A macron, on the other hand, is a genus of sea slugs in deference to this other series of comparative images.

Friday 21 August 2020

ๅผๅฝ“

Present /&/ Correct showcases a nice collection of vintage ekiben wrappers—a portmanteau of the words for railway and bento boxed meals (้ง…ๅผ).
The latter came from a Chinese term meaning convenience and around since at least the thirteenth century. Though there was a decline in quality and artfulness of these prepared snacks for train passengers with quicker journeys and the increased popularity of flying, ekiban are seeing a revival as on onboard food option and have since been at least offered as take-away fare inside stations, department stores and airports. Given this longevity (prior to the age of transporation), these boxes are bearers of a lot of culture, expectations and performance and several other specialty types have been developed, including shidashi—a catered meal ate a social occasion like a wedding or a funeral, kyaraben—a bento meant to resemble a favourite cartoon character, and a shikaeshiben (ไป•่ฟ”ใ—ๅผ)—that is, a revenge bento, where the preparer uses the boxed lunch to get back at the recipient by writing confessions or insults in the food or by making it inedible or possibly poisoned.

Saturday 1 August 2020

hlaf-masse

From the Anglo-Saxon for “loaf mass,” Lammas Day is celebrated in some parts of the northern hemisphere on the first of August, Lammastide falling halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, by bringing bread to the church made of the first fruits of the season to be used for communion. Traditionally, members of the clergy reciprocally made a procession to local bakeries to bless them as a profession (it is a good reason to bring out ye old breadmaker) and is a syncretism, substitution for the Gaelic festival to herald the beginning of harvest time called Lughnasadh (Lรบnasa, Lรนnastal, Luanistyn) readopted by practitioners of Celtic neopaganism.