Jiffy Soup Reminder

Published on by

There are ~60 Jiffy Soup recipes made with combinations of different soups, or basic canned soup jazzed up a bit collected and indexed here.

Guide to Daily Reading | 4/6/20

Published on by

Today, in 1909, Commander Robert E. Peary reached the North Pole!

I am trying to figure out where I can get my hands on the other 22 volumes of The Pocket University readings, either digitally or in crappy old book form.

LibraryThing has the complete list:

I’ve clicked on a few, including the one containing today’s GDR, and get nothing. Part of the issue is that there are multiple editors and apparently no series editor.

Bookfinder probably has them all, but each shows up as a separate entry under the editor’s name, or “author not set.” The volume I’m looking for today is The Pocket University Volume XVI.Part 1. Autobiography,Greatest Americans. Only one search result. $22. Others have more hits, but are generally similarly priced. It is not in my nature to spend 22 X ~$20 for some crappy old books.

Enough about me & my woes.

As I cannot find today’s Daily Reading, “At the North Pole” by Peary himself, we will turn to a Dear Old Friend, Our Wonder World: A Library of Knowledge in Ten Volumes Volumes Four Exploration, Adventure, and Achievement (1914) for …

Holy Moly! In 1893, Mrs. Peary gave birth to their daughter, Marie Ahnightio Peary at the headquarters Peary had established at Bowdoin Bay.

That’s North America, flipped

Mrs. Peary, it should be said, was as devoted as her husband, and he owed much to her willingness to share in privations which few women have under gone.

Isn’t that most always how it goes? He & She.* Except for you slackers that cannot form pair bonds. But then, you slackers never staked a portion of a satin American Flag at the North Pole, did ya.

*No apologies to our– that would be Mr. Big Food’s and mine– same sex couple friends. You are not slackers, IMHO. Pair bonds & all.

It’s Drudge Work Monday, Y’all!

Published on by

Here are some Housekeeping Hints from Heloise (1962) to help you cope with your homemaking chores.

CUT DOWN ON SWEEPING. “It is not necessary to sweep under your beds every day. Who is going to look under your beds? Save your energy … never waste it.”

BRIGHTEN UP THE BATHROOM. “Now, about washing the tub. Use your broom to do this. Wet the tub and sprinkle cleanser in it. Let the water drip slowly and your old kitchen broom will do the rest.”

QUICK TRICK. Put one of two old socks over the end of a yard stick. Secure with rubber bands. Presto! A tool to clean cobwebs from ceilings. “This is not nearly as tiring as holding a heavy broom.”

QUICK TRICK. Use a mascara brush to clean “those delicate, intricate designs on silver pieces.”

SATURDAY’S A GOOD WASHDAY. “The children are home then and can help with it. Teach your children to help hang up the clothes.” Comment: For you youngsters, she’s talking about hanging clothes on a clothesline to dry in the sun.

MORE. “Never iron a dish towel.”

And with that, I shall take my leave and go vacuum, make U.S. Senate Bean Soup I, and get started on baking two loaves of Potato Bread.

I miss Stuppy, our robot vacuum.

Guide to Daily Reading | 4/5/20 | Jackpot!

Published on by

Born this day in 1834, Frank R. Stockton.

Frank Richard Stockton (April 5, 1834 – April 20, 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children’s fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century.

That Infallible Source
I direct your attention to the lower left hand corner.

That is my table of crappy old books about crappy old books. A great many are on the subject of children’s books and authors. Let us begin.

From The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (1995) we learn that his stories and fantasies for children were collected and published in three volumes. The most famous of which, based on other resources, was his (1887) Bee-Man of Orn and other fanciful tales. Interestingly– or sadly, I haven’t read any of the actual tales yet– he had a quite successful comic novel for an adult audience, published in 1889, and abandoned the kids.

His name is included in the Index to Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends Second Edition (1926). Five collections are listed. I am not sure just what would possess someone creating an index to include the current price of a book, but I am not living in 1926. The five volumes listed range from $.60 to $3.50.

As an aside, let’s consider what an enormous effort it must have been to create the Index, especially the first, 1915, edition. It is a bibliography of titles, and secondarily of authors. It’s over 600 pages! The Preface itself– detailing the particulars of the entry scheme– are fantastic!

Finally, at least in terms of my own library, Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger” is included in The Family Book of Best Loved Short Stories (1954), so he survived for a time.

GDR 4/5/20

Stay well and keep reading!

To the bottom of a most pressing matter

Published on by

Last evening I said,

If you, like me, like poking around junk stores

Covered Casseroles post

I then posted the question, “Should that be ‘as I’?” Concluded it should, and awaited SueK’s response.

SueK agreed, “as I” and offered a rephrasing. I feel as if (!) we should get to the bottom of this, and so we will consult our two favorite authorities on all things grammatical, John C. Hodges (Harbrace Handbook of English, 1951) and William R. Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style, 1951).

From the Harbrace Handbook:

Like, as, as if. Use like as a preposition, not as a conjunction. Use as or as if as a conjunction.

WRONG It looks like it would rain. RIGHT It looks as if it would rain.

WRONG Do like I do. RIGHT Do as I do.

RIGHT He worked like a man.

More from The Elements of Style:

Like. Not to be used for as. Like governs nouns and pronouns; before phrases and clauses the equivalent word is as.

Like has always been widely misused by the illiterate; lately it has been taken up by the knowing and well-informed, who find it catchy, or liberating, and who use it as though they were slumming.

Strunk

“… as though they were slumming.” Awesome.

Sunday Travels | Endless Roaming

Published on by

I’d like to recommend you take a look at Dave Kings’ blog, Endless Roaming. In his own words, Dave is an

AUSTRALIAN TRAVELLER THAT LOVES TO “ROAM” OUR GLOBE, CREATOR OF ENDLESSROAMING.COM SHARING THE EXPERIENCE THROUGH WORD AND PHOTOGRAPHY. CURRENTLY RESIDING IN MY HOME OF NEWTOWN SYDNEY BUT HOPE TO BE BACK ON THE ROAD LATE 2020.

He (re)posts three travelogs every afternoon. They are delightful and his photographs are stunning. Wonderful getaways!

Enjoy!

Covered Casseroles

Published on by

<short rant> F*ck you If It Doesn’t Give You Joy Today Chick</short rant>

So. If you, like me, like poking around junk stores, you will have come across abandoned sets of dishes with not the right number of plates and an over abundance of covered casseroles.

Who serves things in covered casseroles these days?

Well. In the Year of Our Lord 2020 when we prepare meals in the Kitchen of the Big House and transport said meals via decorative trays to the quarantined residents of the Apartment, Covered Casseroles come in right handy.

I mean. FFS. (Pardon my language.) Slap a hunk of pot roast and gravy in one covered casserole, put the lid on. Gently place a vegetable soufflé in another, dose with gravy, put the lid on.

I am not kidding. I never, in my wildest TEOTWAWKI dreams thought that Covered Casserole Dishes would be so important.

Guide to Daily Reading | Catching Up

Published on by

Let’s just power through a few days all at once. I’ll not do too much research on any one.

3/31 Andrew Marvell (born 1621), John Donne (died 1631). I cannot remember what took me away from this, and it’s a danged shame I didn’t get back to it. Of course I know what happened! It was Tuesday. I must have intended to get back to it after supper. Marvell was especially interesting. He was a lyric poet and friend of Milton. I found him in the crappy old book, A Restoration Reader (James Holly Hanford, ed., The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis. 1954). This of course threw me into a tizzy to learn more about the Restoration– restoration of the British Crown after Cromwell. Fascinating period. Good Book, too.

The readings from Donne were: “The Dream”; “The Will”; “Death”; “A Burnt Ship.” It’s Donne. I’m sure you can find them in any crappy old English Anthology you have laying around.

4/1 Agnes Repplier (born 1855). Under Personal Life, the very first thing that infallible source mentions is that she was a heavy smoker. WTF? This would have not been worth the effort, IMHO. Reading: “A Plea for Humor.” Anyone who has to plea for humor is probably pretty humorless, again, in my humble opinion.

On 4/2 we turned the page in our Guide to Daily Reading.

Dreams, books are each a world; and books, we know, are a substantial world, both pure and gold. Round these, with tendrils, strong as flesh and blood, our pastime and our happiness will grow.

William Wordsworth

4/2 Nothing happened. The Daily Readings are: “Jefferson” (not a clue other than that it is in Vol. 16-PtI: 43-70 of The Pocket University set of readings); “Nelson’s Victory over the Danish Fleet” (some history); “The Battle of the Baltic” (poem).

4/3 Washington Irving (born 1783). This probably would have been fun. I like A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1864). Daily Readings: “Wouter Van Twiller” (from A History… ; “The Voyage” (selected passages, maybe this)

Which brings us to today, Saturday April 4, 2020.

4/4 Nothing happened. No one of note was born, died, disappeared, or was liberated. I find that hard to believe. Let us turn to Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them (Hazeltine, 1928, 2nd 1965). Fabulous crappy old book, by the way. … Holy cow! Lots of cool people were born or died today.

  • John Napier (d. 1617), inventor of the logarithm
  • Grinling Gibbons (b. 1648), English master wood carver
  • Dorthea Lyne Dix (b. 1802), pioneering reformer of “prisons, almshouses, and insane asylums”
  • Sir William Siemens (b. 1823), English physicist, inventor of methods to improve steel manufacturing
  • William Henry Jackson (b. 1843), photographer, explorer. “He produced the pictorial records of the Wyoming Badlands which convinced congress that this region should be set aside as Yellowstone National Park.”

Guide to Daily Reading 4/4

“You’re definitely over 40.”

Published on by

Found via a link at Ace of Spades Head Quarters. Here’s the quiz. I got a perfect score because I’m definitely over 40.

Take the quiz. It’s the weekend. What else do you have to do?

Sunday through Thursday

Published on by

Sunday evening Mr. Big Food called his folks. You know how you can understand an entire conversation by only listening to one side? Not good. The Independent Living Facility in which Mr. Big Food’s Dad and Mr. Big Food’s Mom live had gone sort of lockdown last week. And those Independent Kids being who they are, realized they could go out the service entrance when no one was looking! Like sneaking out past midnight! So Management locked the back gate. And just for sh*ts & giggles, laid off half of the kitchen staff.

After the call, Mr. Big Food asked what I thought, and I said, “Sure. Absolutely!” And then he said, “They won’t take us up on it, but they should know it’s an option.”

Monday morning he emailed them. Just temporary. Apartment hasn’t been lived in since October. It’s more spacious. Fresh air.

Monday evening, Mr. Big Food’s Dad and Mom called. Thanks. Appreciate it. We’re thinking about it.

I must comment that we were not expecting them to even think about it. These are native Texans– have been for over 80 years each. Set in their ways. We’ve got it. And other such attitudes.

So I started a list.

Tuesday evening Mr. Big Food’s Dad and Mom called. “We’ll be there Thursday.” Things had gotten worse. The lockdown cracked down. Not even allowed on the grounds for a stroll. Not allowed on their own little patio. Food sucks.

Breaking out of The Incubator.

So I began executing the list.

Wednesday they got things in order. Thursday they left. A 14 hour drive in one day. In their 80s. They’re Texans. Got here before dark.

For my part, the only thing on the list we did not accomplish was using the truck to push the dead Saab to the front of the workshop so they would have a place inside to park their SUV.

I suspect they will not mind being quarantined in an apartment on Farther Along Farm. Food is pretty good.