We continue meandering through my latest old book acquisition, A View of the Pleasures Arising from a Love of Books: In Letters to a Lady, Edward Mangin (1814). Link goes to Archive. I’ll do one each week. By way of background, in the Preface we learn that the Mangin desires to convey the numerous Pleasures
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Above, from left to right: my new sterling salt spoon resting in a salt cellar, two demitasse spoons of different sizes, a standard teaspoon Lightening isn’t right, but you get the idea. I did polish each piece before I took the picture. Really! Our first stop after we made the decent into the Mississippi Delta
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If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then mythology has no claim to the appellation. But if that which tends to make us happier and better can be called useful then we claim that epithet for our subject.
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in 1865 Lincoln was shot. I know this only because I am doing a little prep work for our daily readings. Mr. Big Food is on his way back from a conference in that hell hole labeled “Memphis” on the map. I was scheduled to go as well but there was an incident here on
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Our Daily Readings have been on a roll lately. Everything Washington Irving (1783-1859) wrote is simply wonderful. What a writer! There are so many great stories in addition to those he’s remembered for today. “Wouter Van Twiller” is hilarious. Old Wouter was a real person, so this is humorously biographical. “The Voyage” is an account
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Threading the Rude Eye is not the sort of fiction I typically read. But the author, Stanley Wheeler (to whose newsletter I subscribe) is an online pal and a good writer. The premise of the book is interesting. It’s set in an alternative history of the American Revolution, and is first in a series. What
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Just passing this along. [Image from from The Water-babies: A Fairy Tale for Land-babies, by Charles Kingsley and illustrated by Warwick Gobel (1909 edition; The Water-babies first published in 1863)] C.S. Lewis on the Existence of Fairies The article in part discusses Lewis’s last book, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964).
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Below is a post from July 2020 I happened to find when searching for something. To the left is something I stumbled upon earlier today. I believe the proper response to the “librarian” is this: Burn in freaking hell for all eternity. Why, yes! I am a bit grumbly. It is 16˚F outside and 67˚
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Originally posted January, 2014 I have jest about decided It ‘id keep a town-boy hopping’ Fer to work all winter, choppin’Fer a’ old fireplace, like I did!Lawz! them old times wuz contrairy!– Blame’ backbone o’ winter, ‘peared-like, Wouldn’t break– and I wuz skeerd-like,Clean on into Feb’uary! Nothin’ ever made me madderThan fer Pap to stomp
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From a couple of years ago… errr, I mean ~2700 years ago but still relevant. “I suggest you reflect on the clearing of your debts and the avoidance of famine. First, a household… . The utilities in the house must all be got ready, lest you ask another, and he refuse, and you be lacking,
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Something a little different When God on earth was making the primal Paradise, a garden, say the Scriptures, was fashioned, to suffice. And man these years remembers, and every spring recants one step toward his Eden, with every seed he plants. —Chateaubriand, quoted by Master Chef Louis P. De Gouy, The Gold Cook Book (1947)
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The Farm. November 19, 2023. Happy Thanksgiving Week! This week we’ll rummage through 12 years’ worth of Thanksgiving related posts and see what we can come up with from bygone days. I am semi-inclined to write something new, so stay tuned for that as well. And as a reminded, the latest reiteration of Jesse Jackson’s
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“Beaten biscuit originated in the South.”—From the library of Lizette Sandifer Buchanan, Bayou Cuisine: Its Tradition and Transition (1970) BEATEN BISCUIT Of course, I’ll gladly give de rule1 meks beat-biscuit by.Dough I ain’t sure dat you will mekDat bread da same as I. ’Cause cooking’s like religion is—Some’s ’lected, an some ain’t.And rules don’t know
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Originally posted a while back when I was reading Being a Boy (Charles Dudley Warner, 1877). What a great book! Highly recommended. “The feeling of a boy towards pumpkin-pie has never been properly considered. There is an air of festivity about its approach in the fall. The boy is willing to help pare and cut
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From Master Chef Louis P. De Gouy, The Gold Cook Book (1947) Beans have been cultivated in the Americas since prehistoric times. Lima beans have been discovered in burial mounds in Peru, and early explorers found beans being cultivated by the Indians, from Canada to South America. In 1605, in a letter concerning the Indians
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From Vegetables, Old Carolina Tobacco Country Cook Book: From the Great Depression to World War II (1985) THE MAIN DISH: The main dish at a meal was not always a meat dish. Perhaps one of the main reasons for this was that the wife, who did the cooking, also had to help with the many
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Remember Clementine Paddleford and her How America Eats cookbook? In the 1950s she traveled the United States to discover…well, how America eats. The cookbook is filled with great stories. Now, 70 years on, the stories are like a blast from the past. A window into another time and place. A book well worth Hold that
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Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld No. 372 Somethings never change. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld. Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims. J.W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell, trans. Samson Low, Marston, Dearle & Rivington (limited), London. 1888. Originally published in 1665.
Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld No. 357 François Duc de La Rochefoucauld. Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims. J.W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell, trans. Samson Low, Marston, Dearle & Rivington (limited), London. 1888. Originally published in 1665.
There are persons of whom the world approves who have no merit beyond the vices they use in the affairs of life. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld No. 273 As true today as it was over 350 years ago. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld. Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims. J.W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell,
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