Snowflake Toast.

Snowflake Toast – Take 1 quart of milk, one-half cup cream and a little salt. Mix a tablespoonful of flour with a little of the milk, and add when the milk is boiling hot. Let it cook until the flour has no raw taste. Have ready the whites of 2 eggs thoroughly beaten, and after the milk and cream are well cooked, stir in the whites of the eggs lightly and allow it to remain over the fire long enough for the whites to coagulate – about half a minute is long enough. This quantity is sufficient for about 12 slices of bread well toasted. Dip the sliced in hot milk, take out quickly and pack together for about 3 minutes, then pour this snowflake mixture over them.

Oh, boiled milk, :shudder: I think I’ll pass on this, but the name is rather grand, is it not? From this 1897 book, the snowflake toast is on page 330.

The Terror of…SOY!

Via Medium.com

The things which go on while I’m under my rock. Perhaps it’s just me, but none of the men in the above look to be lacking in masculine qualities. This, of course, calls into question as to what those ‘necessary masculine qualities’ might be, and I’m not sure I want to know. The concepts of masculinity and femininity are, for the best part, damn silly, and for the worst part, terribly toxic and harmful. We aren’t extruded bits of plastic labeled Ken and Barbie. We come in a wide variety of everything. Ah well, on with the show.

Popular figures among the alt-right and users of right-wing internet forum boards such as 4chan frequently used the term “soy boy” to attack their liberal critics, using the term to label their targets as politically or physically weak. Alt-right YouTube pundit James Allsup claims to have invented the term “soy boy,” which experienced brief mainstream exposure through right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich.

The weakness, it is argued, comes from increased estrogen levels experienced when consuming soy products and the alleged resulting feminine behavior.

Oh for pity’s sake. Soy has to be one of the most studied and investigated plants on the planet, considering its versatility and utility. There are no studies which show that soy consumption “effiminizes” the poor menfolk. For most people, soy is quite beneficial, and no, it has no impact on those precious testosterone numbers, dudes. Your testosterone is safe with soy.

In a video uploaded to his YouTube account yesterday, Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars editor, attempted to explain how the consumption of soy products is to blame for decreased testosterone levels and lower sperm counts in men, resulting in depression and feminine behavior.

“Men with high estrogen take on feminine traits. They find it harder to handle stress. They become less assertive. They become low energy. Their voices get higher. Their genitals shrink. They lose muscle tone,” Watson said.

Goodness me. You’d think there would be panic in the streets! Media would be wall to wall coverage of the great penis shrink of 2017. Talk shows would have sobbing men behind screens, talking about the horrible degredation of testicle loss and puberty voices. Interestingly enough, there have been a high number of men lately who have not handled stress well at all. These are ‘masculine’ men, too. The ones who have histories of abusive, assertive, nay, aggressive behaviour. They tend to take out their problems with a gun, which ends up with many dead people, including themselves. I think I’ll stick with the men who aren’t terrified of soy.

Later in the video, Watson attempted to correlate increased sales of soy products in the United States to unrelated articles that detail a “substantial drop” in men’s testosterone levels in the United States and “otherwise healthy and lean” young men developing enlarged breasts—or as Watson describes them, “bitch tits.”

Bitch tits. Gosh, that must be one of those necessary masculine qualities, denigrating anything deemed female. I think we can all live without that one. One of these days, you manly menly dudely types are going to have to deal with the fact that yes, men have breasts. By the way, you should be doing regular checks for lumps, just like you do for those precious testicles, because men get breast cancer too. They come in many different shapes and sizes. A lot depends on diet, true, and whether or not you work out. If you’re eating a trash diet, you’re probably gonna have hairy man teats. Have you all taken a good look at your idol Trump when he’s in his golf clothes? Yeah. He could probably do with laying off the McD’s. Going back to the image above, none of those men look like they are sporting a healthy rack.

In his pseudo-scientific explanation, Watson even claimed that soy found in infant baby formula is making children liberal “from birth.”

“Rather than people with already pre-existing left-wing beliefs being attracted to vegan-style tofu soy diets, we’re actually creating an army of soy boys from birth,” Watson said. “What a terrifying thought.”

:Cough: Excu…hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha *gasp* hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha *thud*

Okay. I’m a bleeding heart liberal, a compleat lefty. I did not grow up on soy products, because they weren’t a big thing way back when. I don’t eat much soy now. That has not affected my leftiness in the least. I’m pretty sure you can’t get leftiness in bottle. That would be rather big news. Why do I get the idea you idiots think this is just like the “commies are behind flouridation” business?

Watson warned that “soy is the silent killer” of masculine behavior and that the world is “losing an entire generation of young men to soy.”

At the end of the video, Watson issued a warning to his male viewers: “Men, if you don’t want to develop a bunch of retarded beliefs about how inviting in millions of rapey migrants is a good idea, about how anyone to the right of Michael Moore is literally Hitler, about how fantastic communism is, or about how being a white male is shameful and wrong, while literally growing tits and seeing your penis shrink at the same time, when it comes to soy just say no.”

Hahahahahahaha. My my. I look forward to the intense, saturated, “Just Say No…to Soy!” campaign. The War on Soy. Maybe that could put an end to the idiocy of the war on drugs. Okay, probably not. You fellas don’t need to be concerned with ‘rapey’ immigrants. You should be concerned with all the homegrown rapey men, y’know, the ones who tend to put all kinds of emphasis on being masculine.

Such privilege, that you literally have nothing more to do than to sit around and make up such shit. I wish I had that kind of free time. The whole mess, including video, is available at RWW.

The Anti-Trump Hotel.

Oh, this place sounds fabulous! From what I’ve read, I might want to live there. :D

The first thing you’ll see when you walk into Eaton Workshop, a hotel opening in late spring 2018 in Washington, is a custom-commissioned video art installation by AJ Schnack, shown on a series of vintage-style television screens. All day long, it’ll broadcast a montage of footage from the presidential elections of 2012 and 2016 that’s built around one pointed question: How did our country get where it is today?

It’s not a subtle statement, and it’s not meant to be.

In Trump’s Washington, Eaton is planting a clear flag as a haven for Democrats. It’s the world’s first politically motivated hotel, the flagship for a global brand that’s built around social activism and community engagement. And it comes with a pedigree: As the daughter of Ka Shui Lo, the creator and executive chairman of Hong Kong-based Langham Hospitality Group Ltd., founder Katherine Lo knows a thing or two about luxury hotels and world-class service.

Lo firmly believes that hotels ought to be catalysts for good. In a world where we can be conscious consumers—of everything from clothing to food to baby products—she argues there’s a place for conscious hotels, too. This isn’t a revolutionary idea: Already, 1 Hotels has built a small collection of luxury properties entirely around the idea of sustainability, and Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts has made a significant, brand-wide commitment to bolster community programming for disadvantaged children in all of its destinations. It’s one of many five-star brands that have a conscious ethos but choose not to flaunt it.

Eaton Workshop is different. With a premise that’s built around liberal activism and civic engagement, the brand will weave a liberal philosophy into every aspect of the guest experience, some more obvious than others.

[…]

Among the Washington location’s programming signatures will be a sort of TED talk series driven by the liberal agenda, consisting of fireside chats and rooftop lectures that Lo hopes will be free, open to the public, and streamable as Eaton-branded podcasts. Then comes the art program, which—aside from the political statement piece at check-in—will include commissions from at least a half-dozen up-and-coming local artists and a street-facing exhibition window curated in partnership with local museums and institutions. A co-working space will prioritize memberships for progressive startups, activists, and artists, while a wellness program will offer “inner-health-focused treatments” such as Reiki and sound baths, rather than facials and massages. (Some of these features will roll out a few months after the hotel opens.)

Just as important, partners and staff will be brought on board, both for their skills in the food and beverage worlds and their activist track records. For instance, Lo saw the cocktail director of the famed Columbia Room, Derek Brown, as a perfect fit to be the hotel’s beverage director—not just because he’s won such awards as Imbibe magazine’s Bartender of the Year but because he “cares deeply about social justice.” To wit, Brown actively champions policies that fight sexual harassment in the bartending industry and acts as chief spirit advisor for the National Archives.

Similarly, Lo says that the “amazing life story” of house chef Tim Ma “perfectly expresses our brand ethos.” The Chinese-American culinary up-and-comer was an engineer at the National Security Agency for years before discovering his true passion in food. At Eaton’s to-be-named restaurant, Ma is planning a menu with a heavy focus on vegetables from an on-site garden.

A guest who does nothing other than check in, sleep atop Eaton’s organic mattresses, and check out will still have a sense of the hotel’s mission, says Lo. “We plan to have new ideas in the minibar—an activist toolkit, for example, that includes sheets with information to help you call your congresspeople. And if we’d been open during this year’s Women’s March, I could have seen us putting poster boards and markers in the rooms!”

Political statements such as these will be tailored to each property. In Hong Kong, for instance, Lo says she’d like to replace Bibles in the nightstand drawers with copies of the United Nations Declaration for Human Rights.

Raw Story and Bloomberg have this story.  Eaton Workshop.

The Powdercap Strangler.

The Earthy Powdercap Mushroom was minding its own business, living out a perfectly good mushroom life in Clumber Park, a pleasant, woodsy spot in Nottinghamshire, England. But it was in danger. A rare fungus was taking over—until, like a sci-fi alien erupting from a human chest, the bodysnatching fungus burst from the mushroom’s head.

These perfectly nice Powdercap mushrooms became victims of Squamanita paradoxa, the Powdercap Strangler, the Nottingham Post reports.

The Powdercap Strangler is a shadowy character. First discovered in 1948, in Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest, the Strangler is rarely seen. It rears its actually pretty ugly head in parts of the U.S., Canada, and Europe, but everywhere it’s found, it’s an unusual sight. In the U.K., it’s only been found 23 times.

These particular Stranglers were found during a foraging expedition in the park, and identified by the British Mycological Association. The species was also seen in the U.K. in 2011.

The Powdercap is an orange mushroom, and even after the Strangler takes over, it retains an orange stem, to hold up its own grey head. As one mycologist puts it, the Strangler’s “mushroom erupts in place of the host’s mushroom.”

Atlas Obscura has the full story.

While you’re there, don’t miss this very interesting story about The Secret History of Paris’s Catacomb Mushrooms.

A Parisian inspects mushrooms growing in the tunnels underneath the city. Documents Mairie de Paris-Inspection générale des Carrières/All Rights Reserved.

Consider Soul Cakes, Turnips, & The Plague.

If you want to do something a bit different, consider Soul Cakes. There’s a good recipe here. Rather than go with carving pumpkins, why not give the traditional turnip a go?

A traditional Irish Jack-o’-Lantern in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland.

And the latest issue of Medievalist has a costume idea:

A Plague Victim.

It’s easy costume to prepare: – use beet juice rubbed on your face to create a flushed look.  Buboes can easily be made from bread dough – use honey to attach to your underarms. Wear an old dress or other clothing you don’t mind getting dirty – this way you can fall to the floor groaning dramatically. You can take advantage of the conflicting theories about the black death and, when caught eating, claim an enormous appetite is a common symptom.  You can throw your ‘buboes ’ at people, both delighting them at your humour and disgusting them at the same time!

Edited to add: I’d have a blast with  that – I’d probably go with ready to bake biscuit dough, paint the outside with food colouring, then make a hole to pour in slightly whipped cream, tinted green and yellow with food colouring, then pinched mostly closed. If you threw one of those at someone, you could properly make them scream! :D

The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book.

C. Ford. Click for full size.

I have a number of old ‘enquire within’ type books, which covered everything from food, to medicine, to road making and more. One thing which stands out, foodwise, is just how radically our eating habits have changed. Way back when, people ate pretty much everything, and it was rare for any bit to go unused and wasted. Food preparation was also a constant, demanding, unbelievable amount of work. There are many recipes for sauces, relishes, preserves, and so on, which were made in very large quantities, to be made every year and put up. And so on. Many of the meat recipes started with “First, catch your ____”, as hunting was still the primary way to obtain meat, fish, and fowl. As you can see from the above photo, in one my books from 1885, sandwiches were given short shrift. Not much there. Which leads us to 14 years later, and the 1909 book, The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book, by Eva Green Fuller, who provides 400 ways to make a sandwich.

The ethos of no food waste is still very clear in the 1909 book; and many people wouldn’t consider some of the sandwiches to be food at all, such as one of the tomato sandwiches:

Tomato and Onion Sandwich

Mix in a bowl some tomato catsup, season with pepper and salt and a pinch of sugar, add a little finely chopped onion, mix and place between thin slices of buttered white bread, with a crisp lettuce leaf between.

One thing that is a bit difficult to get used to is the ubiquitous use of butter when it came to bread – it didn’t matter your filling, more than half the time, the acceptable bread spread was butter. Although I have never prepared my own catsup (and boy, do I ever have recipes for it, tomato, walnut, grape, currant, gooseberry, green cucumber, pepper, green tomato, and mushroom catsups!) and I have never made a catsup sandwich, I have made sandwiches out of bread, mayo, and crisp lettuce. Maybe not terribly nutritious, but they fill the belly.

So, if you’re out of sandwich ideas, or just curious, you can have a journey of sandwiches here.

Coal Comforts.

A “Coal Comforts” cupcake by Spencer Merolla (courtesy the artist).

Spencer Merolla is doing some great work, this time around, having a pop up bakery which has decidedly non-edible goodies, as they are made from ash. Just a bit here, the article is in-depth, with many links well worth following.

As the banks of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal continue to be developed, the legacy of pollution in its waters can be an uncomfortable narrative alongside gentrification. In conjunction with Gowanus Open Studios on October 21 and 22, artist Spencer Merolla is creating a pop-up bakery offering cupcakes, cookies, and other treats, all molded from coal ash. The inedible delicacies served from a mobile cart are meant to encourage conversation about the environment and climate change, especially on a weekend when many non-locals will be roaming the neighborhood.

“Gowanus is kind of a cautionary tale in terms of environmental degradation,” Merolla told Hyperallergic. “I love the work that is being done to clean up the canal and green the watershed, and it’s very exciting to think we can repair some of the damage we’ve inherited and be better stewards of this place in the future. But there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube, here or anywhere. We have to do a better job of preventing these kinds of catastrophes in the first place. Because they are happening right now, all over.”

…Merolla’s work with molding ash emerged around that time, with a piece called “Ashes in Our Mouth (Baloney Sandwich Series)” that suggested the bad taste many were left with after Trump’s election, as well as his support for the coal industry over cleaner energy.

“I’d wanted to work with ash for some time, given its association with grief, but it was the presidential election of last year that turned me toward coal ash specifically,” she stated. “Trump’s campaign relied so heavily on nostalgia in general and for the coal industry in particular, and it got me thinking about the many ways in which that nostalgia is toxic. It persuades people that because something is old-fashioned and familiar, it’s also benign.”

[…]

It’s worth noting that among the developers of Gowanus is the Jared Kushner-led Kushner Companies. The Gowanus Canal was designated an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund Site in 2010, thanks to its toxic cocktail of arsenic, radioactive material, and other pollutants. Lining the canal’s bottom is “black mayonnaise,” a concoction of coal tar, heavy metals, and other sludge from decades of industrial run-off. With rising tides of climate change, it remains vulnerable to flooding, even now pouring raw sewage into the streets in heavy rains.

During Gowanus Open Studios, Merolla plans to set up the “Coal Comforts” bakery cart outside the Gowanus Souvenir Shop at 567 Union Street. The tagline of the bakery is: “Can’t have your cake and eat it too.” By shaping the coal ash into food-like forms, Merolla references how much of the world’s population consumes poisonous air due to coal pollution, and the impossible balance between continuing the industry as it is and improving human life.

As she said, “The connection between food justice and environmental justice is only going to become clearer in the future — you can’t have one without the other.”

You can see and read much more at Hyperallergic, and you can watch a video by Ms. Merolla at the Kickstarter page for this show.

Frank Buttolph’s Menu Obsession.

Photo of Frank E. Buttolph, c. 1917–21 New York Public Library.

Frank Buttolph collected menus. A lot of menus.

…Buttolph’s commitment to collecting menus came, she said, from her desire to preserve early 1900s culinary history for future scholars. Confirming this, The New York Times once wrote that “she does not care two pins for the food lists on her menus, but their historic interest means everything.”

She was a meticulous collector—not only in transcribing, dating, and organizing her menus with a detailed card catalog, but also about how they should be stored. When the director of the Astor Library tried to rubber-band menus together, she pushed back out of worry that it would leave marks.

Click for full size.

Oh gods. Now I want proper mac ‘n’ cheese, and peach fritters.

Atlas Obscura has a delightful article about Ms. Buttolph and her quest to preserve dining habits, and you can see pages and pages and pages and of her collection here. Gad, what a time sink! There’s an Astor menu printed on linen! The menus are not limited to the U.S. The artwork on many of them is fascinating, especially those for dinners being held by individuals. The Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen-Amerika has a menu with gorgeous artwork, and the menu itself is handwritten.

It’s All About The Pizza, Ayyyy!

Palermo’s Pizza.

“What part of Donald Trump is not elite? The business side, the politics side, the inheritance side?” BBC reporter Emily Maitlis asked.

“Oh my god, there’s so many things about the president. How about the cheeseburgers, how about the pizzas that we eat?” Scaramucci replied.

“Everyone eats cheeseburgers, pizzas, what are you talking about?” the reporter fired back.

I’m with the reporter. A love of certain foods does not make an everyman.

Scaramucci then accused Maitlis of “coming across a little elitist” and said he grew up in a middle-class family with a “tight budget” and “little to no money.”

He said Trump understands the “common struggle” even better than he does.

“He knows how to operate in the elitist world and has unbelievable empathy for the common struggle that’s going on with the middle-class people and the lower middle-class people,” he said.

Oh sure, he understands the “common people”. Having daddy hand you a million bucks in seed money, that’s a very typical thing, happens to most commoners, right? Oh, and the language! “Common struggle”, pretty sure that’s shortspeak for commoners, because Tiny Tyrant fancies himself royalty. As for empathy? Oh, please. Pull the other one, it has bells on. It is totally unbelievable that Trump has any empathy at all. I would love to see someone point Trump at a typical lower middle class house, and tell him he had to take all his vacations in it, rather than his mansion in Florida, for a month. He wouldn’t be able to do it. Although you probably could park him in a Pizza Hut for a day, if the pizza was free.

Via The Hill. (Video at the link.)