Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
I have an unfinished project tracking fruitcake recipes through newspaper clippings that calls to me. To get me in the mood to revisit it, and to get you in the mood for the holidays, here are some choice clippings of the theft, poison, and murder with which fruitcake has been associated.
I have a lovely pony bead and pin ornament that my grandmother made long ago and it inspired me to try my hand at this holiday craft. All that is needed is a Styrofoam ball, straight pins, Pony beads, and patience.
Pony beads or three-cornered beads are still obtainable online, perhaps even in your local craft store. I quickly found out that my general flat head pins would not hold the bead in, so I focused primarily on using pearl head pins to affix the beads to the Styrofoam. I also picked up some crystal headed pins from a wedding supplies shop and wanted to do a disco ball like ornament but soon found that longer needle length is not a good thing in this craft. They end up competing for space inside the foam ball and eventually no more pins can be added.
These are light weight for having pretty decent visual impact and are very meditative to do in the evening.
The next set of ornaments that I tried my hand at were inspired by a picture my friend sent from an Indy shop: stuffed and beaded soft ornaments. I think the inspiration was a shinier tighter weave, but I thought felt would hold it’s shape nicely. I based my designs on the sun in honor of solar holidays like Saturnalia and Yule, celebrating the sun on the shortest day of the year. In the end, they kind of ended up looking like cookies though.
This is also a very meditative craft. I got to use up a bunch of beads in my closet and I stuffed the ornaments lightly with the felt scraps from cutting out the circles. I also put a clove bud in each one for a hint of holiday smells.
Do I need to introduce why I may have picked up a ‘mini’ sized reprinting of the fall 1900 Sears, Roebuck and Co. Consumers Guide, or why I am prone to acquiring similar aged magazines and catalogs? My inclination isn’t necessarily part of the nostalgic yet enlightened ‘vintage stye, not vintage values’ movement and argument (thought it is one I wholly support) as much as a type of historical voyeurism. I like to look at the pictures.
In any case. I was paging through this little catalog, wondering if I should get reader glasses because of the miniaturized print (the book is about 5×7 in), enjoying the product drawings, when I noticed that among the fabulously technically drawn shoes and chandeliers (a skill I remember from my earliest art education when graphic artists were still schooled in the ways of product drawings and sign painting), were photo-realistic fashion models…at least where their faces were concerned. What happened below their heads was some of the most ridiculous cut and paste manipulations I have seen.
I’ve looked at loads of 1900s post cards, cartoons, and fashion plates, so, at first, I wasn’t even paying attention to the exaggerated wasp wastes that connected pigeon breast and bustle. Clearly the ideal 1900s lady was a bird wolpertinger of the most terrifying! What first captured my disbelief were the coat collars, or specifically, how long a woman’s neck must have been to ensure her head showed up above the coat collar pictured. And then, the bird like illusion of woman was only more emphasized when her head cocked strangely to one side without affecting the length or rigidness of her neck and the collar that held it hostage!
I hope you enjoy the little ogle at absurdity as much as I did.
Hello! I hope y’all’s Halloween was as lovely as mine! As the first of the feasting holidays (in my house), I busied myself making seasonally appropriate meals with in-season foods and baking. One of the bakes I have been slowly perfecting for myself is barmbrack. The recipe I have is rather old and super spare so I went online to find something a little easier to get a good product out of.
What I found was a lot of recipes for yeast-less ‘barmbrack.’ That sounded great and much easier, but then I found this post by the Irish American Mom pointing out what is and is not actually barmbrack. I love her soap-box (delivered in a completely enjoyable way) and the history she provides on this bake, so I wanted to make sure and share in case anyone else is becoming as obsessed with variations on fruitbread/fruitcake as I am.
This is a tiny taste of the playlist the Schmidts have going all October (sorry to share so late). Happy Halloween, y’all!
You see before you a picture that seems to be depicting a wedding feast. I say seems to be, because the title of the picture doesn’t say anything about a wedding. But, the order of those seated, the unhappy lady in the center, in front of a red cloth, wearing a crown with a wreath over her head are all reminiscent of other pictures from the same period that showed wedding feasts. This is ‘Burlesque Feast’ by Frans Verbeeck. This picture pulls you in and drags you down. It conjures up torrents of questions that seasoned art historians may be able to answer quickly, but maybe even the experts wouldn’t know. Allow me to show you around…
First, a little background. Frans Verbeeck (1510-1570) came from a family of important artists in Mechelen, in the province of Antwerp in the Flemish Region of Belgium. According to Wikipedia it is not always possible to attribute work to one or another of the Verbeeck family, but at least three paintings have been attributed specifically to Frans Verbeeck who lived in the middle of the 16th century.
Burlesque Feast is not Frans Verbeeck’s most noted work. I found much more attention paid to The Mocking of Human Follies, and there is another feast picture attributed to Frans Verbeeck called ‘Peasant Wedding’ that looks very similar in composition albeit less strange. It is almost like ‘Burlesque Feast’ is making fun of ‘Peasant Wedding.’ And Verbeeck’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ in turn, almost seems to be making fun of Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Peasant Wedding’.
Plenty of analysis has gone into Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ that can help us figure out what is going on in the other two pictures, even though the customs are unknown to us. For instance, the lady sitting in front of the green cloth, wearing a crown with a ‘crown’ suspended over her head is the bride. So, the characters similarly positioned in Verbeeck’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ and also in ‘Burlesque Feast’ are also brides, or playing the part of one.
Back to ‘Burlesque Feast.’ Go ahead and open the link to the large image on Wikimedia commons and get deep in there. Do you notice how the bride in front of the red cloth, wearing a crown that appears to be made of spoons and broken egg shells, under a wreath that hangs from the ceiling, looks so utterly unhappy? Maybe she looks so sad because her groom is the fellow in the bottom right retching into the corner? But her emotional state and his apparent drunkenness are nothing compared to other things happening in the picture.
Coming in on the bottom left of the picture we see a procession of hooded figures seemingly lead by an elderly lady. From the ermine trim on her clothes and the owl on her hand – as well as the falcon on the hand of the lady behind her – I am guessing that these are quite well-to-do individuals. Falconry being a past-time of the rich. Perhaps these are the wealthy members of the town coming to give their blessing to the unhappy bride? But, look how odd and hunched the old lady is. Why is she so crooked. And why is there an unsheathed knife pointed at her on the table to her side? In Dutch still life painting, a popular art of the same time, a knife left carelessly on the table is a sign of betrayal. Is the old wealthy lady betrayed or the betrayer?
Owls in the middle ages were alternately seen as symbols of the devil or classically as representations of wisdom. Which could it be here?
This lady, to the right of the bride (from our view), why does she look as though she is psyching herself up to stab a body? Is it the man who leans closely in to talk with her that has pushed her to this point of anger or the woman chugging from a jug on her other side? Or, is it just that she is dismayed her knife has a big ole’ nick out of the blade?
And further right, on the other side of the man that leans in closely, is a ghostly image of a man who is not there. He stares directly at the audience and is, in fact one of only two characters in this whole picture that do engage with the audience directly. Is this a mistake of the digitization process, or the painting actually have this ghostly image in it? If in the painting, it seems oddly deliberate. I know many paintings were painted on top of previous compositions, but this doesn’t look like an under-layer peeking through to me. If anything, it looks like the impression you might get if you had two printouts face to face in a folder for too long and a little of one gets stuck onto the other.
Further back in the room on the right side of the painting, a bald creature with a pig like nose tends a spit that cooks a cow head over the fire. That could be odd enough on its own, but as I looked at the figure, trying to see if he was missing a foot or it was just turned to the side (I vote for turned), I noticed that he is chained to a block. Slavery was present in Europe in the middle ages and there were also some interesting punishment devices, so is this creature enslaved or is it being punished?
His is not the only face that is more creature-like than human-like. Up in the left hand corner, among other musicians playing for the feast is a flute player who looks, to me, like a lizard with a goiter. At first I was thinking that classifying some of the characters of the picture as creatures was a little harsh, but a closer look at the lizard like flute player reveals that he only has to fingers on each hand.
And finally, the most obvious but easy to overlook creature is front and center, across the table from the bride and the second character who engages us directly, or maybe the first. He has feet for hands, and, perhaps, a tail? I could also mention that he brandishes an upturned broom that holds a lit candle – something that is not safe in the least – but why dwell on that when he has feet for hands?
When I started looking at the other wedding pictures, I did notice in Verbeek’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ this spot in the picture is taken by a small jester-like human character. This is really what got me thinking that ‘Burlesque Feast’ was poking fun at ‘Peasant Wedding.’ The more I looked at Verbeek’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ I wondered if it was poking fun at Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Peasant Wedding.’ Bruegel’s picture was dated to 1567. I could not find if Verbeek’s pictures had been dated, but Verbeek and Bruegel were contemporaries, so I imagine some painterly teasing is possible.
The training/maintenance regimen of these women athletes was and is astounding! And, this video is when the ‘mermaids’ wore masks most of the time and didn’t wear binding mermaid tails.
Based on the bookshelves lining the walls of the room we alternately call the dining room, office, and library, I might be a bibliophile. I am susceptible to an interesting title, book cover, and synopsis, though I have a test that I do before bringing anything home: after being pulled in by the title, cover, and synopsis, I start reading the first page. If I am not grabbed then I skip ahead deeper in the book, if I am still not grabbed, I put the book down.
Reading all these books I bring home in a timely manner, is another matter entirely. I really don’t. But I have been making some progress this past year or so, thanks to friends inspiring good habits. I feel compelled to list them out:
I feel like there is a better method of commemorating the read. Perhaps I need to get back into the 100th page comics challenge. Of course some of this friendly inspiration has been book-club like, so my goal to read through the books I’ve already acquired is competing a little with reading books that a book club has decided to address.
I’ve become a little more regionally inclined in my recent vintage recipe book purchases and I was extremely happy to find that some of these books included recipes for materials that usually have to be grown or obtained directly from someone who grows them.
Each of the books above yielded at least one recipe that I consider more for the gardener trying to figure out what to do with their new harvest than for a cook who normally gets materials from the store.
While my calamondin tree bit the dust (I suspect greening) and my papaya is far from producing fruit, I do have a handful of established surinam cherry bushes. I am super familiar with the monstera deliciosa as a garden plant but I do not have one of those either, and I would love a yaupon holly.
However, I do have a sea grape, that I understand produces human edible fruits, and a volunteer loquat tree. I have also been following Eat the Weeds and Other Things Too, trying to figure out an offensive against some of my most pernicious garden adversaries. I will have to experiment some and see how these things can be worked into daily food.
Labor Day is one of those holidays for which it is especially difficult to build a comfortable, celebratory, collection of watching. It is very close to the end of summer/back to school celebration, and also lacking in a dearth of movies taking place during or about the holiday.
It has been a little while since Clement Skitt showed up on the bean, but you may have gleaned from Clement Skitt’s word of the day that I have a bit of an affinity for vintage slang. I gave that affinity a place to live by making it a love of Clement Skitt, a comic character from Levi Levi and the Time Machine. Since the last word of the day post, I’ve stumbled on a couple more old slang dictionaries on the Internet Archive and figured I’d share in case you would like to peruse them while I do some reading up.
I know I am not the first person to ponder the frequent incidence of the word ‘cooky’ in old cooking pamphlets and recipe books, but no one has yet explored this ‘alternate spelling’ on the internets to my edification. And ‘alternate spelling’ is what is given as a reason for the existence of ‘cooky’ in dictionaries. I thought maybe cooky’s etymological history would explain it, but no. The Online Etymology Dictionary says simply that ‘cookie’ is possibly derived from a 1730 Scottish term meaning “plain bun,” but it’s definition in 1808 as a “small, flat, sweet cake” is more similar to the Dutch koekje “little cake,” a diminutive of koek “cake.”
The etymological histories didn’t even get into how British English calls the same types of confection ‘biscuits.’ Michele Debczak at Mental Floss (2012) points out that the two ‘sweet baked goods’ actually refer to two different types of confection, but does not explore why, even if they have been categorically described as either slower cooking soft thick dough (cookie) or a thin crisp baking stiff dough (biscuit), the terms are more often used based on country and not on type of bake.
I was foolishly hoping to find some online search or service that could comb through historical resources for word popularity similar to how Google Trends combs through the internet search history, but alas. The closest I got was the Google books ngram viewer, which can report on the frequency of words within the Google Books catalog (Wikipedia).
The graph that resulted confirmed what I was seeing in my recipe books and cooking pamphlets, that ‘cooky’ was used most during the mid 20th century, but it didn’t feel like the whole story. After all, Google Books doesn’t really have a lot of recipe books, and recipes were also popularly shared in newspapers.
Chronicling America at the Library of Congress returned massive results when searching for ‘cooky’ that I thought were bogus at first. It seemed to me that the results interchangeably included both ‘cookie’ and ‘cooky.’ This can happen sometimes when search engines are smart enough to correct for misspellings but also not smart enough to search misspellings when quotes are included.
But then I realized that the results were not because of spelling corrections! Both spellings were used in most of the results! From the earliest result I could find in my (definitely not exhaustive) search: 1826, to a mid-century result in 1948, ‘cooky’ was being used as the singular, while ‘cookies’ was the plural.
The 1826 mention that I found, above, also calls the collected confections ‘cakes,’ bringing to mind the Dutch koekje. The earliest I could find ‘cookie’ used as the singular was in an 1895 poem about a ‘Cookie Man.’
The next time I found ‘cookie’ in the singular sense was also a name. I am not quite sure when ‘cookie’ became an alternate for ‘cooky’ but it seems safe to say that instead of simply an alternate spelling, ‘cooky’ is actually the old use singular of ‘cookies.’
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