I was not very into sharing when my beloved Crisco and Sparkles passed on last year. After a kitty-less Christmas and many months of coming home to an empty house, Richard and I have adopted kittens (months ago now). I thought it was high time to formally introduce them. This is Gorgon and Spasmo.
They’ve got some growing and learning left to do, Spasmo only just figured out she could push unlatched doors open, but they have given us hints at what crazy characters they are going to be. I’m sure they will begin to crop up in all sorts of drawings after the co-dependency training is complete.
Crisco and Sparkles will live on in their comic incarnations:
I am one of many people who have fallen into the sometimes colorful and sometimes frightening world of vintage cookbooks. I have purchased lots of these ‘pamphlets’ online and spent hours pouring through them. Sometimes I find something novel that I want to try. Sometimes I find a good idea that I fold into my cooking repertoire. And sometimes I guffaw in humor and astonishment at what women before me were told to feed to their families.
First off, how is it that foods always look strangely inedible? That casserole on the left seems as though it is put together with normal ingredients, and yet, none of them have melded or melted in a way that you would expect from a prepared dish. Same goes for the open face sandwiches on the right. The photos here, and in so many other cookbooks, remind me of the plastic food that is sometimes used as window display in Japanese restaurants. While there is nothing obviously wrong with it, it still does not seem edible.
Center: remember when you are cooking, crafting, darning, doing laundry, washing the dog, or scrubbing the floors, SMILE! And, pass it on to your daughters.
Wait, what?
In addition to daily meal ideas, there is some instruction for the housewife trying to do many things on a tight schedule. This section of the book resulted in the most strange and entertaining illustrations. For example: drop that revolver in your hot pot!
Hand salad, little lady
This illustration is just surreal. Why is the cook so tiny? Or, is it that that salad is really big? And, why is there an enormous arm and hand erupting from it as if the hand’s owner were sucked into the salad quick sand?
Being astonished and amused by the pictures, illustrations, and the never-ending barrage of molded (aka gelatin) salads is one of the understood pleasures of vintage cookbooks. So much so, that you will find plenty of books just poking fun at pictures without really paying attention to the underlying recipes, culture, or women the books were written about, within, and for. A rare standout, which I absolutely loved reading, is American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Bananas, Spam, and Jell-O by Christina Ward.
If you ever wonder why we eat what we eat, why grocery chains sell us what they do, and why our habits of food consumption are sometimes lazy, wasteful, and strange, then Christina Ward’s book is for you. It dissects the cultural, political, and commercial drives that made some foods a staple in grocery stores, like pineapples and bananas, while other foods are not. With plenty of illustrations from the original publications, it puts a new spin on understanding them by pointing out the religious, racist, and prejudiced imagery they included to firmly ground them in the society to whom they were selling.
Food is one of the primary ways that I celebrate the holidays and changing of the seasons. However, I cannot claim to be a truly seasonal eater.
I do find that having a dish that you make only once a year, or even once a month encourages me to forget. At which point I end up in a routine of making the same thing over and over. To help me get over this, I put together a holiday recipe zine a couple of years ago. It didn’t completely capture my repertoire at the time, and I have added dishes since, so this would be a good time to add to it, yeah? Perhaps I could expand it with my recipe series and my comic about cumin pumpkin.
The quintessential foods that whisper ‘holidays’ to me are:
Cumin roasted pumpkin which is such a devil to make, I drew a comic.
Kapusta, a warming cabbage stew that was always on the table at the Wilsey’s Christmas eve party, where my Dad took us every year.
Ginger bread, cake, cookies, whatever
Fruit cake
Stuffing because I never make it any other year
Green bean casserole, the canned way, but not with mushroom soup because that’s verboten in my house
I was long overdue in looking at the junk mail folder to which my email client automatically moved emails that fit a certain profile so I didn’t see this email until recently.
It’s terrifying right? This duder’s malware gave them access to all my accounts and my web cam! I am aware of several situations where people have been legitimately blackmailed by individuals who had gained access to their computers and accounts. How do I know this is a fake designed to get me to go to where-ever Googling their keyword would take me and also to give them money? I mean, they did really have an old password of mine. Well, I know me, and I know that I change my passwords frequently. I make sure my browser and operating system are kept up to date. I know all the web cams in my house are covered by stickers.
I did change my passwords again, just to be safe, but the point is, if I hadn’t already learned good online habits, or I did the Google search as they told me to, I may have fallen victim to a real blackmail scenario. So I thought I’d share, just in case this reminder might be helpful to you.
I had a milestone birthday this year, and I celebrated by spending time with my husband and some of my closest friends.
The best present in the world was an album of secret music just for me. The second best present was tripping over a branch while doing yard work, falling on our cement pathway, and not even having a scrape afterward. I feel 15 again!
News about Big Data and privacy seems to have taken a back seat to everything else, or just fallen off the radar. Even when it was all over the place, I got the impression that most of the privacy dangers were tied to online environments. This was my mistake. There is probably another article out there clearly explaining how this is not true; I don’t need that article, because my Big Data insult came from my debit card.
MY STORY: I recently started seeing a new OBGYN and he recommends, generally, that all women of reproducing age take a folic acid supplement. This is something that is included in prenatal vitamins and usually only recommended for women who are already pregnant. But hey, I was will to try something new, so I went to the store to get some folic acid. Let me clarify, I went to a physical store up the road from where I live. I picked up the supplement from the shelf myself, grabbed a few other items, and then went to the checkout where I paid with my debit card. Different from how Vertesi attempted to hide her actual pregnancy from online trackers, I did nothing online.
AND YET: No more than a couple weeks after my visit to that store, I received a free and unsolicited care-package from Gerber, including baby food samples and whatever. Honestly I was so taken aback that I don’t remember all that was in the package, instead, focusing on finding someone who could put the contents to good use. I was also put on the list for a free Tampa Bay Parenting magazine that still comes monthly to my door even though I am not a parent. Just last month, I got my first Highlights magazine. My kid will surely have a great time with that educational content…wait, I still don’t have a kid.
I suppose I should know that debit transactions are sent over the same electronic connections that support everything else ‘online,’ but I really expected more privacy from my bank. And, in this day of Big Data, I kind of expect more from the Big Data companies, too. It would be obvious that all of my activities after buying folic acid did not support the assumption that I had a child. If they cared to look, it would also be obvious to AARP that my mother died several years ago, and does not need the life insurance offers that constantly arrive in my mail.
I am not alone in being absolutely delighted that a line of merchandise from Hocus Pocus (1993) is available at my local Halloween store. And, I’m sure I am not alone in being disappointed that the merch makers have neglected to make the movie replica I would most like to have: the Black Flame Candle. I was disappointed enough to make one for myself.
I gathered together as many screenshots as I could find from the movie that showed the artwork on the candle. After some unsuccessful searching on the internets for block prints that look like they inspired the original, I decided to wing it.
Step One
Protect your surface and gather all your materials: large flameless candle, permanent markers, carving tool, and reference photo.
As in, all the best of what that I spend time with every October.
What Media
Rocky Horror Picture Show is always on the list. When I was a kid in Dallas, TX, Rocky Horror would start running on broadcast television all through October. My mom loved the movie, so, of course, I loved it too.
I said list. Every year Richard of Doomedmoviethon.com and I have a list of movies and specials that we have to watch throughout October. I could’ve sworn I have blogged about this list before, but it doesn’t look like I have. I will correct that. For now, just know that Halloween isn’t Halloween without having seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show and also, Martha Stewart’s Halloween special and Slumber Party Massacre.
We also have a special USB drive mix of music for the car. Henry Hall is starting to feature more and more prominently, and it wouldn’t be complete with a few versions of “Mr. Ghost is Going to Town.”
What Food
Pumpkin seeds – not that I ever stop eating these all year, but the ones we made ourselves after carving pumpkins have a special kind of flavor. I love the way they sing. It might be one of my favorite sounds.
Pumpkin bread – I found an awesome recipe for pumkin bread done in a slow cooker. It is cakey, like a breakfast loaf, and it is lovely!
Pumpkin and turkey chilli – if ya’ll haven’t tried pumpkin based chilli, you should give it a go!
