Medieval mutton stew, slightly modified

Great stew for a cold winter's eve.
Great stew for a cold winter’s eve.

I used the mutton stew recipe I mentioned yesterday to make this, but I did make one change: I added yellow carrots, which would certainly have been known in Europe by the late middle ages.  Orange would not become the typical carrot color for a few more centuries.  Red would also have been common, but those are a little more difficult to come by these days, at least outside of a farmer’s market full of heirloom gardeners.  It just felt like the stew needed something besides meat, an egg, and seasoning.

Note to self: get a better background for medieval cooking photos.

-Geoff

More medieval cooking on a snowy winter’s eve

This week has become one snow event after another, and we are starting to actually run out of places to put the snow when we shovel.  There are really only two piles: the big one on the other side of our trash and recycling bins, between them and the neighbor’s fence; and the small one in this little corner between the steps and the house, where there is a stump I want dead anyway.  So the little pile is getting close to its maximum practical size, and the other one has reached the height of the bushes.  And trying to chip away all the melted, compacted snow that had refrozen as ice all over the walk and steps took almost an hour of hard work.  Thirty degrees outside and I was sweating.

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Valentine roundup

On the day I wear black and refer to as The Crispus Attucks St. Valentine’s Massacre Memorial, the rest of the world celebrates Hallmark’s day and overspends on chocolate, jewelry, flowers, and all things pink and red.  Last year we presented valentines in this space of a special variety.  This year we’ve gathered some of the best that showed up in our Twitter feed.  And by “best” we mean Geekiest.  Enjoy.

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Internet in Greater Boston – fewer options for more money

Greater Boston, and especially our home of Cambridge, is undoubtedly one of the technology capitals of the United States, and certainly of the East Coast.   And yet Kelly and I have struggled for years to find a decent, reliable Internet provider for a reasonable price.  Currently we are using Comcast, because we simply could not get reliable service from Verizon no matter how hard we tried.  It was depressing, but at least we figured it probably wouldn’t get any worse.

And then earlier this week I read that our Internet/phone/cable provider, Comcast, is going through yet another merger.

Sigh.  No good can come from this.

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Wintry mess coming tomorrow

I have a doctor appointment in the morning, and then work in the afternoon and evening.  I don’t know exactly what the morning rush hour will be like but I am guessing it will be a hell of a mess.  Hopefully the Mini will be able to handle it.  I am hoping it does not turn out to be more trouble than it is worth.  I don’t consider wrecking the car and/or injuring myself to be a fair trade for trying to make my appointments and getting to work, but I will give myself extra time to dig out the car and try to beat the traffic that I know will be coming.  We shall see, I suppose.

-Geoff

Concert at Memorial Church Harvard Sunday 2/16/14 6:00pm

From Matthew Hall comes word of a lovely concert this weekend, the first weekend of School Vacation week here in MA.  That’s important for those of you who, like us, work in the service industry.

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The dual basket idea worked, apparently

When we decided to put a second basket on top of the upright freezer as a cat bed, we had hoped that eventually the cats would be able to use them at the same time.  And so they have.

Yesterday, as I was finally finishing up the major kitchen cleaning and reorganization project I mentioned earlier, I put out the jar that holds cat treat and stocked it.  That got someone’s attention.

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Today in Equality

With the opening of the Sochi Olympic games on Friday there are all sorts of things going on right now to remind us that the world is full of both hateful bigots (I’m looking at you, Putin) and wonderful people (Canada, Scotland, that would be you.)

This is what has popped up in the latter category in my various news feeds today.  Enjoy.

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Today is Four Chaplains Day

On February 3rd, 1943, a small convoy named SG-19 was making its way across the Atlantic to Greenland from New York.  It consisted of the United States Army Transport Dorchester and two smaller merchant vessels, the SS Lutz and the SS Biscaya, escorted by three Coast Guard cutters: Tampa, Escanaba and Comanche.  Somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland at about 12:55 AM that morning, a German submarine torpedoed the Dorchester, knocking out her power as well as opening up her hull to the sea.  Below decks were hundreds of young American servicemen, many of them on their first ocean voyage.  They had been instructed to leave their life preservers on in case of attack, but the heat of the ship’s boilers and engines led many of them to take the jackets off.  And with the loss of power they were all suddenly in the dark.

Among the personnel on board were four Army Chaplains, all First Lieutenants: George Fox (a Methodist);  Alexander Goode (Reform-Rabbi); Clark Poling (Dutch Reformed);  and John Washington (a Roman Catholic priest).  The four had become fast friends at the Army Chaplains School on the Harvard University campus, right here in Cambridge.

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