Tag: history

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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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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Heraldry, history and ASOIAF/GoT

As dumb as it sounds, one of the things I love about George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is the heraldry.  Specifically, the house sigils, as they are more commonly known, are some of the most iconic things about the show.  Of course Martin based this on medieval heraldry practices that, at least technically, still exist to this day.  Plenty of families have coats of arms, as do cities, towns, universities and colleges, etc.  And the central part of any coat of arms is usually a shield of some sort.  In the world of ASOIAF these tend to be fairly simple (the direwolf of House Stark, both the HBO version and book-ish version) although a few do get more complex (like House Tarth, HBO version and book-ish version).   And GRRM goes to a lot of trouble to describe the sigils of a great many houses in ASOIAF.  To give you an idea of the sheer amount of creative calories burned, check out the Heraldry page at the Citadel website and this awesome Westeros map some uber-geeks put together.  I totally geeked out about both of those.

Well, Kelly and I decided a while back to make our own sigil (in true geek fashion) and now I will share it with the world via the Intertubes.  A lot of people did something similar with the “Join the Realm” promo web page done by HBO for Game of Thrones.  But I wanted to do our own, with symbols that meant something to both Kelly and me.

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Dachshund winter activities

I bet you are thinking I am going to talk about dachshunds in the snow and such.  Well, you don’t know much about our dachshunds, then.  When it’s ridiculously cold outside, like it is now, just getting the dogs out to do their business can be a trial, especially if precipitation is in progress.  So most of their winter activities consist of a) trying to stay warm, b) trying to get more food than they are normally allowed, and c) sleeping.  Frequently a) and c) are combined.

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Denial, or where science and belief collide

I try to not rant too often on our blog, because I prefer to talk about things that are interesting and beautiful and even uplifting.  But sometimes I just feel compelled to do so because the absurdity and stupidity of something really gets to me.  This is one of those times.   So I ask your forgiveness as I indulge my anger a bit.

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So you can see for yourself

Here’s a screenshot of my Weatherbug from a few moments ago.

Forget about "winter is coming". It has arrived.
Forget about “winter is coming”. It has arrived.

So that is showing a temperature of minus 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit with a windchill of minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit.  I think this may actually be one of the coldest, if not the coldest, temperature I have ever experienced.  And I don’t think it’s stopped yet.

Sorry to keep going on and on, but weather (and weather history) fascinates me so I am just geeking out about all of this.   I am wondering if temperature records may be broken tonight or tomorrow.

-Geoff

This IS your Christmas Card

For a whole lot of very good reasons in the last few years, it’s proved impossible to get it together to send out our annual 100+ Christmas cards.  Between the time investment, which requires starting shortly after Thanksgiving, and the cost of the postage, we just haven’t been able to do it.  So, we’re going digital again this year.  Yep, this is your card.

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Pork pie – for vegetarians

I promised I would post a picture if I managed to make anything that came out reasonably tasty, and so here you go.  This is the Pork Pie recipe from A Feast of Ice and Fire, but made with a “Ground Sausage” from one of those companies that make meat substitutes.  It came out delicious, despite my inability to do the top crust correctly (hopefully do better next time).

If Samwell could fly, he'd be back at Castle Black having a slice of this.
If Samwell could fly, he’d be back at Castle Black having a slice of this.

Anyway, I think I might try something else this week.

Happy Thankgiving everyone!  And happy Hannukah too!

-Geoff

 

My family and the Kennedys

Wow.  Fifty years.

JFK in state at WH
President Kennedy’s body lies in state in the East Room of the White House on November 23rd, 1963. His honor guard in this photo includes one member of each of the five armed services. His coffin rests on the same bier that held President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin in 1865.

It’s hard to describe the relationship I have had with a President who died before I was born, or the way that relationship was shaped even as I grew up in Alabama.  But there was, and still is, a relationship.  It led me to make  speeches in high school that evoked Kennedy’s own speeches on public service.  It led me to defend JFK vigorously even when I was still a dumb young Reagan Republican.  And it led me to make a point of visiting his grave at Arlington when I finally had the opportunity on a class trip.  Where I wept.

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