Civil war underwear and Indiana Jones

This article regarding Civil war undies is both interesting and informative.

Regarding Indiana Jones. As can be documented, he attended the University of Chicago.  A few weeks ago, a package turned up at the University of Chicago, addressed to Henry Jones Jr. Long story short, it's a replica available on Ebay, which, while in route to it's buyer in Italy, fell out of the package and ended up at the University of Chicago. Both the NYTimes and HuffPost have pretty entertaining articles on it.
Also topical and worth a read is Dr. Jones' tenure rejection letter.

finger jello

This post is concerns finger jello.

i'd never heard of such a thing, but tripped over it yesterday via a Pioneer Woman blog post.  (Look, one of the pictures features cattle vaccines stored in the kitchen fridge, which makes me homesick. )

Anyway, finger jello is a very pretty layered dessert, different flavors/colors of jello (including a condensed milk-based white layer) that you cut into shapes or small cubes and eat with your fingers (presumably the reason for the name). There's also stained glass or broken glass jello?!

i'd heard of jigglers, but never finger jello, and did some asking around. My good friend LZ hadn't heard of it, so it's not a upper northeast thing.  i also received this gchat this morning:

 Lauren:  maybe finger jello is indigenous to the 40s?

me:  on what are you basing this supposition?

 Lauren:  it just seems like it fits in with those savory jello sides with meat, and looks like tiny finger sandwiches

KateB, a Chicagoan-by-upbringing, associated the name with jello to be eaten with fingers.

Katherine: Finger jello? Oh, Jello Jigglers. Extra gelatin, right?

 me: you are amazing Katherine: Jello shots!

Which means that either Kate's brilliant (which she is), had heard of it before, or invented it in a former life. She had never heard of the Jello easter egg molds, which i referenced as a jello-based dessert popular when i was a 'tween. (Our mold leaked. Ugh.) That lead to us both finding a blog post for a gorgeous layered easter egg do-it-yourself thing, and also includes a drill. i personally love recipes that involve actual tools.

The origin of the name is still illusive. The Jello wikipedia page is no help, but did kick up some interesting tidbits. Apparently, there were once savory jello flavors, including Italian salad, celery, and tomato flavors for use in jello molds? There's also the awesome line, "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jello's reputation as family-friendly was slightly tarnished by Jello shots and Jello wrestling."

shaving, badger hair, and edible armadillos.

i was checking the Sartorialist blog today, like i usually do with lunch, and a recent post concerned shaving brushes as a Secret Santa gift. The brush in question was F.S.C. Barber Horn Shave Brush with Best Badger, and being a student at UW-Madison, the Best Badger part caught my attention.

 

It turns out, there are several grades of badger used in shaving brushes as outlined in wikipedia; good badger is from the underbelly of th badger, and comprises 60% of the hair on a badger. Best or pure badger is the finer hair from about 25% of the rest of the total badger hair, and Super badger is a graded/sorted version of this. The ne plus ultra is Silvertip badger, which have naturally silver tips. These apparently hold a lot more water, and as such, produce a superior lather.

This was mentioned directly to my labmates Ryan and Holly via gchat, with hilarious results.

Ryan:  yeah, apparently badger hair is the only thing people use with straight razors

but I dunno where they got these best ones from

yeah, you want that PURE badger too

none of those badger/horse hybrids

 me:  (shakes head)

amazing.

 Ryan:  I wonder if there are badger farms like there are with sheep

they just come and shave the badgers every now and then

 me:  Ryan, you should start one

also, make sure you get good health insurance

 Ryan:  more like life insurance

 me:  (my grandfather swears he's seen a badger attack a truck, so yeah)

 Ryan:  honey badger don't care

THAT'S the brush I want

In answer to your question, Ryan, apparently badger hair available commercially comes from mainland China, where badgers are a crop nuisance.

 Holly:  dare i ask why you're looking at this site in the first place?

 me: yes, terrible shaving problems

 Sent at 1:58 PM on Tuesday

 Holly:  i can see you going for the straight razor over the electric

 me:  (what? i have a dad and brother who shave. Granted, the dad and brother are blond and barely need to shave, but whatevs)

like, yeah. straight edge forevah

 Holly:  seems like a pretty fancy gentleman store for that group (no offense)

 me:  entirely too true

they'd all be like; 'You spent how much on WHAT?!'

 Holly:  i'd prefer $50 worth of beef jerky!

 me:  that has my vote, too

(and is much, much more likely)

even though it'll last, what, an hour?

 me:  and yeah, as i'll be in Amarillo; jerky for all, and to all a proteinacious night!

 Sent at 2:06 PM on Tuesday

 Holly:  (i read Armadillo, and wondered how armadillo jerky would taste...)

 Sent at 2:09 PM on Tuesday

 me:  mmm, leoprosy.

According to a brief search, the Florida Public Media cites" the 1975 edition of the Joy of Cooking describes armadillo meat as light and “porklike in flavor.” Also in that article regarding armadillos as a food source, they can carry leprosy, you should prolly cook your armadillo to 160 degrees before ingesting.

PBS remixes, St. Catherine, taffy and spinsters.

As previously posted, PBS is re-mixing clips from its various programs. Older clips include both Mr. Rogers as well as Bob Ross, and now music vids from Julia Child and Reading Rainbow. i'll admit that despite my great fondness for Reading Rainbow, the re-mix sounds a ton like the Mr. Rogers and Bob Ross re-mixes.

The Chazen Gallery here recently hosted a collection from Florence's Uffizi Gallery called An Offering of Angels. Because it's nearly Christmas, and because the collection includes works by guys like Botticelli and Titian, i took myself to see it (of course, in the last 2 hours, of the last day of the exhibit - ain't no minute like the last minute). One or two of the works featured St. Catherine of Alexandria. St. Catherine is dear to me (as is St. Catherine of Siena). Because she died in 305 AD, there are a few variations of her story. However, the gist of it is that she was a noble (princess) and noted scholar, converted a lot of folks, (possibly refused the Emperor Maxentius) and was sentenced to death by spiked wheel. The spiked wheel broke when she touched it, so she was beheaded instead and her feast day is Nov. 25th. Among other things, she's the patron of philosophers and unmarried women.

There's a firework called the Catherine wheel.

She's an early saint, and so there are a lot of traditions associated with her. In France, young unmarried women (woo, spinsters!) fashion a crown and place it on statues of her on her feast day. Women older than 25 who remain unmarried are apparently called Catherinettes, and  are said to be taking St. Catherine's bonnet. They are made to wear hats in green and yellow for the feast day (those usually made by friends). In Quebec, the day is celebrated by young women making taffy for guys-of-interest, a tradition stemming from a teacher-nun (also now a saint) who would make taffy to entice her students to show up to class.

A few words on taffy. i've been meaning to make pulled taffy for a few years now, and finally did a week or two ago (slightly late for St. Catherine's Day, and included a guy). There are a whole bunch of recipes out there, but we tested one with glycerin and one without. The batch without glycerin got cooked to hard ball stage, around 280 degrees and was much stickier. The glycerin seemed to add pliability, and increase the temperature range to which you could cook the taffy without it turning into basically hard candy.

Regarding glycerin; i some from a local grocery store (Woodmans, full disclosure). It was in the skin care section, but the back said 99.5% anhydrous and was labeled USP, so we went with it. Follow up included a quick google, and it is safe for human consumption.

Note on the word 'spinster'. Older, unmarried women are historically known as such because spinning wool was a livelihood lucrative enough to allow women not to have to rely on a male.  Contained within the wikipedia article is the note that, " Unpopped popcorn kernels have been dubbed "old maids" in popular slang, since just as unmarried women that don't have children, they do not "pop""  Golly.

there be dragons?

A friend recently posted this article, a wanted ad for a dragon slayer near Oklahoma City, on FB.

(i... know of a virgin we can use as bait, but she'll insist upon getting in the first stab.)