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3138. arkymalarky - 6/9/2005 4:39:09 PM

Bob saw a cotton mouth on the road a year or two ago when it was so wet, but that's very rare. When you float the river, though, they hang from limbs and will sometimes drop into the boat. That happened to Dad and Bro one year, and Bro promptly dived out the back of the boat, leaving poor old Dad to fish the snake out with the oar.

3139. jexster - 6/11/2005 1:44:54 AM

Two weeks ago, we had our first annual parish Corpus Christi Faire. Food and crafts and fire eaters - the ususal but the food..really...it was nice that three neighborhood spots put booths together (one Arab family) but people don't go to street fairs to eat what they can 6-7 days of each week.

"What did they eat in the middle ages?" I asked..

Next year perhaps...

Midieval Recipie Translations



I volunteered to head the operation..


Want pig!

Here are recipes from several medieval English manuscripts and collections, each in its original language accompanied with a literal translation, and followed by a modern interpretation of the recipe and its cooking procedures. These recipes do not contain specific measurements and quantities, but are sufficiently explained that any competent cook will be able to prepare them


Pygge y-farsyd

3140. alistairConnor - 6/11/2005 9:45:28 AM

May I suggest, in that case, that you also do a lamb on a spit (middle eastern méchoui, but I don't imagine the recipe's changed much in the last 1000 years) -- as you mentioned Arabs in the neighbourhood.

3141. Dubai Vol - 6/11/2005 1:59:10 PM

Re: 3139

Wow! Jexster is human! (OK, I knew that, but it's nice to get confirmation) You know I love you, man!:)

"First Annual" events always tickle my funny bone: one of my more erudite teachers in high school pointed out that they really should be called "inaugural." But not being as precise about the language as Mrs Gage was, I'll let it slide :p

As nice as the idea is, Medievel food was by all accounts pretty uninteresting. I'd be tempted to slip in some Indian cuisine under whatever pretext. The tandoori (clay oven) style is reputed to be ancient....

Right now I am preparing a welcome home meal for Mrs Dubai-she's been in Kuala Lumpur all week on business. I hope a nice curry is not taken amiss. Apparently she spent last night in a German Bier Keller drinking Bier und Schnapps until 3AM. " My head hurts!" was her txt msg this AM.....

3142. arkymalarky - 6/11/2005 4:32:40 PM

DV, I posted this elsewhere, but don't remember where, but we had dinner with a German woman last week who used to travel to Dubai on business regularly and she was saying some of the things you said in here about the country, and was talking about the islands they're creating that you've posted pictures of in here.

3143. arkymalarky - 6/11/2005 4:33:59 PM

What would be the term for a subconscious fear of periods (those ending sentences)? Whatever it is, I think I have it.

3144. PelleNilsson - 6/20/2005 7:06:39 PM

macnas

I read a story in the IHT about the North Atlantic salmon. The hero is Orri Vigfusson, "the square-jawed Icelander, a buttoned-downed Viking in tweeds". The villains are the Irish drift-netters. Excerpts:

The Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, begins as a pea-size orange egg in freshwater tributaries from Connecticut to Canada's Ungava Bay in North America and from Portugal to Russia's White Sea on the European coast. A year or so later, it emerges as a silvery, pencil-long salmon smolt ready to head to sea, toward the sheltered, crustacean-rich feeding grounds off Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

When they return to their native streams, the wild salmon must dodge seals and cormorants, leap dams and waterfalls, before finally and mysteriously finding their way home, where they mate and spawn.

These days, few of the full-grown salmon heading back to their rivers in France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Ireland make it past the wall of more than 800 drift nets seining off the west coast of Ireland. Consequently, fewer salmon spawn and the population plummets.


Once Irish nets are banned, Vigfusson says, the potential growth for European angling revenue is staggering. He cites a recent study by Indecon International Economic Consultants, which concludes that in its home nation of Ireland, a netted wild Atlantic salmon sells for €22, but that same fish caught in Ireland on a sports fisherman's line can generate up to €423 in indirect revenue generated by food, lodging and transportation expenditures.


Is this something that is discussed in Ireland?

3145. Macnas - 6/21/2005 8:43:41 AM

Are you codding me? (ha! punerific or what?)

Indeed it is Pelle, and any one who angles is dead set against the drift netters. It's a bit of a political football, so it is not being resolved as quickly as it should. The unfortunate fact is that it will have to be banned outright, as no industry is more open to rule-bending than fishing.

The drift netters complain, with some justification, that it is the only industry they can make a profit from, due the way the EEC allowed Irish waters be raped by marauding Portuguese and Spanish fleets. The fact is that time is well up for drift netting, and it will have to go.

Your man Vig is quite right, river caught salmon is worth far more, and is one of those things that draws people from around Europe to bolster our tired tourist industry. Another sore point is salmon farming. It should be done using the Scandinavian model, but instead it is done in a slip-shod and poorly regulated way here.

This increases the amount of sea-lice in wild fish, and is another bone of contention between those who angle and those whose business is fish. The density of the farmed fish is too high, they are not in proper currents, they are too close to shore, and dead fish are not recovered in a timely manner.

One such farm was exposed on television, at the bottom of one of its containment nets, there was a meter of dead salmon, rotting away. The live salmon were rotten with lice.

3146. PelleNilsson - 6/21/2005 6:06:22 PM

EU fisheries management is a disaster. Here we have huge trawlers virtually vacuuming the Baltic for herring which is then sold to mink farmers for 0.1 Euros per kilo. The situation this year is particularly bad. The production of rotten herring will be down by a third. Let's not talk about the cod.

3147. thoughtful - 6/21/2005 6:40:06 PM

seems fishing is an issue here too...lobsters hit with a deadly bacteria that prevents them from shedding their shells...northeast coast hit with a deadly red tide that makes shellfish inedible...shad in the ct river are the lowest they've been in 30 years...not to mention the mercury levels. Not good.

3148. Macnas - 6/22/2005 8:30:59 AM

I know it may sound odd, but I have never eaten a fish that I have not caught myself. Hence not very many fish consumed, but I never was a great fan of it.

Oily fish such as mackerel I cannot abide, herring and anything small and in a tin ditto. Cod I have tasted, but only a mouthful. My fish of preference is brown trout, sea trout a close second and salmon third.

Everything else can go swim.

3149. alistairconnor - 6/22/2005 10:39:17 AM

Good rustic philosophy.
Don't eat what you're not prepared to kill.
And vice versa.

Explain that to the IRA.

3150. iiibbb - 6/27/2005 2:04:55 PM

So my fiance and I did a yard sale this weekend. Merging households and all.

We made $750 (assuming some of the IOU sales to friends of ours come through). Even if they don't we still made 600+. We made twice as much as most of our experienced yard-selling friends of ours thought we would.

Anyhow... anyone contemplating such a thing.

(1) We did a Sat&Sun sale. We made 90% of it on Saturday. Sunday was almost not worth it. If I had it to do over I would consider doing a Friday afternoon/Saturday/and _maybe_ a couple of hours after church.

(2) We had the gambit of people... the professional yardsale types are some of the most annoying people ever. It got to the point I wouldn't haggle with them because they were so stupid about $1 bidding stuff that's worth signficantly more. I'm not opposed to haggling by any stretch... but they were rude on top of it. Don't bid a $1 on something that's worth 80 and marked for 20. Geez.

The most pleasant people came between 8:30 and 1:00.

(3) Sale I messed up on? $10 for one of http://search.ebay.com/hp-11c_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8">these. My geek friend was very excited. His quit working... these calculators are very popular with electrical engineers.

(4) Most clever sale? My yard sale signs sold for $5.

(5) Hardest sell? A box of old topo maps for $65... I love maps. I hated to sell these, but I wasn't doing anything with them. Some artist bought them and she was going to actually do something interesting with them... which is why I let them go.

(6) Computer stuff does not sell... you can hardly give it away. Couldn't even sell a 17" trinitron monitor that was in decent shape for $10.

(7) If it has the words "Coca-Cola" on it, you will probably sell it.

--- It truely is amazing what people will buy, and won't buy. We had some stuff left over I was really surprised didn't sell at all. Yet some of my 'junkier' stuff went at full asking price.

Wierd.

3151. arkymalarky - 6/27/2005 9:16:07 PM

Bob would have loved the maps and probably the calculator.

Good tips. I'd rather have bamboo shoots shoved up my nails than do a yard sale, but we really need to one of these days. We'd have to move all the stuff to somewhere else to have it, though, which would be a nightmare. I'm never up early enough to get much out of yard sales, but I like them.

3152. iiibbb - 6/27/2005 9:33:16 PM

More tips

(1) I would tag-team with other families if I were you. I forgot to mention that's what we did. Multi-family sales are a big draw and I think enhance your likelyhood of getting what you want for stuff. In addition, rather than being a painful experience, you get to hang out with friends of yours while you sell stuff.

(2) Mark stuff about 20% over what you'd really take. People want to haggle. If they show any interest you can immediately knock some money off.

(3) You can tell what we didn't mind keeping... stuff that was over $20 is stuff that we wouldn't care if we took home.

(4) Make sure stuff is clean... clean stuff sells significantly better, and at significantly closer to your asking price.

(5) Have a free-stuff box... part of the object is to get rid of stuff... if you really don't care, just mark it as free. If you can't bring yourself to do that, "buy something, and get something from the box for free".

3153. thoughtful - 6/28/2005 8:48:36 PM

I eat LOTS of veggies and get tired of eating the same old same old, so I've found the best way to add zip to veggies is to combine them. Last night, I sauted up vidalia onions with garlic, zucchini and plum tomatoes in olive oil. I seasoned it with fresh parsley and basil and of course salt and pepper. Came out yummy. Serve with or without a sprinkling of parm cheese on top. Would've been good if I had some criminis around to toss in too....

3154. Magoseph - 6/28/2005 9:12:55 PM

I’m tired of eating vegetables too and lately I have blended them in the mixer with a little Tabasco sauce and chili powder and drank the whole down quickly. I have prepared vegetables in all kinds of ways and I’m tired of cooking two meals every meal. What are criminis?

3155. thoughtful - 6/29/2005 1:30:52 PM

criminis are baby portabella mushrooms...pack a wallop of flavor.

3156. concerned - 6/29/2005 3:54:55 PM

What a dry spring and hot early summer it has been in the upper midwest. I actually have had to water my plantings & some saplings this year to ensure they don't succumb to stress.

OTOH, I have some good news to report with regard to the colorado blue spruces and even some of the western hemlocks I planted this year. Most of the (bare root) blue spruces are showing new growth and some of the hemlocks are also. Also, I am succeeding in keeping the deer away with bitter pellets and occasional applications of Deer Off. Also, my Southern Magnolia is turning it around, having suffered only moderate leaf burn over the winter with no shoot die back and growing six inches so far this year (for the previous two years, it had suffered major die back and leaf burn). And I came across a web forum where somebody not far from me (slightly northwest of me) is having good success growing a Southern Magnolia of the same cultivar as I have (Bracken's Brown Beauty - most others have failed for him). He says his flowered last year and the secret to survival in Zone 5 is not to get them too small and keep them going until they're about five years old. He says once his got established it made it through a northern Illinois winter without any leaf burn. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to accept that yet since even some conifers such as arbor vitae get leaf burn, but it'd be great if my Southern Magnolia actually became that hardy. Souther Magnolias, I find out, are also pretty unique for a flowering tree because they supposedly bloom more or less continuously throughout much of the growing season once they become established.

3157. judithathome - 6/30/2005 1:02:05 AM

Good news on your trees, Con'ed!

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