Scribal Terror

Hallelujah!

Via Neatorama (Those aren't real nuns, by the way . . . , but they're very talented.)

What do you eat on New Year's Eve?

Do you have an "eat poor" tradition? Are smoked oysters or creamed herring de rigeur? We're having homemade pea soup and cornbread.

It can't be New Year's Eve without the bat

On the origins of champagne

 

The first commercial sparkling wine was produced in the Limoux * area of Languedoc about 1535. Around 1700, sparkling Champagne, as we know it today, was born. There is documentary evidence that sparkling wine was first intentionally produced by English scientist and physician Christopher Merrett at least 30 years before the work of Dom Perignon who, contrary to legend and popular belief, did not invent sparkling wine. 

Although the French monk Dom Perignon did not invent champagne, it is true he developed many advances in the production of this beverage, including holding the cork in place with a wire collar to withstand the fermentation pressure. It is believed champagne was created accidentally, yet others believe that the first champagne was made with rhubarb ** but was changed because of the high cost.

--Wikipedia

*Thus the first sparkling wine should have been called limousine.

** Mmmmm. Rhubarb.

The illustration is a statue of Dom Pierre Perignon at Moët et Chandon
 

Recipe for a nice garbage stew

 

The word "garbage" originally referred to entrails and offal. It appears quite frequently in old recipes. Here is how it's used in a  fifteenth-century cookbook:

Take fayre garbagys of chykonys, as the hed, the fete, the lyuerys, an the gysowrys; washe hem clene, an caste hem in a fayre potte, an caste ther-to freysshe brothe of Beef or ellys of moton, an let it boyle; an a-lye it wyth brede, an ley on Pepir an Safroun, Maces, Clowys, an a lytil verious an salt, an serue forth in the maner as a Sewe. --Medieval Cookery

[Take some nice garbage of chickens, such as the head, the feet, the livers, and the gizzards; wash them clean and put them in a nice pot, and add fresh beef or mutton broth, and let it boil. Add bread, pepper, saffron, mace, cloves, and a little verjuice* and salt, and serve it as a pottage]

"Fayre" would have been the opposite of "foul," as "nice" is now the opposite of "nasty." The bread was used for thickening, a pottage is a soup or stew, and verjuice is (according to the OED) "the acid juice of green or unripe grapes, crab-apples, or other sour fruit, expressed and formed into a liquor." Actually it all sounds pretty good, but I'd substitute lamb for the chicken innards.

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing  syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.   

Ambiguously phrased scientific specialty of the day

Nematode-eating fungi expert. Via Environmental Graffiti

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing  syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.   

Helpful hint

 
From Nurse Myra at Gimcrack Hospital:

Men who wear condoms have found that briefly applying nettles to the penis before putting on the condom can compensate for the sensation lost by the latex barrier.

More fun with nettles at the link.

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing  syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.