Scribal Terror

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

This is adapted from CD Kitchen. I make a lot of it and then freeze it in single-serving packets.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups 2% milk
2 cups chicken stock or bouillon
1/2 pound fresh broccoli
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
8 ounces grated sharp cheddar

Directions:

Cook the broccoli until tender. Crumble it up and set aside.

Saute onion in butter. Set aside with broccoli.

Cook melted butter and flour using a whisk over medium heat for 3-5 minutes. Stir constantly and slowly add hot chicken stock whisking all the time.

Put everything together. Add milk, salt, pepper, and cayenne. Puree, return to stove until hot, then serve.

Mustard yogurt sauce

This is a lovely cold sauce for salmon:

    1 tsp dijon mustard
    1 tsp parsley finely chopped (dill would also do nicely)
    2 T GOOD olive oil
    4 T plain yogurt (fat free works fine)

Most of the recipes for mustard sauce I've found have called for either mayo or sour cream, and neither of those sounded tangy enough. The yogurt adds the perfect amount of tartness.

Aurora Borealis, 1131

 

--This is a poem I wrote as a reflection on an 1131 AS Chronicle entry:

This year, just after the Lord's own feast,
On a winter night, at our first sleep,
Was the northern heaven all as it seemed
A burning fire; Dismayed, we dreamed
Of an end to our dreaming, our time.

 

Look. It's an offing.

 
This particular offing is off the coast of Northern Wisconsin. An offing, in other words, is the part of a large body of water (in this case a lake, but usually the sea) which is closest to the horizon, the point where a ship just becomes visible from shore. When we say something is in the offing, we mean it's on the horizon or about to occur.

Before they had watercoolers . . .

 

They had scuttle-butts. According to Wikipedia:

Water for immediate consumption on a sailing ship was conventionally stored in a scuttled butt: a butt (cask or small barrel) which had been scuttled by making a hole in it so the water could be withdrawn. Since sailors exchanged gossip when they gathered at the scuttlebutt for a drink of water, scuttlebutt became Navy slang for gossip or rumors.

The scuttle-butt on the USS Constitution:

She could carry 48,600 gallons of fresh water, which was primarily used for drinking, and was stored in numerous containers in the hold and dispensed from the scuttlebutt, a large wooden cask laid on its side. The term "scuttle butt" is literally the combination of two words: 'scuttle' meaning hole, and 'butt' meaning a barrel of the 108-140 gallon capacity. Over time scuttlebutt's meaning transformed to rumor or gossip because sailors would congregate around the "scuttlebutt" exchanging the latest rumor. Maintaining tradition on modern Navy ships, water fountains are still called scuttlebutts.