Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

The choice is between normal and crazy.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

The willow is too close to the house.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Afternoon Open Thread

Saturday Afternoon Open Thread

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I was looking at this old cookbook that belonged to my great-grandmother. It was published in 1926 by the McCormick & Co. extracts, spices and tea company in Baltimore, MD:

Admonitions on housewifery are sprinkled throughout:

I don’t think that would work out for everybody…

My great-grandmother was a terrible cook and also nuttier than a squirrel turd. Given the world she lived in as a young woman, the latter is understandable.

About a third of our countrymen want to repeal the last century, and with their champions installed in the executive branch, they’ve made some progress. But I say HELL no, we won’t go.

Anyhoo, open thread.

Reader Interactions

179Comments

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    Funny that you posted this on the same day our cleaning people came. ? I am a seriously terrible housekeeper and would have gone bugfuck nuts if I had been born in a time where my only option was to get married and start pumping out children.

    But now I have to go watch videos about my digestive system and plan my meals for the rest of the week. Grocery shopping tomorrow. IBS is annoying, but at least the stupid, non-intuitive FODMAPs diet seems to help a bit.

  6. 6.

    Fair Economist

    I wish I knew enough about my great-grandparents to say whether they were nuttier than a squirrel turd or not.

  9. 9.

    fuckwit

    I was reading about the history of the early Greek colonies of Sicily in the ancient times. Every single one of them devolved from democracy, to oligarchy, to tyranny. Predictably. Inevitably.

    It seems like the USA– and with it, the rest of the world– is at making the transition from the second to the third stage now. We’ve been an oligarchy for the last 20-30 years. Now 8 rich men own as much wealth as what, 90% of the rest of the fucking planet? And now we have the tyrant Troll in power.

    This is a crucial moment. We could pull this one out of the fire, but it won’t be easy. First step is to take back the House in 2018, maybe even the Senate. And then, impeachment. Then, some major but hopefully simple modifications to the Constitution to keep this shit from happening ever again.

  10. 10.

    opiejeanne

    @Fair Economist: I know quite a bit about all four sets of my great grandparents and at least three were nuts. Jury’s out on the rest. They all lived through the Civil War as children or young adults, an event that affected all their lives so I’m not too surprised that 3 were nuts.

  11. 11.

    wuzzat

    @Mnemosyne: The rivers of fire, the Browns, the relatively large number of people who are willing to be shot into space to GTFO of Ohio, the rise and fall of Big Butter Jesus, the Browns… the list goes on and on!

  12. 12.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve never been to Ohio in my life (and of course I know Kasich’s a fraud). At any rate the question has nothing to do with contemporary politics.
    @James Powell: It’s just a general impression, but to me it seems that Ohio’s the Midwestern state most singled out for ridicule. (As is Missouri, but I understand the stereotype there as being a glorified Arkansas).

  13. 13.

    Baud

    But I say HELL no, we won’t go.

    I don’t know. I kind of miss fedoras. Would be cool if they became fashionable again.

  14. 14.

    schrodingers_cat

    I have a cookbook from India, first published in the early 70s, it has similar hectoring advice for “good” wives and newly wed young women. The recipes are fool proof though

  15. 15.

    MattF

    In my family, bad cooking was closer to home. I was in the hospital a few years ago, and the food there reminded me of dear old mom. Which is to say, not good.

  17. 17.

    opiejeanne

    Betty Cracker: I have a couple of old cookbooks, a bit older than yours. I Red through the recipes and wonder how people made those recipes work or how they ate like that

  18. 18.

    Baud

    “as faithfully, as cheerfully and as intelligently as her husband does his”

    I would not want a housewife that met this standard.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    @wuzzat:
    When I lived in Columbus, one evening at the gym I over heard two men discussing OH. The first one said “I thought you hated this place so much you were leaving last year.” “We waited until the kid graduated HS. Tomorrow is his last day, then we are getting the fuck out of here.” That was a prevailing attitude among a lot of people I met. Not all mind you, some people seemed to like it. I think they had no imaginations. That’s not to say that you couldn’t have a nice life in OH but it was probably going to be a bit boring, IMO. And experience.

  23. 23.

    Felonius Monk

    Local reports say that there are over 100,000 people at the Saratoga racetrack today for the Travers. Needless to say we are not going out for dinner tonight. The place is a zoo.

  24. 24.

    Major Major Major Major

    That book looks really cool! And I love finding little things like that sprinkled around old things, it’s a reminder of how far we’ve come.

    I’m in Vancouver now, headed to Stanley Park and the aquarium and the lighthouse and the bridge. It’s a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, and it’s wonderful to walk around in a city and just feel safe for once. We had brunch with a friend’s friend and he said the latest local news story about violent crime was somebody driving around the north shore throwing eggs.

  32. 32.

    efgoldman

    @opiejeanne:

    I Red through the recipes and wonder how people made those recipes work or how they ate like that

    I am avoiding the temptation to find and link old disgusting recipes. It’s a game we’ve played here from time to time.

  33. 33.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: it became a Thing for guys who spend too much time on reddit and 4chan to try and look cool by wearing fedoras, and failing. Mostly trilbys technically. Now folks associate a young man in a fedora with them.

  35. 35.

    Jeffro

    @Starfish:

    Ohio is starting to get some Florida level craziness going on.

    Unpossible! Florida is always going to be Florida, no matter how hard Ohio tries.

  36. 36.

    Gelfling 545

    I knew 3 of my father’s grandparents. I knew none of my mother’s nor yet her parent’s who died when she was 9 (her mom) and 17 (her dad). My paternal grandmother’s mother lived with us when I was a child and I adored her. My grandfather’s parents lived in NYC and we visited a couple of times a year. They seemed normal but reserved. He was a cabinet maker and had been born and raised in an orphanage in Germany. She was born in Austria and, as far as I can tell, essentially indentured to a family in Germany as a cook. My grandfather & his siblings were born here. What I remember best of this great grandmother was her coming to Buffalo for my grandfather’s funeral. I was 17 and had been accepted into college with a scholarship. When my Dad told her she remarked that it was certainly a reason to be proud but what a shame that I would never marry.

  42. 42.

    divF

    A confluence of Ohio and antique household practices can be found in the volume “Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping”, first published in 1880. Here is Madame divF’s favorite piece of household advice for the “lone woman” undertaking week-long spring cleaning by bringing in some temporary hired help.

    … on Monday, be up early; after breakfast leave the girl to wash the dishes, sweep, and put things in order up stairs, and you take a man and go to the cellar;…

    The italics are in the original.

  43. 43.

    jl

    thanks for interesting cultural tidbits from our late lamented past.
    I had a great aunt who was a world champion cook and nuttier than a fruitcake.
    Interesting to read her old cookbooks. She rewrote all of her favorite recipes over and around what was in the book.

    Edit: what I meant was, she edited her favorite recipes with pencil in the book, so decades later it is hard to make out what the hell she did or how to reproduce some old family favorites.

  44. 44.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    We have a not too old Settlement cookbook in our house. It has a chapter on how to host a formal dinner party and where the maids should be standing, etc.

    I also have a ’70s-vintage vegetarian cookbook which, my daughters were delighted to discover and point out to me, also describes “dinner parties” in the intro, but in terms of people sitting around passing joints.

    Somewhere we also have the handwritten cookbook from my wife’s great aunt, the farmer’s wife.

  49. 49.

    RSA

    Going to college in Baltimore, I always liked the McCormick spice factory, in the Inner Harbor. You could smell the spices, day or night, just driving by. I was sad to hear that it was torn down in the late 1980s.

  54. 54.

    Tenar Arha

    My mother’s go to cookbook was the I Hate to Cookbook, by Peg Bracken. She’d cook & freeze or refrigerate dinner on the weekends, because she taught and high school and later administered college, and also did what amounted to as chunks of the 2nd shift. She was an okay cook, but she didn’t enjoy it. She didn’t have time to get fancy. She didn’t have lots of free time but my brother and I started early making our own lunches, helping with dinner & even doing our own laundry starting in middle school.

    ETA grammar

  55. 55.

    james parente

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I dated a woman who lived north of Cincinnati. Off I-75. I was never comfortable there. Could that have been due to the honking big-assed Traitor’s Flag painted on the roof a barn, surrounded by agressive bible verses, just off the Interstate?
    Not my favorite state.
    Funny thing, though, I really like Skyline Chili. It is great Stoner Food!

  56. 56.

    jl

    @trollhattan: A hipster trilby and a Bond trilby seem to work different. I usually find a hipster face in a trilby very punchable (though I refrain). Not so Bond face in a trilby, even though I am not a Bond fan, Connery or otherwise.

  58. 58.

    Fair Economist

    @efgoldman:

    I am avoiding the temptation to find and link old disgusting recipes. It’s a game we’ve played here from time to time.

    There’s an amusing site I browse that tests mid-century menus, Midcentury Menus. They actually cook the things to see what they’re like, which adds to the amusement. I’m sure there are similar ones for older cuisines. I know older recipes are often about taking things we generally don’t eat like organ meats and making them more palatable.

  59. 59.

    efgoldman

    @RSA:

    I always liked the McCormick spice factory, in the Inner Harbor. You could smell the spices, day or night

    Used to be tons of places like that in and around Boston: the Bell’s seasoning plant, in Everett or Chelsea; Baker’s Chocolate in Neponset; tons of candy factories all over Cambridge (Deran, Necco, Squirrel Nut Zippers…). Sort of compensated for the stink from paint and chemical plants.

  61. 61.

    frosty

    @RSA: The spice factory is north of the city in Hunt Valley now and you can get the scent of what they’re bottling from I-83. Not nearly the ambiance of the harbor, and the harbor lost something too when the spice odors left.

  62. 62.

    smintheus

    My mom, who is an outstanding cook, recently said that she first learned to cook well from an excellent but simple McCormack cookbook she was given around the time she married in the ’50s. My parents lived in Baltimore at the time. Possibly related to the older book your grandmother had.

  64. 64.

    trollhattan

    @jl:
    I think the answer to “Do I look like Sean Connery wearing this?” is “No!” 99.999% of the time.

  69. 69.

    efgoldman

    @raven:

    We had the Ovaltine Factory!

    I nagged my mother into buying Ovaltine once (they sponsored at least one of my favorite TV shows – “Hey kids! Tell your Mom to get Ovaltine!”). I drank it once. So awful I never touched it again.

  73. 73.

    lamh36

    ‘Sup BJ

    Been a day of cleaning and running errands. Tomorrow the fam is coming over so we can talk about the final plans for our DC trip in a month!

    Right now though, I’m in a Patrick Swayze kinda mood…so I’m bout to get into watching some #Roadhouse !! Been a while since I watched it

  75. 75.

    Shana

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: An apartment I moved into in college had a left behind cookbook called The Starving Artist’s Cookbook published in 1976 but seems much older. All the recipes seem to be written for residents of Greenwich Village sometime around 1955. It refers to a can of tuna costing 24 cents and hamburger going for 50 cents a pound. There’s a chapter about furnishing your pad. Some of the recipes are decent. I don’t know why I’ve kept it, but there it is on my shelf.

  77. 77.

    debbie

    @Starfish:

    When I moved back to Ohio, one of the first news stories was about a couple of guys who were pulled over by a cop. He asked them why they were dragging what was clearly an ATM behind their pickup. They insisted it was a washing machine they were taking to be repaired. Shockingly, it turned out to be stolen.

    In Ohio, people don’t need crack to act like crackheads.

  81. 81.

    Mel

    On the subject of Ohio and what my wingnut neighbor used to call “lady business” (apparently, anything from housework to cooking to pregnancy to the few “lady jobs” that he thought didn’t immediately turn women into demons from the 7th level of hell), enjoy this 1920s teaching contract originally posted by the Ohio Education Association. Scroll to the bottom of the linked page to view it.

    Long may we engage in the immoral act of loitering in downtown ice cream parlors, ladies!

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @raven:
    Everybody has to like it some place. I’ve seen worse than OH, that’s for sure. Just never could see the attraction. Still have friends who live there. And they could move, I think for some it’s just where they landed. I know that not everyone likes where I live either.

  84. 84.

    RSA

    @raven: Mmm–sounds good! I love Old Bay, partly for the flavor, partly for the memories it brings back.

    @frosty:

    The spice factory is north of the city in Hunt Valley now and you can get the scent of what they’re bottling from I-83.

    I didn’t know that! Thanks. I’ll have to go by there some time, keeping in mind the different atmosphere.

  86. 86.

    smintheus

    I have to post this video of the absolutely hilarious Italian TV personality/cook from decades ago, la sora Lella. Here she’s cooking ‘Pollo Romano’. The show gets increasingly bizarre and argumentative in classic Italian style beginning around 6 minutes in. But the first several minutes are a great reminder of what outdoor markets in Rome were like back in the day (before they were turned into tourist traps a few decades ago).

    There’s still a Sora Lella restaurant on the Tiber island.

  87. 87.

    Felonius Monk

    @efgoldman:

    I drank it once. So awful I never touched it again.

    I grew up on that stuff. I loved it, but haven’t had it in years. But then I also loved Hot Ralston cereal.

  88. 88.

    efgoldman

    @Jay S:

    Ovaltine had to have been powered by advertising alone.

    That whole “Hey kids, tell your mom to buy….” was so, so pervasive in the 50s and 60s. No wonder they eventually banned those kinds of ads.

  90. 90.

    Sister Golden Bear

    As expected, confronting Nazis and white supremacists in SF is a combination of storm chasing and whack-a-mole, as they keep moving around — although they were last seen in Pacifica, meaning they’d literally been chased out of town. Alt-bros continue to whine on Twitter about not feeling safe in SF. Maybe ya should’ve thought of that beforehand…

  91. 91.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    @Jay S:
    Me. I used to like Ovaltine. Can’t remember the last time I had some. Probably more than 55-60 yrs ago. You had to mix the crap out of it though, otherwise it tastes like chocolate sand. It’s even better if you use a blender and add ice cream.

  92. 92.

    efgoldman

    @Felonius Monk:

    I also loved Hot Ralston.

    My mom’s choice of hot cereal was pretty much always Maltex, although I could get her to go for Cream of Wheat/Cream of Rice once in a while. For decades my own choice is oatmeal.

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    @opiejeanne:

    I Red through the recipes and wonder how people made those recipes work or how they ate like that.

    A featured article in BBC History magazine reproduces old recipes. The current issue features cucumber ice cream, using cooked cucumbers and ginger Brandy, from an 1885 Victorian era cookbook.

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    @Starfish: Please don’t tell me that I am the only one who thought a “Gender Reveal Party” in Ohio was something different than what was talked about in that article in People magazine.

    Please?

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who got his high school diploma in Dayton.)

  96. 96.

    Felonius Monk

    @efgoldman:

    That whole “Hey kids, tell your mom to buy….” was so, so pervasive in the 50s and 60s.

    What about Captain Midnight? If you listened to him on the radio or watched him on early tv — you just had to drink Ovaltine. :)

  97. 97.

    efgoldman

    @Ruckus:

    You had to mix the crap out of it though, otherwise it tastes like chocolate sand.

    Hershey’s syrup and Bosco both made superior chocolate milk. Quik (powder) took forever to dissolve.

  98. 98.

    trollhattan

    @Jay S:
    Ovaltine was in the house because the mom didn’t believe in chocolate milk mix for the young’ns. Pretty sure one jar would last a decade. Barley malt was not my friend then; although today I like certain barley products just fine.

    Must note “Christmas Story” Ovaltine Little Orphan Annie tie-in.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @Jay S:
    Remember I was a kid and taste buds can change quite a bit after you hit your teen years. I probably wouldn’t like it now and couldn’t drink it in milk anyway. That stuff and I don’t get along, plus I’m not allowed.
    @efgoldman:
    Oatmeal is much better than Cream of anything but Hot Ralston was at least edible.
    ETA of course whatever it was that was served as hot cereal on board ship, and I have no idea what it was supposed to be, was, to be polite, crap.

  102. 102.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    “May I ask you if you’ve noticed,
    May I ask you if you’ve seen
    My minnow Minnie
    Who was swimmin’
    In your Ovaltine?”

    I don’t remember the last time I had it – probably before I was ten – but I seem to vaguely recall it tasting like crap.

  104. 104.

    Felonius Monk

    @Jay S:

    Alright we need an official Ovaltine survey. It’s a 2-2 tie so far.

    I would only drink it hot. It didn’t mix well with cold milk.

  105. 105.

    Mel

    I’m a yes on the Ovaltine, but I have to admit that I haven’t had it in years. We used to mix Ovaltine and Hershey’s syrup into milk, and then plunk a little ball of vanilla ice cream in it.

    Root beer floats (A&W root beer!) were also a childhood favorite.

  106. 106.

    Brachiator

    @Jay S:

    @efgoldman:

    .Alright we need an official Ovaltine survey. It’s a 2-2 tie so far..

    Loved Ovaltine. Sometimes we also had Hershey’s chocolate syrup mixed in milk.

    I vaguely remember a hot cereal called Malt o’meal. I would cut up sausage links and put the pieces in Cream of Wheat.

    I have oat meal from time to time, on an odd weekend, but after childhood I was never big on hot cereals.

  108. 108.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    Hershey’s good, Bosco, not so much. Quick is I believe, chocolate colored granite dust. Which is why it didn’t dissolve well.

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Alt-bros continue to whine on Twitter about not feeling safe in SF.

    Good. They shouldn’t. As Tina Fey reminded them recently, An African-American drag queen is still a six-foot three-inch Black man.

    Apparently some people missed the unspoken who can kick your ass, pasty white boy part of that sentence.

  111. 111.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Brachiator:

    I detest malt — malted milk, those horrible malted chocolate things they used to have at the movies, beer — so Malt-o-Meal was never on my list.

    But I love proper oatmeal/porridge, Cream of Wheat, Cream of Rice, and my favourite, hot Ralston. Also love corn meal mush, either in a bowl as a hot cereal, or congealed, sliced, and fried. Yum!

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    .Alt-bros continue to whine on Twitter about not feeling safe in SF.

    Somehow this strikes me as soon funny, given all the angry, militant posturing from these dopes in their earlier marches.

  114. 114.

    WaterGirl

    @efgoldman: Isn’t Ovaltine just chocolate milk with something awful in it to make it taste bad?

    edit: from later comments, I just learned that malt must be what makes it taste bad. Like SD, I despise malt in anything.

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @Fair Economist:

    we generally don’t eat like organ meats and making them more palatable.

    We had a guy who worked for us back in the 60s who ate head cheese all the time. That’s an acquired taste. And I never even acquired the concept.
    Also we had a fella from Estonia, who ate an entire onion at morning break, most every day. He never worried about people bothering him the rest of the day.

  117. 117.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Another Scott: I didn’t see where the article described the party, but I assumed it was a gathering where you out yourself as gay/transgender/whatever.

    Why? What did you think it was and what was it?

  120. 120.

    Brachiator

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    .Also love corn meal mush, either in a bowl as a hot cereal, or congealed, sliced, and fried.

    Never had mush, and not sure I would want to give it a try.

    For me, “Mush!” is something you say to a team of dogs in the Yukon, not food to eat.

  126. 126.

    Mel

    @WaterGirl: It’a a party where the center of excitement is a “neutrally iced” cake. When the hosts cut into the cake, the interior is either pink or blue.

    It’s supposed to be some sort of highly dramatic “reveal” of the expected baby’s gender. Guests are expected to wow and oooh with amazement. I find it really bizarre.

  129. 129.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    Not quite the same thing. Grits is ground hominy. There’s a process that involves soaking the corn in some kind of alkali before processing. Corn meal mush is a similar consistency, but the flavour is quite different.

  131. 131.

    Fair Economist

    @Florida Frog: It could be even more of a time sink if I tried the menus. Unfortunately – or fortunately, I’m not sure – my family is not made of adventurous eaters so it would be wasted. It’s interesting how much cuisine has changed in 50-70 years.

  133. 133.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: rofl.

    Apparently it’s a thing where a pregnant woman tells her friends whether she’s having a girl or a boy.

    I guess such parties are a thing now?

    Glad that I’m not the only one that was confused!

    I was picturing something out of Playboy After Dark… ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  134. 134.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @debbie: Seriously? Oy.

    And was the baby in question the one that didn’t actually exist? I saw in my skimming of the article that there was a girl who said she’d lost her baby in the shooting, but police said she was never pregnant.

  135. 135.

    Brachiator

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    And grits is the Southern name for it.

    No, grits is a bit different. And I love grits.

    I remember in college, there was a Southern cooking night in the dining hall, and grits were featured. Some of the student diners could not handle grits. Even those who presumably ate polenta.

  136. 136.

    Jay S

    @SiubhanDuinne: Up here in the northwest Bob’s Red Mill sells coarse ground corn as grits. The only other version I’ve seen are a national brand of instant grits made with hominy. I believe both are used and may vary by region.

  140. 140.

    schrodingers_cat

    Yes on Ovaltine, with hot milk but I like Rooh-Afza and chocolate milk (these days I make my own mix), I used to like the Cadbury’s drinking chocolate when I was growing up.

  141. 141.

    Mel

    @Jay S: Where I grew up, both “grits” and “hominy” or “hominy grits” were both a thing.

    Regular grits were made of boiled corn meal (a coarser gring than what is used for polenta).

    Hominy /hominy grits (I’ve heard it called both ways) are made from whole kernels of corn, with the hull and the germ taken out. The kernels are soaked in a lye water solution. (Not sure what else might have gone into the solution, or if the older people in my family bought the hominy pre-soaked or did it themselves. I was a very you g child when my Grt Grandmother was serving hominy to us.) The hominy corn kernels get rinsed thoroughly and are then cooked. They get quite puffy and are rather tasty, as I recall.

  145. 145.

    Starfish

    @Another Scott: I want to live in your world where women do not engage in ostentatious displays of how important it is to be a vessel to birth humans.

    A friend had a gender reveal cake and gave slices to her kids. Her daughter who was the only girl of three children cried when she bit into her cake and learned that there would be another boy.

  146. 146.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mel: Hominy is also called pozole, which is also the name of a Mexican soup containing it.

    That process of soaking the kernels in something alkaline is called nixtamalization. It’s also used in making corn tortillas. Native Americans discovered it a long time ago, and when Europeans brought corn back to the Old World they didn’t do it and started getting sick. Turns out turning corn into hominy makes niacin bioavailable, and if you eat corn as your main dietary staple without treating it that way, you get pellagra (niacin deficiency).

  148. 148.

    Original Lee

    Since this is an open thread: I have a recipe for gingersnap pie crust that uses gingersnaps and zwieback. It’s been a while since I bought zwieback, so you can imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find any in any of the 5 stores I visited today. Is there an alternative to zwieback? Or is there a grocery store chain that reliably stocks it? Thanks!

  151. 151.

    Gelfling 545

    @efgoldman: Some days you can smell the cheerios from the remaining General Mills plant here (Buffalo) . It’s much nicer than the smell we used to get from the Purina dog chow plant.

  152. 152.

    Original Lee

    @debbie: Yes. First place I looked, then also tried cookies/crackers aisle and international/ethnic. Nowhere to be found!

  154. 154.

    jl

    @Mel: Soaking the corn in a weak lye solution does two things. It does something to the niacin in the corn to make it easier to absorb, so the corn in more nutritious. Also, it does something to the protein in the corn to make it more ‘doughy’. I think masa, from Mexico cuisine is made from hominy, to the tamales and tortillas don’t fall apart. I don’t know if that part of it is noticeable in hominy grits. I can’t tell from what i have eaten when I am in the South. Not sure if they keep track of whether the corn meal is form hominy or untreated field corn. Maybe it is just a generic name for any kind of corn meal mush made southern style. Maybe some commenter knows?

  156. 156.

    Original Lee

    @debbie: Thanks. Why on earth they would stop making something that a quick Google search would reveal is used in many baked goods is beyond me.

  159. 159.

    Mel

    @Jay S: I suspect that “hominy grits” was a local dialectic variant.
    I grew up towards the southern end of Appalachia. My great grandma whose family was from the south called hominy “hominy”. My great grandparents and grandparents who grew up in my little corner of Appalachia called hominy “hominy grits”.

    A linguistic quirk of the regional dialect is the most likely reason for the “hominy grits” phrase on that side of the family, I think.

  162. 162.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @trollhattan: I’m guessing they were hoping that they white sheets would blend into the fog. (For non-locals, Pacifica is notoriously foggy during the summer.)

    There’s been some speculation that they chose this weekend because they thought all those hippie activists would be out at Burning Man. It’s true that at this most wonderful time of the year, you can actually find parking in SF, also not have to listen Burners yammer on about the Burn. But they forgot that most San Franciscans are still in town.

  163. 163.

    Mel

    @jl: Just called a friend who is from Mexico. He said his grandparents did use hominy when they made masa.

  164. 164.

    donnah

    I was born and raised in SW Ohio and still live here. When it comes to friendliness and good neighborhoods, we’re just fine. I got a good education and married my high school sweetheart after college. Our three sons also went to a great public school system. Two of them still live in the area.

    Am I worried about crap that goes on here? Sure. Ohio has its share of shitheels, goofballs, and idiots, but lots of states, probably all of them, have their share, too. We were crushed when Trump won and still haven’t recovered. But we are active in politics and we do our share of campaign volunteering to support Democratic candidates.

    Cost of living is quite manageable here and we expect to retire here. Like everywhere else, there are good parts and bad parts. We celebrate the good parts!

  166. 166.

    trollhattan

    @Sister Golden Bear:
    “Hey y’all, your sheets getting wet too? Hate it when they cling.”

    Super brave of them to head for Hippie Central for their little klavern but the fun stops when they remember they can’t pack heat. I hope each and every one had to pay $45/day to park.

    “Welcome. Now spend your money and go the hell home.”

  168. 168.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: Well, of course, that makes perfect sense once you know that it’s a bunch of people who are going to have a baby! thanks

  169. 169.

    jl

    @trollhattan: After getting my schedule screwed up today by their nonsense, I skeaddled back home early and tried to look up info on Patriot Prayer. I think they are a righty trolling group. They hold demonstrations and protests over nothing, don’t say enough about themselves for anyone to figure out what they are other than some kind of right wing thing. And then hope for some BS to happen so they can whine about it. Their public statements have grown increasingly fantastical and stupid as their protest, and then hastily announced and then cancelled, press conference at Alamo Square, devolved into nothing.

  170. 170.

    frosty

    @RSA: Old Bay: When you’re hankering for a Bloody Mary but don’t have any mix, Old Bay in tomato juice will be an acceptable substitute.

    Helpful hint: always keep a 6-pack of 6-oz tomato juice cans lying around.

    Re: McCormick. The winds have to be right to catch it from I-83. Better to drive up to the spice plant, just south of Shawan Road (I think). I worked downtown in the early 80s and it was pretty neat. “Oh, they’re working on cumin today.” Or pepper, or chili powder, etc etc.

  172. 172.

    frosty

    @Ruckus:

    Quick is I believe, chocolate colored granite dust.

    Of course. That’s the reason it’s the only thing my mother used. Not the world’s most inventive cook.Never used garlic. I use her potato salad recipe and that’s it.

  173. 173.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: To be perfectly candid, after I had originally clicked on the link to the article, I thought, uh oh, I should have used private browsing for that. So I closed the window – like that would make a difference if cookies were already tracking me, etc!

    Yeah, I was pretty sure the removal of clothing was going to be involved. :-) The real answer is a bit anticlimactic!

  174. 174.

    Miss Bianca

    @lamh36: love “Roadhouse”! Enjoy! ETA: Tho I gotta admit it’s Sam Elliott, rather than the Swayze, who really floats my boat in that one. I go for dark and brooding, what can I say…

  175. 175.

    Amir Khalid

    @Ruckus:
    Ovaltine is still popular in Asia. You can easily find it on supermarket shelves in Malaysia, right next to the Horlicks.

  178. 178.

    J R in WV

    @Amir Khalid:

    Chocolate mix with vitamins added. Ever bite into a vitamin pill or capsule? Yetch! Now add cholcolate, still yetch! But parents were supposed to think that the vitamins made the chocolate drink healthy, and thus better than Hershey’s, So Wrong!

  179. 179.

    Tehanu

    Hated Ovaltine AND Bosco — one bitter, the other always tasted thin and artificial to me.

    I found my mother’s American Woman’s Cookbook, with great color pictures and lots of recipes for things like shrimp cocktail and creamed beef. Now I know why Mama always served tomato juice in little tiny glasses before every holiday dinner, and there was always a maraschino cherry on my half grapefruit.

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