A really cool article about one of my weird niche interests (ask me about Renaissance recipes sometime, they’re great).
Since I have my main cookbook right by me at the moment, here’s a small sample of some flavour profiles from Renaissance England, prior to the shift in European cooking styles that’s described in this article–all of them from savoury recipes involving meat:
Rosemary, currant, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, pepper.
Shallot, mustard, nutmeg, honey, white wine vinegar.
Onion, rosemary, marjoram, thyme, savoury, bay, parsley, pistachio.
Hardly the plain boiled fare most people picture in traditional English cooking, right?
Renaissance food is awesome.
This has been intermittently getting a note or two and it’s awesome so I’m going to reblog it again. Everyone learn about one of my strange niche hobbies.
1. medieval Europeans were ALL ABOUT OPTICS. They studied it, wrote about it extensively, and used magnifying lenses to read.
2. the asthma is a little bit more of an issue, because they didn’t have inhalers, but on the other hand (a) one major hypothesis for the cause of asthma is that modern-day humans aren’t exposed to enough early childhood infections, and (b) even if you don’t buy that theory, what IS true is that we have good evidence that people with disabilities were a normal part of medieval society (and this evidence comes largely from the peasant class, not the upper classes).
3. medieval Europeans were GAY AS HELL they just didn’t talk about it the same way we do. research on this is still hotly debated but basically there was a ton of hot nun-on-nun and knight-on-knight action. we didn’t invent the gays ok
4. you were more likely to be killed for being the wrong type of Christian or for being Jewish than you were for witchcraft, and even that was mostly in the post-medieval period. The Spanish Inquisition (of Monty Python fame) is early modern, not medieval. And by the way guess whether it was more dangerous to be Jewish in the 12th century or in the 20th century. Go on, guess
5. like i’m not saying it was super awesome to live without penicillin or sewer systems but basically history is not one long line of progress pointing up. a lot of things sucked in the past that don’t suck now, but other things suck way more now than they did in the past, and some things are just different as heckpants. in conclusion, what did the middle ages ever do to you, they just wanna illuminate manuscripts and drink a lot of beer ok
despite what you were raised believing, racism was never happenstance, it has always been an active, creative, aggressive set of policies and practices, designed to suffocate and brainwash you and everyone you come in contact with.
Always was a part of The Founding Fathers plan.
Damn, not Lincoln.
Fuck Lincoln
Stopped seeing Lincoln through rose colored aviators a while ago. I knew he was never in favor of abolishing slavery for the sake of it but he was in no way the great man to black people everybody paints him to be
Mary Sherman Morgan: America’s First Female Rocket Scientist (1921-2004)
During the Space Race, the US had a weight problem. It wanted to launch rockets into space, but their fuel just wasn’t efficient enough. Toss in enough fuel to lift the rest of the rocket, and you wouldn’t be able to lift all the heavy rocket fuel. With the Soviets having just launched Sputnik into space, what was the US to do?
Enter Mary Sherman Morgan.
She was an unlikely hero for the US Space program. She had no college education. She’d had a child out of wedlock (in the 40s!). But she was great at what she did – which was making explosives. Soon thereafter, she invented the rocket fuel Hydyne, which was instrumental in launching Explorer-1, a feat for which lead engineer Wehner von Braun got most of the credit.
Being overlooked was just fine with Morgan, though. She actively avoided the limelight at every opportunity. This combination of her overwhelming humility and the top-secret nature of her work resulted in no newspaper being able to verify the obituary her son submitted after her death. “My mother,” he said, “had done such a good job of erasing herself from existence by not allowing anybody to write about her… nobody could verify that she ever even existed.”
Since then, her son has worked tirelessly to build a legacy for her – writing a book and a stage play, trying to get as much information declassified as he possibly can. The rest, he puts out for independent verification.
Actually, the first person to ever have their name associated with an original written work was Enheduanna, a Sumerian princess and priestess born in 2285 BC.
In other words, the FIRST AUTHOR IN HUMAN HISTORY was a woman.
This month is the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. To mark the occasion, the National Museum of American History has spearheaded #DisabilityStories—an international conversation on Twitter and other social networks that will take place on Wednesday, July 15, 2015.
We wanted to highlight this story from the early days of motion pictures and an example of the rich history of the nation’s Deaf community. It comes via Popular Electricity from March, 1914. The story is about a series of films made by Gallaudet University (then Gallaudet College) and its first president, Edward Miner Gallaudet. (The school itself was named for Edward’s father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a pioneer in the education of the deaf.) The University is still
the world’s only university with programs and services specifically designed to accommodate deaf and hard of hearing students, here in Washington, D.C.
While I haven’t been able to find the original film mentioned, Gallaudet does have a video archive of many historic films, including “The Preservation of Sign Language.” The 1913 film advocated the continued use of sign language at a time when oralists (such as Alexander Graham Bell) were pushing deaf and hard of hearing people to learn to lip read and speak through mimicking the breathing patterns and mouth shapes of oral speech. The film was included in the National Film Registry in 2010, selected for its “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” significance.
i can’t believe u just pulled receipts on potatoes
Um no potatoes did not cause a famine the potato BLIGHT caused the famine. Do u know what the potato blight is??? A POTATO DISEASE. Potatoes did nothing wrong and also suffered how dare u try and ruin the reputation of potatoes honestly
lol actually the British caused the famine.
As the saying goes “God brought the blight the British brought the famine”
Irish had to survive on potatoes because it was the most productive crop per acre. This meant that most people chose monoculture of one potato strain which made it more susceptible to disease. All other food was exported by colonists both before and during the famine to feed the British. The Brits even had armed guards at docks to protect shipments of food out of Ireland.
These same fucks then turned around and did the same thing in India and Bengal. Exporting food for profit while millions starved. You see the same thing in capitalist countries today. Exporting food or even using it for non-food production (turning corn into gas) while millions are malnourished. You can have grocery stores and grain houses bursting to the seams right next to neighborhoods of hungry people.
capitalism set up the conditions for the famine AND maintained it
Kimchi and Justice 