#Nanny Ogg's Cookbook

[petermorwood]

Crisps / Chips again

Associated with this post, here's an artefact, two anecdotes and an opinion.

The artefact is a slightly dented but still remarkably airtight "Charles Chips" tin.

It was bought, full, many years ago from the Vermont Country Store, from whom we subsequently bought reflll packs - given their size, "sacks" would be more accurate - which were shipped to Ireland in sturdy cardboard boxes.

VCS no longer carry Charles Chips in either tin or refill. I know. I checked. BUT...

The Charles Chips company, which per Wikipedia was doing just fine in 1990 then got sold and went bankrupt twice in less than three years (gosh!) is Back In Business, and note has been taken, with considerable interest - oh, you bet - that they do international shipping...

*****

Anecdote No. 1 is from when @dduane lived in Bala Cynwyd near Philadelphia, in what was known as "The House of Dangerously Single Women" (ahem). She tells me that the household used to get Charles Chips delivered to the door about twice a week, by the company's own vans.

Speaking as a long-time crisp fan, I found that both very neat and a source of mild envy. :->

Anecdote No. 2 is from 30-ish years ago, when we were in New York for something or other and, being rather jetlagged with our internal food clocks out of whack, did our usual thing and went out for a walk.

Curiously enough, this involved visiting several food stores and supermarkets where we bought a lot of Interesting Foreign or Much Missed (i.e. American, in both instances) junk food for grazing on back in our hotel room.

In one of them DD was about to lay claim to a huge bag of Wise potato chips (its bag would have been the design in the middle)...

...while nattering to one of the shop staff how much she missed them. He told her that a new delivery was expected in about 20 minutes and if she wanted to wait, she'd get much fresher chips.

And So It Came To Pass.

Well done, that guy!

*****

Finally, while Saratoga Springs may have been where potato crisps / chips were popularised, standardised, commercialised or whatever, it's definitely not where they were invented.

Even the oft-repeated "creation myth" frequently has its hard-to-please celebrity demanding to have his potatoes sliced and fried really thin "The Way I Had Them In France" - which kinda sorta suggests they were, um, being made there just like that well before the Saratoga thing happened.

Myths are okay, even marketing myths - so long as they're recognised as myths and not shilled as true by places with reputations like the Smithsonian.

*****

It's a bit like the still-current nonsense about spices being used in medieval kitchens to disguise bad meat. As far as I've been able to find out, this originated with a historian called J. C. Drummond in the late 1930s - yup, just before World War Two - simply because he didn't know his period terminology.

"Green" meant fresh - even nowadays, an inexperienced or immature person is "green" - so green cheese was newly made, and green meat was newly slaughtered, unaged and consequently tough and flavourless.

Just ask any steak fan the difference between a fresh steak and a 30-day dry aged one.

Drummond, in his overspecialised-scholarship wisdom, assumed that "green venison" meant meat which had gone off, and that a recipe to improve it with spices was to cover the bad smell and taste.

In fact it was somewhere between a marinade and a rub, meant to improve the tenderness and flavour of fresh meat as if it had aged for a while, thus shortening the waiting time between killing a beast and getting it to the table of a hungry court.

As I've said before, it's always easier for no-proofs-given pop history to dismiss medieval people as (insert derogatory observation here) than take the time needed to explain why and how they in their time were not that different to us in ours.

*****

PS: when looking for that previously posted stuff about green meat I found a post where, with even less evidence than Saratoga Springs inventing crisps, a Brit poster claimed Brits invented curry.

Snrk.

Among other more or less pertinent observations, I mentioned that what Brits invented was BRITISH curry, and anyone who has read "Nanny Ogg's Cookbook" will know what I meant by that... :->

#food and drink #snack foods #nostalgia #anecdotage #Charles Chips #Wise Potato Chips #Nanny Ogg's Cookbook #GNU Terry Pratchett

[noirandchocolate]

A Note About Love Letters Once again, this is an area where a bit of thought right now can save some red faces later on.  Women have this habit of saving up billets of doux and tyin’ them up with a ribbon and keeping them in a drawer somewhere and, sure enough, about ten years later you finds that the kids have dug them out and are reading them to their friends for a penny a time.  Once again, a bit of foresight now can work wonders.  With a bit of co-operation between the writers it’s wise to begin the missives like this: ‘My dearest love, GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF THIS, YOU THIEVING DEVILS!  YES, WE KNOW IT’S YOU!  PUT THEM BACK THIS MINUTE!’ Of course, it helps even more if you’ve discussed early on what names you’re going to give your children when you have them.  This will then earn you an entire quiet afternoon while they try to work out how you did it, and possibly also give them one of them complexes which will benefit them in later life.

--Nanny Ogg (as told to Terry Pratchett), “Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook”

#terry pratchett #discworld #gnu terry pratchett #nanny ogg's cookbook

[stainlesssteellocust]

#discworld #gnu terry pratchett #lord vetinari #havelock vetinari #sam vimes (hinted at) #nanny oggs cookbook #Oggposting

[aeshnacyanea2000]

‘You done a book,’ said Granny. ‘Only cookery,’ said Nanny Ogg meekly, as one might plead a first offence.

Terry Pratchett - Maskerade

#Terry Pratchett #discworld quotes #GNU Terry Pratchett #quotes #Maskerade #Granny Weatherwax #Esmerelda Weatherwax #Nanny Ogg #Gytha Ogg #books #cookery #cookbook

[clonerightsagenda]

My quirk is that if left with a media property long enough I will assign a character the role of Chuck Tingle.

#it started with TLC!Hal writing Chuck Tingle style stuff to be annoying and then spread #I was a 'Palamedes is the TLT universe's Chuck Tingle' truther #BEFORE the Nona excerpt confirmed he tried to write smut for cash #you see I'm always right about these things #nona the ninth spoilers/// #super vaguely #nona spoilers// #cut me own throat dibbler would write tinglers #wait FUCK Nanny Ogg writes tinglers #he's her distributor #she already did the sexy cookbook

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Something Something Phangirl Meets Discworld

Back when I was an undergrad, I had procrastinated a couple of first-year core classes (required stuff that has jack shit to do with your major but is supposed to make you a "well-rounded student" for everyone who wasn't educated in the US) to the point where we were at the beginning of year four, we took a couple over the summer, but now we're staring down having to take Art Appreciation for an entire final term and I did not WANT to. So instead I took a two-week intensive "Wintermester" art appreciation course in a classroom whose carpets squished in Fairbanks, Alaska in December. The fact that it didn't become a horror movie is a miracle. BUT. YOU GUYS. This class introduced me to The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall, and thanks to how awesome that was, I finally went out and got the one Witches novel I hadn't bothered with at that point. Let's talk Maskerade.

Maskerade might be the Discworld book with which I've had the most dynamic relationship because I am currently what I would consider a "fallen" or "lapsed" theatre kid. However, when I picked up Maskerade for the first time, I was a "desperately trying to hold on to theatre with both hands and both feet despite ongoing and worsening health issues and a school theatre that has nearly succeeded in killing me three separate times but I don't want to let go" theatre kid. So on first read, I loved Agnes, I loved Nanny and Granny, Greebo is never not a standout, and I was fully over here like, "YES, THEATRE IS THE MIRACLE OF A THOUSAND THINGS FAILING TO GO WRONG!" I wasn't a huge fan of how Christine was characterized, and frankly I found the art/business dichotomy irksome.

I was barely 22 and an idiot. I have since grown some.

On subsequent reads in and beyond graduate school, I can see the love behind the pointed critiques, and I had run into the odd Christine or two, so I was far more willing to sympathize with Agnes--the single point of sensibility and practicality in a flamboyantly dramatical cats system that is often toxic. And while I liked the Nanny, Granny, and Enrico Basilica subplot on initial reads, now it is perhaps my entirely favorite part of the book. Adding the managed chaos that is the Witches to a theatre is amazing, and we get some really fantastic insights into how Nanny and Granny can leverage witchcraft beyond Lancre. It has a different flavor in Ankh Morpork, and what that ends up meaning for Walter Plinge is literally the difference between life and death.

The loving parodic use of theatrical tropes and traditions is honestly delightful throughout. I realize that saying, "Hey, so Sir Terry Pratchett was kind of amazing" on the internet is the oldest of old news, but honestly it bears repeating because Discworld is incredible.

Nanny Ogg's cookbook manages to be both hilarious and a scathing indictment of how poorly authors are paid--something that honestly just keeps gettting MORE relevant. I also love the low-key Producers-eqsue mixed with Shakespearean twinning aspects of having Nanny be the writer and Granny the accountant foiling off of Salzella and Bucket. Like, had their positions been reversed, the Ankh Morpork Opera House would have been flush with cash practically overnight and the cookbook would have ended up scammed. It's a really lovely, subtle little peice of foiling that 1000% was not required to make this book great, but I love that it's there.

So theatre kid phangirl me wasn't the biggest fan of this book, but grown-ass adult me with a little more life on her claims this as one of her top five all-time favorite Discworld books. I'm going to leave it here and realtively spoiler-free for those of you who might be on the fence about picking up the book. I highly recommend that you do, but I also recommend watching The Phantom of the Opera (either the Royal Albert Hall one or an actual stage production; don't START with the movie) before reading Maskerade, just to fully get the levels of allusion, parody, and homage.

#terry pratchett #sir terry pratchett #discworld #maskerade #the witches #granny weatherwax #nanny ogg #agnes nitt #phantom of the opera #absurdist fantasy #books & libraries #books and reading #books and novels #books #book recommendations

[below-my-s0ul]

Made gumbo in my fancy big pot for the first time and I thought I'd document it here cause apparently food is all I post about, tho for this one I'm gonna add the drinks I'm having as well cause I'm listening to the 200th episode of The Poisoner's Cabinet that just came out so I'm having some of my favorite drinks that they've introduced me to

Here's the roux with a lovely rum based drink called The Shark Bite on the side

And here I'm halfway there after adding the stock (and more of every vegetable than is in the recipe cause I can [and excuse my use of a recipe, I'm Norwegian and have never been to Louisiana, I got this from Nanny Ogg's Cookbook and it's very good])

Added more hotsauce (it's taco sauce cause uuuhhhh it's the spiciest thing I have) and bourbon cause you can never go wrong with more Bulleit. And the drink behind that is a Guillotine, dangerously delicious, cause it's pretty much just different types of alcohol

Here's the finished product and once again it's fucking delicious! Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to do more than small adjustments (last time I tried not to use the recipe I forgot the tomatoes, so I'm still gonna use it as a guideline for securities sake)

#my stuff #food #alcohol #i do recommend the poisoner's cabinet if you like historical crimes and especially poison #they talk about cases that are farther in the past with a focus on the victorian age #im gonna add #gnu terry pratchett #cause it's mrs Gogol's recipe that i base my gumbo on #tho mine isn't very clairvoyant (but that might just be my shortcoming)

[new-squidbeak-gaytoon]

OC tastes if they were like food furries & drink furries & just general in order

i am going to draw all of these either as charmies or just hybrid fusions

mentions alcohol multiple times

tuyen: do you even have to ask. they're fucking mango!! mango fizzy pop... irl they would probably taste a whole lot like Dirt. please don't lick their scar (it tastes like battery acid spaghetti and actual battery acid)

Tyr: food.....drink would be lavender tea or cranberry juice!!! irl he tastes pretty neutral

Norma: CLAMMOCHI MOHICLAM!!!!!!! drink would be sodie pop. irl she tastes like roses :]

lyca: SALMON yummy salmo yujmmymyyymymyy... ! he tastes like vegetable broth or hot chocolate. irl he tastes like fur. warm

eights: monster energy. monster energy. grass.

aro: fancy chicken probably? "is that whiskey? ...it's perfume." they taste likeperfume irl too

Misha: bell pepper,,,,, sparkling water mb.. LIKE THE GOOD KIND...... irl she tastes neutral but maybe a bit spicy since she eats those foods a lot (ghost bepper

404: moss, sweet water that's the perfect mix of cold and refreshing. irl he tastes like plants

Danny: duck!! & milkshake! irl he tastes a bit like oiI....

squeak: sour candies.... and black coffee :] irl he also tastes like oil

Mike: lionfish/pufferfish recipe from nanny ogg's cookbook & cherry sodapop!! irl he tastes like Eeeel

pyom: chili chocolate, warm chicken broth. irl he tastes very mildly sweet...

straps: fisherman's friend mints, port maybe? irl tastes like wood...

other: blood. blood. blood /j in all seriousness uhhhhh

stapel: warm chicken soup, perfectly spiced! milk and brandy, maybe???? irl he tastes like Slime.

pentolo: MUSHROOM OLIVE PIZZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! red wine as well! irl he ALSO tastes like slime

princess: orange peel muffins,,, and warm milk! irl she tastes very vaguely like pineapple

zoa: sweet potato... hot souce.... she tastes mildly nice but idk like what

zoa's still unnamed little sister: BUTTERFLY SOUP AHAKDKSDJNSDSKD/J

THATS ALL OF MY GUYS (AT LEAST THE DEVELOPED ONES!!!)

#oc stuff yay #klug's ocs #splatoon #sorry

[toooldforthisbutstill]

Hello! Thank you for your masterpost of Discworld recipes, but there's something that surprises me: The absence of carrot & oysters cake. Nobody has ever attempted to make it?

Hello!

That's a good question ^^

There is a recipe, in Nanny Ogg's cookbook, for a Oyster and Carrot Pie... and I didn't try it. Couldn't, wouldn't. Nobody at home like oysters, like.* Nooope. And I didn't find anyone who tried it either, on Tumblr or elsewhere. So...

I can't say that nobody has ever attempted it, but I don't think anyone who tried it ever told the story on the internet?*

So I'm sorry, anon, but if you want to know how this pie tastes, you'll have to try it for yourself, I'm afraid ^^

*Also it calls for canned oysters??? and I've never seen that, ever, in my life. (And the truth is, I don't want to. Bleh.)

*If I'm mistaked, if someone blogged it or something, please, please point me in the right direction! I'll add it to the masterpost ^^

#discworld #discworld cookery #nanny ogg

[firstofficerrose]

The first appearance of Nanny Ogg's cookbook! I found an old copy of the cookbook a while ago, and it's hilarious, I hope to find my copy again sometime! Probably buried in storage. I never did try any of the recipes… I wonder if there's Dwarf Bread in there.

#nanny ogg #witches novels #maskerade #discworld #gnu terry pratchett #rose reads #rose rambles

[manfrommars2049]

“Wowwow Sauce” - 1999. Drawn for 'Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook'. (From Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series) art by Paul Kidby via ImaginaryWizards

#ImaginaryWizards #YanniRotten

[biinarytransitions]

Thinkin about Nanny Oggs Cookbook today

[stainlesssteellocust]

Yes folks I have access once again to a copy of the weird, the wonderful, the outlandish Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook

and it’s just as good as I remember

#discworld #gnu terry pratchett #nanny ogg #oggposting

[uschi-the-listener]

A Book A Day

Post the cover only of a favorite book, one a day. Do not offer a review, summary, explanation, or other commentary. Participation is voluntary.

If you have questions, about the books or anything else, please ask. My inbox is always open.

#a book a day #Nanny Ogg's Cookbook

[hedleykowcosplay]

Some are born Great. Some have Greatness thrust upon them. But some... are just not great at cooking. From the Discworld novels, join Nanny Ogg this Friday as she re-creates a recipe from the Disc-renowned "Nanny Ogg's Cookbook".

It's really going to be... something. At least Granny Weatherwax is here to ensure there is a reduction of total disaster.

N.O.- @peggycosplays x x x G.W. - @c0untf0rkula x x x 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bonus:

#terry pratchett #discworld #nanny ogg #Granny Weatherwax #cosplay #discworld cospla #nanny ogg's cookbook #cooking #discworld cosplay

[noirandchocolate]

‘Gytha,’ she said, 'this is ME askin’ you this.  Is there any page in this book, is there any single recipe, which does not in some way relate to…goings-on?’ Nanny Ogg, her face red as her apples, seemed to give this some lengthy consideration. 'Porridge,’ she said, eventually. 'Really?’ 'Yes.  Er.  No, I tell a lie, it’s got my special honey mixture in it.’ Granny turned a page. 'What about this one?  Maids of Honor?’ 'Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor,’ said Nanny, fidgeting with her feet, 'but they ends up Tarts.’

--Terry Pratchett, “Maskerade” (illustration by Paul Kidby)

(Nanny is a published author, though her “Joye of Snacks” was penned under the pseudonym “A Lancre Witch.”  In Roundworld, of course, we know it simply as “Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook.”)

#terry pratchett #gnu terry pratchett #maskerade #paul kidby