#Reading one book is like...

[petermorwood]

Potato Crisps / Chips on Tasting History

So we've just watched Max's latest...

...and I was grinning a bit because I posted about Dr Kitchiner's 1817 (non-US, definitely non-Saratoga) crisps / chips recipe a month ago.

That image was from an American edition of his book; I've found a pic from the original - NB that these slices are floured before frying.

For reference, here's a two-penny piece from about 1797; the coin would still be current 20 years later:

...and here's how thick the potatoes should be sliced. That's 4mm, which is 2mm less than "a quarter of an inch" (6.25mm).

The slices will get even thinner as their moisture evaporates during frying, and, given the nature of recipes, potatoes cooked this way are probably even older than 1817 and Kitchiner's is just the first appearance found so far in print.

*****

The first recipe for "Game Chips" (an accompaniment to grouse, pheasant etc.) appeared, per the Wikipedia link, in a 1903 book published by famous chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935):

"Chip potatoes - these are potatoes cut into thin slices; this is usually done with a special plane. (A mandoline.) They are put in cold water for 10 minutes; then drained, dried in a cloth and fried until very crunchy. They are served hot or cold and generally accompany game roasted in the English style."

However, per Escoffier's Wikipedia page, much of his work was based on that of Anton Carême (1783-1833), whose dates are squarely coincident with Dr Kitchiner's Potato Slices.

Given the amount of cookery to-and-fro between England and France after the Napoleonic wars were over, it's impossible to say who first came up with the idea of potato crisps.

The French loved dainties - "un petit quelquechose", a little something - which the English pronounced and dismissed as "kickshaws", something over-fussy yet insubstantial. Yet those same English also loved roasting things with their appropriate accompaniments.

(I'm writing this just over a week after Christmas, and have been well reminded that the phrase "Roast (turkey / goose / beef) With All The Trimmings" is still in common 21st-century use.)

If those roasted things were game birds, only those above a certain level in society would be eating them, so it's not unreasonable to assume a rich-person game bird would attract fussy, time-consuming rich-person trimmings like, okay, Game Chips.

One thing's for sure, Potato Crisps - and Game Chips too, so hard luck, Escoffier - are almost certainly older than even Tasting History could prove.

*****

BTW, they also existed at a time when "English Food Was Bland" is more fake history.

Sauces put out on the table in fancy bottles had fancy labels ("bottle tickets") showing what was in them, and the contents were often far from bland.

Quin sauce was anchovy-based, hot and pungent.

Harvey's was a spicy sauce similar to Worcestershire, ketchup was probably mushroom and also spicy; the other two need no elaboration.

AFAIK the two crescent-shaped ones in the next pics are deliberate imitations of an officer's rank-gorget.

Finally a generic Not-Bland label that would go on any number of modern bottles (antique silver, yours for £250)...

*****

And after all of the above, I could do Very Bad Things to a packet of Tayto Cheese 'n' Onion. A packet?

Why stop at a packet when A Pack takes less time to say?

After all, It Is Written that:

"Reading One Book Is Like Eating One Potato Crisp Chip."

And also that Nothing Exceeds Like Excess...

#food and drink #potato crisps #game chips #Tasting History with Max Miller #Diane Duane #Reading one book is like... #...like eating one potato chip #wise words maxims and apothegms #Youtube

[souldagger]

you'll have one joke post complaining abt old misogynistic scifi blow up and years later you'll still get people reblogging it with tags like "why i don't touch scifi." hey. im at your door with a pile of scifi in my hands. i'll lovingly read ursula k le guin or octavia butler to you aloud myself. let me in let me in please please please please hello

#[throws up and dies] #.txt #books #man im really glad that the version of that post that mostly gets spread around these days #is the one with the 'for the love of god not all scifi is like that heres a bunch of scifi reading recs' addition 😭😭😭

[eyes-of-nine]

pls assume i'm thinking about this moment 24/7 all week every week

#ahsjgdh i love the young xianle quartet sm they're almost barely not traumatized...kinda #they're very silly especially in retrospect #aaa i do also really want to draw young xie lian and mu qing but the idea of rendering that much gold detailing sounds like hell ywy #i'll do it but christ alive #my art #fanart #tgcf #tgcf fanart #tgcf spoilers #technically #also i haven't read past book 3 for now ywy #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #feng xin #hua cheng #...he gets one tag bc i'm not keeping track of all the aliases #every time i draw hc his hair gets worse and worse #my man has not seen a hairbrush in the past 800 or so years of his existence

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

#this was much longer i had to cut it down for legibility #but i do want to say i am aware this post doesnt touch on human rights violations as a result of fast fashion #that is because it deserves its own post with a completely different tone #i am an environmental educator #so that's what i know the most about. it wouldn't be appropriate of me to mention off-hand the real and legitimate suffering #that people are going through #without doing my research and providing real ways to help #this is a vent post about a thing i'm watching happen; not a call to action. it would be INCREDIBLY demeaning #to all those affected by the fast fashion industry to pretend that a post like this could speak to their suffering #unfortunately one of the horrible things about latestage capitalism as an activist is that SO many things are linked to this #and i WANT to talk about all of them but it would be a book in its own right. in fact there ARE books about each level of this #and i encourage you to seek them out and read them!!! i am not an expert on that i am just a person on tumblr doing my favorite activity #(complaining) #and it's like - this is the individual versus the industry problem again right because im blaming myself #for being an expert on environmental disaster (which is fucking important) but not knowing EVERYTHING about fast fashion #i'm blaming myself for not covering the many layers of this incredibly complicated problem im pointing out #rather than being like. yeah so actually the fault here lies with the billion dollar industries actually. #my failure to be able to condense an incredibly immense problem that is BOOK-LENGTH into a single text post that i post for free #is not in ANY fucking way the same amount of harm as. you know. the ACTUAL COMPANIES doing this ACTUAL THING for ACTUAL MONEY. #anyway im gonna go donate money while i'm thinking about it. maybe you can too. we can both just agree - well i fuckin tried didn't i #which is more than their CEOs can say

[bioethicists]

i genuinely have no animosity towards ppl who get upset abt not being able to read academic texts + i do think we need to expand the pathways/methods of being exposed to critical concepts so that "sit + read for 2 hours" is not the only option.

however, as someone dx with adhd + incapable of sitting still for even a minute (actually right at this moment i am writing this instead of reading the book sitting open in front of me), i do feel like a lot of ppl do not realize that not all readings are designed to be read like a novel.

as in, it's ok + normal + good to need to reread a paragraph several times, to only read part of a book, to have to research or reference words or concepts in order to grasp the reading, to skip over large chunks of text which are not relevant to your expertise, to continue reading despite not understanding a concept. this is something 'neurotypical' academics do frequently + many of these texts, especially contemporary ones, were designed with this in mind.

there are many ppl with accessibility needs that are not being met by academic texts at this time! many texts (in my humble opinion) are unnecessarily complex in order to show off or hide the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about.

i still feel like many of the kneejerk reactions on this site are based on the assumption that their experience reading academic texts should be similar to their experiences reading a nyt bestseller, rather than a process of thinking, analyzing, researching, processing, returning. some of u are telling yourself that any challenges u face while reading are a result of some internal fault u have + not an expected + precious part of the experience.

#like if u hate reading feel free not to #but if u wish u could read theory #but you're convinced it's impossible bcuz it's confusing or difficult or u could never possibly read a whole book? #i encourage u to step away from this idea of reading cover to cover in one run #+ start engaging with theory like a puzzle which u can fiddle with as much or as little as u feel able to

[ale-arro]

been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

#replace this with any other type of significant relationship too #also! this book actually rules btw i really recommend it #i didnt read it when it first cane out bc i was like. well i am already pretty familiar with asexuality and not rly interested in 101 stuff #but it turns out it doesnt feel 101-y at all its a super awesome piece of queer theory and also chen has Good opinions #and not weird watered down ones that i am sometimes wary of in aspec communities (frankly especially ace ones) #i think maybe if more people approached asexuality the way chen does (including and maybe even especially ace people) #i would be more inclined to still ID as ace #but anyways! #aro #aromantic #<- tag selections that reflect how i personally engage with this quote #also #described in alt text #also also #j tag #:/ #aro media

[zombie-bait]

happiest girl in the whole entire world

thinking about my favourite kind-hearted eldritch horror trapped in the body of my favourite traumatized goth girl

(+ purple variant)

#nona the ninth spoilers #nona the ninth #the locked tomb fanart #the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #harrowhark nonagesimus #tlt spoilers #tlt #alecto the first #nona tlt #nona the ninth fanart #Vague Pyrrha & Paul in the bg #I miss reading those books man #Fanart #digital art #Recommending them to literally everyone I meet #Cuz man tlt did a number on my brain #On Harrow’s brain too lmao #I love making Harrow look inconsistent in every piece of fanart I do #My excuse is that its a book and her face on the cover of HtN and NtN is very small ok #One day I’ll settle on a design I like #That day is not today (two weeks left of my semester and I’m losing it)

[peakvincent]

new game is to type one through ten in your tags and see what comes up. i think my favorite of mine is ‘my uncle told us he spent seven and a half hours in a sensory deprivation tank once’ but ‘gideon the ninth motherfucker’ is a close second

#one is that bad laptops can still handle custom content #two stupid old men who i lovehate :( #goddamn it i wish the three funniest women alive would tell me what i just saw #the f in rpf stands for fourth wall #ten pounds of trauma in a five pound bag #me and alice will both read it and i think that brings you up to like six!!! #my uncle told us he spent seven and a half hours in a sensory deprivation tank once #goal was one book per store and we ended up with six stores and eight books which actually i think is fine #gideon the ninth motherfucker #thinking about the ten inexplicable minutes where jay and i were very in on brandon saad/roberto luongo #*

[expelliarmus]

#mine #doctor who #dwedit #david tennant #catherine tate #freema agyeman #someone has probably done this already but here i am with my version!!!! #one more week of work left before winter break!!! #i can't waitttt #then i can read all my dw books in peace and cry over these two all over again :') #also i really like how the colouring came out for the 3rd gif

[obsob]

happy and proud!!

✷(print shop)✷

#mine #original #sm how managed 2 miss pride month....but its pride month every month in this house hold #ive read two bad YA books so far this month as a break from th 2nd farseer book but now.....i am back.........i am reading th 3rd one #its gna make my brain explode i can feel it #n then idk what i will read. maybe th hands of th emperor #could i read smth other than 800 page epic fantasy pls #the YA books werent too bad for YA but they hve that YA cringe 2 it. idk how u people read it constantly #if i hve 2 read th word 'heck' one more time #also theres always like. disney channel vibes. like i read gay YA romance n its so sanitised n vanilla. its so superficial #like i get this is for 16 year olds but were is the longing. the yearing. these guys are fanfic tropes stuck 2gether 2 glue. #also. what is with nearly every mlm romance / fantasy being YA not adult fiction. whats up w that #anyway hve a good evenin im gna do knitting!!!!!!!!!!!!

[7amaspayrollmanager]

Alright let's imagine a scene that is all too normal in palestine. A palestinian business owner finds his building covered in graffiti stars of Davids and Hebrew that says "gas the arabs" and "death to arabs"

Now imagine there's a reporter there and asks the palestinian business owner what happens and they say "the jews attacked my business"

Pause. Now your response might be "uncle no. Say israelis not jews" and then this is when he would look at you like youre stupid because the israelis doing this are jewish. They are not the Christians or the druze or the palestinian ones with Israeli citizenship. They are Jewish israelis who believe in their religious supremacy. When you graffiti stars of david all over a palestinian business, car, or the street you seek that conflation. it sends a message, this is jewish land and you're next.

The problem is that these videos circulate in zionist circles. "Watch this video of children in gaza calling for the death of jews" "watch how they say they want to fight and kill jews" those children are referring to Israeli soldiers that come in night and do their raids with the star of David attached to their uniform or the ones that bomb them. It's easy to watch those videos and assume that palestinians are indoctrinating their children on anti semitism or you can realize that those children's only interaction with jewish ppl is through violence and parents cannot protect their children from this. Doesn't matter context is lost

Abby Martin went to Jerusalem and interviewed israelis for 2 hours and she says every israeli was extremely confident to say that this land is for them and that they should push the Arabs out and when she interviewed palestinians they spoke of freedom from occupation and their dreams. That's reality. Not the soundbites.

And yet we have invasive youtubers and interviewers constantly in the street of ramallah or wherever in palestine asking palestinians "do you hate jews?" And in those videos you hear those palestinians say "no we have no problem with jews we have a problem with occupation and we have a problem with zionism." Bc this is how we are trained to respond to this trope. Palestinians are very aware what the world thinks of us and the reality is that many palestinians have internalized it and we grow up reading books on the Holocaust and train ourselves to recognize anti semitic dog whistles so zionists don't get the soundbites they want.

So we say "anti zionism is not anti semitism" and we say "israeli zionists" and we do not say "jewish supremacy" even thought it exists in palestine but "zionist supremacy" and in these carefully worded speech we water down what is happening to us in an effort to not deter people away from solidarity. But it means nothing. The world categorically blames palestinians for rising anti semitism they blame us for jewish insecurity globally.

[why-the-heck-not]

the saturday-sunday night diabolical "life is falling apart"- to do list followed by a mad scramble

#in the middle of said mad scramble bc ohmygod I have 30+ things on that to do list that I'd like to get done by Tuesday at the very VERY #latest so like eeee it's a uhh something something #my sunday's have been starting on saturday evenings lately time's getting more condensed !! yikes #no one ask me when I'm planning on sleeping if I'm here drinking coffee at 1:30am I don't know I'll cross that bridge when I get to it #studyblr #bookblr #booklr #aesthetic #books #study #reading #read #book #studyspo #april 2024 #2024

[nonpoppie]

bingyuan sillies

#bingyuan #luo binghe #shen yuan #scum villain #bingqiu #svsss #their cringeboy x crazygirl dynamic is one for the books #read that one bluethursday binggeyuan fic and my life was changed #and like regardless of whether sqq was hot or not in his past life #what matters to binghe!!! is that shen yuan loves him!!!!!!! #in their weirdo4freak obsessed no boundaries way as canon dictates of course #my art dump #ill be honest kitten i have Not been live laugh loving these past few months

[lemonzestedtea]

the significance of the number, 3 in tgcf gets me every time.

xie lian's third ascension is when everything changes (for the better)

hua cheng introduces himself as "san lang" when he meets xie lian after his third ascension. "san lang" means "third son." it's the third time, or the third form (his third life, if you will) that hua cheng has met xie lian in.

there are three calamities (if you ignore bai wuxian, and if you still count qi rong as a calamity)

there are multiple trios — xie lian, mu qing, feng xin; shi wudu, he xuan, shi qingxuan; shi wudu, pei ming, ling wen; and so on.

there were thirty three officials who disgraced xie lian; and were consequently destroyed by hua cheng.

hua cheng released three thousand lanterns for xie lian.

he also died three times for xie lian; first as hong hong'er, second as wu ming, and third as the supreme ghost king.

all this information, coupled with the fact that three is considered a lucky number in chinese culture just makes me feel so many emotions

#these are just things i noticed #i feel like that one meme “i have connected the dots” #feel free to add more!! i think i would probably find more if i went through the books #these are all just from my memory and i read the books last year ok #i just love them so much can you tell #tgcf #tian guan ci fu #xie lian #hua cheng #heaven official's blessing #feng xin #mu qing #shi qingxuan #he xuan #beefleaf #hualian #xianle trio #xianle quartet

[angstydiaz]

“They rushed this they rushed that” with the amount of cancelations netflix does to shows yeah its kinda necessary sometimes dude

It’s definitely not a perfect adaptation but its pretty enjoyable lmao

#you dont have to like the show but pls leave show fans alone lmao #before anyone starts yes ive read the books lmao theyre one of my favs #kanej #wesper #helnik #six of crows #shadow and bone #posts of mine i like