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phaedrecameron · 5 years

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The Accused, James Fraser, Chapter 10 - Sandbag

“Are you sure this is a good idea…he’s the prosecutor!?” Phaedre whisper screamed in Claire’s ear as they entered the Boston criminal courts building.

“We’ve got to find Jamie. His defense lawyer won’t risk us screwing up the case,” Claire replied, directing them to first floor café. “Grey released Jamie without prior authorization. I’m sure of it. I’ve been around long enough to know that protocol wasn’t followed. He’s hoping Jamie will lead him to accomplices. He’ll have people watching him.”

Phaedre nodded in acquiescence. She’d just have to trust this Beauchamp woman. Claire was taking a hell of a risk helping Jamie and she seemed to care for him a great deal.

Once Phaedre had explained her connection to Jamie, Claire had offered her a place to stay, which happened to be Geillis’ home. Geillis had an entire shelf on her guest room bookcase dedicated to Jamaican and Haitian voodoo. Phaedre would definitely need to ask her about that later.

Phaedre looked at Claire as they sat in the café. She was definitely pretty, but in a sort of untamed, ethereal way. No wonder her best friend was a witch. But she couldn’t say whether Claire was Jamie’s type. Phaedre had been around Jamie often enough to know he attracted the eye of many women. He was always polite, but he was looking for something or someone else. And there was the issue of Beauchamp being married to Frank Randall. Ugh, thinking of that man was like smelling rotten milk. Yet, Jamie must feel something for Claire. While Phaedre had been unpacking her things at Geillis’, Claire shyly entered the room.

“So..do you speak any Gaelic…I mean for your research?” Claire had asked.

“Speak, no. But I’ve gotten to understand a few things.”

“I see.” Claire had tugged at the hem of her shirt. “Well, Geillis doesn’t know any Gaelic and google translate is useless because of the phonetics of that bloody language.”

“What is it you want to know?” Phaedre had been tired and the way Beauchamp had been hemming and hawing was akin to waiting for water to boil.

“Well… do you know what ‘mo cree’ or ‘mo rye’ means?”

“Mo chridhe. Mo ghraidh. My heart. My love.”

“Oh.” Whatever Beauchamp had been expecting it wasn’t that. She’d started to glow and the stupidest smile had formed on her face. She’d left the room as though Phaedre had given her the Holy Grail.

Clearly, Jamie had spoken those words to her, not something he would have done lightly.

Yes, Phaedre would follow Claire’s lead.

****************************** “What the fuck were you thinking! Releasing Fraser from custody!?” Harry Quarry screamed at Grey.

“I didn’t release him, he posted bail,” Grey replied.

Harry was red faced, with a vein protruding from his forehead. John worried his boss would have a coronary right on the spot. Harry walked around his desk to glower over Grey.

“Don’t! You know damn well capital defendants can’t get bail. You dismissed the death penalty allegation!”

“Harry, this is the best way to catch..”

“We have the killer! You know Grey, I stood up for you when everybody thought you were a spoiled blue blood who bought his way through life. I recommended you for homicide when everyone thought you needed more experience. It’s nice that you can blow up your career, go yachting for six months and get another job, but this job is my life’s work and my family needs my pension!” Harry sat back behind his desk, turning his attention to a stack a files. “I’ve already spoken to Brown. You’ll stay on the Fraser case. The optics of removing you now would make the office look even worse, but once this case is over you’ll be lucky to even prosecute a speeding ticket. Leave.” Harry didn’t look up.

Grey went to the downstairs café, wishing he had some MacKenzie Whisky to add to his coffee. If he was wrong about Fraser, he’d hunt the man down and flip the switch himself.

“Hullo.” Suddenly Dr. Claire Beauchamp was sitting across from him. She looked more poised than the last time he saw her, but she was clearly up to something. “I need the location of James Fraser…for the eval.”

Grey sipped his coffee. She would make a terrible spy, no finesse.

Claire continued, “I need a follow up exam. I don’t want to miss the court deadline.” She smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure he provided an address as a condition of pre trial release…maybe even agreed to an electronic gps device?”

“Yes, and he surrendered his passport, but surely you know how…irregular it would be to release the defendant’s address to the court appointed psychiatrist. Contact Ned. He can arrange a meeting or my office can coordinate the interview at police headquarters.”

“I understand it’s unusual, but there are extenuating circumstances,” Claire pressed.

“Which would be……?”

Beauchamp looked as though she intended to grab his coffee and throw it in his face. Grey moved his coffee out of her reach. He was more than willing to wait her out.

“The circumstance of his innocence,” Claire hissed.

“If you had any such evidence, you’d have told Ned or the police. This is clearly personal for you.”

“And if you thought he were guilty, he wouldn’t be out on bail.”

Touché

“Do you know that woman?” Grey pointed his chin at a woman a few tables over. She was eavesdropping while pretending to read a kindle.

Claire groaned and waived the woman over. “This is Dr. Phaedre Cameron, Jamie’s cousin. She’s…helping me.”

Grey ignored her use of a nickname for Fraser and watched as this woman joined their table. “Hello, pleased to meet you,” Phaedre extended her hand. Grey shook it as he looked from Beauchamp back to this Dr. Cameron.

The woman was clearly an American and not from Boston.

Sensing Grey’s confusion, Phaedre explained, “distant cousin, on his paternal side. We have an 18th century ancestor in common, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, The Old Fox.”

Grey blinked. He definitely needed something stronger than coffee.

“Lovat was executed by the English,” Phaedre added triumphant. “Did you know Scottish people came en mass to colonial America; some were indentured servants and some were involved in the trans Atlantic slave trade and….”

Claire lightly put her hand on Phaedre’s arm. She knew all to well the signs of a historian about go on a very long and very convoluted explanation of historical events.

“Oh, sorry,” Phaedre looked sheepish.

Grey cleared his throat, “Well it’s good Fraser has…. maintained contact with his American relations…..are you a doctor of psychiatry also?”

“Goodness, no. History. I’m a professor at UNC, Chapel Hill.

Grey sat forward. “North Carolina! That’s what Fraser was doing down there. Visiting you.”

Cameron’s face went blank. She had a far better poker face than Beauchamp. She looked to Beauchamp, “this will help Jamie, yes?”

Claire looked to Grey, “I don’t know. Can we trust you? To help find the true killer?” Her face was earnest and open.

Grey looked at the two women. Both highly educated, both convinced of Fraser’s innocence and willing to help him at great cost. Grey, himself was in a similar situation. He’d be ruined if releasing Fraser turned up nothing. Grey sighed. What was it about damned James Fraser.

“Yes, yes, you can trust me, but I want to know everything! What was Fraser doing in North Carolina and how do you really know him?”

Beauchamp nodded to Cameron. Cameron began, “what I said was true; Jamie and I are distantly related. My historical focus is the culture of enslaved Africans living in islands along the southern Atlantic seaboard in Colonial to antebellum America. These people developed a distinct culture and language; a language that is dying. I knew of programs to revive and protect languages— like with the Maori language in New Zealand and Gaelic in Scotland. I discovered MacKenzie Whisky was a huge sponsor of the program in Scotland. I reached out a few years back and Jamie responded. We became friends. He educated me on Scottish history and it was really interesting. I found great overlap and contact between Scots and putative African Americans. I researched some of my own history and found the common ancestor.”

I see, so he came for a visit?” Grey asked.

“He called me about two months before the murder. He wanted to know if I could put him contact with experts who could keep quiet.”

“Experts?”

“Historical experts; archeologists, anthropologists, antiquities specialists, renaissance art dealers, indigenous peoples researchers. I didn’t think much of it.” Phaedre shrugged. “I figured it was for his Foundation. “Said he would fly to North Carolina to discuss it.”

Phaedre stopped abruptly and looked at Claire, “He really is special, tries to help those he can.” Claire’s blush was not unnoticed.

“Anyway,” Phaedre continued, “he brought this.” She handed Grey a stack of photos of artifacts and copies of documents. “Those are historical items of note; spanning centuries, across multiple cultures and all stolen. Jamie asked me to authenticate some pertaining to Colonial America and get the right experts for the rest.”

“Jesus,” Grey flipped through the pages. There was also references to purchases of conflict diamonds from Africa, emeralds from Colombia, rhino horns, items looted from the unrest in the Middle East.

“These items are all in possession of Mackenzie Whisky. Amassed over the last two years, and easily traceable to Janet Murray & William Fraser, Jamie’s siblings,” Claire added.

John sat back in his chair. “A set up.”

Both women nodded. Grey knew if this information got out Fraser’s siblings would be jailed and the company would be ruined. This was a PR disaster in every market where Mackenzie Whisky was sold. This is what Minnie would call a scorched Earth attack.

“Jamie said he knew the liaison who was procuring the items on behalf of the company. He was flying to Boston to meet her. It must have been Laoghaire.” Phaedre stated.

“Once he was arrested, I didn’t know what to do.” She looked between Claire and John, “He wouldn’t return my calls. I didn’t want to go to the police or his lawyer for fear of everything going pubic….I thought maybe with doctor – client privilege…I… I…” Claire grabbed Phaedre’s hand.

“We’ll fix it, we’ll find him and figure it out,” Claire continued to squeeze Phaedre’s hand and looked at Grey.

Grey, while sympathetic, was extremely skeptical of Beauchamp being able to help Fraser.

“He’ll already have a plan,” Phaedre stated, wiping at the corner of her eyes. “We’ve just got to convince him we can help. He’s got a reason to live now.” She smiled at Claire. ***************

Claire fiddled with her hair and wiped her hands on her jeans for the third time as she rode the elevator to the 7th floor of the luxury apartment building where Jamie was staying. What if he refuses to see her? What if he sent her away? Before she could lose her nerve, Claire exited the elevator, walked to his door and knocked.

Nothing.

She knocked again.

When she thought she could no longer bear it, she heard Jamie’s voice through the door, “Ach, took ye long enough! Where’d ye go, Memphis?!”

The door swung open and she instinctively stepped back. Her mouth fell open. Jamie stood before her. He was wet and naked, save a gps ankle monitor and an entirely too small hand towel he was grasping around his waist.

He stared, but said nothing.

Claire moved forward.

“Sorry, it’s me, Claire.”

#the accused #outlander fan fiction #outlander modern au #john grey au #jamie and claire otp #jamie and claire modern au

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Who Will Save the Food Timeline?

The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian.

In the long timeline of human civilization, here’s roughly how things shook out: First, there was fire, water, ice, and salt. Then we started cooking up and chowing down on oysters, scallops, horsemeat, mushrooms, insects, and frogs, in that general chronological order. Fatty almonds and sweet cherries found their way into our diet before walnuts and apples did, but it would be a couple thousand years until we figured out how to make ice cream or a truly good apple pie. Challah (first century), hot dogs (15th century), Fig Newtons (1891), and Meyer lemons (1908) landed in our kitchens long before Red Bull (1984), but they all arrived late to the marshmallow party — we’d been eating one version or another of those fluffy guys since 2000 B.C.

This is, more or less, the history of human eating habits for 20,000 years, and right now, you can find it all cataloged on the Food Timeline, an archival trove of food history hiding in plain sight on a website so lo-fi you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a GeoCities fanpage. When you look past the Times Roman font and taupe background, the Food Timeline happens to be the single most comprehensive inventory of food knowledge on the internet, with thousands upon thousands of pages of primary sources, cross-checked research, and obsessively detailed food history presented in chronological order. Every entry on the Food Timeline, which begins with “water” in pre-17,000 B.C. and ends with “test tube burgers” in 2013, is sourced from “old cook books, newspapers, magazines, National Historic Parks, government agencies, universities, cultural organizations, culinary historians, and company/restaurant web sites.” There is history, context, and commentary on everything from Taylor pork roll to Scottish tablet to “cowboy cooking.”

A couple of years ago, I landed on the humble authority of the Food Timeline while doing research on bread soup, a kind of austerity cuisine found in countless cultures. The entry for soup alone spans more than 70,000 words (The Great Gatsby doesn’t break 50,000), with excerpts from sources like Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat’s A History of Food, John Ayto’s An A-Z of Food and Drink, and D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully’s Early French Cookery. Before long, I fell into the emotional condition known as an internet K-hole, following link after link after link for hours on end. From olla podrida to hodge podge to cassava to taro to Chex Mix to Johnnycakes, the Food Timeline covered everything. Did you know that mozzarella sticks go as far back as the Middle Ages, but back then they called them “pipefarces”? I bookmarked the site and returned to it time and time again, when I was researching, writing, or just bored and hungry.

Despite the Food Timeline’s incredible utility, few people I spoke to had ever heard of it. Those who had always marveled at its breadth. “Oh my god, it’s nirvana,” Taste of the Past podcast host Linda Pelaccio said to herself when she first stumbled onto the Food Timeline. Sandy Oliver, a food historian and fellow fan, was stunned by its completeness and simplicity. “It was one of the most accessible ways of getting into food history — especially if you were a beginner — because it was just so easy to use,” she told me. “It didn’t have a hyperacademic approach, which would be off-putting.”

When Oliver learned that the thousands of pages and countless resources on the Food Timeline were compiled and updated entirely by one woman, she couldn’t believe it. “Oh my lord,” she thought. “This is an obsessed person.”

The Food Timeline, in all its comprehensive splendor, was indeed the work of an obsessed person: a New Jersey reference librarian named Lynne Olver. Olver launched the site in 1999, two years before Wikipedia debuted, and maintained it, with little additional help, for more than 15 years. By 2014, it had reached 35 million readers and Olver had personally answered 25,000 questions from fans who were writing history papers or wondering about the origins of family recipes. Olver populated the pages with well-researched answers to these questions, making a resource so thorough that a full scroll to the bottom of the Food Timeline takes several labored seconds.

For nearly two decades, Olver’s work was everyone else’s gain. In April of 2015, she passed away after a seven-month struggle with leukemia, a tragedy acknowledged briefly at the bottom of the site. “The Food Timeline was created and maintained solely by Lynne Olver (1958-2015, her obituary), reference librarian with a passion for food history.”

In the wake of Olver’s death, no one has come forward to take over her complex project, leaving a void in the internet that has yet to be filled — and worse, her noble contribution to a world lacking in accurate information and teeming with fake news is now in danger of being lost forever.

It isn’t often that we are tasked with thinking about the history of the food that we eat, unless it shows up in a Jeopardy! question or we ask our informal family historians to detail whose mother passed down this or that version of pound cake. But there are plenty of reasons to pay close attention: for curiosity’s sake; for deepening an appreciation of and respect for cooks, food, and technique; and for gathering perspective on what came before us. “Very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes,” Olver wrote on the Food Timeline. “Today’s grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn related to ancient Roman minces.”

The problem is that these days we’re overloaded with bad information that can be accessed instantaneously, with few intermediaries running quality control. “I think it’s a little too easy to turn to the web,” Oliver, who was also a longtime friend of Olver’s, told me as we talked about the legacy of Food Timeline. “What I worry about is that people aren’t learning critical thinking skills. Once in a while I run into someone who has never used a primary source — wouldn’t know it if it hit them on the head. Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Or, if not a library, a mammoth resource compiled by a certified reference librarian herself. Whenever a reader would write in asking a question, or when Olver herself would become interested in the provenance of a certain food, she’d turn to her personal library of thousands of food books, and her litany of professional resources and skills, and write out detailed answers with sources cited on her website.

As Olver emphasized proudly in a 2013 interview on Pelaccio’s Taste of the Past podcast, when you Google “food history,” the Food Timeline appears first in the search results, even though she never “paid search engines for premium placement, solicited reciprocal links, partnered with book vendors, or sold advertising.” Over the years, thousands of emails poured in asking Olver for help finding the specific information they were looking for, like the history of a weird cheese or a grandmother’s pie recipe.

“One of my favorite groupings of people are those who are looking to recover family recipes,” Olver explained to Pelaccio. “I love that! As long as you can give me a little bit of context, then I have some direction.” She would often cook the recipes people sent her so she could gain a better understanding of the legacy of certain foods. Occasionally, she would struggle to come up with an answer to readers’ questions. “If anybody out there knows the answer to this, please let me know,” she began on Pelaccio’s podcast. “I’ve been asked repeatedly over the years for a recipe for ‘guildmaster sauce.’ It is mentioned on some of the old railroad menus and on fancy dining car menus, but we are not coming up with a recipe or other references.” She never got the answer.

“One of the reasons she wanted people to learn about food was for the simple basic fundamental fact that it kept people alive,” Sara Weissman, a fellow reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library and occasional Food Timeline collaborator, told me. “It was that simple. There was no pretension about it.” Olver found food to be a universal subject of interest — everyone had something to share and everyone had something to learn.

“Yesterday I took the entire day off from work because I wanted to research seitan wheat meat,” Olver told Pelaccio. “My whole site is really driven by my readers. What is it that they want to know?”

The Olvers’ former family home is a modest colonial that sits on a shady suburban street in Randolph, New Jersey, about 10 minutes from the Morris County Public Library, where Lynne worked for more than 25 years. It is fastidiously clean and welcoming, and Olver’s library was still the focal point of the house when I visited a little more than a year ago. As she amassed primary sources to build out the Food Timeline, the sitting room filled up with bookshelves to house her more than 2,300 books — some dating to the 17th century — as well as thousands of brochures and vintage magazines, and a disarrayed collection of other food ephemera, like plastic cups from Pat’s and Geno’s and a tin of Spam. “One of 10 top iconic American manufactured foods, SPAM holds a special place on our national table & culinary folklore,” Olver wrote on the Timeline.

Despite Olver’s intense fondness for it as an object of inquiry, Spam did not hold a special place on her palate; she never tried it. A picky eater, she detested lima beans, pistachio ice cream, calamari, slimy textures, and anything that even edged on raw. When she was in high school in the early ’70s, her favorite dish to make was something she called “peas with cheese,” which is as simple as it sounds. “She would take frozen peas and she’d melt cheese on it, mostly Swiss,” then cover the messy pile in Worcestershire sauce, Olver’s sister, Janice Martin, recalled. “We called Worcestershire sauce ‘life’s blood.’ It was coursing through our veins.” (Sadly, the Timeline does not include an entry for peas with cheese.)

Making peas with cheese as a teenager was the beginning of what would become a lifelong interest in food for Olver. Libraries also captured her attention early on: At 16, she took her first job as a clerk in the Bryant Library in Roslyn, New York, shelving books in the children’s department. There, she was mentored by two older librarians, whom she loved. “She was an introvert,” Olver’s sister told me. “When it came to research, she was fascinated by ferreting out information that nobody else could find.” In 1980, she graduated with a degree in library science from Albany State University, where she also worked as a short-order cook, making sandwiches for students and faculty at a university canteen.

“Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.”

Olver and her future husband, Gordon, met at Albany State and married the year after Olver graduated, in 1981, after which they worked in Manhattan (Lynne at a law library, Gordon in reinsurance), then Connecticut. They eventually had two children — Sarah and Jason — and settled in New Jersey in 1991, where Olver found a job as a reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library, eventually becoming the head of reference, and finally director of the library.

It was during Olver’s time as a reference librarian that the seed was planted for the Food Timeline. It began as an assignment to explain the origins of Thanksgiving dinner to children, to be published on an early incarnation of the library’s website. Around the same time, Olver was asked to write a monthly print newsletter to share library news, which she named Eureka!. One section of the newsletter was devoted to “Hot Topics,” as Olver and her colleague Sharon Javer wrote in the first dispatch. “Each month, this lead feature will focus on a particular theme: holidays, New Jersey events sources, census data, and so on. Included in this sizzling section will be answers to arduous questions, practical pointers and many marvelous morsels of information.”

Eureka!, in a sign of things to come, began to take over her life. “I remember one time saying to her, ‘How come we’re buying all this colored paper?’” Gordon, her husband, told me. “The library wouldn’t pay for the paper, so she was buying it on her own. When the library realized it was taking so much of her time, they asked her to stop. Meanwhile, she had put so much time and effort into it that she said to them, ‘Just pass it over to me, I’ll take it.’”

When the family got a Gateway computer in the late ’90s, Olver began teaching herself HTML, and by 1999, she was combining her interest in the Thanksgiving dinner project and the Eureka! answers column into a hybrid website she called the Food Timeline, where she could focus on providing well-researched food history on her own time. An archived version of the 1999 Food Timeline still exists and looks — unsurprisingly — more or less the same as the one now. “We still hand code html & today’s readers comment the site is ‘ugly,’” Olver wrote under the site’s “Market Strategy.” “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale. Conversley? [sic] FT looks so old it’s become vintage.”

Olver wrote everything on the Food Timeline with a royal “we,” including her responses to readers’ emails, despite the fact the project was largely hers, with an occasional assist from others. “‘I don’t want anyone to know that it’s just me,’’’ Sarah recalled her mom saying. “She wanted people to believe that it was a network of volunteers,” because she felt that it lent the site more credibility.

“We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.”

While Olver worked at the county library by day, by night she was creating an online resource for anyone who wanted to know more about Johnny Appleseed or chuck wagon stew or the origins of Sauce Robert. By the website’s first anniversary, Olver was already spending upwards of 30 hours a week on the Food Timeline, compiling and posting all the information she was digging up and answering readers’ questions about the origins of their grandmothers’ crumble recipes. “If you came in the house and you wanted to know where she was, and she wasn’t cooking, she was in the office on the computer,” Gordon recalled.

Eventually, even the cooking fell behind. Olver’s children came to expect burnt grilled cheese sandwiches at meals Sarah said. “She would be like, ‘I’ll leave these [on the stove] and go do my work,’ and then she would forget because she was so into what she was doing.”

Over time, the audience for the site expanded, and Olver’s subtle form of fame grew with it. She was named a winner of the New York Times Librarian Award in 2002, and, in 2004, Saveur put the Food Timeline on its Saveur 100 list of the best food finds that year. In the mid-2010s, she was asked to contribute to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and consult for America’s Test Kitchen.

Sarah and Jason recalled taking their mother to a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan during that time period. “She was so excited about the teacher of this class because she had heard of her through her research,” Sarah told me. “When we got there, the teacher was like, ‘I’m looking at my roster of students and I see that Lynne Olver is here. Where is Lynne Olver?’ Mom kind of timidly raised her hand, and this chef was like, ‘I’ve been dying to meet you!’” The chef who left Olver starstruck was just as starstruck to meet Olver.

For years, Olver lived something of a double life. As the director of a mid-size suburban library, she was known to hand out PayDay candy bars to her staff on pay day and shovel snow from the building walkway during snowstorms, while as the founder of Food Timeline, she brought her computer on vacation, dutifully responding to readers’ food history questions within the promised 48-hour window. “I think she started on the internet as a way to reach a lot of people,” her sister said. “A lot of people who wouldn’t go into the library.”

The night before her wedding, in September 2014, Olver’s daughter, Sarah, noticed that her mom wasn’t acting like herself. While the family was sitting all together in the living room, Olver got up to go to the bathroom; minutes later, she was in the throes of a seizure. Sarah called 911, and Olver was taken to the hospital. The family stayed with her until doctors sent them home in the early hours of Sarah’s wedding day. The wedding had to go on, though Olver was too sick to attend. Doctors diagnosed her with leukemia the next day.

Olver had known for a while that she was sick, but didn’t want to ruin the wedding, so she had put off telling anyone. “She’d be like, ‘I’m dying, but let me put everyone else first,’” Sarah said. Olver was kept in the hospital for two months, but fought hard to be home for Thanksgiving. “It was my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner because she wasn’t feeling up to cooking — and I ruined it,” Sarah said. “The turkey shrunk off the bone. That was one of the only things that made her laugh in a really long time.”

“Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.”

When she was diagnosed with leukemia, Olver used the Food Timeline’s Twitter account to grumble about the food in the ICU at Morristown Medical Center, where she stayed until she was transferred to specialists in Hackensack two months later. “It was a chicken cutlet with some kind of sauce on it,” Gordon recalled; the post has since been taken down by the family. “She said, ‘This sauce, I don’t know what it is, I’m not eating it. It doesn’t look very good. It’s not a natural color.’”

Following her stay at the hospital in Hackensack, Olver returned home to wait for a bone marrow transplant. “She had to use a walker because balance was a problem, but very shortly after getting back from the hospital, she was walking around and doing all of her Food Timeline stuff again,” Gordon explained. She was responding to emails, diving back into her research. “On her birthday, March 10, she said, ‘I had a glorious day.’”

The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.”

A little over a month later, Lynne died of leukemia, only one year short of her retirement from the library. She had been planning to spend her retirement working on it full time: Earlier that year, she had renewed the Food Timeline domain for 10 more years.

A year after Olver’s death, her family began to discuss what would happen to the Food Timeline and who could take it over. “What we know is that we couldn’t do it justice ourselves,” Sarah said.

To anyone willing and able to maintain Olver’s vision of an ad-free, simply designed, easy-to-access resource on food history, the family members say that the website and her library are theirs, for free. A couple of people have put forward their names, but the family felt that their hearts weren’t in the right place. “One woman had shown us what she had done with her website and it was just full of banner advertisements,” Gordon said.

“It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added.

Olver’s book collection — if a price were to be put on it — would be worth tens of thousands of dollars, Gordon estimates. So far, there have been no takers for either the books or the task of keeping the site going.

“The Culinary Institute of America initially expressed interest,” Gordon said. “But three months later, they came back and said, ‘We don’t really have the ability to take that volume of texts and dedicate [the task of updating the site] to a specific person. I said they were missing the point; I wasn’t looking to give them the books unless they wanted the website, too.”

The Food Timeline was — and still is — a great democratizing force. “I think Lynne liked that the internet was for everybody and by everybody. Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best,” Lynne’s sister, Janice, told me. “If you hold the knowledge and you can help everybody get it, that’s where it’s at.” Lynne Olver, an award-winning reference librarian, wanted everybody to know exactly what she knew.

“I would second anybody who says that they want Food Timeline to be brought up to date, who know how to keep that valuable digitized information where people can get their hands or their minds on it,” Sandy Oliver told me. “I’d hate to think Lynne had spent all those hours doing all that work and have it just slide into oblivion. I’d love to see it continue in whatever useful form it can.”

Dayna Evans is a freelance writer currently based in Paris. She last wrote for Eater about the rise of community fridges across the country. D’Ara Nazaryan is an art director & illustrator living in Los Angeles. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2AEYzmX https://ift.tt/3gQZZdN

The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian.

“Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.”

“We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.”

“Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.”

The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.”

“It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2AEYzmX via Blogger https://ift.tt/2AHBVKT

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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Who Will Save the Food Timeline added to Google Docs

Who Will Save the Food Timeline

The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian.

“Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.”

When the family got a Gateway computer in the late ’90s, Olver began teaching herself HTML, and by 1999, she was combining her interest in the Thanksgiving dinner project and the Eureka! answers column into a hybrid website she called the Food Timeline, where she could focus on providing well-researched food history on her own time. An archived version of the 1999 Food Timeline http://gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food.html" rel="nofollow">still exists and looks — unsurprisingly — more or less the same as the one now. “We still hand code html & today’s readers comment the site is ‘ugly,’” Olver wrote under the site’s “Market Strategy.” “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale. Conversley? [sic] FT looks so old it’s become vintage.”

Olver wrote everything on the Food Timeline with a royal “we,” including her responses to readers’ emails, despite the fact the project was largely hers, with an occasional assist from others. “‘I don’t want anyone to know that it’s just me,��’’ Sarah recalled her mom saying. “She wanted people to believe that it was a network of volunteers,” because she felt that it lent the site more credibility.

“We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.”

“Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.”

The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.”

“It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added.

Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/7/8/21271246/food-timeline-lynne-olver

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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A Visual Dispatch From One of the World’s Most Remote Islands

With travel restrictions in place worldwide, we’ve launched a new series, The World Through a Lens, in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet’s most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, Andy Isaacson shares a collection of photographs from the remote island of Tristan da Cunha.

The six-by-six-mile volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha (the main island of an archipelago bearing the same name) sits in the remote waters of the South Atlantic, roughly equidistant from South Africa and Brazil, and about 1,500 miles from its nearest neighbor, the island of St. Helena. Lacking an airport, Tristan, part of a British Overseas Territory, can only be reached by ship — a journey that lasts about a week.

Tristan, as its colloquially known, is currently home to about 250 British nationals, whose diverse ancestry — made up of Scottish soldiers, Dutch seamen, Italian castaways and an American whaler — first arrived some 200 years ago. They live in “the world’s most isolated settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas,” reads the island’s website, “far from the madding crowd.”

It was late one night in 2009 when I Googled “What is the world’s most remote inhabited island?” and Tristan appeared. I had questions. How does it feel to live so far from the madding crowd? How do you even get there?

The logistics, it turns out, involved requesting approval from the island council and booking passage from Cape Town on a South African polar supply ship, one of only a handful of regularly scheduled voyages to and from Tristan each year. (Pack appropriately; once you get there, you’ll be there a while.)

Modern air travel, which involves boarding a plane in one part of the world and stepping out several hours later into another, distorts geography. But a slow journey across the surface of the Earth helps you grasp the true breadth of distance.

Sailing the seas for a week puts Tristan’s extreme isolation into perspective. At first sight, the island — a cone-shaped mass of rock that rises to a height of more than 6,700 feet — appears like an iceberg alone and adrift, given shape by the vast negative space that surrounds it. Improbably, beneath the beneath the towering flanks of an active volcano, a cluster of low-slung structures with red and blue tin roofs occupies a narrow grass plateau overlooking the ocean: the settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas.

“People imagine us with grass skirts on,” Iris Green, Tristan’s postmistress at the time, told me after I arrived. In fact, the island’s history is entirely free of such stereotypes. Discovered in 1506 by the Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha, it was claimed in 1816 by the British, who placed a garrison there to ensure it would not be used as a base to rescue Napoleon, imprisoned on St. Helena. In 1817, the garrison was removed, but a corporal named William Glass and his associates remained behind. They imported wives from Cape Colony (in present-day South Africa), built homes and boats from salvaged driftwood, and drafted a constitution decreeing a new community based on equality and cooperation.

Over the years, the islanders assimilated castaways and deserters of various nationalities. Today’s inhabitants, all interrelated, share seven family names among them: Glass, Swain, Hagen, Green, Repetto, Lavarello and Rogers. The collective spirit that sustained the island during years of almost complete isolation still exists.

“Tristanians will do business with the world; we understand it’s important to be in the world if you want something from it,” explained Conrad Glass, then the Chief Islander. “But the world can keep its bombs and bird flu. Whatever we’ve got here is under our control. It’s the remoteness of the island that has jelled us and brought us all together.”

In the way of sightseeing, Tristan has little to offer visitors. A tourist brochure lists activities such as golf (a challenging nine-holer whose hazards include chicken coops and gale force winds) and an all-day hike up to Tristan’s summit, Queen Mary’s Peak, which is typically shrouded in clouds. On Saturdays, the recreation center, Prince Philip Hall, comes alive for the weekly dance, while next door, the Albatross — the world’s remotest pub, of course — is the spot to grab a South African lager and pick up some Tristanian dialect. Locals might be “heyen on” about collecting “Jadda boys” as they get “half touch up”— bragging about how many penguin eggs they’ve collected, while getting drunk.

I spent a month on Tristan, participating in its daily rhythms. There were birthdays and baptisms, and lobster prepared five ways. When a bell rang out across the settlement, announcing calm seas, I set out with fishermen to collect the lobster, the island’s primary export. Other days I strolled down Tristan’s only road to a patchwork of stonewalled potato plots overlooking the sea: The Patches.

I recall one afternoon walking into the island’s cafe, where a British Forces TV channel was broadcasting a news conference with President Barack Obama — something about Russia and missile defense. Never had the forces shaping the world, beamed into a faraway room where locals chatted breezily about marking their lambs and the strength of the potato crop, felt so distant and irrelevant.

A novel coronavirus is another thing. Tristanians are far more interconnected with the world today than in 1918, when they were spared the Spanish flu. The island’s hospital has two beds and no ventilators. There are also a disproportionate number of older people, and more than half of Tristan’s population show signs of asthma — a phenomenon that allowed a Canadian researcher in the 1990s to identify one of the genes responsible for the condition. But the island’s remoteness offers an upper hand: Tristanians are insulated from the virus by the world’s widest moat.

Recently, I reached out to James Glass, Tristan’s current Chief Islander (and Conrad’s second cousin). There are no Covid-19 cases to date, he wrote to me. All future cruise and cargo vessels have been banned from landing. At the moment, food security is not a concern: There are plenty of potatoes in the ground and lobster in the sea.

“We will have to decide what we are going to do on the next voyage in June, maybe take more measures. It will be a real problem if it gets here,” Mr. Glass wrote. “All we have for our protection is our isolation and our faith.”

Andy Isaacson, a photographer and writer based in New York, has reported for The Times from all seven continents. You can follow his work on Instagram.

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charllieeldridge · 5 years

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Exploring Nova Scotia: Our Experience On Canada’s East Coast

How much of your home country have you seen? As Canadians who have been travelling abroad for around 11 years, we’ve explored very little of our home country — and I mean very little. Prior to our recent trip to Nova Scotia, Nick had only been as far east as Edmonton, and I went to Montreal once when I was young!

We were overdue to experience more of Canada, and what better place to start with than one of the furthest eastern points in the country?

Our 15-day journey through the second smallest province in Canada gave us a taste of the Maritimes and left us wanting more. Each of the seven main areas of Nova Scotia offered a different feel — in terms of landscapes, cuisine, and heritage. We’ll be writing more articles, and creating more videos from our time in Nova Scotia, but for now, read the rest of this article and check out the video below to find out more about travelling in this stunning province.

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The Invitation to Nova Scotia

It had been a while since we’d been on a press trip. In fact, the last one was when we were invited to visit Chicago — in 2018. Earlier this year we had backpacked around Ecuador and Peru, and enjoyed a digital detox along the way, free of work and campaigns.

We were ready for another partnership that suited our interests, and the Nova Scotia tourism board was the perfect match.

Once we received the proposed itinerary, we asked to make a couple of changes to better fit our travel style, and they were happy to accommodate our requests.

We knew right away that the tourism board was going to be great to work with. They understood the value of influencers and online media and that it’s important to create content that our readers will enjoy.

What a view!

Our trip to Nova Scotia was 18 days, but only 10 days were planned with the tourism board, the rest of the time we were on our own — so, we had lots of time to see the in-between bits of the province (Although, we could’ve stayed double that time).

The Road Trip Route

“Don’t forget to drive on the righthand side of the road!”

Those were my first words to Nick when we picked up our car at the Halifax airport. Living in Grenada, we drive on the left. Plus, it’s practically impossible to drive more than 65 kilometers/hour as our windy roads have obstacles to dodge like people, goats, dogs, and potholes (to name a few).

Driving in Nova Scotia with its paved roads, lane dividers and traffic lights was going to be a breeze…provided Nick remembered to stay on the correct side of the road.

After loading Google Maps on our phone, we set off to downtown Halifax. The sun was shining, our Dodge Charger was purring, and we were so excited for the start of the journey!

Having your own wheels is a must in Nova Scotia. Our Dodge Charger was a great ride!

With so many epic viewpoints, tasty restaurants, and offtrack spots to explore, having your own wheels in Nova Scotia is essential. Not only that, but since it’s such a compact province, driving around here is pretty straightforward — it’s basically impossible to get lost.

The only thing you need to decide is where you want to go, and which scenic route you want to take.

If you look at a map of Nova Scotia, you’ll see a very jagged coastline with a bunch of “fingers”, numerous bays and coves, and an uncountable amount of lakes (well, over 3,000), rivers, and streams. Needless to say, the drives here are stunning.

Our road trip route in Nova Scotia looked like this:

Halifax ⇢ Peggy’s Cove ⇢ Mahone Bay ⇢ Lunenburg ⇢ Blue Rocks ⇢ Liverpool ⇢ White Point ⇢ Shelburne ⇢ Barrington ⇢ Yarmouth ⇢ White Point ⇢ Kejimkujik National Park ⇢ Digby ⇢ Annapolis Royal ⇢ Wolfville ⇢ Urbania ⇢ Pictou.

We then crossed the Canso Causeway to Cape Breton Island.

Pictou ⇢ Mabou ⇢ Ingonish ⇢ Baddeck ⇢ Margaree Forks ⇢ Inverness ⇢ Halifax

History & Culture

We travel the world to learn about other cultures, customs and ways of life. By simply visiting the eastern coast of Canada, we found ourselves in our home country, but with new cultures and cuisines to experience.

With just 15 days to travel around Nova Scotia, it was a bit difficult to learn everything about the history and people here (and to visit all the historical sites, and sample all of the traditional cuisines). But, we did our best and had nothing but positive experiences with the welcoming people of the province.

From the Mi’kmaq, the French Acadians, and the Africans, to the English, Irish and Scottish – as well as the many who have immigrated here more recently, Nova Scotia is a melting pot of cultures and people.

The Mi’kmaq have called Nova Scotia home for over 13,000 years. During our trip, we visited the Kejimikujik National park which is home to ancient petroglyphs, and the waterways here were used by the Mi’kmaq as travel routes to move them between the Bay Of Fundy and the Atlantic Ocean — by means of a dugout, wooden canoe.

Loved this tree at the Kejimikujik National Park

In Latin, Nova Scotia translates to “New Scotland”, and there’s still a strong Scottish influence in the province, especially on Cape Breton Island and the town of Pictou. From Ceilidhs (get-togethers) and fiddle music to their accent and cuisine, the Scottish roots are prominent here.

We spent some time in the town of Pictou, which is where the first Scottish settlers arrived aboard the Hector ship in 1773. Here, lamp posts are decorated with Scottish tartans, a replica of the Hector sits in the bay, and there’s a yearly Festival Of The Tartans (in Pictou County) which celebrates all things Scottish — bagpipes, traditional games, food, highland dancing, and more.

Pictou was a beautiful little town!

We also visited some of the Acadian communities in the southwest part of the province, as well as Cheticamp on Cape Breton Island. The French were the first Europeans to arrive in Nova Scotia in the 1600s, and they set up their base in Annapolis Royal — a lovely little community that we stopped in on our way to Wolfville. From there, the Acadians spread out around the province.

During our road trip, we saw Acadian flags with signs informing us that we’ve arrived in an Acadian community. The Acadian influence is prominent in Nova Scotia and it reveals itself in the food, language, and architecture.

No matter which town or community we were in, it seemed each had some sort of historical significance. The next time we visit Nova Scotia, we want to immerse ourselves further in the culture and learn more about the Acadians, Africans, and Mi’kmaq people and perhaps give more time to camping, national parks and the outdoors.

Highlights From Nova Scotia

Many of the places we visited, and the things we did stick out in our minds as highlights from our journey. During our brief visit, we were able to get a taste of what each area of Nova Scotia has to offer. Here are just a few of our highlights:

Halifax

This city of around 430,000 people is set on the second-largest natural harbour in the world… as you can imagine, it’s an incredibly picturesque place.

We wandered up and down the Waterfront (a pedestrian-only walkway) while stopping in for poutine, beaver tails, and craft beers along the way. We popped into the Atlantic Maritime Museum, wandered through the Farmer’s Market, and rode an amphibious vehicle (Harbour Hopper) through the streets of Halifax…and directly into the Ocean.

The Waterfront in Halifax is a great place to walk

Across the bay, just a 5-minute ferry ride away, is the community of Dartmouth. Colourful buildings, street art, little cafes and a great walking path are all reasons to visit here. Plus, you’ll get a great view of Halifax from across the water.

With numerous international cuisines to dine on, historical sites to visit, endless events to attend (we were there for the annual Halifax Jazz Festival!), and a chilled-out vibe, Halifax was a great first stop on our Nova Scotia trip.

Taking the 5-minute ferry from Halifax to Dartmouth

Where To Stay

We stayed at two different places in Halifax.

The Westin Nova Scotian (in the newly renovated rooms). The view across the harbour was spectacular, the breakfast buffet was excellent, the staff were friendly and the location was great.

A cute Airbnb in one of the historic homes in the city. Again, a great location, just steps from the waterfront.

Don’t forget to grab your Airbnb coupon to receive up to $55 off your booking.

Where To Eat:

There are numerous options for local and international cuisine. Some of our favourites include:

The Bicycle Thief – great location, tasty food, and friendly staff. Try the lobster roll and the rigatoni ragu.

Johnny K’s – Donair is the official food of Halifax, and they say that you haven’t truly been to the city until you’ve eaten one. These aren’t the same as the traditional Middle Eastern doner kebab or shawarma, there’s a twist. (we personally prefer the traditional ones, but hey, when in Halifax!)

The Five Fishermen – excellent restaurant serving delicious cuisine. Try the lobster and the tenderloin steak.

Food Stalls – located on the waterfront, there’s a cluster of food stalls. Try the beaver tail, poutine, and ice cream. Plus, the Stubborn Goat beer garden is a great option for cold beers on a sunny day. (The only downside is they serve drinks in plastic cups. Bring your own reusable cup to help with the excessive use of plastic).

This was a tasty lobster roll!

Lunenburg

Located on the South Shore is the UNESCO listed (fish obsessed) town of Lunenburg. The town revolves around fishing and is evident as soon as you arrive — fishing boats in port, fish ornaments on shops and churches, shipbuilding and fisheries museum, and fish on the restaurant menus!

We were told by our walking tour guide that the people of Lunenburg lived and died by the sea — as in the past, numerous people sadly lost their lives while fishing in treacherous conditions.

With its location right on the water, and the Georgian, Victorian and Colonial-style homes, this is a very picturesque place. Apart from wandering around and enjoying the port town, don’t miss the Ironworks Distillery which produces dangerously delicious fruit liqueurs, plus harder booze such as rum, vodka, and gin. Even if you’re not a drinker, the building it’s set in is worth a visit.

We really enjoyed Lunenburg and would’ve stayed an extra night if we had time

Where to Stay: We stayed at the Bagintine Inn, which had a great view of the water. Even though there’s a bar and restaurant down below, we didn’t have any issues with it being too loud. The location is excellent.

Where to Eat: The Savvy Sailor has tasty (filling) breakfast, with a great view. For dinner, we ate at the Salt Shaker, and while the food was good, it didn’t blow us away. Staff were great and the location was excellent. We heard good things about the Grand Banker Bar and Grill…but didn’t have a chance to try the food, only the beers.

Kayaking at Blue Rocks

The community of Blue Rocks is a quick drive from Lunenburg and is a popular place for photographers. But, we weren’t there to photograph the blue shale rocks, we were there to do some kayaking!

As we pulled in, the Atlantic Ocean was rough and the white caps were pretty big. I was nervous and thought the water was too choppy to kayak. Nick (with his common sense) assured me that the guide wouldn’t take us somewhere dangerous.

And, he was right.

As soon as I voiced my concerns to the guide, he said there was no way he’d take clients out in that water. Where we were going was protected by little islands and rocks. The company was called Pleasant Paddling, and it was definitely pleasant.

Even though the Atlantic was rough, where we kayaked was nice and calm

We paddled through narrow channels while spotting bald eagles, numerous black ducks, and other sea birds. We even had some curious seals swim towards us. Getting on the water and learning about Blue Rocks (and the province as a whole), while burning off some of the food we had been eating, was a great way to spend the morning.

Pleasant Paddling offers 3 different tours, starting from $60 per person. Click here to learn more.

Whale Watching at Digby

Located just outside of Digby is the Digby Neck. This peninsula is an excellent place to embark on a whale-watching trip out into the Bay of Fundy. The sun was shining as our boat passed Long Island and circled the bottom of the peninsula at Brier Island, before heading out into the open Bay of Fundy.

Time for some whale watching

We all had our eyes peeled, hoping to spot a humpback whale.

Thankfully, even though we were a little bit early in the season, we spotted one! The crew knew this whale and had named him “Rooftop”. We spotted him a few times during the day, as he showed off by putting his fluke in the air.

As the day was coming to an end, we were extremely fortunate to spot a Finback Whale. This is the second largest whale in the world, and they move very fast in the water. For whatever reason, this whale decided to hang out with us and allowed us to “ooo and ahh” and take some pictures and videos, before descending down into the depths.

There’s just something special about seeing wildlife in its natural habitat.

Bring warm clothes for whale watching…and check out the video above for whale clips!

Where To Stay: We stayed in Digby itself and enjoyed checking out the town the day before. We stayed at the Digby Pines Golf Resort and Spa, which was set on a gorgeous property.

Where To Eat: I recommend the Shoreline Restaurant in Digby. The town is known for having the best scallops in the world, and the bacon-wrapped scallops and pan-fried scallops with garlic and butter are delicious.

Whale Watching: The company we went with was Petit Passage Whale Watching, and we had a great experience. Make sure to bring warm clothing, even in the summer months. It’s $85 for adults and $30 for kids. Click here to learn more.

Tidal Bore Rafting

Have you heard of this?! It’s an experience you can only have in Nova Scotia — nowhere else in the world offers it.

Here’s what happens…

Where’s the boat?! Tidal bore rafting was so much fun

The tides in the Bay of Fundy are the highest in the world, fluctuating between 3.5 meters (11ft) and 16 meters (53ft). When the rush of the incoming tide meets with the outgoing Shubenacadie River, it creates swells, waves, and rapids.

We hopped on a zodiac and headed out on the river to ride these waves!

Even though we were gulping down mud and water (due to laughing so hard), we had such a great time. The boat launched over the waves while we held on tight. Once we completed our rapids, we headed to the banks of the river to do some mud sliding.

Mud sliding was a great way to end the day

This trip really brought out our inner child and we had such a blast. Highly recommended! To learn more about tidal bore rafting, click here.

Cape Breton Island

I’m listing the whole island as a highlight, as there are just too many things that stood out for us here! The famous Cabot Trail drive is a must, but I recommend not rushing it. Drive a little bit, then stay the night somewhere and explore around that area, before continuing on the Cabot Trail the following day.

Inverness town has a beautiful oceanfront boardwalk, excellent golfing, craft beer brewery, and camping opportunities. The Glenora Inn and Distillery is the longest-running producer of single malt whiskey in North America (there are only 2), plus, the accommodation and restaurant there are excellent.

The boardwalk along the beach in Inverness is a great place to walk

The Margaree River offers fantastic fly fishing opportunities. Even though Nick didn’t catch a fish (the weather wasn’t in his favour), there were 40-pound salmon jumping out of the river there! If you’re interested, pick up a salmon fishing license for around $62. You can buy flies and a license at the Tying Scotsman.

The Cape Breton Highlands National Park offers numerous hiking trails and scenic pull-outs. Definitely make sure to get out of the car and do some walking. We walked The Skyline Trail and while it has stunning views, it was quite busy. If you’re looking for a quieter, more natural hike, then I’d recommend giving yourself a bit of extra time to enjoy a less popular trail.

View from the Middle Head Trail

Ingonish Beach has a sandy or rocky beach, depending on the tides. There’s a freshwater lake here, camping opportunities, and the stunning Keltic Lodge. The lodge was the most scenic accommodation we had during our trip, and conveniently, it’s the starting point for a great short hike — Middle Head Trail.

To sum up, don’t miss Cape Breton Island!

Where to Stay:

Genora Inn and Distillery. The property is located just outside of Inverness and is beautiful. Don’t miss the tours of the distillery, dining at the restaurant, and the live music at night.

The Keltic Lodge is home to the world-renowned Cape Breton Island Golf Course, is the starting point for the Middle Head Trail, and is set in the most picturesque place! The restaurant served great food (the burger and pasta were delicious), and our room had an excellent view. Located at Ingonish.

The Inverary Resort is a lovely property located right on the lake. You can rent kayaks, SUP or jet skis and enjoy a day on the water. There are different room styles to choose from. The new restaurant needs more staff, but the food was tasty (try the mussels and halibut). Located in Baddeck.

We booked a 3 bedroom chalet at Lakeland Cottage for a couple of nights while Nick went fishing and loved the little cabin. It was spacious and there were walking trails nearby. Just a 10-minute drive to Inverness, and near to Margaree Forks.

We enjoyed our stay, the tour and the restaurant at the Glenora Inn

Where to Eat:

The Red Shoe Pub comes highly recommended for food and music, but we decided to spend the evening at the Glenora Distillery restaurant instead.

The Celtic Music Interpretive Center has lunchtime ceilidhs and serves up good food. Try the salt cod fish cakes.

The Dancing Moose: Owned by a Dutch couple, they serve up Dutch Pannekoek (pancakes), and other tasty homemade food.

Rusty Anchor Restaurant: Near Pleasant Bay, this spot has a great outdoor patio, friendly staff and good seafood dishes.

Eating at the lodges. Each of the accommodations we stayed at in Cape Breton Island (except for our chalet outside of Inverness), had an onsite restaurant with tasty food. So, we opted to stay there and relax for the evening.

What’s Next?

Now that we’ve returned to Grenada, we’re just letting our Nova Scotia trip sink in. While we were in the province, we took lots of video and photos and will be creating 3-4 videos showcasing the best places to visit, the best things to do, our experience tidal bore rafting, and a list of things you won’t want to miss in Halifax.

We’ll also be writing lots of articles and continuing to share photos and posts on Facebook and Instagram. Stay tuned for more from this small, but action-packed province.

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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The internet’s most comprehensive archive of food history — a passion project of one dedicated librarian — predates Wikipedia. Now, it needs a new custodian. In the long timeline of human civilization, here’s roughly how things shook out: First, there was fire, water, ice, and salt. Then we started cooking up and chowing down on oysters, scallops, horsemeat, mushrooms, insects, and frogs, in that general chronological order. Fatty almonds and sweet cherries found their way into our diet before walnuts and apples did, but it would be a couple thousand years until we figured out how to make ice cream or a truly good apple pie. Challah (first century), hot dogs (15th century), Fig Newtons (1891), and Meyer lemons (1908) landed in our kitchens long before Red Bull (1984), but they all arrived late to the marshmallow party — we’d been eating one version or another of those fluffy guys since 2000 B.C. This is, more or less, the history of human eating habits for 20,000 years, and right now, you can find it all cataloged on the Food Timeline, an archival trove of food history hiding in plain sight on a website so lo-fi you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a GeoCities fanpage. When you look past the Times Roman font and taupe background, the Food Timeline happens to be the single most comprehensive inventory of food knowledge on the internet, with thousands upon thousands of pages of primary sources, cross-checked research, and obsessively detailed food history presented in chronological order. Every entry on the Food Timeline, which begins with “water” in pre-17,000 B.C. and ends with “test tube burgers” in 2013, is sourced from “old cook books, newspapers, magazines, National Historic Parks, government agencies, universities, cultural organizations, culinary historians, and company/restaurant web sites.” There is history, context, and commentary on everything from Taylor pork roll to Scottish tablet to “cowboy cooking.” A couple of years ago, I landed on the humble authority of the Food Timeline while doing research on bread soup, a kind of austerity cuisine found in countless cultures. The entry for soup alone spans more than 70,000 words (The Great Gatsby doesn’t break 50,000), with excerpts from sources like Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat’s A History of Food, John Ayto’s An A-Z of Food and Drink, and D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully’s Early French Cookery. Before long, I fell into the emotional condition known as an internet K-hole, following link after link after link for hours on end. From olla podrida to hodge podge to cassava to taro to Chex Mix to Johnnycakes, the Food Timeline covered everything. Did you know that mozzarella sticks go as far back as the Middle Ages, but back then they called them “pipefarces”? I bookmarked the site and returned to it time and time again, when I was researching, writing, or just bored and hungry. Despite the Food Timeline’s incredible utility, few people I spoke to had ever heard of it. Those who had always marveled at its breadth. “Oh my god, it’s nirvana,” Taste of the Past podcast host Linda Pelaccio said to herself when she first stumbled onto the Food Timeline. Sandy Oliver, a food historian and fellow fan, was stunned by its completeness and simplicity. “It was one of the most accessible ways of getting into food history — especially if you were a beginner — because it was just so easy to use,” she told me. “It didn’t have a hyperacademic approach, which would be off-putting.” When Oliver learned that the thousands of pages and countless resources on the Food Timeline were compiled and updated entirely by one woman, she couldn’t believe it. “Oh my lord,” she thought. “This is an obsessed person.” The Food Timeline, in all its comprehensive splendor, was indeed the work of an obsessed person: a New Jersey reference librarian named Lynne Olver. Olver launched the site in 1999, two years before Wikipedia debuted, and maintained it, with little additional help, for more than 15 years. By 2014, it had reached 35 million readers and Olver had personally answered 25,000 questions from fans who were writing history papers or wondering about the origins of family recipes. Olver populated the pages with well-researched answers to these questions, making a resource so thorough that a full scroll to the bottom of the Food Timeline takes several labored seconds. For nearly two decades, Olver’s work was everyone else’s gain. In April of 2015, she passed away after a seven-month struggle with leukemia, a tragedy acknowledged briefly at the bottom of the site. “The Food Timeline was created and maintained solely by Lynne Olver (1958-2015, her obituary), reference librarian with a passion for food history.” In the wake of Olver’s death, no one has come forward to take over her complex project, leaving a void in the internet that has yet to be filled — and worse, her noble contribution to a world lacking in accurate information and teeming with fake news is now in danger of being lost forever. It isn’t often that we are tasked with thinking about the history of the food that we eat, unless it shows up in a Jeopardy! question or we ask our informal family historians to detail whose mother passed down this or that version of pound cake. But there are plenty of reasons to pay close attention: for curiosity’s sake; for deepening an appreciation of and respect for cooks, food, and technique; and for gathering perspective on what came before us. “Very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes,” Olver wrote on the Food Timeline. “Today’s grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn related to ancient Roman minces.” The problem is that these days we’re overloaded with bad information that can be accessed instantaneously, with few intermediaries running quality control. “I think it’s a little too easy to turn to the web,” Oliver, who was also a longtime friend of Olver’s, told me as we talked about the legacy of Food Timeline. “What I worry about is that people aren’t learning critical thinking skills. Once in a while I run into someone who has never used a primary source — wouldn’t know it if it hit them on the head. Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Or, if not a library, a mammoth resource compiled by a certified reference librarian herself. Whenever a reader would write in asking a question, or when Olver herself would become interested in the provenance of a certain food, she’d turn to her personal library of thousands of food books, and her litany of professional resources and skills, and write out detailed answers with sources cited on her website. As Olver emphasized proudly in a 2013 interview on Pelaccio’s Taste of the Past podcast, when you Google “food history,” the Food Timeline appears first in the search results, even though she never “paid search engines for premium placement, solicited reciprocal links, partnered with book vendors, or sold advertising.” Over the years, thousands of emails poured in asking Olver for help finding the specific information they were looking for, like the history of a weird cheese or a grandmother’s pie recipe. “One of my favorite groupings of people are those who are looking to recover family recipes,” Olver explained to Pelaccio. “I love that! As long as you can give me a little bit of context, then I have some direction.” She would often cook the recipes people sent her so she could gain a better understanding of the legacy of certain foods. Occasionally, she would struggle to come up with an answer to readers’ questions. “If anybody out there knows the answer to this, please let me know,” she began on Pelaccio’s podcast. “I’ve been asked repeatedly over the years for a recipe for ‘guildmaster sauce.’ It is mentioned on some of the old railroad menus and on fancy dining car menus, but we are not coming up with a recipe or other references.” She never got the answer. “One of the reasons she wanted people to learn about food was for the simple basic fundamental fact that it kept people alive,” Sara Weissman, a fellow reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library and occasional Food Timeline collaborator, told me. “It was that simple. There was no pretension about it.” Olver found food to be a universal subject of interest — everyone had something to share and everyone had something to learn. “Yesterday I took the entire day off from work because I wanted to research seitan wheat meat,” Olver told Pelaccio. “My whole site is really driven by my readers. What is it that they want to know?” The Olvers’ former family home is a modest colonial that sits on a shady suburban street in Randolph, New Jersey, about 10 minutes from the Morris County Public Library, where Lynne worked for more than 25 years. It is fastidiously clean and welcoming, and Olver’s library was still the focal point of the house when I visited a little more than a year ago. As she amassed primary sources to build out the Food Timeline, the sitting room filled up with bookshelves to house her more than 2,300 books — some dating to the 17th century — as well as thousands of brochures and vintage magazines, and a disarrayed collection of other food ephemera, like plastic cups from Pat’s and Geno’s and a tin of Spam. “One of 10 top iconic American manufactured foods, SPAM holds a special place on our national table & culinary folklore,” Olver wrote on the Timeline. Despite Olver’s intense fondness for it as an object of inquiry, Spam did not hold a special place on her palate; she never tried it. A picky eater, she detested lima beans, pistachio ice cream, calamari, slimy textures, and anything that even edged on raw. When she was in high school in the early ’70s, her favorite dish to make was something she called “peas with cheese,” which is as simple as it sounds. “She would take frozen peas and she’d melt cheese on it, mostly Swiss,” then cover the messy pile in Worcestershire sauce, Olver’s sister, Janice Martin, recalled. “We called Worcestershire sauce ‘life’s blood.’ It was coursing through our veins.” (Sadly, the Timeline does not include an entry for peas with cheese.) Making peas with cheese as a teenager was the beginning of what would become a lifelong interest in food for Olver. Libraries also captured her attention early on: At 16, she took her first job as a clerk in the Bryant Library in Roslyn, New York, shelving books in the children’s department. There, she was mentored by two older librarians, whom she loved. “She was an introvert,” Olver’s sister told me. “When it came to research, she was fascinated by ferreting out information that nobody else could find.” In 1980, she graduated with a degree in library science from Albany State University, where she also worked as a short-order cook, making sandwiches for students and faculty at a university canteen. “Libraries are where you’d find that stuff. It’s not the same as using a Wikipedia page at all.” Olver and her future husband, Gordon, met at Albany State and married the year after Olver graduated, in 1981, after which they worked in Manhattan (Lynne at a law library, Gordon in reinsurance), then Connecticut. They eventually had two children — Sarah and Jason — and settled in New Jersey in 1991, where Olver found a job as a reference librarian at the Morris County Public Library, eventually becoming the head of reference, and finally director of the library. It was during Olver’s time as a reference librarian that the seed was planted for the Food Timeline. It began as an assignment to explain the origins of Thanksgiving dinner to children, to be published on an early incarnation of the library’s website. Around the same time, Olver was asked to write a monthly print newsletter to share library news, which she named Eureka!. One section of the newsletter was devoted to “Hot Topics,” as Olver and her colleague Sharon Javer wrote in the first dispatch. “Each month, this lead feature will focus on a particular theme: holidays, New Jersey events sources, census data, and so on. Included in this sizzling section will be answers to arduous questions, practical pointers and many marvelous morsels of information.” Eureka!, in a sign of things to come, began to take over her life. “I remember one time saying to her, ‘How come we’re buying all this colored paper?’” Gordon, her husband, told me. “The library wouldn’t pay for the paper, so she was buying it on her own. When the library realized it was taking so much of her time, they asked her to stop. Meanwhile, she had put so much time and effort into it that she said to them, ‘Just pass it over to me, I’ll take it.’” When the family got a Gateway computer in the late ’90s, Olver began teaching herself HTML, and by 1999, she was combining her interest in the Thanksgiving dinner project and the Eureka! answers column into a hybrid website she called the Food Timeline, where she could focus on providing well-researched food history on her own time. An archived version of the 1999 Food Timeline still exists and looks — unsurprisingly — more or less the same as the one now. “We still hand code html & today’s readers comment the site is ‘ugly,’” Olver wrote under the site’s “Market Strategy.” “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale. Conversley? [sic] FT looks so old it’s become vintage.” Olver wrote everything on the Food Timeline with a royal “we,” including her responses to readers’ emails, despite the fact the project was largely hers, with an occasional assist from others. “‘I don’t want anyone to know that it’s just me,’’’ Sarah recalled her mom saying. “She wanted people to believe that it was a network of volunteers,” because she felt that it lent the site more credibility. “We acknowledge: what was cutting edge in 1999 is now stale.” While Olver worked at the county library by day, by night she was creating an online resource for anyone who wanted to know more about Johnny Appleseed or chuck wagon stew or the origins of Sauce Robert. By the website’s first anniversary, Olver was already spending upwards of 30 hours a week on the Food Timeline, compiling and posting all the information she was digging up and answering readers’ questions about the origins of their grandmothers’ crumble recipes. “If you came in the house and you wanted to know where she was, and she wasn’t cooking, she was in the office on the computer,” Gordon recalled. Eventually, even the cooking fell behind. Olver’s children came to expect burnt grilled cheese sandwiches at meals Sarah said. “She would be like, ‘I’ll leave these [on the stove] and go do my work,’ and then she would forget because she was so into what she was doing.” Over time, the audience for the site expanded, and Olver’s subtle form of fame grew with it. She was named a winner of the New York Times Librarian Award in 2002, and, in 2004, Saveur put the Food Timeline on its Saveur 100 list of the best food finds that year. In the mid-2010s, she was asked to contribute to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and consult for America’s Test Kitchen. Sarah and Jason recalled taking their mother to a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan during that time period. “She was so excited about the teacher of this class because she had heard of her through her research,” Sarah told me. “When we got there, the teacher was like, ‘I’m looking at my roster of students and I see that Lynne Olver is here. Where is Lynne Olver?’ Mom kind of timidly raised her hand, and this chef was like, ‘I’ve been dying to meet you!’” The chef who left Olver starstruck was just as starstruck to meet Olver. For years, Olver lived something of a double life. As the director of a mid-size suburban library, she was known to hand out PayDay candy bars to her staff on pay day and shovel snow from the building walkway during snowstorms, while as the founder of Food Timeline, she brought her computer on vacation, dutifully responding to readers’ food history questions within the promised 48-hour window. “I think she started on the internet as a way to reach a lot of people,” her sister said. “A lot of people who wouldn’t go into the library.” The night before her wedding, in September 2014, Olver’s daughter, Sarah, noticed that her mom wasn’t acting like herself. While the family was sitting all together in the living room, Olver got up to go to the bathroom; minutes later, she was in the throes of a seizure. Sarah called 911, and Olver was taken to the hospital. The family stayed with her until doctors sent them home in the early hours of Sarah’s wedding day. The wedding had to go on, though Olver was too sick to attend. Doctors diagnosed her with leukemia the next day. Olver had known for a while that she was sick, but didn’t want to ruin the wedding, so she had put off telling anyone. “She’d be like, ‘I’m dying, but let me put everyone else first,’” Sarah said. Olver was kept in the hospital for two months, but fought hard to be home for Thanksgiving. “It was my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner because she wasn’t feeling up to cooking — and I ruined it,” Sarah said. “The turkey shrunk off the bone. That was one of the only things that made her laugh in a really long time.” “Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best.” When she was diagnosed with leukemia, Olver used the Food Timeline’s Twitter account to grumble about the food in the ICU at Morristown Medical Center, where she stayed until she was transferred to specialists in Hackensack two months later. “It was a chicken cutlet with some kind of sauce on it,” Gordon recalled; the post has since been taken down by the family. “She said, ‘This sauce, I don’t know what it is, I’m not eating it. It doesn’t look very good. It’s not a natural color.’” Following her stay at the hospital in Hackensack, Olver returned home to wait for a bone marrow transplant. “She had to use a walker because balance was a problem, but very shortly after getting back from the hospital, she was walking around and doing all of her Food Timeline stuff again,” Gordon explained. She was responding to emails, diving back into her research. “On her birthday, March 10, she said, ‘I had a glorious day.’” The reason? “Someone had written in with a question that she liked.” A little over a month later, Lynne died of leukemia, only one year short of her retirement from the library. She had been planning to spend her retirement working on it full time: Earlier that year, she had renewed the Food Timeline domain for 10 more years. A year after Olver’s death, her family began to discuss what would happen to the Food Timeline and who could take it over. “What we know is that we couldn’t do it justice ourselves,” Sarah said. To anyone willing and able to maintain Olver’s vision of an ad-free, simply designed, easy-to-access resource on food history, the family members say that the website and her library are theirs, for free. A couple of people have put forward their names, but the family felt that their hearts weren’t in the right place. “One woman had shown us what she had done with her website and it was just full of banner advertisements,” Gordon said. “It has to uphold her vision,” Sarah added. Olver’s book collection — if a price were to be put on it — would be worth tens of thousands of dollars, Gordon estimates. So far, there have been no takers for either the books or the task of keeping the site going. “The Culinary Institute of America initially expressed interest,” Gordon said. “But three months later, they came back and said, ‘We don’t really have the ability to take that volume of texts and dedicate [the task of updating the site] to a specific person. I said they were missing the point; I wasn’t looking to give them the books unless they wanted the website, too.” The Food Timeline was — and still is — a great democratizing force. “I think Lynne liked that the internet was for everybody and by everybody. Knowledge is power, but sharing knowledge is the best,” Lynne’s sister, Janice, told me. “If you hold the knowledge and you can help everybody get it, that’s where it’s at.” Lynne Olver, an award-winning reference librarian, wanted everybody to know exactly what she knew. “I would second anybody who says that they want Food Timeline to be brought up to date, who know how to keep that valuable digitized information where people can get their hands or their minds on it,” Sandy Oliver told me. “I’d hate to think Lynne had spent all those hours doing all that work and have it just slide into oblivion. I’d love to see it continue in whatever useful form it can.” Dayna Evans is a freelance writer currently based in Paris. She last wrote for Eater about the rise of community fridges across the country. D’Ara Nazaryan is an art director & illustrator living in Los Angeles. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2AEYzmX

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