First, Boil Your Duck

(copyright-free Audubon image from Dover.)

TO MAKE CURRY PUFFS.  Boil one duck, with the liver and gizzard.  Cut the meat of the duck into dice.  Chop the gizzard rather fine.  Rub the liver to a smooth paste with a little butter, and mix thoroughly with three even tablespoonfuls of curry powder.  Place over the fire one quart of the liquor in which the fowl was cooked.  Add the chopped meat, gizzard, one medium-sized onion, grated, one nutmeg, grated, and salt to taste.  When it comes to a boil add one tablespoonful of chopped parsley and the liver and curry mixture, thinned with a little of the hot liquor.  Thicken with three tablespoonfuls of browned flour rubbed smooth with three tablespoonfuls of butter.  This will be sufficient filling of a dozen and a half puffs.

For the puffs, bake cream-puff batter in the usual way.  while still hot split near the top and fill with the curry.  Serve hot.  Or, if you do not wish to bake the puffs almost any baker will let you have them without the usual sweet filling.  They must in this case be placed in the oven for a moment to heat, before adding the filling.  Watch carefully that they do not become too brown.

(Three tablespoons of curry powder.  Someone liked it hot).  From the Ladies' Home Journal, October 1892.

Caturday!

The Online Bookshelf - The Weakling

Available as a free download from Project Gutenberg.

Caturday!

Quote of the Day

Many years ago, two priests were travelling on foot through the mountains of Spain.  They arrived at a river where there was no bridge, only a ford, and found a pretty girl standing by the riverside, wondering how she was going to get across, because the water was fast and the current strong.

Frey Juan took pity on her and offered to carry her on his back and she accepted.  He was a tall, stout man and he easily made it across, whereas the girl would probably have lost her footing and gotten drenched or perhaps even drowned.  On the opposite bank, she thanked him gratefully and went on her way.

 As soon as she was out of earshot, Frey Esteban began to berate Frey Juan.  “Shame on you!  A man of God, behaving in such a shocking and indecent way!”  And Frey Esteban continued to scold Frey Juan for quite some time.

Finally Frey Juan turned to him.  “Brother, I’m sorry that you are having to bear such a heavy burden,” he said gently.

“What are you talking about?” asked the astonished Frey Esteban.

“The girl.  I put her down six miles back, but you are still carrying her.”

Girls and Their Toys

I know, I know.  There's something seriously wrong with me, but I really want one of these.

Caturday!

Unaccustomed As We Are

I will be in Chicago (well...Schaumburg, technically) for a conference until Thursday night.  With my sweet lovely boss and six other RNs, and only the public affairs officer along as backup.  

Let's hope we can keep the seven of them out of mischief.

Caturday!

...Shall Not Perish From The Earth

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. 

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. 

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. ~ A. Lincoln.

Grrrsday

Knitting - a "Jumper" from 1940

From the Australian Woman's Weekly, March 1940.  Instructions are below - left-click to enlarge.

Vintage Images - Postcards

For those of us who have managed to get to the beach this muggy, wet, grey June.  Copyright-free, from Dover.

Sin of Omission

It is twelve months since the spousal unit's second knee replacement surgery, and he had a final follow up visit with the surgeon this morning.

Me:  And what did the doctor say?

He:  He says they look good -- I can pretty much do whatever I want on them.

Me:  Did it occur to you to tell him that you plan on participating in the Bataan Memorial Death March next spring?

He:  No.

Caturday!

In a Just World

People who cook fish in the office microwave should be transported.

Knitting - "Useful Designs" from 1893

From the Ladies' Home Journal, November, 1893.  Left-click to enlarge.

Vintage Advertising - Fels Naptha Soap

I remember the smell of this -- it may have been hard on the skin, but when you washed something in Fels Naptha, it smelled clean! Ad from the Ladies Home Journal, September 1922.

The ABCs of Cooking

"Not this trip, old pal," by Arthur Davenport Fuller

"For Men with no experience of cooking on Small Boats, Patrol Boats, in Camp, on Marches, etc. Moffat, Yard and Company. For the benefit of the Knitting Committee of the AMERICAN DEFENSE SOCIETY, which is knitting for American Soldiers and Sailors, and it is hoped that both cook-book and knitted garments may help to make more comfortable the men who are only too ready to do their bit.  New York, May 26th, 1917."

OATMEAL FOR THREE PERSONS

1/2 cup of oatmeal (Quaker Oats)
1 quart of hot water
A pinch of salt

Boil fifteen minutes.

BOILED RICE FOR THREE PERSONS

1/2 cup of rice in two quarts of boiling water.

Boil for fifteen minutes.  Wash rice first.

MACARONI FOR THREE PERSONS

Break into inch pieces a cup full of macaroni, and cover with boiling water in a saucepan.  Add a little salt, and cook until soft (about an hour).  Keep covered with water while boiling.

BAKING POWDER BISCUIT

2 cups of flour
4 teaspoonsful of baking powder
1 teaspoonful of salt
1 Tablespoonful of lard
1 Tablespoonful of butter
3/4 cup of milk and water in equal parts

Mix the dry ingredients as well as you can with a spoon, then add the milk and water.  Roll out and cut into biscuits, and bake about ten minutes in a medium hot oven.

FRIED CRACKER OR HARD BREAD

Dip the hard bread into cold water for a minute or two, not to get too soft.  Then fry in a hot frying pan in butter or bacon.

BAKED CANNED SALMON

Put a can of salmon in a dish to bake, a lump of butter the size of a walnut, pepper and salt, and fill up the dish with milk.  Put some cracker crumbs and a little butter on the top, and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

(This little booklet, which can be found on the Internet Archive in various downloadable formats, was either the work of German saboteurs or some very well-meaning and terribly misguided American ladies.  Either way, of limited to no usefulness to its intended audience. I can only imagine what a young man with no previous cooking experience made of any of these recipes;  I have visions of the can winding up in that last dish.)

Caturday!