DAILY PHOTO: Onion Fields
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Category Archives: America
Charleston Limerick
There was a Bible-thumping lady from Charleston who, in her views, was no less than puritan. She tried to ban books she hadn't given a look because, like "Moby Dick," the titles were smut-ridden.
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Critical Mass of Banana [Limerick]
A longshoreman at the Port of Savannah had to unload ships full of bananas. They'd trip rad detectors, and in came inspectors to prevent a critical mass of banana.
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BOOK REVIEW: Made in Chicago by Monica Eng & David Hammond
Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites by Monica EngMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: March 21, 2023
Chicago is a food city. Once famous for its stockyards and still a major transit point for the products of America’s breadbasket, the city is home to a diverse people, a gathering of migrants and immigrants who brought a wide variety of foods from their homelands and put the necessary twists on them to make them salable to Chicagoans while using available ingredients. This book features entries on thirty foods and beverages that are products of Chicago ingenuity, be they dishes that were wholly invented in the Windy City or one’s that have a distinctive Chicago-style variant. Foodies know exactly what is meant by Chicago-style hot dogs, pizza, or tamales.
If all you know about Chicago cuisine is that ketchup on a hot dog is considered a sin, you’ll learn about some colorfully named Chicago inventions such as: “the Jim Shoe,” “the Big Baby,” and “the Mother-in-Law,” as well as many others that are more prosaically named, if equally calorically dense. One also sees the mark of Chicago’s immigrant story in the Akutagawa, Flaming Saganaki, Gam Pong Chicken Wings, the Maxwell Street Polish, and Chicago Corn Roll Tamales.
Each chapter discusses the nature of the respective dish, its influences, the [often contentious] origin of each item, where one can obtain said dish, and (for most) includes a recipe for making one’s own home variant. So, it’s mostly food history, but with a bit of cookbook, as well. There are pictures throughout, of the foods and in some cases of the location that invented or popularized each dish.
Be forewarned, while Chicago is a city that loves food, it’s not a place that’s wild about nutrition or moderate serving sizes. In fact, I feel certain that many people attempting to consume every item in this book in, say, one month’s time would drop dead of a coronary shortly thereafter (if not during.) Most of these dishes are foods done fast and served with an allowance of fat, sugar, and / or meat suitable for a family (for several days.)
If you’re a traveler (or a Chicagoan) and want to know more about quintessential windy city foods and where you can sample them, you must read this book.
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DAILY PHOTO: A Fine Fall Day in the Graveyard
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DAILY PHOTO: Chicago River, North Loop
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BOOK REVIEW: How to Read the Wilderness by the Nature Study Guild
How to Read the Wilderness: An Illustrated Guide to the Natural Wonders of North America by Nature Study GuildMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: November 22, 2022
This illustrated guide is designed to help readers learn some of the most prolific trees, plants, animals, birds, coastal life forms, and night sky constellations of North America. For plant [and in some cases animal] identification, the book uses a handy flowchart method that asks questions, sending the reader to an appropriate marker depending upon the answer. For wildlife identification, it uses descriptions of not only the animal, but skeletal remains, scat, and tracks. It also gives alternate names and asterisms for constellations.
The pros of this book include: 1.) it focuses on the most common elements and doesn’t get bogged down trying to be all-inclusive; 2.) it uses a flow charts, diagrams, and drawings successfully to do much of the heavy lifting.
The downsides of the book are: 1.) it seems be much more Western US-centric, and often treats everything East of the Rockies as a single zone (not to mention minimal discussion of Canada or Mexico – so maybe it should be thought of more as a US guide;) 2.) in trying to be text-minimal, it occasionally states things in a way that lacks clarity.
If you want to get a basic understanding of the elements of nature for the United States, this book is worth investigating. It’s young reader friendly, but not exclusively so.
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DAILY PHOTO: Good Fences…
DAILY PHOTO: A Clearing, w/ Evergreen & Sky
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Pumpkin Time [Haiku]
shades of orange when paired with brisk air put me in autumn mind
the !n(tro)verted yogi 