A Book, a Torch, a Death

Johnson's Dictionary Online (thanks @yellowbelliedtoad!) – 1755 and 1773

Green's Dictionary of Slang – 1300s to today

A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – 1788

Créme Bruleé Brownies

Prep Time: 40 minutes Cook Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes Yield: 15 servings

Ingredients

Brownies:

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, melted

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 TBS vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups flour

12 oz (ish) jar hot fudge sauce

Créme Bruleé Topping:

¼ cup cornstarch

1 cup white sugar

6 Tablespoons butter, melted

3 ¼ cups half and half cream

2 teaspoons vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

¼ cup granulated sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 9x13 pan with foil and spray thoroughly with nonstick spray; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cocoa and melted butter. Stir in sugar until combined. Stir in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each. Stir in vanilla. Fold in flour JUST until you no longer see flour streaks in the batter. Gently fold in hot fudge sauce.

Spread batter in prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until raw batter no longer appears when a toothpick is inserted in the center. Remove from oven and place pan on a cooling rack.

Prepare topping: In a medium-sized heavy saucepan, whisk together cornstarch and sugar. Whisk in the melted butter and half and half. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is the consistency of a thick pudding. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour custard over the brownies, spreading to cover. Sprinkle surface with granulated sugar, then place under the broiler for several minutes until top is golden (may be dark brown is some spots). Alternately, a kitchen torch can be used.

Let brownies cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled. Remove foil, cut into bars and serve.

My boyfriend just watched it in a theater and noticed something. At one point the movie references the guy who implemented the gulag system, following up on a comment from a history teacher, and this is the image they picked to represent it.

look up recipes (especially snack recipes) that are child/toddler/baby-friendly

It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.

My faves in case you need any recommendations. (Some of these are really not appropriate for children, so keep that in mind lol).

The Dark Crystal - 1982 - the Skeksis will give you nightmares. I am honestly very proud of the remake for being just as disturbing if not more so than the original.

Watership Down - 1978- NOT FOR CHILDREN - Jesus Christ why did so many of our parents show us this film at a formative age? It's all about trauma and death and displacement and there's literal blood and murder. Not a G Rated Film. Still, it's very good. Loads better than that CGI remake from a decade ago.

The Secret Of NIMH - 1982 - Incredible movie. Minor disturbing elements. Probably my favorite on the list. It's just a great adventure story with real world issues (animal experimentation, mental health problems, disabilities) and there's even a lovely romance. Highly recommend.

Legend - 1985- This film is just straight up disturbing. Yes, there's a lot of beautiful shots of unicorns and sexy, 20-something year old (insane Scientology wack job) Tom Cruise and gorgeous Mia Sara, but there's also torture, madness and literally the Devil (Tim Curry is the entire reason you should watch this film)

Labyrinth - 1986 - I only really have two words. David. Bowie. My 10 year old self found out about a lot of burgeoning kinks while watching that man prance around in eyeliner and a codpiece. It's a wonderful adventure as well - if you ignore the blatant romantic and sexual tension between Bowie and an underage Jennifer Connelly (none of us could)

The NeverEnding Story - 1984 - Lots of disturbing imagery in this one! The Nothing was fucking terrifying, and the creatures in this world seemed uniformly creepy, but still incredibly well done. Love the adventure of it.

The Princess Bride - 1987 - Not technically a kids film maybe? Lots of adult themes and adult jokes, but safe for kids imo. I adored it and still do. Incredible performances by Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. R.O.U.S, Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! (need I say more?)

The Last Unicorn - 1982 - A beautiful film with stunning representations of innocence, good and evil. Just gorgeous really. I should rewatch it as it's been 20 years or so.

Adding a couple...

LadyHawk.

A romance / Action film about a knight and a maiden who are cursed. Her to transform into a hawk during the day & him into a wolf at night. Forever keeping them apart.

DragonSlayer

A coming of age tale about a wizard apprentice who must save a village from a dragon & the sacrifice lottery the village has established around it.

(Rare example of 1980s genderfuckery)

Willow

LOTR before we ever thought a LOTR film would ever be possible. You've probably seen this one, but just in case.

The Flight of Dragons

Transplanted into the body of a dragon a scientist must come to terms with magic, even while explaining it.

Krull

Classic adventure story severely undervalued in its time.

Some of the creepiest spider stop motion to ever exist.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

cunt dracula:

Hey guys did you. Did you know that butter. Did you know that if you put fat in food it makes it more satisfying and adds textural depth. Hey did you know that some flavours aren't very soluble in water and are instead soluble in fats, so if you add some fat to your watery soup then. Then the flavours. Hey guys did you know that butter is a fat.

Mind blown super surprising in my late thirties hey guys did you know that sad watery soup can be improved with some fat? Just like sauce or meat or basically any other food which I already knew about? Did you know it works for soup as well? Did you know that some flavours are more soluble in

I made this Elizabethan petal hussif for a friend who received an award for her historical costuming work. Hussifs were often used as sewing kits with spots for all of the notions you need for a project. Wives would send them with their husbands to war with extra uniform buttons and repair supplies. This one has an inner pouch area that can fit a small project or pieces thereof.

It's a free, no sign-up, no ads fitness resource created by professionals who view this as activism (fitness should be accessible to everyone), and it's very thoughtful and thorough.

Features I really like:

- all instructions for workout routines are diagrammed on single pages with a clean, easy to read layout

- there's 30 or 60 day programs you can follow if you, like me, don't know what to do. they take you through a rotation of workouts so you're working different muscle groups on different day for a specific purpose

- there's so much variety and there's a filter so you can find the level and your goals and type of workout you wanna do

- you don't need any equipment

- some of the programs are RPGs or adventure stories! How's that for motivation. There's also badges and achievements or something but I haven't looked that closely at how that works yet

- they're nerds. they name workouts after D&D classes. There's a Lannistrr workout, a batcave workout, a witcher workout

- I've only scratched the surface

I'm doing this really easy one to start out

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQSMS0J6JbrKdSOSbyJXaQ_zN_HSSp7zZ

It tastes like a pumpkin gingerbread cake! Great treat for fall and winter!

Tim Cain's Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins -- They're the shadow king's favorite!

1 and 2/3 cup flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup pumpkin (half of a 16 oz can)

1/2 cup (one stick) butter, melted

The Nymphet Femme Fatale (As Popularized by Misreadings of Lolita)

we need to talk about Lolita | Lola Sebastian

A Deep Dive into Black Femininity and Class | Shanspeare

pinterest aesthetics, fatphobia & whitewashing

Femininity and the Intersection of Race and Class

The Eras of an Icon: Britney Spears

Monstrous Menstruations: the dehumanising treatment of women in horror

Why the Curtains are Blue: The Implications of Being Uncritical

in defense of the femme fatale 🚬

Lana Del Rey: the pitfalls of having a persona

tiktok is kind of bad for fashion

When Shakespeare Got Cool

“Re-imagining Lolita”… Poorly (Roger Fishbite BITES, Adapting Lolita #2) | Lola Sebastian

Class + Wes Anderson’s Aesthetic - THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS + FANTASTIC MR. FOX

I am happy to share this recipe for Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which originally appeared in the November, 1993, issue of Gourmet. It appeared in an article written by Laurie Colwin. It’s quick, easy and delicious, and I made it that year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I hadn’t thought about the pie for many years. Last week, I remembered it, but couldn’t recall when it appeared in the magazine or who created it.  When I couldn’t find the recipe in my files or on Epicurious.com, I wrote a little post on my own blog, wondering how I’d find it.  I also contacted some of my former colleagues at Gourmet to see if they could pinpoint it. We were all stumped.

Funnily enough, Mrs. Finch, a longtime friend of my mother in law, took my plight to heart and found the recipe by pecking around online. Someone somewhere had scanned the article for posterity. 

I chuckled when I saw that the recipe was from Laurie Colwin and now appears in her book, More Home Cooking, A Writer Returns to the Kitchen (HarperCollins, 1993).  Colwin died in 1992, but her writing surpasses time. In a wonderfully chatty and humane way, she artfully wove culinary conversation with universal topics such as friendships, family life, and everyday chaos. She was remarkably perceptive and understood that a harried home cook’s culinary agenda was easily sidetracked by curious children, haphazard filing systems, and idiosyncratic house guests. I’ve always found it easy to relate to  Laurie Colwin’s cooking.

While rereading the book's chapter, “Waiting for Dessert”,  I smiled when I read these paragraphs introducing Nantucket Cranberry Pie: 

“I like a cake that takes about four seconds to put together and gives an ambrosial result. Fortunately, there are such cakes, and usually you get them at the homes of others. You then purloin the recipe…and serve it to others, who then serve it to others. This is the way in which nations are unified and friendships made solid.   

My candidate for an easy, spectacular dessert is something called Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which is not a pie, but a cake, and was served to me in the country by my friend Ann Gold, who lives on a dairy farm and  got this recipe from her mother, who can no longer remember where it came from. It is a Gold family staple, and the buck stops there.” 

Here’s the deliciously easy recipe, reprinted with permission from HarperCollins and presented in Colwin’s unique recipe-writing style:

Nantucket Cranberry Pie

1. Chop enough cranberries to make 2 cups and enough walnuts to make ½ cup. 2. In the bottom of a 10-inch pie plate or springform pan, place chopped cranberries, chopped walnuts, and ½ cup sugar. 3. Mix 2 eggs, ¾ cup melted butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, and 1 teaspoon almond extract. Stir till smooth. 4. Pour over cranberry walnut mixture and bake for 40 minutes at 350 F.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.