WONDERFUL NEWS!!

Roháč obecný / Lucanus cervus / European stag beetle

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,

For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.

You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,

But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,

Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,

For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,

And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,

For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,

And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,

So for a nomadic people accustomed to being able to make do with the ABSOLUTE minimum, I would assume Mandalorian kitchen implements are going to be basic. The words we have in Mando'a that refer to them also refer back to armor- helmet and pot, plate and frying surface, etc.

I have some experience with camp cooking. The same pot you use for boiling will probably go towards baking. You really just need a Deep Vessel and a Flat Surface to make just about anything you want. You're just limited by what fuel source you've got for the kind of heat you'll have- hot and fast fires are things you can flash-fry on, but not bake, for example. Boiling, at least, will never fail you, so soup is always on the menu. More on that later.

I have a thought that at home, slow-cookers and griddle surfaces are king. What would be lacking, that we Earth natives might find strange, would probably be the bakeware. Not baking- surely Mandalorian homes have ovens, which can conveniently double as dehydrators. No, I mean all the fancy things for pastry work. We're accustomed to cake tins, pie tins, casseroles, cookie cutters, muffin tins, etc. Mandalorians would likely just use the same implements for different purposes. One or two good sized baking dishes or sheets will make a multitude of things. Nothing is stopping you from baking a rectangular pie in your 9×13. Nothing is stopping you from baking "muffins" in that same tim all in a big rectangle and cutting it into servings, or baking it in pucks like extra fluffy cookies.

But things that would really dominate in Mandalorian cooking? Boiling. Dumplings, noodles, soups, stews. There is a REASON for this, and it is that water regulates temperature really really well. It boils at one temperature under our atmosphere's pressure and has wicked high specific heat, so an unreliable fuel source is less of a problem. So the stock pot in a Mandalorian household and camp alike would see a lot of use.

Mandalorian kitchens would also have ample pantry space- there would be cold storage at home, yes, but also shelf-stable staples, like flours and beans, dried milk, cooking fat, gihaal and other meat meals and extracts used like bouillon. A highly anachronistic space, indicative of the Mandalorian resistance to relying on goods and services that could be taken away.

To summarize:

AKA large pot with a lid that can be put on top of hot coals and have hot coals put on top of it. Can be used for baking, can be used for cooking.

Incidentally, this is why I don't care that the recent Wuthering heights wasn't realistic period dress or society etc. It was blatantly symbolic (and Symbolic!) and wasn't trying for realism or period accuracy, so I don't criticise it for period inaccuracy. Like, who walks across the moors in a massive tulle gown in real life? No one ever, and that's the point. It's obviously performance, and that's what its going for. My criticisms are based on other criteria.

But this new adaptation of S&S seems realist - the colour palette and grading, the costumes and hair that aren't accurate but look like something real people at some point in time have worn, the characters that read like real(ish) modern women... It's trying to read as realist without being realistic and just. What's the point in setting it in the past then?? Why adapt Sense and Sensibility, a realistic realist novel, into an unrealistic realist movie?

I'm just so tired of earth tones being "realist." People wore bright clothes! The past wasn't drab, honestly it might have been brighter than now given our whole obsession with beige minimalism.

But no, it's not realistic unless it's BROWN and BORING

This is just modern minimalism imposed on the past. Just make a modern.

a) If you are doing Jane Austen, you are doing the top of society, percentage-wise. Stop lying to yourself. (Even the Dashwoods. They're poor in comparison to their previous situation but they still have incomes and more to the point, their old clothes.) They have servants. There is someone waiting to help them change clothes.

b) Oh my god it does not take hours to twist someone's hair up and stick a comb in it, and cosmetics were minimal. The alternative to pristine is not "full blown mess".

*) For further context: One of the top areas in Czechia from which people emigrated into the US for better prospects later in the century.

(Original source is Miroslava Ludvíková: Kvaše z roku 1814)

With cotton printing... seeing her kerchief... My initial gut instinct at point c) was I wanted to say "I live for the day someone puts a Regency era character in indigo resist print", and then I realised I don't have to because F. L. Věk already did back in 1971. (Well, a 1790s character.) Sadly in black & white. That series is far from authentic in its costuming, but I get the sense at least it did not commit this mistake of "realism".

Also your previous reply to my inbox is very sweet, pass on my regards to your brother/household for being brilliantly funny in appreciating the excellence of Larry!

LMAO yes let's project our clown car of a government onto lothal it's the only way to cope

"Underwater Landscapes of Crespo Island" (Paysages sous-marins de l'île Crespo), from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869).

In 1842, South Avon bride Julia Bassman wore an extraordinary corset for her wedding: one decorated with padded quilting around the bust and hip gores and in discrete foliate motifs around the waist. Her name, location, and the year are written directly onto the fabric.

It's also very interesting because of its flimsiness. Most corsets of the era are made of cotton sateen, a fairly sturdy fabric, and have a significant amount of cording or strength quilting (rows of parallel lines, or a grid). This one has an outer layer of thin linen and an inner layer of thin cotton, and the quilting here is almost entirely decorative. Apart from the busk, there's essentially no stiffening here. I would suppose that this comes down to a couple of things:

As I'm always saying, the cut of a corset does all of the work to shape a figure. It's not the boning. People think it's the boning but it's not.

A young woman might need minimal support to achieve the fashionable figure. I should measure the corset and see its exact dimensions, but it looks to be on the smaller side.

She may have decided that this was going to be a special garment that would only be worn once, so it didn't need to hold up to many or even multiple uses.