Soft Buns  makes 10 big buns  This dough can be used for anything that calls for a lovely, buttery dough that’s not too full of fat.  Reprinted with permission from Meyer's Bakery by Claus Meyer.  Copyright 2017 Octopus Publishing.  Distributed by Hachette Book Group.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/soft-buns?utm_campaign=TST_Weekend+Kitchen_20180120&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=

"Bartleby, the Scrivener:  A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856.  A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to".  Numerous essays have been published on what, according to scholar Robert Milder, "is unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon.  The narrator, an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer with a comfortable business, already employs two scriveners to copy legal documents by hand, Nippers and Turkey.  An increase in business leads him to advertise for a third, and he hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the irascible temperaments of the other two.  At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work.  But one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request--"I would prefer not to."  To the dismay of the lawyer and the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks and eventually none, instead staring for long periods of time at a brick wall just outside one of the office's windows.  The narrator makes several futile attempts to reason with him and to learn something about him; when he stops by the office one Sunday morning, he discovers that Bartleby has started living there.  Read much more and link to the story at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby,_the_Scrivener  NOTE that http://www.bartleby.com/ offers literature, verse and information free of charge. 

In many of his works of fiction, William Faulkner explores the lives of characters who live in the closed society of the American South, particularly at the point in time when its traditions and values are being changed and challenged by new, urban, sometimes Northern values.  In the story, “Barn Burning,” Faulkner explores what happens when individuals lose their connection to this society and its values.  Abner Snopes, a rebellious sharecropper with a Barn Burning past, is the main character who acts as antagonist in the story while being a victim in his mind.  Abner Snopes, who was a thief and coward even before the end of the Civil War,  is now isolated from his previous pride, identity, and sense of self by the new equality and values that invade his world.  As a result, Snopes feels free to completely blame the world for his actions, and violates moral rules without regret in the society he no longer accepts.  http://www.newclassroom.com/Faulkner  Note that https://www.snopes.com/ is the oldest and largest fact-checking site on the Internet.  It was begun in 1994 to research urban legends. 

"Irrational exuberance" is a phrase used by the then-Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan, in a speech given at the American Enterprise Institute during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s.  The phrase was interpreted as a warning that the market might be overvalued.  The phrase was also used by Yale professor Robert Shiller, who was reportedly Greenspan's source for the phrase.  Shiller used it as the title of his book, Irrational Exuberance, in 2000.  Shiller is associated with the CAPE ratio and the Case-Shiller Home Price Index popularized during the housing bubble of 2004–2007.  There was some speculation for many years whether Greenspan borrowed the phrase from Shiller without attribution, although Shiller later wrote that he contributed "irrational" at a lunch with Greenspan before the speech but "exuberant" was a previous Greenspan term and it was Greenspan who coined the phrase and not a speech writer.  Greenspan wrote in his 2008 book that the phrase occurred to him in the bathtub while he was writing a speech.  The irony of the phrase and its aftermath lies in Greenspan's widely held reputation as the most artful practitioner of Fedspeak, often known as Greenspeak, in the modern televised era.  By the mid-to-late 2000s the dot-com losses were recouped and eclipsed by a combination of events, including the 2000s commodities boom and the United States housing bubble.  However, the recession of 2007 onward wiped out these gains.  The second market slump brought the phrase back into the public eye, where it was much used in hindsight, to characterize the excesses of the bygone era.  The term gained new currency after the collapse of the US housing market in 2008 that led to a world-wide financial panic.  Shiller was the co-creator of the Case-Shiller index that tracks US residential housing prices.  This combination of events caused the phrase at present to be most often associated with the 1990s dot-com bubble and the 2000s US housing bubble although it can be linked to any financial asset bubble or social frenzy phenomena, such as the tulip mania of 17th century Holland.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_exuberance

"The small intestine in adults is a long and narrow tube about 7 meters (23 feet) long.  The large intestine is so called because it is wide in diameter.  However, it is shorter than the small intestine — only about 1.5 meters (5 feet) long."  https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/AnneMarieThomasino.shtml

What's the Difference Between Cornmeal and Polenta? by Christine Gallary   Cornmeal is made by grinding dried corn kernels into one of three textures:  fine, medium, and coarse.  The traditional way of making cornmeal was through stone-grinding, which retains some of the hull and germ of the kernels.  This makes the cornmeal more nutritious but also more perishable because of the higher fat content.  The more modern way of grinding corn is through steel rollers, which remove most of the husk and germ.  Besides the difference in grinds, cornmeal can be made from blue, white, or yellow corn.  Stone-ground cornmeal is labeled as such or can also be called "water ground," and you can usually assume unlabeled cornmeal is made through the steel roller process.  Finely ground cornmeal is sometimes labeled as corn flour, but British recipes that call for "cornflour" actually refer to cornstarch, which is not milled from the whole corn kernel.  Masa harina is cornmeal made from corn kernels that have been cooked in limewater first.  While cornmeal is the traditional ingredient in cornbread, it is also used for texture and sweetness in cookies and other breads.  It is also often used to dust baking surfaces for things like pizza to prevent the dough from sticking, and can also be used as a thickener for soups and chilis.  Polenta is really a dish, not an ingredient, from northern Italy.  It refers to a porridge or mush now made from coarsely ground cornmeal since corn was cultivated in Europe in the 16th century, but was also in the past made with farro, chestnuts, millet, spelt or chickpeas.  Polenta is usually made from yellow corn.  Packages labeled polenta mean that the grind of the corn is appropriate to make the polenta dish, but you can substitute regular medium or coarsely-ground cornmeal instead.  Don't use finely ground cornmeal or corn flour which have too fine of a consistency and will give the finished dish a pasty texture.  Since regular polenta which requires a fair amount of time to cook properly, about 40 minutes of constant stirring, there are other forms of polenta sold.  Instant or quick-cooking polenta has been pre-processed to reduce the cooking time, but many purists don't like the flavor and consistency as much.  Prepared polenta is fully cooked and sold in tube-shaped packaging—this form is best sliced and fried, sauteed, grilled, or baked, as it has already passed the creamy, runny form when freshly cooked.  Link to recipes at https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-cornmeal-and-polenta-word-of-mouth-211404

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

stent  (stent)  noun  A tube inserted into a blocked vessel to keep it open.  After the dentist Charles R. Stent (1845-1901).  Stent did pioneering work in coming up with a compound that made better molds for dentures.  Later, the compound was used to make casts of other body parts and cavities.  Stents correct stenosis (narrowing).  Earliest documented use:  1878.  The word stentorian is also an eponym, but it came from someone else.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1840  February 9, 2018  Of all the comic creations of William Shakespeare, the fat knight Sir John Falstaff ranks highest in popularity.  In Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” history plays, Sir John appears as the Lord of Misrule, a bad but endearing companion to the young prince Hal.  In Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” supposedly written at the personal request of Queen Elizabeth the First, Sir John’s amatory exploits are held up to ridicule.  In the 18th century, two of Mozart’s contemporaries, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Antonio Salieri, had a go at adapting “The Merry Wives of Windsor” into operas.  In the 19th century, the German composer and conductor Otto Nicolai scored a big hit with his “Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor.”   "Falstaff", the last opera written by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered on February 9, 1893 at La Scala in Milan.  Approaching eighty, Verdi proved surprisingly adept at comedy, setting the nimble libretto crafted by Arrigo Boito to music as sly and quick-witted as the character Shakespeare created some three hundred years earlier.  Composers Datebook