HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR  "A topic or a plan that represents a change from what one thought was being talked about or considered.  Shakespeare offered the companion saying in 'Twelfth Night' , where Maria is offered a comment on her plans against Malvolio and responds:  'My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.'  In 1798 the Philadelphia 'Aurora' had a line on President John Adams, to whom the paper referred sarcastically as King John I:  'Whether any of them may be induced to enter into the pay of King John I is 'a horse of another color.'  One suspects that the image originated in racing where one might have bet on a horse of a certain color only to find that a horse of another color is winning."  From "The Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).  The movie Wizard of Oz literally had a horse of a different color:  "When Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion arrive at the Emerald City, they are met by a carriage pulled by a most unusual horse.  On the way to the Wizard's secret chambers, it changes color before everyone's eyes.  At first, the film's creative team thought the horse could be painted to create the multi-hued illusion, but the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said no.  The trick was to find a substance that would not only pass the ASPCA test but would photograph clearly.  Food coloring was tried, even liquid candy, both without success.  Finally, a paste of Jell-O powder was found acceptable.  http://www.technicolor.com/aboutus/press-wizardoz.html and

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The name lavender derives from the Latin root “lavare,” which literally means “to wash.”  The earliest recorded use of lavender dates back to ancient Egypt.  There, lavender oil played a role in the mummification process.  During later times, lavender became a bath additive in several regions, including Persia, ancient Greece, and Rome.  These cultures believed that lavender helped purify the body and mind.  Read of the many uses of lavender at https://www.healthline.com/health/what-lavender-can-do-for-you  Search for lavender festivals using terms like:  "lavender festival" june july



The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,300-foot long and 3-foot high prehistoric effigy mound located on a plateau of a crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio, and is the largest surviving prehistoric effigy mound in the world.  Resembling an uncoiling serpent, the mound is steeped in mystery and controversy.  Despite over a century of research, there is no conclusive evidence about what it represents, when it was built, and what its true purpose was, though various astronomical alignments suggest it may have functioned as a type of calendar.  The Serpent Mound conforms to the curve of the land on which it rests, with its head approaching a cliff above a stream.   It winds back and forth for more than eight hundred feet and has seven distinct coils, ending in a triple-coiled tail.  The serpent head has an open mouth extending around the east end of a 120-foot-long hollow oval feature, which is generally viewed as an egg, although other interpretations suggest it is the sun, the body of a frog, or merely the remnant of a platform.  To the west of the effigy, is a triangular mound measuring approximately 32 feet at its base and long axis.  The Serpent Mound is believed to have been laid out all at once, with a layer of clay and ash, and reinforced with stones.  Joanna Gillan  https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/great-serpent-mound-ohio-largest-earthen-effigy-world-001594



Foodscaping, sometimes called edible landscaping or front yard farming, is a type of landscaping in which all or major areas of a lawn on private property or sometimes public property are used to grow food.  It has been considered as a hybrid between farming and landscaping in the sense of having an "all-encompassing way of growing a garden, feeding yourself, and making it look pretty" with an "integrative landscape".  Grass and shrubberies are replaced with berry bushes or other plants which yield fruits and vegetables which can mean lower bills at the grocery store.  In contrast to having a backyard vegetable garden or raised bed for flowers or other enclosed or fenced-in space where fruits and vegetables are grown, foodscaping is more extensive, with "implementation of edible foods into the landscape."  Instead of just planting shrubs, trees, vines, grasses and ground covers, foodscaping involves adding edible plants that add interest, color, texture and, of course, taste.  — Anne Marie O'Phelan, 2013  Foodscaping became more widely practiced as a response to high food prices as well as the economic downturn of 2008.  Sometimes it requires planting to take advantage of natural flows of water, which may be called waterscaping.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foodscaping  See also Foodscaping--A New Way To Create A Garden by ALBERT MONDOR at https://gardenculturemagazine.com/featured-articles/foodscaping-a-new-way-to-create-a-garden/



The Three Musketeers  “In Thai cooking, we have three spices that we use together and we call them the three musketeers”.  “These are coriander, black pepper, and garlic and we use them all the time, on everything.”  This mixture, said tour guide, Phanpaiboon (Nud) Panudcha, dates back to the beginning of Thai culinary history and is the most authentic form of Thai cooking, having been used for generations on meat and seafood.  She explained that the three musketeers (also known as kratiem prik thai) are not only the base for marinades, but can also be used on meat as is.  However, she said that the key to this dish is the coriander.  The authentic Thai dish, said Nud, relies on the root of the plant, and not the seeds or leaves.  The root has both citrusy and spicy undertones, adding a complex flavor to otherwise bland dishes.  The Three Musketeers Mixture  4 cloves of garlic, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, and  ½ cup coriander root (cilantro leaves and stems are fine if root isn’t available).  To make the mixture, grind everything with a mortar and pestle or blend in a food processor until it reaches your desired consistency.  Emily Cappiello  Read more and see pictures at https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/235177/thai-spice-paste-recipe-for-meat-and-fish/  Thank you, Muse reader!



The Scientific Secret of Fluffy Pancakes by Esme Trontz   Pancake batter is composed of two crucial parts:  dry ingredients (usually flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt) and wet ingredients (usually milk, eggs and butter).  Flour contains a protein called glutenin (or gluten), which is crucial for the formation and structure of pancakes and baked goods.  Gluten also provides the "chewy" texture in pancakes and breads.  When the flour is dry, the gluten molecules are nearly immobile, which means that they do not move much.  When the flour is moistened with water (or with milk and eggs, which are composed mainly of water), the gluten molecules become active.  Wet gluten molecules are elastic and springlike (which means that they can change shape under pressure) and plastic (meaning they can maintain their shapes after being stretched and moved around).  When flour is mixed with water, gluten proteins loosen from one another, stretch out and begin to rearrange.  Further mixing allows the end of a gluten protein to bond with the end of another gluten protein.  As the gluten proteins come in contact with one another, they continue to bond.  With additional mixing, the proteins create a tighter and tighter weblike network of proteins that are able to trap air bubbles.  When chemical leaveners, such as baking powder, create bubbles in a cooked pancake, the gluten network traps these bubbles and allows a pancake to rise and stay fluffy yet still keep its shape.  See pancake recipe from Cook's Illustrated at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science-home-gluten-pancakes/  It's good to let your batter be a little lumpy.



MORE ON STEINBECK  The author of Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden lived in Paris in the mid-1950s, where he wrote a weekly column for the French daily Le Figaro called One American in Paris.  One of his pieces took the form of a short story, Les Puces sympathiques.  Published in French on 31 July 1954, it was found by Andrew Gulli in Steinbeck’s papers at the Ransom Centre at the University of Texas at Austin.  Gulli is the editor of the Strand magazine, which is publishing it in English as The Amiable Fleas.  “Don’t expect to read something dramatic in the vein of Grapes of Wrath,” Gulli warned.  Steinbeck’s chef, Monsieur Amité, is desperate for a second Michelin star--so desperate that when things go wrong in the kitchen on the day of the inspector’s visit, he ends up kicking his bosom companion and muse, “a great and dignified cat named Apollo”.  Determined to win back Apollo’s friendship, he makes a dish to tempt the cat back.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/31/unknown-john-steinbeck-tale-of-a-chef-published-amiable-fleas



The National Library of Israel said on August 7, 2019 it received the last part of a collection of Franz Kafka's writings that it planned to put on line, after winning an ownership battle for part of the Prague-born novelist's literary estate.  The papers had been held by sisters Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler, who argued they had legally inherited them from their mother, Esther Hoffe.  She was secretary to Kafka's friend, biographer and executor Max Brod, who ignored the German-language author's dying wish to burn all his unpublished work.  The archive includes three draft versions of Kafka's story "Wedding Preparations in the Country", an exercise book in which he practiced Hebrew, hundreds of personal letters to Brod and other friends and travel journals.  Since 2008, the library has won a series of legal rulings granting it possession of the documents, in accordance with instructions in a will written by Brod, who died in 1968.  The library said that since court proceedings ended in 2016, it has been collecting the papers from sites in Israel and Germany and, finally two weeks ago, from a Swiss bank vault.  See pictures at https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5565218,00.html



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2135  August 8, 2019