What Is the Difference Between Almonds and Marcona Almonds?  And what makes the Queen of Almonds so royally good? by Amanda Balagu   Marconas—also known as the Queen of Almonds—are easy to tell apart from standard California varieties.  Besides being rounder and flatter in shape, as an import from Spain, they tend to be significantly more expensive and difficult to find at the grocery store.  Aaron Brown, who runs the California Marcona Company and Almondipity with wife Norik Naraghi, explains that Marcona almonds are “a little bit softer and have a much thicker shell and skin” than those commonly grown in the U.S.  Their flavor, he says, is more buttery and earthy.  They also roast well, which gives them a satisfying crunch.  The texture is often likened to a macadamia nut.  According to Brown, approximately 85 percent of the world’s almonds are produced in California, while only about 5 percent comes from Spain.  To say that almonds are having a moment would be a bit of an understatement.  While people have been munching them for millenia, increased consumption of foods rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids (such as almonds) has completely transformed the global nut industry.  According to Brown, approximately 85 percent of the world’s almonds are produced in California, while only about 5 percent comes from Spain.  See pictures at https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/243319/what-is-the-difference-between-almonds-and-marcona-almonds/  Thank you, Muse reader!

The Republic of Crimea, officially part of Ukraine, lies on a peninsula stretching out from the south of Ukraine between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.  It is separated from Russia to the east by the narrow Kerch Strait.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18287223

Ukraine gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Europe's second largest country, Ukraine is a land of wide, fertile agricultural plains, with large pockets of heavy industry in the east.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18018002

European Russia is the western part of the Russian Federation, which is in Eastern Europe.  With a population of 110 million people, European Russia has about 77% of Russia's population, but covers less than 25% of Russia's territory.  European Russia includes Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two largest cities in Russia.  The southern part of Russia has some small areas that lie geographically south of the Caucasus Mountain range, and therefore are geographically in Asia.  The other, eastern, part of the Russian Federation forms part of northern Asia, and is known as North Asia, also called Asian Russia or Siberia. Europe also forms a subcontinent within Eurasia, making all of Russia a part of the Eurasian continent.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Russia

Hendrick Avercamp (1585 (bapt.)–1634 (buried)) was a Dutch painter.  Avercamp was born in Amsterdam, where he studied with the Danish-born portrait painter Pieter Isaacks (1569–1625), and perhaps also with David Vinckboons.  In 1608 he moved from Amsterdam to Kampen in the province of Overijssel.  Avercamp was deaf and mute and was known as "de Stomme van Kampen" (the mute of Kampen).  As one of the first landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch school, he specialized in painting the Netherlands in winter.  Avercamp's paintings are colorful and lively, with carefully crafted images of the people in the landscape.  Many of Avercamp's paintings feature people ice skating on frozen lakes.  The passion for painting skating characters probably came from his childhood as he practiced skating with his parents.  The last quarter of the 16th century, during which Avercamp was born, was one of the coldest periods of the Little Ice Age.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrick_Avercamp

A villanelle, also known as villanesque, is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain.  There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines.  The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form.  The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.  The form started as a simple ballad-like song with no fixed form; this fixed quality would only come much later, from the poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)" (1606) by Jean Passerat.  From this point, its evolution into the "fixed form" used in the present day is debated.  Despite its French origins, the majority of villanelles have been written in English, a trend which began in the late nineteenth century.  The villanelle has been noted as a form that frequently treats the subject of obsessions, and one which appeals to outsiders; its defining feature of repetition prevents it from having a conventional tone.  The word villanelle derives from the Italian villanella, referring to a rustic song or dance, and which comes from villano, meaning peasant or villein.  Villano derives from the Medieval Latin villanus, meaning a "farmhand".  The etymology of the word relates to the fact that the form's initial distinguishing feature was the pastoral subject.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle

Villanelle:  A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.  These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain.  See “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,”  and Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “The House on the Hill.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/villanelle

Villanelle, birth name Oxana Vorontsova (in Codename Villanelle) or Oksana Astankova (in Killing Eve), is a fictional character in Luke Jennings’ novel Codename Villanelle (2018), its sequel Killing Eve: No Tomorrow (2019), and the BBC America television series adaptation Killing Eve (2018—) in which she is portrayed by English actress Jodie Comer.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle_(character)

The Congress of Manastir was an academic conference held in the city of Manastir (Bitola) from November 14 to 22, 1908, with the goal of standardizing the Albanian alphabet.  November 22 is now a commemorative day in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, as well as among the Albanian diaspora, known as Alphabet Day.  Prior to the Congress, the Albanian language was represented by a combination of six or more distinct alphabets, plus a number of sub-variants.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Manastir

WORD OF THE DAY for November 22 
grace note (plural grace notes)  (music) A musical note, indicated on a score in smaller type with or without a slash through it, played to ornament the melody rather than as part of it.  Its note value does not count as part of the total time value of the measure it appears in. quotations ▼

 (figuratively) Something that decorates, embellishes, or ornaments; a finishing touch. quotations ▼

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grace_note#English

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! - Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (22 Nov 1869-1951)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2186  November  22, 2019