The phrase 'best bib and tucker' means one's best clothes.  Early bibs were somewhat like modern day bibs, although they weren't specifically used to protect clothes from spilled food as they are now.  Tuckers were lace pieces fitted over the bodice, sometimes called 'pinners' or 'modesty pieces'.  Tuckers, as the name suggests, were originally tucked in.  Pinners differed by being pinned rather than tucked.  Pinner is clearly the precursor of pinafore--originally pin-a-fore, that is, pinned on the front.  Tuckers continued to be worn until the late 19th century.  Charlotte Bronte referred to the practice in Jane Eyre, 1847:  "Some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week; the rules limit them to one."  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/best-bib-and-tucker.html 

Raid the Pantry Cookies (cookies recipe using 1 ½ cup flour, standard ingredients and 3 cups of add-ins such as chips (chocolate, butterscotch, white, peanut butter), cereal (oats, Rice Krispies, crushed Corn Flakes or Cheerios), dried fruit (chopped if large), chopped nuts, seeds, etc.  Mary Bilyeu   https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/food/2020/08/08/from-the-pantry-raid-the-pantry-cookies/stories/20200809002 

Pantomime (informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment.  It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season.  Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing.  It employs gender-crossing actors and combines topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale.  Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers.  Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to classical theatre.  It developed partly from the 16th century commedia dell'arte tradition of Italy and other European and British stage traditions, such as 17th-century masques and music hall.  An important part of the pantomime, until the late 19th century, was the harlequinade.  Outside Britain, the word "pantomime" is often understood to mean miming, rather than the theatrical form.  Read much more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime 

Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a term that refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious.  Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.  This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue.  The valid types of ad hominem arguments are generally only encountered in specialized philosophical usage.  These typically refer to the dialectical strategy of using the target's own beliefs and arguments against them, while not agreeing with the validity of those beliefs and arguments.  Ad hominem arguments were first studied in ancient Greece; John Locke revived the examination of ad hominem arguments in the 17th century.  Many contemporary politicians routinely use ad hominem attacks, which can be encapsulated to a derogatory nickname for a political opponent.  See graphic:  Abusive Ad hominem lies near the bottom end of Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem 

The phrase “bee’s knees”was first recorded in the late 18th century, when it was used to mean 'something very small and insignificant'.  Its current meaning dates from the 1920s, at which time a whole collection of American slang expressions were coined with the meaning 'an outstanding person or thing'.  Examples included the flea's eyebrows, the canary's tusks, and one that still survives--the cat's whiskers.  The switch in meaning for the bee's knees  probably emerged because it was so similar in structure and pattern to these other phrases.  https://www.lexico.com/explore/what-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-the-bee-s-knees 

Bee’s Knees Cocktail by Dan Q. Dao  The phrase the “bee’s knees” was used in Prohibition times as slang to mean “the best.”  This cocktail, a gin sour that’s believed to have been created around that time, used lemon and honey to mask the harsh smell of bathtub gin.  Find recipe at https://www.saveur.com/bees-knees-cocktail-recipe/ 

The New Guinea singing dog, an extremely rare breed, is best known for its unique barks and howls--it's able to make harmonic sounds that have been compared to the calls of a humpback whale.  Only around 200 captive singing dogs live in conservation centers or zoos, the descendants of a few wild dogs captured in the 1970s.  The animals are severely inbred due to a lack of new genes.  None had been seen in their natural habitat for half a century until 2016, when an expedition located and studied 15 wild dogs in the remote highlands of the western side of New Guinea, known as Papua, in Indonesia.  A new expedition returned to the study site in 2018 to collect detailed biological samples to confirm whether these highland wild dogs truly are the predecessors of the singing dogs.  New Guinea is the world's second largest island.  The eastern half is Papua New Guinea, while the western half is part of Indonesia and is known as Papua.  The dogs were first described after a specimen was found at an altitude of about 2,100 meters in Central Province, Papua New Guinea, in 1897, the study said.  Despite anecdotal reports and unconfirmed photographs in recent years, many feared the New Guinea highland wild dog had become extinct through loss of habitat and mixing with feral village dogs.  However, the dogs were rediscovered in 2016 near the Grasberg gold and copper mine in Papua, where measures to protect the ecosystem around the mine had inadvertently created a sanctuary in which the highland wild dogs could thrive.  The expedition team was led by James McIntyre, a field researcher and founder of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation.  Katie Hunt   Read more and link to 1:30 video at https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/asia/singing-dog-found-in-wild-scn-trnd/index.html 

The term monkey's uncle, most notably seen in the idiom "(well) I'll be a monkey's uncle", is used to express complete surprise, amazement or disbelief.  It can also be used to acknowledge the impossibility of a situation, in the same way that "pigs might fly" is used.  The phrase has been said to date from 1925, the year of the widely publicized Scopes Trial in the United States, where the term first appeared.  The earliest example quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary is:  "If that's a joke I'm a monkey's uncle", from an Ohio newspaper on 8 February 1925.   It was originally a sarcastic remark made by creationists.  The notion "that [people] were descended from apes was considered blasphemous . . . by Darwin's contemporaries", and it was for this reason that the sarcastic phrase came into use.  Michael Quinion notes that the phrase "Monkey's uncle" occurs in a parody of Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha which was reprinted in James Parton's The Humorous Poetry of the English Language, published in 1881, and observes:  "This may be just an accident of invention, but the date fits".  The Monkey's Uncle is a 1965 Walt Disney movie, with the title song written by the Sherman Brothers and performed by Annette Funicello and the Beach Boys.  I'm a Monkey's Uncle was a Three Stooges short film.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey%27s_uncle 

Beer Donuts and 11 Other Recipes You Can Make With Beer by Nick Wharton  https://www.wisebread.com/beer-donuts-and-11-other-recipes-you-can-make-with-beer

September 9 is National Teddy Bear Day.  The collective noun for bears is sleuth.  September 9 is National Wiener Schnitzel Day.  September 9 is National I Love Food Day.  Julia Child said “People who love to eat are always the best people.”  https://food.yadachef.com/2017/09/september-9-is-national-i-love-food-day.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2255  September 9, 2020