Yury Karlovich Olesha (1899-1960), Soviet author of fiction, plays and satires best known for his 1927 novel Envy.  He is considered one of the greatest Russian novelists of the 20th century, one of the few to have succeeded in writing works of lasting artistic value despite the stifling censorship of the era.  His works are delicate balancing-acts that superficially send pro-Communist messages but reveal far greater subtlety and richness upon a deeper reading.  Sometimes, he is grouped with his friends Ilf and Petrov, Isaac Babel, and Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky into the Odessa School of Writers.  Find list of Olesha’s books at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/63475.Yury_Olesha 

Barbara Barrie (born Barbara Ann Berman 1931) is an American actress of film, stage and television.  She is also an author.  Her film breakthrough came in 1964 with her performance as Julie in the landmark film One Potato, Two Potato, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.  She is best known for her role as Evelyn Stoller in Breaking Away, which brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1979 and an Emmy Award nomination in 1981 when she reprised the role in the television series based on the film.  On television she is perhaps best known for her portrayal, between 1975 and 1978, of the wife of the namesake captain in the detective sitcom Barney Miller.  Barrie also is known for her extensive work in the theatre, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1971 for originating the role of Sarah in Stephen Sondheim's Company.  Barrie has written two children's books.  In 1990, she published Lone Star, a biographical book about a girl named Jane who moves from Illinois to Texas and deals with her Orthodox Jewish family assimilating to Texas culture.  Her second book, Adam ZigZag, was published in 1994 and is also biographical, about a young boy named Adam with an actress mother who struggles with dyslexia.  She is also the author of two books about her battle with colorectal cancer, Second Act and Don't Die of Embarrassment, and has said that speaking out about early detection is "more important than acting."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Barrie  Barbara Barrie created Tomato Lightning, a spicy chutney available in gourmet food stores.  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0057363/bio 

Pandan is a herbaceous tropical plant that grows abundantly in Southeast Asia.  In Chinese, it is known as "fragrant plant" because of its unique, sweet aroma.  The cultivated plant, which is similar to the palm, features upright bright green leaves that are long, slender, and spiky.  The leaves are used for their flavor in many Thai and Southeast-Asian dishes.  Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius) is also sold as a paste, extract, and powder, which are used to flavor desserts.  There are different uses for pandan, also known as screw pine, depending on its form, whether leaves, paste, extract, or powder.  Whole pandan leaves are used as a wrapping before steaming or frying foods, similar to banana leaves.  However, pandan is much thinner in width compared to the broad banana leaf, so it is important to note that the juices may seep through.  Darlene Schmidt  Link to recipes at https://www.thespruceeats.com/cooking-with-pandan-3217067 

Pho is a type of Vietnamese soup that usually consists of bone broth, rice noodles, spices, and thinly sliced meat (usually beef).  Though “pho” technically refers to the noodles and not the soup itself, most people consider the dish a singular unit.  It’s often topped with herbs and bean sprouts.  Though the most common way to pronounce pho in Vietnam is “fuh” (like “duh”), some regions pronounce it more like “foe” and others stretch the word out into two syllables, according to Diane Cu, co-creator of the blog White on Rice Couple, via Chowhound.  Corey Williams Link to recipes at https://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/what-is-pho 

English speakers have had gumption (the word, that is) since the early 1700s.  The term's exact origins aren't known, but its earliest known uses are found in British and especially Scottish dialects (which also include the forms rumblegumption and rumgumption).  In its earliest uses, gumption referred to intelligence or common sense, especially when those qualities were combined with high levels of energy.  By the 1860s, American English speakers were also using gumption to imply ambition or tenacity, but it wasn't until the early 1900s that gumption began to appear in English texts as a direct synonym of courage or get-up-and-go.  American showman P.T. Barnum also claimed that gumption named a particular kind of hard cider, but that sense is far from common today.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gumption 

You can’t walk far through the streets of Manila without seeing what looks like the hide of a dried-out hedgehog on the side of the road.  These are the remnants of a fruit known as the marang, which grows throughout the Philippines and parts of Borneo.  Unlike its more popular counterparts in the Artocarpus genus—namely breadfruit and jackfruit—marang has an odor that will funk up a room the same way that durian does.  The scent is something like gasoline, but don’t let that deter you; the sticky white flesh inside tastes like a fruit cup.  A wide assortment of different fruit flavors come together with every mouthful, including softened pears, berries, banana, jackfruit, and pineapple.  Some fans also consider the aroma of gasoline to be addictive, akin to the pleasure of eating a stinky cheese.  After feasting on one of these large fruits, the meal is not over; the seeds can be roasted or boiled as a snack and taste a little bit like potatoes and chestnuts.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/marang-philippines

The Smurfs (French:  Les Schtroumpfs; Dutch:  De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, human-like creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest.  The Smurfs was first created and introduced as a series of comic characters by the Belgian comics artist Peyo (the pen name of Pierre Culliford) in 1958, wherein they were known as Les Schtroumpfs.  There are more than 100 Smurf characters, and their names are based on adjectives that emphasise their characteristics, such as "Jokey Smurf", who likes to play practical jokes on his fellow smurfs.  The Smurfs wear Phrygian caps, which came to represent freedom during the modern era.  The word “smurf” is the original Dutch translation of the French "schtroumpf", which, according to Peyo, is a word he invented during a meal with fellow cartoonist André Franquin when he could not remember the word salt.  The Smurfs franchise began as a comic and expanded into advertising, films, TV series, ice capades, video games, theme parks, and dolls.  Over the decades, many singles and albums of Smurf music have been released in different countries and languages, sometimes very successfully, with millions of copies sold.  The best known is the single The Smurf Song and its accompanying album, created by Dutch musician Pierre Kartner who sings under the alias Father Abraham, which reached the #1 position in 16 countries.  Worldwide, more than 10 million CDs with Smurf music have been sold between 2005 and 2007 alone.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs 

Vanilla is the second-most-expensive spice in the world—saffron maintains that crown.  The vanilla family is made up of around 110 different species of orchid, found worldwide under the right conditions.  Those conditions are basically hot and wet, so vanilla orchids thrive around the equator, from tropical Latin America to Southeast Asia to West Africa.  They produce a range of fruits, generally sort of elongated, bean- or banana-like in shape, and usually green in color.  Of all the orchid species, which number in the tens of thousands, vanilla is the only one that has a fruit that’s considered edible, or at least that’s regularly eaten.  Vanilla was used by the Totonacs and Aztecs for ceremonial and scent purposes, and in a couple of beverages, most notably chocolate drinks and atole, a drink made from ground corn.  It ended up in Europe thanks to the Spanish, who brought it back from the New World along with chocolate and chili peppers and tomatoes and all kinds of other stuff.  Europeans found many more uses for vanilla, most notably combining it with another colonial product, sugar from the new sugarcane plantations in the West Indies, to make vanilla desserts that became popular among those who could afford them, which was really only the very rich and powerful.  This is around the time when the first recipes for vanilla ice cream, crème brûlée, and other vanilla-tinged dishes were created.  Dan Nosowitz  Read much more and see pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/madagascar-vanilla

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2317  January 25, 2021