Although today we’re primarily familiar with nutmeg as a powder that comes in little plastic bottles, it’s actually the pit of the fruit of a tree native to the Banda Islands of Indonesia.  Throughout the 18th century, the Dutch controlled the Banda Islands, keeping nutmeg scarce and prices high in international markets.  In America, where nutmeg was a popular flavor in 18th and early 19th century cooking, the spice was extraordinarily expensive—so expensive, unscrupulous vendors allegedly tried to replicate nutmegs in wood.  At the time, America’s rural communities were connected by a network of itinerant peddlers, or “hucksters,” who sold household goods.  The peddlers were often associated with dishonest dealings (part of the definition of a “huckster” today), and the original “wooden nutmeg” was a euphemism for a general mistrust of such people.  Thomas Hamilton, a British traveler who toured America and documented his findings in Men and Manners of America in 1833, said of peddlers in New England:  “They warrant broken watches to be the best time-keepers in the world; sell pinchbeck trinkets for gold; and have always a large assortment of wooden nutmegs and stagnant barometers.”  In The Clockmaker:  Or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville, published in 1839, the main character is called “a Yankee pedlar, a cheatin vagabond, a wooden nutmeg” by an incensed rival.  Sarah Lohman  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94734/why-early-america-was-obsessed-wooden-nutmegs

Since the early 1700s, tea plantations have come and gone throughout the South.  The Lipton tea company can be credited for reigniting an interest in growing tea in the region.  In the 1960s, they began experimenting with growing tea plants in the United States and ran research facilities in many states, including Alabama and South Carolina.  The most widely distributed Southern-grown tea is from Charleston Tea Garden, on Wadmalaw Island in South Carolina.  This sprawling tea estate is descended from an old Lipton research facility, and there are about 5,200 tea plants on each of the estate’s 127 acres.  Visitors can take a trolley tour of the estate and watch tea being processed.  In Fairhope, Alabama, Donnie Barrett took three plants salvaged from a dumpsite when Lipton closed its experiment at the Auburn University Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station and grew them into 61,000 plants to start Fairhope Tea Plantation.  During three trips to China between 1984 and 2007, Barrett skipped the pagoda tours and visited tea plantations instead.  “As we went from city to city, I would go to the tea farms and they explained all their secrets.”  Armed with these insights from Chinese tea growers, he planted out his tea in 50-foot-long rows with 1,000 plants in each.  Each row is 7 feet, 3 inches apart.  His tea leaves are hand-harvested—just new shoots with two leaves and a leaf bud—as he learned from the Chinese, and dried to preserve the sugars and starches in the leaves.  Barrett is credited for inspiring other Southerners to begin growing tea.  “I’ve given away thousands of plants to help people start farms,” he admitted.  “We make batches throughout the year, 30 to 40 pounds at a time.”  But the only way to enjoy his tea is to visit the Fairhope Museum of History (where Barrett is the director), and select your tea from the gift shop there.  Conne Ward-Cameron  https://www.southernkitchen.com/story/drink/2021/09/02/beyond-sweet-tea-southern-farmers-grow-proper-tea-leaves-us/5695964001/  You may either add brewed tea or teabags (removing the bags before serving) to soups or stews.  You may garnish dishes with finely minced tea leaves.  

 "Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen." - Alfred Hitchcock   "Cooking is one of the strongest ceremonies for life." - Laura Esquivel   "The more you know, the more you can create.  There's no end to imagination in the kitchen." - Julia Child   "Good food and a warm kitchen is what makes a house a home." - Rachael Ray  https://www.kitchensbyemmareed.co.uk/inspirational-kitchen-quotes

Bamboo rice comes from a dying bamboo shoot.  When bamboo shoots die, it flowers a rare seed variety of rice known as bamboo rice.  It’s said that bamboo rice harvesting is a huge source of income for some tribal communities.  Bamboo rice is a variety of short-grain rice that offers powerful aromatic flavors and aromas which is largely because it is infused with pure bamboo juice.  It’s pale green in color and provides an herbaceous flavor and makes the dish pretty for any plate, adding more color than traditional white or brown rice would be able to.  The texture of bamboo rice is sticky.  https://myasiancooking.com/how-to-cook-bamboo-rice/ 

Green Bamboo Rice  Simple recipe serves four as a side dish.  https://www.npr.org/2012/04/17/150728347/green-bamboo-rice 

February 20, 2022  If you've walked through Baltimore, Md. over the last few days, you might have come across a curious sight--around 50 lost gloves popped up on fence posts, waving in the wind, with little notes attached to their sleeves. Bruce Willen and his wife created the "Library of Lost Gloves and Lost Loves" in a Baltimore park.  It's an art installation made of lost winter gloves and mittens.  Copyright © 2022 NPR  All rights reserved  Read interview with Don Gonyea at https://www.npr.org/2022/02/20/1082012483/lost-mittens-become-an-art-installation-on-lost-love-in-baltimore

Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for a short poem titled "Trees" (1913), which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914.  Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor.  He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment (the famous "Fighting 69th") in 1917.  He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.  He was married to Aline Murray, also an accomplished poet and author, with whom he had five children.  While most of his works are largely unknown today, a select few of his poems remain popular and are published frequently in anthologies.  Several critics—including both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars—have dismissed Kilmer's work as being too simple and overly sentimental, and suggested that his style was far too traditional, even archaic.  Many writers, including notably Ogden Nash, have parodied Kilmer's work and style—as attested by the many imitations of "Trees".  Deep in the Nantahala Wilderness, southwest corner of North Carolina is the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, one of the last stands of virgin hardwood forest in eastern United States.  Find list of Kilmer’s works at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Kilmer

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves. - Robert Neelly Bellah, sociologist and author (23 Feb 1927-2013)

http://librariansmuse.blogpost.com  Issue 2499  February 23, 2022