An animal cracker is a particular type of cracker, baked in the shape of an animal, usually an animal either at a zoo or a circus, such as a lion, a tiger, a bear, or an elephant.  The most common variety is light-colored and slightly sweet, but darker chocolate-flavored and colorful frosted varieties are also sold.  Although animal crackers tend to be sweet in flavor like cookies, they are made with a layered dough like crackers and are marketed as crackers and not cookies.  Stauffer's Biscuit Company produced their first batch of animal crackers in York, Pennsylvania, in 1871.  Other domestic bakeries, including the Dozier-Weyl Cracker Company of St. Louis, and the Holmes and Coutts Company of New York City, were the predecessors of the National Biscuit Company, today's "Nabisco Brands".  In 1902, animal crackers officially became known as "Barnum's Animals" and evoked the familiar circus theme of the Barnum and Bailey Circus.  Later in 1902, the now-familiar box was designed for the Christmas season with the innovative idea of attaching a string to hang from the Christmas tree.  Until that time, crackers were generally sold only in bulk (the proverbial "cracker barrel") or in large tins.  These small cartons, which retailed for 5 cents at the time of their release, were a big hit and are still sold today.  The number and variety contained in each box has varied over the years.  In total, 53 different animals have been represented by animal crackers since 1902.  In its current incarnation, each package contains 22 cookies consisting of a variety of animals.  The most recent addition, the koala, was added in September 2002 after being chosen by consumer votes, beating out the penguin, walrus and cobra.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cracker  Thank you, Muse reader!    

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (née Miller; 1890–1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.  She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952.  A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime".  She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.  In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.  Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled.  She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published.  Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928.  Following the breakdown of her marriage and the death of her mother in 1926 she made international headlines by going missing for eleven days.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie    

Calibri is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style.  It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2007, with Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista.  In Office 2007, it replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Word and replaced Arial as the default in PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and WordPad.  De Groot described its subtly rounded design as having "a warm and soft character".  Calibri is part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts from various designers released with Windows Vista.  All start with the letter C to reflect that they were designed to work well with Microsoft's ClearType text rendering system, a text rendering engine designed to make text clearer to read on liquid-crystal display monitors. The other fonts in the same group are Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibri   

The Stokes Purple® sweet potato hails from North Carolina.  Mike Sizemore, a sweet potato farmer, received some purple-colored potatoes as a gift from an unidentified woman.  He liked them so much that he began to cultivate them, eventually obtaining a patent and, in 2006, launched them in the commercial market.  The Okinawan sweet potato originated in Central and South America.  It is believed that explorers introduced them to the Philippines and China in the 15th Century, and the potato then made its way to Japan in the 1600's.  Initially planted in Okinawa, the southern island of Japan, they were soon cultivated all over Japan. Eventually, these purple potatoes wound up in Hawaii and became a part of the native menu, where they are also known as "Hawaiian sweet potatoes."  Today, they are widely grown in Hawaii and exported to the United States mainland.  The Okinawan sweet potato is said to have 150 percent more antioxidants than blueberries.  Antioxidants help to guard against cardiovascular disease and cancer. They contain two times your daily value of vitamin A, half your daily value of vitamin C, as well as vitamin B6, iron, dietary fiber, and potassium.  While purple potatoes offer a bonanza of disease fighting nutrients, the standout health hero is the powerful antioxidant content linked to reducing inflammation which helps improve blood pressure, overall heart health and may help stunt the growth of certain cancer cells.  Look for the Okinawan sweet potato in your grocery store in the fall and winter seasons.  Unlike its darker skinned counterpart, the tubular-shaped Okinawan sweet potato has a buff or light brown colored skin with a violet-purple flesh.  This tuber has a slightly sweet taste and a creamy texture, lending itself to the same recipes you would use with orange sweet potatoes.  Patricia S. York  https://www.southernliving.com/food/veggies/potatoes/sweet-potato/purple-sweet-potato  Thank you, Muse reader!   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2745  November 15, 2023