The watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is a large, sweet fruit originally from southern Africa.  It’s related to cantaloupe, zucchini, pumpkin, and cucumber.  Watermelon is packed with water and nutrients, contains very few calories, and is exceptionally refreshing.  What’s more, it’s a good dietary source of both citrulline and lycopene, two powerful plant compounds.  This juicy melon may have several health benefits, including lower blood pressure, improved insulin sensitivity, and reduced muscle soreness.  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/watermelon#bottom-line   

Owens-Illinois bought the Hack House from Jim and Daisy in 1968.  They donated it to the Milan Area Historical Society.  In 1991, the Hack House was honored with a listing in the National Register of Historic Places, building #91000441.  It is listed as the Friend-Hack House with the National Register of Historic Places.  The Hack House museum is open from May to late November, Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 pm.  It is open upon request for special events.  https://www.historicmilan.com/hack.html    

A couple hundred years ago, Europeans and Americans had all sorts of wonderful little sweet baked treats to be eaten out of hand, treats we would call cookies but which they called cakes:  gingerbread, jumbals, Shrewsbury cakes, and endless other variations on the basic combination of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and spice. Some were soft; some were hard like biscuits. Some had lots of spice; all had at least a little—cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, ginger, allspice, occasionally anise or pepper, even caraway or coriander.  Some added brandy, sweet wine, or rose water or were studded with orange peel or candied citron.  Any of those little cakes might be called the ancestor of the sugar cookie, but none really was.  Sugar cookies, after all, are plain.  They evolved not only from that pack of eighteenth-century small cakes, but, strangely enough, in opposition to them.  The likeliest ancestor was actually the creation of Dutch settlers in New York, a little thing they called a koekje—pronounced “cookie”—which meant simply “small cake.”  They weren’t terribly unlike most English cakes, but the New York Dutch made use of an important innovation:  they used chemical leavening.  The first alkali leavener, pearlash, came into use at the end of the eighteenth century in the area around New York City, and the first published recipe for “cookies,” which appeared there in 1796, called for it.  We take baking soda and baking powder for granted, but without them you can’t attain the crisp-chewy texture that we associate with sugar cookies today.  Eighteenth-century cakes were baked hard like biscuits or were soft and cakey with eggs or, occasionally, twice-baked and crisp, but they didn’t have the chewy quality of a good cookie.  http://www.davidwalbert.com/dw/2012/12/12/a-brief-history-of-the-sugar-cookie/ 

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury.  He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.  His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.  Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe.  He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter.  An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris but instead resulted in scandal.  During the year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England, where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.  From the beginning, Sargent's work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for its supposed superficiality.  His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism.  In later life, Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air.  Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent  See https://www.jigidi.com/solve/jia696zw/john-singer-sargent-american-1856-1925-study-for-seated-musicians-for-el-jaleo-ca-1882/   

Author Ilyon Woo has a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University.  Her 2023 book Master Slave Husband Wife, a history of the escape of Ellen and William Craft from slavery, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by the New York Times and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyon_Woo

Moong Dal is a type of Indian lentil curry soup that is very aromatic and flavorful. It is not spicy (though you can add cayenne if you want to), and one of the best ways to use moong.  Moong are split mung beans that have been de-skinned.  In the bag, they are a pale yellow, but they melt and soften as they cook.  If you can’t find moong, try using red lentils instead.  https://beanrecipes.com/yellow-moong-dal/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  2818  May 24, 2024