Hasty pudding is a pudding or porridge of grains cooked in milk or water.  In the United States, it often refers specifically to a version made primarily with ground ("Indian") corn, and it is mentioned in the lyrics of "Yankee Doodle", a traditional American song of the 18th century.  Since at least the 16th century, a dish called hasty pudding has been found in British cuisine.  It is made of wheat flour that has been cooked in boiling milk or water until it reaches the consistency of a thick batter or an oatmeal porridge.  It was a staple dish for the English for centuries.  The earliest known recipes for hasty pudding date to the 17th century.  There are three examples in Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook. The first is made with flour, cream, raisins, currants and butter, the second recipe is for a boiled pudding and the third includes grated bread, eggs and sugar.   Hasty pudding was used by Hannah Glasse as a term for batter or oatmeal porridge in The Art of Cookery (1747).  It is also mentioned in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 as a combination of either milk and flour or oatmeal and water.  The recipe is also found in The Compleat Housewife where it is made with grated penny loaf, cream, egg yolks, sack (or orange blossom water) and sugar.  https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_pudding   

In 1796, Joel Barlow (1754-1812), American poet and diplomat, wrote his famous poem called “The Hasty Pudding.”  The poem was inspired by his homesickness for New England and his favorite cornmeal mush.

And all my bones were made of Indian corn.
Delicious grain! Whatever form it take.
To toast or boil, to smother or to bake,
In every dish ’tis welcome still to me,
but most, my Hasty Pudding, most in thee.   

Hasty Pudding Club:  In 1795, a society called the Hasty Pudding club was organized by twenty-one Harvard College students.   The club’s purpose was to encourage “friendship and patriotism.”  Its constitution stipulated that every Saturday, two “providers” were to carry a pot of hasty pudding to the meeting.  For the majority of the 19th century, prospective members were forced to ingest large quantities of hasty pudding.   According to Harvard University historians, the club was founded by students who sought relief from the food the college provided by cooking their own hasty puddings in fireplace pots.  With this ritual, the Hasty Pudding Club found it namesake.  Today it is the nation’s oldest theater company.  https://whatscookingamerica.net/history/hastypudding_indianpudding.htm 

morganatic marriage, legally valid marriage between a male member of a sovereign, princely, or noble house and a woman of lesser birth or rank, with the provision that she shall not thereby accede to his rank and that the children of the marriage shall not succeed to their father’s hereditary dignities, fiefs, and entailed property.  The name is derived from the medieval Latin matrimonium ad morganaticum, variously interpreted as meaning “marriage on the morning gift” (from German Morgengabe), with the implication that this morning gift, or dowry, was all that the bride could expect; or “restricted marriage” (Gothic maurjan, “restrain”); or simply “morning marriage,” celebrated quietly at an early hour.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/henogamy   

In The Great Automatic Grammatizator, Roald Dahl, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature.  Here, a powerful computer designed to help people starts to supplant them.  This story is taken from the short story collection Someone Like You, which includes seventeen other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who serves a dish that baffles the police; a curious machine that reveals the horrifying truth about plants; the man waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach; and others.  Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults.   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20067088-the-great-automatic-grammatizator    

The American Library Association documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship in 2023—a 65% surge over 2022 numbers—as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources.  Pressure groups focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries.  The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023.  Of the record 4,240 unique titles targeted for censorship, the most challenged and reasons cited for censoring the books are listed at https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2857  September 25, 2024