Uno (from Spanish and Italian for 'one'), stylized as UNO, is a proprietary American shedding-type card game originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, that housed International Games Inc., a gaming company acquired by Mattel on January 23, 1992.  Played with a specially printed deck, the game is derived from the crazy eights family of card games which, in turn, is based on the traditional German game of mau-mau.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uno_(card_game)#External_links  

The Anzac biscuit is a sweet biscuit, popular in Australia and New Zealand, made using rolled oats, flour, sugar, butter (or margarine), golden syrup, baking soda, boiling water, and (optionally) desiccated coconut.  Anzac biscuits have long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) established in World War I.  It is thought that these biscuits were sent by wives and women's groups to soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation.  Anzac biscuits should not be confused with hardtack, which was nicknamed "ANZAC wafers" in Australia and New Zealand.  Anzac biscuits are an explicit exemption to an Australian ban on commercial goods that use the term "Anzac", so long as they are sold as "biscuits" and not "cookies".  The origin of Anzac biscuits is contested between Australia and New Zealand, similar to the dispute over pavlova. The actual recipe for the biscuit has been found long before the formation of the ANZAC Corps, and many of the first recipes for Anzac biscuits differ from the modern version.  The earliest known recipe combining the words 'anzac' and 'biscuit' is a recipe from 1916 for "ANZAC GINGER BISCUITS" which was published on 4 June 1916 in the Perth edition of The Sunday Times.  However, this recipe contains no mention of oats present in modern anzac biscuits.  The first recipe for something called "Anzac Biscuits" appears in an Australian publication, the War Chest Cookery Book (Sydney, 1917), but this recipe was also for a different biscuit from what we know as the modern Anzac biscuit.  The same publication, the War Chest Cookery Book (Sydney, 1917), also included the first two recipes for biscuits resembling modern Anzac biscuits, under the names of "Rolled Oats Biscuits" and just "Biscuits".  The first recorded instance of the combination of the name 'Anzac biscuit' and the recipe now associated with it was found in Adelaide dating to "either late 1919 or early 1920".  Another early recipe for the Anzac biscuit dates back to 1921 in an Australian newspaper called The Argus.  These early recipes did not contain desiccated coconut which is present in many modern Anzac biscuits.  The first recipe for an Anzac biscuit containing the desiccated coconut is recorded to be from the city of Adelaide in 1924.  In 1919 in New Zealand a recipe for Anzac Crispies in the eighth edition of the St. Andrew's Cookery Book had similar ingredients to modern Anzac biscuits.  Today, Anzac biscuits are manufactured commercially for retail sale.  Because of their historical military connection with the ANZACs and Anzac Day, these biscuits are still used as a fundraising item for the Royal New Zealand Returned Services' Association (RSA) and the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL).  Special collectors old-style biscuit tins with World War military artwork are usually produced in the lead up to Anzac Day and sold in supermarkets, in addition to the standard plastic packets available all year.  The official RSL biscuit is produced by Unibic under licence.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_biscuit#  

Anzac dough is great as a cobbler topping, or even a tart base.  Leftover cookies keep well in an air-tight container for a few days.  Have fun experimenting with other zests or spice additions, anything that pairs nicely with oats and coconut will likely work here.  For a more traditional Anzac cookie, leave out the orange zest and orange blossom water.  Makes 18-24 medium cookies.  Find Anzac cookies recipe at https://www.101cookbooks.com/anzac-cookies/  

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. - Igor Stravinsky, composer (17 Jun 1882-1971)  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2827  June 17, 2024 

 

Good Omens:  The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is a 1990 novel written as a collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, who in turn were dubbed "Double Trouble" by the British press.  The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the End Times.  There are attempts by the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley to sabotage the coming of the end times, having grown accustomed to their comfortable surroundings in England.  One subplot features a mix-up at the small country hospital on the day of birth and the growth of the Antichrist, Adam, who grows up with the wrong family, in the wrong country village.  Another subplot concerns the summoning of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each a big personality in their own right.  In 2003, the novel was listed at number 68 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens     

In April 2003 the BBC's Big Read began the search for the UK's best-loved novel, and they asked you to nominate your favourite books. The countdown of the top 100 books was televised on BBC2.  A further list of the books ranked from 101-200 was put on the BBC's website. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22922.BBC_The_Big_Read_Top_100_Books   The books ranked 101-200 can be found in a separate list here: 
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22...   

Every Letter Is Silent, Sometimes   The a in bread (as well as in tread) does nothing.  You might as well spell it bred except that then it looks too much like the past tense of breed.  So don't do that.  A is similarly indefensible in aisle and aesthetic.  Most silent b's come at the ends of words and just after bomb, climb, comb, crumb, dumb, lamb, limb, numb, plumb, thumb, tomb.  Just when one starts to feel comfortable with the relative regularity of these, debt and subtle show up like a couple of toughs.  Read more at https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/mums-the-letter-when-letters-dont-say-a-thing  

 back-of-the-envelope  adjective  (idiomatic, informal) Especially of a calculation, estimation, or other reasoning, or an idea:  approximate, rough, simplified. [from 20th c.] synonyms ▲quotations ▼  

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/back-of-the-envelope#English   

Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us. https://www.slowfoodseattle.org/what-is-slow-food#:~:text=Slow%20Food%20is%20a%20global,affect%20the%20world%20around%20us.  Thank you, Muse reader.   

The slow food movement was founded in Italy in the late 1980s by the publicist and sociologist Carlo Petrini as a protest against the fast food industry.  When the first branch of an international fast-food chain opened in Rome's city center in the historic Piazza Navona in the mid-1980s, Petrini organized a culinary guerrilla campaign as a guardian of conscious, authentic culinary enjoyment.  In the middle of the Spanish Steps, he invited the public to a traditional spaghetti dinner.  With this classic of Italian cuisine, he wanted to defy the global one-size-fits-all menu from the USA.  Within a short time, he gained a great deal of attention and was celebrated as a sustainability pioneer.  Shortly thereafter, he founded the Slow Food Association, which very quickly found growing acceptance among broad segments of society.  https://www.bhs-tabletop.com/en-en/blog/post/slow-food-trend/#/ 

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. - William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (13 Jun 1865-1939) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2826  June 14, 2024

Potash includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.  The name derives from pot ash, plant ashes or wood ash soaked in water in a pot, the primary means of manufacturing potash before the Industrial Era.  The word potassium is derived from potash.  Canada is the largest producer, mostly for use in fertilizer.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash   

Imogen Taylor is a British literary translator.  She translates works from German to English, and has previously won the Goethe-Institut Prize for her work.  Her notable translations include Sasha Marianna Salzmann's novel, Beside Myself, Melanie Raabe's The Trap, as well as Florian Huber's Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans, 1945; and Sascha Arango's novel, The Truth and Other Lies.  Her work has been shortlisted for the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and Helen and Kurt Wolff's Translator Prize.  Taylor completed her undergraduate education at New College, Oxford where she studied French and German.  She completed her doctorate at the Humboldt University, in Berlin, where she studied bilingual couples in 18th century French novels.  She has lived in Berlin since 2001.  In 2015, Taylor published a translation of Sascha Arango's novel, The Truth and Other Lies (Die Wahrheit und andere Lügen).  Her translation was listed as The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2015.  In 2016, Taylor won the Goethe-Institut award for an excerpt of her translation Momente der Klarheit by Jackie Thomae (Hanser Berlin).  In the same year, the Seattle Times's critic Adam Woog listed her translation of Melanie Raabe's The Trap as one of the 10 best mysteries of the year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_Taylor   

The Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science.  It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the field of computer science and is often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing".  The award is named after Alan Turing, who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester.  Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II.  From 2007 to 2013, the award was accompanied by a prize of US$250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google.  Since 2014, the award has been accompanied by a prize of US$1 million, with financial support provided by Google.  The first recipient, in 1966, was Alan Perlis, of Carnegie Mellon University.  The youngest recipient was Donald Knuth who won in 1974, at the age of 36, while the oldest recipient was Alfred Aho who won in 2020, at the age of 79.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award   

Pickling cucumbers, as the name suggests, are specifically cultivated for the purpose of pickling.  These cucumbers are typically smaller in size, ranging from 3 to 6 inches in length.  They have a firm texture and thin skin, which makes them ideal for absorbing the pickling brine and retaining crunchiness after the pickling process.  The most common varieties of pickling cucumbers include Kirby cucumbers and Persian cucumbers.  Regular cucumbers, also known as slicing cucumbers, are the cucumbers that you commonly find in grocery stores.  These cucumbers are larger in size, usually around 6 to 9 inches in length.  They have a thicker skin and more seeds compared to pickling cucumbers.  Regular cucumbers are often enjoyed fresh in salads, sandwiches, or as a crunchy snack.  See more at https://recipes.net/articles/what-is-the-difference-between-pickling-cucumbers-vs-regular-cucumbers/  Thank you, Muse reader!    

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it. - William Styron, novelist (11 Jun 1925-2006)   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2825  June 12, 2024

Switchel, switzel, swizzle, switchy, ginger-water or haymaker's punch is a drink made of water mixed with vinegar, and often seasoned with ginger.  It is usually sweetened with molasses, though honey, sugar, brown sugar, or maple syrup are sometimes used instead.  In the U.S. state of Vermont, oatmeal and lemon juice were sometimes added to the beverage.  Switchel debatably originated in the Caribbean, but New England also holds credit as the source, and it became a popular summer drink in the American Colonies in the late 17th century.  By the 19th century, it had become a traditional drink to serve to thirsty farmers at hay harvest time, hence the nickname haymaker's punch.  Herman Melville wrote in I and My Chimney, "I will give a traveler a cup of switchel, if he want it; but am I bound to supply him with a sweet taste?"  In The Long Winter Laura Ingalls Wilder describes a switchel-like beverage that her mother had sent for Laura and her father to drink while haying:  "Ma had sent them ginger-water.  She had sweetened the cool well-water with sugar, flavored it with vinegar, and put in plenty of ginger to warm their stomachs so they could drink till they were not thirsty.  Ginger-water would not make them sick, as plain cold water would when they were so hot."  The Vermont physician D. C. Jarvis recommended a similar drink (a mixture of honey and cider vinegar), which he called "honegar".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchel#:~:text=Switchel%20debatably%20originated%20in%20the,in%20the%20late%2017th%20century.    

Switchel recipe

1 cup water (or sparkling water, or coconut water)

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon or lime juice

2 teaspoons molasses or honey to taste

1/4 teaspoon ground or fresh ginger

Find directions at https://www.farmersalmanac.com/what-the-heck-is-switchel 

PIGS:  Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain

BRICs:  Brazil, Russia, India, and China

NATO:  NATO was established on 4 April 1949 via the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty (Washington Treaty).  The 12 founding members of the Alliance were:  Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.   Current membership as of 2024 consists of 32 countries.

SEATO:   In September of 1954, the United States, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO.   

June 3, 2024  Almost one set of Uno was sold in the US every second last year, according to Mattel, its publisher.  That’s almost 60 Uno decks each minute—up from 17 sets each minute in 2021.  Its popularity is due to the game’s broad appeal, says Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, a curator at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.  “Kids can play against adults without being overmatched, and adults can play it together and still have fun,” she says.  “The gameplay is simple and easy to understand, and playing a round moves quickly.”  More than 600 editions of Uno are available, but the game’s core mechanics remain mostly the same with each new version.  Players draw a handful of cards and then take turns trying to discard them; the first player to get rid of all their cards wins.  https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/03/business/uno-card-game-popularity-cec/index.html   Thank you, Muse reader!   

Any doubts that Spain remains the fine dining center of the world may just have evaporated with the revealing of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants for 2024 list.  Five eateries from the European nation made the list–three of them in the top five.  The awards–considered the Oscars of global fine dining–were handed out at a ceremony at the Wynn in Las Vegas on June 5, 2024, with Barcelona’s Disfrutar walking away with the top prize.  Ranked number two last year, it’s owned and run by chefs Oriol Castro, Eduard Xatruch and Mateu Casanas.  The list is compiled based on the votes of the The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, which is made up of  1,080 international restaurant industry experts including food writers and chefs, in 27 regions around the world.  Restaurants can only win the top prize once, after which they’re entered into a separate “Best of the Best” program.   https://www.cnn.com/travel/worlds-50-best-restaurants-for-2024/index.html   

The Philadelphia Spelling Book becomes the first book ever copyrighted in the United States (June 9, 1790)  *  The city of Troy is sacked and burned, inspiring a tale or two (June 11, 1184)  Literary Hub  June 9, 2024   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2824  June 10, 2024

Figment is the mascot of the Imagination! Pavilion at the Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World Resort.  He is a small purple dragon with a runaway imagination.  Figment was created by Tony Baxter, who came up with the name "Figment" after watching an episode of Magnum, P.I., in which a goat has eaten Higgins' (John Hillerman) flowers and Higgins says, "Don't tell me [the goat is] a figment of my imagination.  Figments don't eat rare tropical flowers".  Figment’s original character design was created by Grayson Shafer in 1976.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figment_(Disney)   

Frangelico (is a brand of noisette (flavored with hazelnuts) and herb-flavored liqueur coloured with caramel coloring, which is produced in Canale, Italy.  It is 20% alcohol by volume (ABV) or 40 proof.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangelico#:~:text=Frangelico%20(Italian%3A%20%5Bfran%CB%88d%CA%92%C9%9Bliko%5D,(ABV)%20or%2040%20proof.

Named for its warm golden-tan color, brunost or “brown cheese” is made by boiling down goat’s milk whey, a byproduct of actual cheese production.  The result is a firm, silky-smooth foodstuff with a rich caramel flavor that is simultaneously sweet and tangy. https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/7-norwegian-cheeses-you-should-know   

Poverty with security is better than plenty in the midst of fear and uncertainty.  The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse   https://read.gov/aesop/004.html

There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.  The Fox and the Grapes https://read.gov/aesop/005.html

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is the writer of The Cuckoo’s Calling, a crime novel she published under the pen name Robert Galbraith.  England’s Sunday Times, responding to an anonymous tip that Rowling was the book’s real author, hired Duquesne University’s Patrick Juola to analyze the text of Cuckoo, using software that he had spent over a decade refining.  One of Juola’s tests examined sequences of adjacent words, while another zoomed in on sequences of characters; a third test tallied the most common words, while a fourth examined the author’s preference for long or short words.  Juola wound up with a linguistic fingerprint—hard data on the author’s stylistic quirks.  He then ran the same tests on four other books:  The Casual Vacancy, Rowling’s first post-Harry Potter novel, plus three stylistically similar crime novels by other female writers.  Juola concluded that Rowling was the most likely author of The Cuckoo’s Calling, since she was the only one whose writing style showed up as the closest or second-closest match in each of the tests.  After consulting an Oxford linguist and receiving a concurring opinion, the newspaper confronted Rowling, who confessed.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-computers-uncover-jk-rowlings-pseudonym-180949824/  

Yann Martel, CC (born June 25, 1963) is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories.  It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists.  Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.  Martel is also the author of the novels The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil, and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to Canada's Prime Minister 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He has won a number of literary prizes, including the 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2002 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.   His first language is French, but he writes in English.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_Martel   

eat someone's lunch (third-person singular simple present eats someone's lunch, present participle eating someone's lunch, simple past ate someone's lunch, past participle eaten someone's lunch)  verb 

(idiomatic, chiefly US, slang) To best or defeat someone thoroughly; to make short work of. synonyms ▲quotations ▼

Synonyms: eat someone for breakfast, have someone for breakfast; see also Thesaurus:defeat  

June 7  is World Food Safety Day, which is recognized by the United Nations to raise awareness about and promote global food safety.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2823  June 7, 2024 

Crisps, cobblers, crumbles, and buckles are all fantastic ways to showcase fresh, seasonal fruit.  They can be made year-round with apples and pears in the colder months and berries and stone fruits in the summer.  No matter the variety, the fruit softens and  releases moisture in the oven, creating an irresistible contrast to the cakey or crispy topping.  The fruit’s natural sweetness also intensifies, eliminating the need for loads of extra sugar.  https://www.savoryonline.com/articles/buckle-cobbler-crumble-crisp-whats-the-difference/#:~:text=Whereas%20crisps%20and%20crumbles%20are,or%20a%20biscuit%2Dlike%20dough.  

dapper (adj.)

mid-15c., "elegant, neat, trim," from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German dapper "bold, strong, sturdy," later "quick, nimble," from Proto-Germanic *dapraz (source also of Old High German tapfar "heavy," German tapfer "brave"), perhaps with ironical shift of meaning, from PIE root *dheb- "dense, firm, compressed."  Later shifting toward "small and active, nimble, brisk, lively" (from c. 1600).  "Formerly appreciative; now more or less depreciative, with associations of littleness or pettyness" [OED].

also from mid-15c.

dap (n.)

fist-bump greeting, in African-American popular culture by 1972, with various theories as to origin and name meaning.  Probably imitative (dap was used in 19c. for the bounce of a ball or the skip of a stone on water).  https://www.etymonline.com/word/dapper 

 

Add chopped apples or grated vegetables or seeds to beans, soup, chili, meat loaf. 

greenhouse gas (countable and uncountable, plural greenhouse gases)  noun 

Any gas (such as carbon dioxide, a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), or methane) that contributes to the greenhouse effect when released into the atmosphere by absorbing infrared radiation emitted by a planet's surface, thus increasing the surface temperature.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/greenhouse_gas#English  

June 5 is World Environment Day, which is recognized by the United Nations to promote worldwide awareness of the need and action to protect the environment. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, began on June 5 in 1972.  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2822  June 5, 2024