Great-Grandmas, Balanced Diets, and Cookies

The whole "If your Great-grandma wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it" seems to assume great-grandmas with limited culinary experience. My own great-grandmas grew up during the Irish potato famine, the Prague Upheaval, and the American Civil War. I feel sure that not one of those women was a picky eater. I also know that three of them worked as cooks in rich people's kitchens before they took command of kitchens of their own, and my Prague great-grandma was remembered as a notable cook 40 years after her death in 1938.

In What Would Great-Grandma Eat? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education, we see some other reasons to wonder about the "great-grandma dictum:"

In 1890, 90 percent of the country's bread was baked in homes. The rest was purchased from tiny neighborhood bakeries. By 1930, this trend had reversed completely: 90 percent of bread was purchased, and purchased from increasingly large, increasingly distant factories. Despite their success, industrial bakers lived in constant fear that bread would lose its place on the nation's tables. Compared with newfangled fruits arriving by refrigerated train from California, or the novelty of modern wonders like Jell-O, bread was just basic. But something remarkable happened during the first three decades of the 20th century. Not only did Americans switch to store-bought bread en masse, but also per-capita bread consumption increased. Modern factory bread wasn't just a more convenient version of the ancient staple; it had taken on new meanings and appeal.

A couple more unrelated food links:

• Five ways to tackle disastrous diets--UN food expert: "The right to food means not only access to an adequate quantity of food, but also the ability to have a balanced and nutritious diet," Mr. De Schutter underlined. "Governments must not abstain from their responsibility to secure this right."
• For those of us fortunate enough to have such things, these should only be consumed following nutritious meals. Coconut Pecan Blondies Recipe | Taste of Home Recipes:

Some Shale Gas Links

• EQT chief speaks on fracking, coal, greenhouse gases at UC   - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -: The question of what chemicals are used in hydraulic fracturing are "overstated," Porges said. Many still ask for companies to reveal them, however, he said they're available on frackfocus.org, which is run by the Groundwater Protection Council.
• Ohio agency says fracking-related activity caused earthquakes | Reuters: An Ohio state agency said on Friday there is evidence that the high-pressure injection of fluid underground related to fracking caused a series of Ohio earthquakes culminating in a New Year's Eve tremor in any area not known for seismic activity.
• Natural born drillers: Why shale gas won't end our energy woes | Grist:
  

  Talk about a dangerous echo chamber: A government agency relies on industry data to calculate "independent" estimates, then industry proponents point to the government figures to bolster their rosy outlook.

  This echo chamber is one powerful explanation for how federal energy officials have, wittingly or unwittingly, become peddlers of the so-called "crack cocaine of the power industry."

  Has the agency cleaned up its act? It has lowered its numbers. But only time will tell whether it has changed how it does its research.

  In the meantime, we'll all have to live with a natural gas boom that may turn out to be a lot more expensive--for both the environment and consumers--than the industry and regulators first believed.

  Drilling Down - Fighting Over Oil and Gas Well Leases - NYTimes.com

  
  

Paleoclimate Links: Atmosphere Evolution, Carboniferous Climate

Some paleoclimate references my environmental science students might find useful:

• Climate during the Carboniferous Period
• Evolution of the Atmosphere

Whose Emancipation Is Next?

Via Northwest History, a selection of negative ads for the presidential race of 1864: The Ads that Could Have Won George McClellan the Presidency. I believe I recognize the organization that paid for this ad in particular.

To Greet You On St. Patrick's Day

"To Greet You On St. Patrick's Day." There's no message or signature on the flip side, just the address: "Miss Florance [sic] Williamson, Prescott, Iowa, RR3" in black ink and the postmark "Des Moines 1912."

phpMyAdmin and MySQL — Drop Tables

phpMyAdmin and MySQL — Drop Tables with Common Prefix | DigitalWindFire: A handy tip for my Wordpress experimentation--this is how I delete the Wordpress portion of my database without touching the Drupal installation:


SELECT * FROM (
SELECT CONCAT('DROP TABLE ', GROUP_CONCAT(table_name) , ';')
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE table_name LIKE 'wp_%'
) a INTO @stmt;

PREPARE statement FROM @stmt;
EXECUTE statement;

Wool Double Four-Patch Coverlet--Finished At Last

Here it is, tied, bound, and hung on the clothesline for photographs. This double-bed cover is made from my wardrobe from the 1980's and 1990's, with a few squares from a 1970's era blue wool skirt I wore for band concerts, and a red wool bathrobe of my mom's (circa 1950).

I backed the wool top with a pieced expanse of fleece remnants. This was a tricky procedure, as the fleeces were stretchy, each in its own way. I didn't get it perfectly flat when I tie-tacked it with the sewing machine, but I'm pronouncing it "good enough."

You can see that I couldn't wait for the completion of the new clothesline to photograph my completed project. Clothesline is still under construction.

State launches gas-drilling database for public

State launches gas-drilling database for public  - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -: "CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginians interested in oil and gas drilling plans can now study permits and get other details online. The Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Oil and Gas has launched a website with information on horizontal drilling operations. The site was mandated under legislation passed in December."

'via Blog this'

Knitting Down Memory Lane

I've been knitting hats again. I haven't figured out a good way to photograph hats, but I remembered that I have some hat images from this blog, 2005. At that time, I didn't have a digital camera, so I slapped these hats on my flatbed scanner before I consigned them for sale. These look OK squashed flat, I think, because the colors draw the eye. Cabled hats displayed flat have a shriveled, sad look.

The skullcap style hats don't look so great on my own "cannonball" head, and I don't have a mannequin, so I'm brainstorming for some suitable form to make cabled hats look nicely three-dimensional.