Food in 1922

After overindulging on cheap meat from Target, I've had hamburger on the brain. (I found a great way to cook them…though it set off the smoke detector…twice…before I even finished cooking the whole pound…)

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World (Tulsa, Oklahoma), January 21, 1922, page 11

Per http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm, 10 cents in 1922 was worth $1.27 today.

Now I'm sad!

For some reason I didn't know Crisco was around in the 1920s. Crisco's website says it came about in 1911. It "was the result of hydrogenation"! Mr. Proctor and Mr. Gamble, it notes, started Proctor & Gamble in 1837, after selling soap and candles. Mmmmm.

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World (Tulsa, Oklahoma), January 21, 1922, page 11

It looks like Kellogg's Corn Flakes were the Cheerios of 1922 (food for kids). Or else they were TRYING to make them the Cheerios of 1922.

The page also has cocoa recipes, including one for what sounds like instant cocoa:

Cocoa
(per cup.)
In each cup put--
1 teaspoon cocoa.
1 teaspoon sugar.
1 tablespoon marshmallow cream.

Stir them with a spoon until creamy then thin with boiling water. The same proportions could be used for larger amounts. I think, though the person who gave me this, said she never made it only in cup amount….

Do you know that a few drops of vanilla in cocoa gives it a wonderful flavor. Not more than one or two drops to the cup.

Do you know that a very slight trace of maple flavor, ever so little, is good with cocoa too.

Do you know that many (illegible) insist that cocoa to be the best, must have a few grains of salt in it--"just enough to do away with that raw taste."

--The Morning Tulsa Daily World (Tulsa, Oklahoma), January 21, 1922, page 11

Media Monday - Florida Renaissance Festival - Part 2

My co-author Maggie and I returned to the Florida Renaissance Festival at Deerfield Beach again on Sunday. You can get a rundown of our Saturday experience, along with a kind of setup of the place, at Part 1.

There's very little to do before 10:30 or so (although, one place we walked by had a breakfast menu set up!). So Maggie and I just did some contemplating.



As an aside, if Masha Bell is to be believed, English spelling wasn't really formalized until the 1750s.



So the first show we saw that morning was Wonderfool. I hadn't been impressed from the description on the website (plus jesters always seem a little like clowns to me), but he did impressive things with fire and made me laugh a lot, even though some of the humor was a touch borderline. (Quite a few kids present, so nothing too bad.) I finally felt like I was back at home at the Arizona faire!







Then we saw the flea circus. We were in the back and of course fleas would be small anyway, so no attempt at pictures! The guy did some interesting sleight of hand at the start, but the flea circus itself was surprisingly dark humor (every "flea"--which the humans spoke to more and more like family members--was coaxed into doing a trick, or failing at the trick, and subsequently died). Now, granted, fleas aren't very nice, and it appears the old-time flea circuses relied on tormenting the fleas for real, as opposed to "killing" fleas that aren't real. But still.

So this is a baked potato with butter, sour cream, cheese, and an Italian sausage.


From the same place that had chocolate-covered bacon and fried Oreos. Maggie and I split it and it was good! Honestly, the sausage wasn't strictly necessary but I thought that was what made it an interesting food item, versus just a baked potato. And I like protein.

Then we did some more wandering, I believe, before we resorted to this.



In my defense, by splitting it, it was only 1/4 pound of cookie each.



So we sat down to eat our cookie, and what do you know? Here comes something the Arizona Renaissance Festival doesn't really have...a parade! It has pretty much EVERYONE in it, including many of the shopkeeps.



I need to make a medieval dress someday. Maybe particolored.

Note the fairy catcher chasing a fairy. Given the fairy focus of the Florida Renaissance Festival, that's a great costume/character idea (though I think he and the fairy were together):



King and queen.


I told you there were a lot of fairies.


Then we saw the Drake Irish Dancers (again, not the best view, so no pictures). I thought they were good, though I'm pretty much dance illiterate.

We were set to do some more wandering, but we were passing by as Tribal Circus was about to start their act and I figured since there was a trapeze it had to be pretty good.



Just as they were getting started, it started to sprinkle, so they had to take off their microphones.



So I'm not sure if everything they did was their regular act or not, but it was fun to watch anyway! The rain soon stopped.

Solely for my backbend-loving friend.




Then we went to see Wolgemut (and by the end, "some guy" whose name I've forgotten!). German bagpipe. It was so loud I wore earplugs...



So I like to look at things, but I'm really not much for actually buying. You wouldn't know it for all the clutter in my house, but unless it's things that I love, and/or at a deep, deep discount (see VNSA Book Sale), I don't usually buy much. Didn't get much in Florida, either--just a little trinket necklace with a pirate ship charm I'm 95% certain came from Hobby Lobby, and then, finally, an amber pendant like Kirsten's!

Not very pure, and frankly the shopkeep wasn't really friendly, but I needed a souvenir, darn it!

Then we saw The Duelists, who were a bit edgy for the kids (though as they put it, if your kids understand their double-entendres, then "you're bad parents"). The show we saw wasn't too bad, but they do a later one that they say is just for adults, which would have been too much for me. Anyway, they gave lessons on dueling (and during the demonstration, one of them died in Maggie's lap--after asking her to scoot over on the bench).



Sometime during the show it started to POUR. Not sprinkle; I mean POUR. To the Duelists' credit, they did not give up, but finished the show (mics still on!).



We'd figured to stay until close and see a couple more shows, and it looked like the rain would stick around--I can't see how they would've started any of the shows directly following the one we saw in the rain. We headed toward the gate, noting that every tent and awning was full of people hiding from the rain. And despite my umbrella, Maggie and I were both soaked to the skin, so we decided to call it a day.

Sure enough, before we'd even reached the car, the rain stopped! I was still cold and uncomfortable, though, and I think heading on home was the right choice!

Media Monday - Florida Renaissance Festival - Part 1

So I guess this could be a little more timely, since Sunday was the last day for the Florida Renaissance Festival in Deerfield Beach. I visited it recently with my co-author Maggie Phillippi. I've been to the Arizona Renaissance Festival more times than I can easily count, and was interested to see how a Ren Faire a couple thousand miles away was!

Quite a few things were the same--a surprising amount of hand-crafted merchandise (like necklaces and even those little shoulder animals) were basically the same. But a lot was different. Unlike the Arizona festival, Florida's is set in a County park. That means that you have to pay $1.50 a person just to park.



Yes, seriously. I'd say on the up side that means you don't have to park in dirt, but actually, you park in...grass.

Since the festival is in a park, the buildings and stages are basically temporary.





Even the tickets look different than Arizona's!



So yeah, once you are inside, there are a lot more tents than Arizona's, and a LOT more trees!





Seemed to be a greater proportion of fried and fair-style food, but not sure. A lot more gyros than Arizona.



Two more things you won't see at Arizona's fest--numerous signs, and WATER!



(The signs are necessary because it is laid out like a meandering park--not more like a mall, like Arizona's.)



In some ways, it seems much more authentic than Arizona's. No giant mountains looming in the distance, lots more public areas where re-enactors are camping, some with displays...



(Careful where you take pictures, by the way. If you take pictures near the actual private tents, even if the area is fully open, you just might get accused of actually entering a tent that was closed, and get a long lecture on why that's not allowed. O_o )

On the other hand, some vistas in Florida are kind of wrong.



Park bathroom (before the lines got long):



For entertainment, we saw the Daredevil Chicken Club. Don't want to spoil the show for you too much, but that is a piece of banana in the air there. Unabashed silliness (and kind of gross).





And we saw Celtic Mayhem, a band that also plays local venues, evidently:


They had a musical version of Cinderella, which was rather unusual; I guess they do a different musical every year?


Florida really IS another world; it was rife with additional Disney references, like Cinderella singing "Godmother, please" (to the tune of "Under the Sea").



Stepsisters:


That's the prince there behind Cinderella (street sweeper Armon Hammer moonlighting as an actor):


After a brief bit of rain (just enough to make the benches wet!) we saw the falcon/hawk show, which was mostly the birds flying around randomly or being hooded while the man in charge told us all about falcons and hawks. Some of the information was interesting and some was repeated several times.


Hawks attack animals on the ground, and tear them up so much that you can only use the remains for stew, whereas falcons neatly kill their prey. Falcons were the birds of the nobility and hawks were the birds of the common man, he said. And falcons and hawks only hunt when they're hungry; they don't hunt to refine their skills, like cats do.

The Florida Renaissance Festival also had a "model pirate ship" that I'd expected to be somewhat larger.


And fry bread (it felt wrong to eat fry bread in Florida for some reason). It was really crispy; I couldn't even finish it, even with Maggie having some!


And later, this monstrosity (chocolate covered bacon!).


It was cold and wasn't very good (and I LIKE crispy bacon! Maggie doesn't, so she didn't care for it at the start). The bacon and chocolate were both good quality, but they didn't go together. I think I ate a piece, just to say I did. But it did garner attention while I was holding it while we waited for Maggie's deep-fried Oreos (delicious!). Everyone wanted to know how it was, and someone advised me to call 911 in advance before eating it, just in case.

The last thing--unlike Arizona's festival, Florida's has the greyhounds OUTSIDE instead of inside!


More pictures next Monday!

Media Monday - Tucson Festival of Books

If you live within a 3-hour drive of Tucson and you like books or writing at ALL, then you really need to go to the Tucson Festival of Books, taking place March 11-12, 2011!

It's FREE and is one of the largest book festivals in the country, taking place on the University of Arizona campus. Last year they estimated 70,000-80,000 attendees, and I know there were literally hundreds of authors as well, with dozens, maybe over 100, panels/workshops/presentations on Saturday, and maybe just a few less on Sunday, all scheduled in blocks (like classes!) with 30 minute intervals in-between. It's so big, the GUIDEBOOK they hand out for free (which is the size of one of those large insert booklets they put in newspapers) is 64 pages long.

The panels themselves are inside (air-conditioned) buildings on campus--many underground in the "Integrated Learning Center," an area they built after I graduated, that takes up a good portion of the formerly-all-grass central mall... There are "panels" where a group of authors discuss things, and then "workshops" which for the most part seem to be one author...discussing things that are usually somewhat more directly related to writing. There were a TON of "workshops" last year, and they were almost all packed, but I don't see as many this year, or at least not as many that are relevant to me.

Then above-ground are tents with exhibitors, many (but not all) book-related. Even The Jane Austen Society of North America was there.

And in the center, they had a kind of food court.

There is a McDonalds on campus and they handed out McCafe mocha samples last year (there was quite a line sometimes!). I think this year they'll have real fruit smoothies. Since I don't like strawberries, I reckon I'd better just bring a lot of water.

They also sold lots of umbrellas last year--the sun was hot!

Well worth the $5. The parasol and food were my only expenses.

This year, I found at least 9 different panels/workshops I'm interested in attending! Well, actually 11, but 2 timeslots are double-booked.....

Which should I choose? "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" or "Electronic Publishing - More Than an Alternative"? Both sound useful. The self-editing is categorized under "literature/fiction" and I don't really write literature, plus I've heard tons of things about editing. (The challenge is putting them into practice.) But on the other hand, I've heard a lot about eBooks/etc. already, too, even though that's probably how Maggie and I are going to end up publishing The Pirate and the Healer. (You can make good money publishing eBooks, and I only saw one remotely reputable publisher that looked willing to even consider an unagented Christian fantasy romance with pirates.)

OK. Electronic publishing it is!

I'd also like to attend "Creating Biography from Diaries and Letters" but as far as I know, I'm not actually going to WRITE a biography, and "How to Write and Publish a Book in the Next Three Months!" sounds infinitely more tempting.

Anyway, it's definitely worth attending, whether to learn, get motivated, or just hear some free talking and maybe pick up a smoothie.

Tucson Festival of Books--one more reason why Arizona is awesome (from January-March)!