I Did It!

I finished Book 4 of the Oxford US History Series, McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.

I know what you're thinking. Another Book Post. Super Duper. I'm including some random dinner pics just because I don't know why.

I've read well over 3 thousand pages covering the first hundred years of our nation's history. Or third hundred years, if you count the nearly two centuries between the Jamestown and Paul Revere's Ride.

The most interesting of the volumes was What God Hath Wrought (number 3) about the antebellum period between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. This was a period of transition between the bizarre, alien world of the Founders, one we wouldn't recognize today, and the America that we know. During the antebellum period, they invented balloon-frame houses, working for hourly pay, travelling in winter, childhood, and democracy.

The most exciting was number 4, the Civil War one. I haven't read extensively on the Civil War since high school when my parents bought me the Time Life series. I read all of those lying on my bedroom floor. I'm not as limber as I used to be. Now I read on furniture. I also noticed my interests have shifted since then.

In high school, I was more interested in the Eastern Theater battles between the Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. Now, I'm more interested in the effects of battles in the Western Theater, where the war was actually won.

Pickled Asparagus

And I'm more interested in the politics and society than in the battles themselves. Reading about terrified men and boys torn to pieces by low velocity rifle fire and canister shot, by the thousands, isn't quite as thrilling as it used to be. American military deaths in the Civil War add up to 12 Vietnams. In fact, if we lost the same proportion of soldiers to population over time in Vietnam as in the Civil War, the Vietnam War would have cost 4 million American lives. Two months ago the official POW/MIA numbers from Vietnam were updated to 1,643. The Union POWs who died at Andersonville Prison alone numbered ten times that.

And they say, well casualties in the Civil War were so high because you have Americans fighting Americans. Sure. If you allow for that, and account that the total casualties were roughly equal for both sides, the North and South each lost around 6 Vietnams worth of men in 4 years.

The sheer volume of slaughter is mind-blowing. So I prefer to read about Lincoln's political maneuvering to pass the 13th Amendment and the diplomatic loopholes of commissioning a blockade runner in a neutral, foreign country.

OK, on to less morbid subjects.

What's Next
These books:

Reconstruction
One does not slog through that much US History just to drop the subject and walk away. No. But here's the rub. There's a two volume sixty year gap between Battle Cry of Freedom and Freedom from Fear, the installment covering the Wall Street Crash of 1929 through the end of World War II. True story: almost half of that thirty years was the FDR administration.

Oxford University Press has tentatively promised that the volume covering the Progressive Era or Gilded Age, basically everything from the end of Reconstruction through the Wall Street Crash, is coming out this year. (Note: Gilded Age was the name that rich white men came up with because it sort of sucked for everyone else.) That still leaves me with a thirty year gap.

Pumpkin Pancakes

So I will fill that gap, in part, with Eric Foner's Reconstruction. Not an Oxford History book. But it's supposed to be the definitive work on the Reconstruction era.

Before I begin my next 800 page history book, I need to partake of a little literary junk food. A little light reading. Most days, I eat healthy, homemade from scratch, mostly vegan dinners. But once a week I need something gross and dirty like a bacon cheeseburger (actually, yesterday I made beef tacos). The same goes with books. I read literary masterpieces and masterworks of academic historians. But I need to get in some greasy pulp fiction from time to time.

The Dresden Files
Storm Front, book one of the Dresden Files series, comes highly recommended by a hermit I know in Central Texas.

Lucy, let me 'splain.

There are a myriad of subgenres within Fantasy. You're probably most familiar with High Fantasy, which encompasses Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Steven Erikson, George R. R. Martin (actually, Martin is Medievalist, but who am I to split hairs), and many more. It's epic, it has magic and swords and battles and all of that. Woot.

But it's only one of many. There's Steampunk and and Low Fantasy and Dark Fantasy and Historic Fantasy a bunch of others I would get too bored to list because they're basically all Fantasy with a different adjective.

One I find wildly compelling is Contemporary Fantasy (which overlaps heavily with Urban Fantasy). Contemporary Fantasy is fantasy that takes place in our world and our time. The most notable examples are pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman or the TV shows Supernatural, Buffy, Once Upon a Time, etc.

Only, when you get to Contemporary Fantasy novels, most of them are either Young Adult or Paranormal Romance or both. Harry Potter is a good example. Twilight is a bad one.

Black Bean Sweet Potato Tacos

Then you have the Dresden Files. Which is one of the few (if only) adult Contemporary Fantasy series that doesn't deal extensivly with moping teenage girls dating vampires. In many ways it's like Supernatural. It combines the noir private detective genre with monsters and zombies.

The Problem of Fantasy
I could go on at length about my issues with High Fantasy. Don't get me wrong. I started there. I cut my teeth on Tolkien. We all did. But grave sins are committed in the name of Fantasy, and it's time to give the genre an overhaul.

OK, the quickest of explanations.

Fantasy traces its roots to the old myths and legends, Beowulf, The Odyssey, Le Morte D'Arthur, etc. Those stories, however, weren't set in ancient times or made up lands. They unfolded in settings contemporary to their original listeners/readers. Beowulf has characters that wield swords and hang out in mead halls because at the time it was composed, people wielded swords and hung out in mead halls.

Carrot Soup with Lemon Tahini Dollop and Roasted Chickpeas

The other issue is society. Tolkien and CS Lewis wrote for an audience that took nobility and royalty and privileged birth for granted. We had those once in America, but then we fought two wars to make them go away.

Today, the Fantasy Industrial Complex still churns out fiction set in ancient times with an aristocratic society. Because that's how Fantasy started. Sort of like how the Catholic Clergy still wear clothing (and those hats!) contemporary to the Byzantine Empire because that's when they got started.

Beef Picadillo Tacos with Homemade Salsa

Everyone is still playing in Tolkien's sandbox. But it's time for a Contemporary American Fantasy. That's my soapbox. And it's just my opinion. There are obviously plenty of people out there still buying books about swords and high kings and prophecies and elves and orcs.

And true, there's been this new wave of dystopian fiction. Hunger Games, Divergent, etc. But they're still, really, playing in Orwell's sandbox. 1984 was a Cold War novel and last time I checked, the Cold War was over. The danger to freedom no longer comes in the form of a despotic government regime.

In this respect, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is probably the best vision of the dystopian future now available to us.

Star Wars EU
So, after Return of the Jedi, people started writing a corpus of Star Wars books. The Extended Universe novels are all officially sanctioned and licensed by the chinless George Lucas himself.

You may say, that's not very nice. Well, I hold Lucas solely responsbile for the fourth Indiana Jones. And that movie is unforgivable. Also Jar Jar Binks.

Says Lucas: "But let me say here once and for all: He was the best damn character in any of the six movies. He was by far my favorite."

Thanks, Chinstrap. Now, please stop making movies.

Back to the EU. The most revered trilogy, by serious Star Wars fans, and by serious Star Wars fans, I mean the people who dress up like Boba Fett and go to conventions, is Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. It takes place five years after the Battle for Endor. This Trilogy is very nearly canon. The people who have Rebellion bumper stickers and X-Wing tattoos and the original 1977 C-3PO action figure still in the package consider Thrawn as important to the mythos as the movies.

Since there's a new movie coming out in the wake of the Chinless Master selling the franchise to Disney and since there's considerable controversy in the fanbase because the movie is projected to diverge from the Zahn narrative, I thought I'd give it a look see.

The Fault in Our Stars
I don't have to tell you the title is a reference to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. We all know that. Yawn.

I've been a super fan of John Green and his brother Hank Green for quite some time. John does the Crash Course series for history and literature and Mental Floss on Youtube. Hank does Crash Course for science and he does Sci Show. Together they do Vlog Brothers. Both very smart, very entertaining, very funny guys. I could go on but it would get weird.

Unless it already did.

I found out recently that John Green wrote a handful of books, one of which, The Fault in Our Stars, is soon to be a Major Motion Picture at a theater near you. One of my favorite things to do is read the book before the movie comes out and then forget to watch the movie. I plan to do that with this one.

Parting Shot
You weren't going to eat... all of that beef... were you?

What should we blog about next?

Spring Happened

After one last burp from the Polar Vortex, it's once again T-shirt weather in Illinois. That is, it's in the low 40s. You can hear birds for the first time in months. You can see the grass. I can walk the dog in my slippers without having to lace up winter boots. It's not that I hate winter boots in specific, I just hate laces in general. I find them churlish and offensive.

Pickle Fails
So, the most recent pickles didn't work out quite like I hoped. One, I executed flawlessly. The other I screwed up horribly.

The Full Sours came out as advertised. Fully Sour. Too sour to enjoy and I didn't like the flavor of the mixed pickling spices. I did everything correctly, I just didn't like the final pickle. Neither did Aine. Neither did anyone at Poker Night. Except for Kwstas. He's Greek. I sent the jar home with him.

So, the habañeros that almost killed me. I had them fermenting in the pantry, which turned the pantry into a box full of pepper spray. Aine refused to go in there. The animals would run and hide when I opened the door. I went in to check them the other day and apparently I didn't chop them fine enough. The pepper pieces separated from the water.

I would have liked to have saved the jar, but I didn't have the Hazmat suit necessary to wash them out. So I tossed them. I'll try again with a less aggressive pepper.

Popcorn Again
We're trying to wean ourselves from the microwave as much as possible. So we've started doing popcorn old school. On the stove top.

Popcorn and Illinois have a special relationship. It's the state snackfood and one of the state's major crops.

It's also one of the oldest staple crops in the Americas. Archaeologists have found popcorn dating back to 3600 BCE in a domestic caves in South America. That means they're almost twice as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us. When the pyramids were being built, these kernels were already a thousand years old. The archaeologists were able to pop and eat them.

Popcorn may have been the main food source for the Aztecs before flour corn was domesticated. They even had a word, totopoca, which means the sound of many kernels popping. You know the popcorn garlands we make at Christmas? The Aztecs invented that. They made popcorn garlands to adorn statues of the rain god Tlaloc. You can see a statue of Tlaloc just over the Texas border in Ciudad Acuña. Be sure to take some popcorn with you if you go.

The first popcorn machine was invented in Chicago in the 1880s. In the 1890s in Chicago, the Rueckheim Brothers developed a process for coating popcorn in caramel, then applying oil to keep the kernels separated. They started selling them in waxy boxes and named them Cracker Jacks. Almost a decade later, Vaudeville songwriter Jack Norworth wrote "Take Me out to the Ball Game" after reading an advertisement on the subway. He wrote the popular snack into chorus, giving them free advertising until the end of time.

Cheaper than dirt, popcorn was a common meal during the Great Depression and a popular snack during the sugar rationing days of World War II. Today, in the US, one billion pounds of unpopped kernels are sold every year. 70% of these are consumed at home.

Here in Jabboland, we're happy to carry on the tradition.

On the Stove Top
When a kernel reaches an internal temperature of 356 degrees, the starch and water turn into a foam that expands outward with a pressure of 135 PSI. The liquid foam congeals into a solid within milliseconds, producing what popcorn afficionados call the flake. The flake can develop into one of two configurations: the obvious Butterfly or the rounded Mushroom.

Here's how it's done:

Put a little bit of oil in a pan and add a single kernel. Turn on the stove.

For a single serving you only need about two tablespoons.

Add a pinch of salt.

Wait for the first kernel to pop.

Once it does, add the rest and let science take its course. You'll want to shake the pan a little, to make the flakes move up and the unpopped kernels move down.

Voila! A healthy, delicious, filling snack. With no additives or chemicals or mad scientist creations that taste like butter but aren't.

The image is misleading. That's a deep bowl. Two tablespoons equal half a bag of popped microwave popcorn. A quarter cup equals one bag popped. Another difference is, when you pop it on the stove, you have one or two leftover kernels. Total. Instead of several dozen. I've popped the leftover kernels from a microwave bag on the stove and gotten almost as much popcorn as I got out of the microwave. So when you pop it in the microwave, you're eating half of what you pay for and throwing the rest away.

Parting Shot
It's dangerous to go alone.

Take this.

Well, excuse me, Princess.

That's How It Tarragoes

Pickle Update
On Poker Night last week, I rolled out the Indian Spiced Carrots and the Korean Style Turnips. Both were met with approbation. The turnips didn't have much flavor by themselves, but they soaked up the onions, garlic, and pepper. They were savory with a bite. The carrots had sweet curry flavor and a lot of crunch.

The Real Deal Half Sours did not make a public appearance. My grandfather liked to tell a story about meeting a friend at a butcher shop. His friend ordered a number of steaks cut thick and a number cut very thin. When asked why, he explained the thick steaks were for him, the thin for when he had company. The Real Deal Half Sours were my thick steaks. Best pickles ever.

Sochi 2014
The Olympics this year are held in Stalin's favorite vacation locale, Sochi, apparently chosen because it stays warm year round. In honor of the Russian games, I made the traditional Russian delicacy, brined apples.

The brine contained honey and salt and I packed the apples with tarragon.

In the bottom of the jar, you can see a grape leaf. Grape leaves are rich in tannin, a chemical found naturally in plants. Tannins make coffee, tea, beer, and red wine bitter. They also help intensify your hangover. They give kidney beans their red color and add to the flavor of chocolate. Tannins in grape leaves keep pickles crispy without affecting the flavor.

Long story short: gross pickles. Aine said they tasted like cough syrup.

I also made some quick pickles last weekend, but the grocery store didn't have any dill. I just used leftover tarragon from the apples. Tarragon has a flavor similar to anise or fennel. They all taste sort of like licorice. Not a flavor you want on your cukes.

So, bunk pickles this week.

I'm sure the fault was mine, not the Russians'. For more information about what they like to eat, read this article.

Next up on the pickle schedule: Full Sour Kosher Dills.

Winter Wonderland
It's still cold. There's still half a foot of snow on everything.

This conversation happened the other day...
James: I can't wait until it's finally up in the 30s again.
Aine: I'll consider it warm when I can go out and the boogers don't freeze in my nose.

I know what you're thinking. That's a lot of talk for a married couple. We only do it to keep warm.

I bundle up Crankles before we go out.

But he seems to enjoy himself.

Look at this.

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, it's a free-hanging icicle, six or seven feet long.

Playing Catch
Fatty's favorite toy is the plastic ring from the top of a milk jug. She wants to play catch all day long every day without ceasing.

She doesn't seem to understand that humans need sleep, though. I often wake up in the morning with it lying next to my face.

Some days, she crawls under the desk, sits on her haunches, and tugs on cords like marionette strings until the router and speakers are sucked over the back of the desk. When I've had enough, I kick her out and close the door. But she still doesn't take no for an answer.

Curried Millet Cakes
In red pepper sauce and topped with coriander chutney. Another new dish we tried out. I took a picture because it looked super fancy.

Parting Shot
When I first saw this truck, I got excited because I thought Radon was a type of dinosaur. Apparently, it's some sort of gas. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, though.

Autumn in Review

It's cold and dreary outside. I've got the Michael Buble Christmas album playing. Jarling's put out their closing sign. Ohio State just trounced Illinois on their own turf, Memorial Stadium, less than a mile from here. The wind's out of east this afternoon. If you walk out into the parking lot, you can smell the humiliation.

The winner of this rivalry, dating back to 1902 (year of the first Rose Bowl, year Texaco was founded, year Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to ride in a car), gets the Illibuck. Which is basically a wooden turtle. Go figure.

What can it mean, you ask? The seasonal shut down of Champaign's favorite frozen custard spot. The yearly defeat by the Buckeyes. The... did he say Michael Buble?

That's right. Autumn is coming to an end. Since we're slipping into the holiday season, let's take a look back at the 2013 Fall Season.

Corn Maze
We returned to the Hardy Reindeer Ranch to navigate the corn maze. That night was dark and freezing. I did my time in Scouting circles as a youngster and learned this very important maxim: Always Be Prepared. Pursuant to that notion, I brought flashlights, gloves, hat, scarf, and a small bottle of Canadian Whiskey.

The maze layout this year looked like one of the guys from Easy Rider. At least before driving through Mississippi. They had six stations spread through the maze with hole punches. You wandered around with a punch card and looked for every station. We got them all. After two hours.

Here's what it looked like:

We Had the Runs
We did the Rattlesnake Master 5k/10k. This was my 7th and final race of the year. I did one adventure run, two 10k runs, and four 5k runs. It's only the last run of the year because I can't find a December race. Next year, I'll try to find something more productive to do with my time. The run was gorgeous, open prairie-land bordered by trees turned orange, yellow, and red.

Sebastian, who ran the 4th of July Freedom run with us, signed up for this one as well. Then we all went for a post run breakfast at Le Peep, the local Champaign version of IHOP. I got a bacon and potato skillet topped with cheese and basted eggs. So disgustingly unhealthy. So delicious. Also, I doused it with Cholula. Because Cholula. I rest my case.

Aine had pancakes. Of course.

The results:
James 10k - 54:37, 37 out of 83 (pretty much dead center of the pack, where I always find myself)
Aine 5k - 30:38, 69 out of 170
Sebastian 10k - 42:26, 7th out of 83 (he's sort of fast)

This is how we looked:

Bayern Stube
Means "living room" in German. A kitschy little German food restaurant north of here in Gibson City. We make a yearly pilgrimage to gorge on pork and potatoes.

They sell their beers by the liters. I kid you not. There are few things as terrifying as a liter mug of beer. I'll be honest, I wasn't man enough to order a liter of beer. I had two half liters.

Seriously. I don't have the upper body strength to lift it since we stopped doing P90X and they refuse to bring you a straw.

As you can see from the pictures, the walls are covered in animal heads, shelves full of steins, German musical instruments, and bizarre weapons. Like a flint lock pistol that's also a hatchet. Try tucking that one into your waistband.

While you wait for your meal and sip your half liter of beer, they bring soda bread and "sausage butter" to munch on. It looks like butter, spreads like butter, but smells and tastes like summer sausage. Which is sort of how I imagine heaven.

For dinner, I had the Bismark Schnitzel, named after the Chancellor because this is how he preferred it. Pork Schnitzel topped with baked apples and Gruyere. I ordered potato pancakes and saurkraut.

Ainers got pork cutlets covered with brown gravy and potato pancakes and vegetables on the side.

I didn't get a picture of her plate. This is her trying to get a picture of the tapestry behind Jessie. The artist took the time to weave an ornate hunting scene. Including one of the hunting dogs taking a steaming crap in the cold Bavarian woods.

Germans.

Say Cheese
We cut into the second pound of cheese. The one we let age three months. Let me tell you. All the difference. It tasted sharper and had a drier, crumblier texture.

This was the most successful cheese of the year.

Parting Shot
We had our first snow of the year. Baron von Flopsburg found it delightful.

Fraulein Fattywurst prefers to stay in where it's warm.

For lack of anything better to do, I decided to make flash cards of all the flags and capitals of all the countries in the world. And then learn them. I'm at 75% on the capitals and 90% on the flags. When I get these down I'm going to add the US States and Territories and probably all the disputed territories. Like Transnistria and South Ossetia. Look 'em up. They're real places. At least, they're trying to be. But probably not Cascadia, because yawn.