My friends, when searching Hathi, IA, WikiSource, Perseus, DPLA et al gets frustrating, here you go - an easy to use, odd, kind of self-indulgent but not at all stupid, free E-BOOK site for all your ancient/medieval/renaissance/etc. eras up to about 1920? reading needs!
Add it to your digital library links NOW.
It was while I was at Fifty Words for Snow I found this:
...with my apologies to Mr. Peenee for taking so long to provide the link. (Let's test his memory.)
It is a cookbook centered around what arguably could be called the first 'fad' appliance - a chafing dish. Basically you were young, single, poor and living in the big city for the first time in some horrible little crappy room. But we got you fam! Here! Have a chafing dish!! You can cook in that squalid little room in a pretty little pot OVER A FUCKING CANDLE FLAME OMGWTFBBQ *running in circles like a chihuahua* - although a spirit lamp is the official line (what else can I do with this sentence?) and thus your ass will save money all over the place and will accrue all kinds of other benefits, including the ability to cure scabies by laying on hands like a monarch of the realm, which I made up.
Our author writes with such cheerful aplomb it's enough to make you laugh out loud, which I did several times, although I admit that in such matters I am a cheap date. Still, never have I enjoyed reading a cookbook so much! And there's footnotes! And outside links! And commentary by the owner of this site!
GEEZE JUST READ: The Cult of the Chafing Dish
__________________________________________
Look what arrived three days ago!
Industrial Explorings in and Around London, by “R. Andom”: "An 1895 travelogue of a dozen very different factories in the London area, copiously illustrated by T. M. R. Whitwell". Sounds like a must-read to me!
ReplyDeleteA chafing-dish, a "fad" item? Oh, fuck! Once the Madam reads about it, we'll have another "labour-saving device" cluttering up our cupboards...
Jx
PS I'm sure if you ask nicely at the barbers or a dentist, they'll let you use their sterilising cabinet on the toxic hazard that is those shorts.
I let them lay on the dining room table overnight. WHAT HAVE I DONE
DeleteAs much as I am tempted to open "Fifty Words for Snow" I think I'll just hold on to what I learned from Simila's Sense of Snow many moons ago. The joys of chafing dishes, sweetpea! They only meant fine dining experiences at my mother-in-law's dinner parties. Yeah, we're bougie like that. LOL xoxo
ReplyDeleteOMG Smila's Sense of Snow! That was an excellent book! But honestly there isn't anything sus about this site at all. Ask Jon ^^. Look what he came up with. Some book about Victorian factories; I ask you.
DeleteI had to look up Chafing Dish to see what it even is! Cooking/Heating Foods over Candles, how Quaint to get your Food Poisoning!!! Those Tongs I hope now you'll never be using again? *LOL*
ReplyDeleteYou know what? YOU are just the kind of person who needs to get in on the Peripatetic Pantaloons El Verde, senorita. It's a major award. Like a leg lamp. So far there is no detectable odor.
DeleteYour right about the Nations! I think Dawn should get in on the next contest!!!
DeleteDuly bookmarked. Merci beaucoup.
ReplyDeleteOh my gods! You weren't wearing gloves. YOU WEREN'T WEARING GLOVES!!!! The tongs alone aren't enough! The 'Shorts virulent microbes and bacteria would have made their way up those tongs and onto your bare, unprotected skin within a second! AAAAAEEEEIEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIf you ask me, they should come with the tongs!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI started to read this not long after you posted it But there is much for me to delve into it will take me a while to post a worthy reply.
ReplyDeleteGosh how you work me! xxx
As for the Green 'The Freakin' Green Elf Shorts' it never occurred to me that they were real and actually exist in the real world. I thought they were an imaginary game.
You are honoured and blessed to have custody of them.