This month's meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Social Studies is full of new tricks, just in time for Valentine's Day.
Besides three fun lectures on the histories of underwear, marriage, and old-timey sex scandals, there'll be burlesque performances by Dottie Dynamo and a raffle for a $50 gift certificate from local lingerie shop Brooklyn Fox. Plus, sticking around until the end will get you a free 1/2 hour of Buffalo Trace....
Last week, America's Test Kitchen published this handy timeline of popular cakes throughout American history. I immediately fell in love with the weirdest of the bunch--the stained glass cake--and googled up the recipe.
A product of the 1950's, the stained glass cake is a much more colorful variation on your plain old icebox cake, which would often be made with chocolate wafers layered with whipped cream. Ideally, the cake is refrigerated for...
Well, not exactly cuddles (or cuddles at all), but eating rabbit can certainly be the death of you.
Rabbit starvation - or the more exotic name mal de caribou - shows up when you eat too much lean meat and are, you know, trapped in a desert or the tundra or a similarly punishing environment. Your kidneys can't handle the high amounts of protein without supplemental fat/carbohydrates and you'll soon be pushing up daisies. It works the...
If this post were a horror movie the title would be appropriately ominous. Since it's about food I guess the right word is "hint."
Chopsticks were invented about 4000 years ago in China, and spread to nearby Japan, Korea and Vietnam without too much trouble. I'd like to think it's thanks to 筷子 translating to "quick little bamboo fellows" but if you'd prefer to think it's thanks to utility that's fine as well.
While Chinese missionaries...
I was excited to learn that two of my favorite things, New York City and gum, have a bit of shared history. Here's the short version:
In 1869, General Santa Anna, eleven-time former President of Mexico, was exiled in Staten Island, staying with Thomas Adams, a former photographer he had met decades before.
Santa Anna thought chicle could be mixed with rubber to make cheaper tires and suggested it to Adams as a business...
