bogman’s last supper

last fall, with the aid of an attractive botanist who has the hots for my older brother, i began perfecting a 2,400 year-old recipe for gruel. there are older food recipes* out there but this one is certainly the most precise. it contains over 25 ingredients (one of which is fine sand) and takes days to make (mostly because gathering seeds is highly time consuming). 

you might be wondering how such an old recipe was recorded—and the answer is neither parchment nor clay. in fact this particular gruel recipe was reverse-engineered from the stomach contents of a murdered european man from the age of iron. because his body was preserved for posterity in bog water, modern scientists have been able to determine (down to the smallest kernel) the type of gruel that the bogman had for dinner—and the answer is danish weedseed gruel.

i have written about the bogman and given my own recipe for his gruel over at the awl. if you’re so inclined, you can make your own tonight—you’ll just have to fly to denmark with your gleaning basket to do so*.

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*for instance, check out this 3900 year-old sumerian beer-making poem.

*the fine print: some of the ingredients may cause photosensitivity and blistering of the skin.

bogman’s last supper illustration by niels bach

on eating elephant

what does elephant taste like? some intrepid individual over at the awl searches through every single book on the google books website and gets an answer for you. 

As anyone educated by “The Flintstones” knows, one of prehistoric man’s favorite meals was barbecued mastodon ribs. Paleolithic cave paintings seem to support the claim (though whether the ribs were prepared with a dry rub or marinade is still a hot topic in archaeological journals). In fact, evidence suggests that early hunters found their way to the new world in the first place by chasing mammoth herds as they fanned across continents. So how did the cow, an ugly-looking milk monster from Vermont, become the utilitarian protein of the masses while the elephant, the mammoth’s lumbering grand-nephew, is only ever eaten in animal cracker form? The long answer involves section headings like animal lifespan, infrastructure, social taboos, endangered species lists and insurmountable husbandry challenges.

The short answer, however, is simple: the elephant has the strength of a hundred Danny Trejos. Add in its trunk and a set of thrashing tusks, and it’s best not to mess with one. But back in the day, certain adventurous individuals did eat elephant flesh and live to tell the tale for our vicarious benefit. Here are their wild accounts. READ MORE

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special thanks to aaron cohen for his help in gathering information.

know your spoon handles

the next time your special spooning partner asks for a special spoon, you might consider offering one of the prelude, enchantress, 1810, or courtship variety.

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source: 1939 advertisement for the international silver co.

week 9: uno

what intrigues me most about diy prison culture is the same thing that intrigues me about the oulipo: that creativity can persevere, indeed it can flourish even under the most severe constraints—be they the inability to use multisyllabic words or the lack of access to metal forks.

some of the objects that jailbirds have been able to craft during their time in the big house are absolutely genius. but alcohol? is improvised prison wine even possible? like great scotch, pruno has many different methods of preparation and flavour notes, but the basic recipe is the same:

mix warm water, fruit juice, sugar, ketchup and moldy bread (for yeast!) in your prison toilet. cover, heat occasionally, wait a month et voilà, enough hoochy booze to inebriate a mastodon!

i was going to make a batch and force my handsome friends and orson to test it out. thankfully this has already been done. what i can do is give you the hook-up on some other words that have uno in them.

ceraunoscope · an apparatus used by the ancients to imitate thunder and lightning
chaunoprockt · wide-breeched
crunode · a point on a curve where it crosses itself; a node with two real tangents
cunopic · dog-faced, shameless
eunomic · law-abiding; socially well adjusted or ordered
lacunose · of a manuscript: full of gaps or hiatuses
lacunoso-rugose · wrinkled with irregular furrows
nounou · a wet nurse
unodorable · incapable of being smelled
unorn · of persons: plain in manners or appearance

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this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride.

turtle-ka-bob

if you are like me and have a pet turtle and haven’t gone shopping for groceries since parsnips were in season, this recipe for turtle (from the indian ocean island of mauritius) may come in handy:

Skewered Turtle Meat

Marinate 1-inch cubes of turtle meat in lemon juice, salt, crushed garlic, and a little oil. Alternate on skewers with pieces of turtle liver and grill over charcoal. Serve with boiled turtle eggs, a hot chutney sauce, and rice.

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disclaimer: i did not actually eat this recipe. i don’t really like rice, so i served the turtle meat on toast points instead.
from: unmentionable cuisine(1979) by calvin schwabe

words wholly unrelated

mouse & dormouse

both are freaky little rodents and both have the word mouse in their name, but neither word is related. mouse comes from the old english word mus while dormouse most likely comes from the latin word dormir meaining “to sleep” (the dormouse is inactive in the winter).

incidentally, as long as i still have this cookbook infronta me, here is schwabe’s recipe for ancient rome-style stuffed dormice:

prepare a stuffing of dormouse meat, pepper, pine nuts, broth, asafœtida, and some garum. stuff the mice and sew them up. bake them in the oven on a tile.

just like mama used to make

if you are getting tired of making each and every one of rachael ray’s “entréetizers” you may be interested in a cookbook that orson just got me. it’s called unmentionable cuisine (1979) by calvin schwabe and features authentic recipes for taboo meats. the “ozark stuffed opossum” caught my eye, as did “grilled rat bordeaux style” which recommends using wine cellar rats because of their high alcohol content.

but what really made my salivary glands frothy—is the recipe “cuyes a la arequipeña” (guinea pig arequipa style). in peru, guinea pigs are widely consumed, even by vegetarians. it is said that their meat is similar to that of a rabbit, although it tasted more like gerbil to me. anyhow, in honor of my very good friend alfonso who is getting married this weekend in lima, here is the recipe for cuyes a la arequipeña that combines all three traditional andean ingredients (i’ll spare you the method of at-home slaughtering, though will mention that it involves the word disarticulation)

fry meat along with finely chopped onions and a generous amount of crushed garlic in oil until golden. add fresh yellow chili peppers (previously seeded, soaked in saltwater, and ground into a paste), black pepper, and salt. cook a bit and add quite a bit of ground toasted peanuts (or peanut butter), several boiled potatoes, and a couple of potatoes mashed with a fork.

et voilà!

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image credit: 8th result on google image search for “guinea pig” with the safe search off, because that is how raynor ganan lives his life: without filters and haplessly surrounded by ben wa balls.