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farlaI have a book, The American Frugal Housewife. It's an authentic reprint of a book from back in the days we were still killing off those uppity Indians, and it contains advice and basic recipes. I've had it for years and every now and again I'll pick it up and read through. Bits of it are hard to understand because they're just so far outside modern frames of references. I remember reading about making vinegar and wondering how you could dump a jug of vinegar in with non-vinegar things and wind up with more vinegar rather than diluted vinegar. It seemed like some sort of colonial version of Odysseus' magic wineskin and I would spend a minute or two trying to figure out if there was some sort of self-sustaining chemical reaction going on.
Some of these issues resolved with age and the discovering that vinegar works on the same principle as beer. Others were more subtly odd. For example, there's a section of stuff to feed sick people. There's gruel, which is water with a tiny amount of grain in it that still has the consistency like water. Then there's this section for 'people who can't stomach gruel', which was weird because again, it's practically water. Those things were a lot of variations on what amounts to flavored water where you pour boiling water on something - apples, beef, whatever - let it sit, drain it and give it to the sick person.And there's a recipe for rice soup, which I remember having once when I was pretty sick. The rice soup is, according to the book, for people who are getting better. I was always a bit bemused by this section on really really weak broth, until I reread it recently. My eyes caught on the phrase about 'not able to keep down anything else' and I suddenly realized that this was for people who, in modern times, would be in a hospital with three IVs in their arms and doctors checking on them every hour.
I've read the book dozens of times, and I never put that together. A lot of bits in it are like that. You can just read it along and if you pause at a given point and think about it, you'll do this mental double-take of oh god, that's what they're talking about. It's all so matter of fact the occasional bursts of horror just flow right by, and it makes it all the more profoundly shocking when you finally notice.
It's the same thing as in some historical documents we would read in classes. They're speaking to the norms of the time, and there are these sentences that you can just pass by if you're not paying attention, but that are so incredibly shocking when you realize what they mean. And other times it seems people were actually doing it deliberately. I read a book once that pointed to a particular phrase in an old journal where the writer talked of how they came to a place "like a grave" and dug it up, finding some tools. Then they reburied the bones.
It's things like that that make me want to be a historian or something. A job of reading this stuff and trying to figure out what it means. It's the same kind of feeling as trying to read through much of the Old Testament, only less but with actually realizing what they meant.
Some of these issues resolved with age and the discovering that vinegar works on the same principle as beer. Others were more subtly odd. For example, there's a section of stuff to feed sick people. There's gruel, which is water with a tiny amount of grain in it that still has the consistency like water. Then there's this section for 'people who can't stomach gruel', which was weird because again, it's practically water. Those things were a lot of variations on what amounts to flavored water where you pour boiling water on something - apples, beef, whatever - let it sit, drain it and give it to the sick person.And there's a recipe for rice soup, which I remember having once when I was pretty sick. The rice soup is, according to the book, for people who are getting better. I was always a bit bemused by this section on really really weak broth, until I reread it recently. My eyes caught on the phrase about 'not able to keep down anything else' and I suddenly realized that this was for people who, in modern times, would be in a hospital with three IVs in their arms and doctors checking on them every hour.
I've read the book dozens of times, and I never put that together. A lot of bits in it are like that. You can just read it along and if you pause at a given point and think about it, you'll do this mental double-take of oh god, that's what they're talking about. It's all so matter of fact the occasional bursts of horror just flow right by, and it makes it all the more profoundly shocking when you finally notice.
It's the same thing as in some historical documents we would read in classes. They're speaking to the norms of the time, and there are these sentences that you can just pass by if you're not paying attention, but that are so incredibly shocking when you realize what they mean. And other times it seems people were actually doing it deliberately. I read a book once that pointed to a particular phrase in an old journal where the writer talked of how they came to a place "like a grave" and dug it up, finding some tools. Then they reburied the bones.
It's things like that that make me want to be a historian or something. A job of reading this stuff and trying to figure out what it means. It's the same kind of feeling as trying to read through much of the Old Testament, only less but with actually realizing what they meant.
