omgwtf!

I haven’t done it so much lately in recent years because it’s hard as hell to find a really nice used book store in southern California, but one of my favourite pastimes is to spend hours and hours in used book stores, perusing the shelves for such literary treasures as youd never find at a Barnes and Nobles or on Amazon.com. Plus, old bookshops just smell better. I could just sit and breathe in one all day long.

Between that and the fact that you can get the most amazing tomes youve ever clapped eyes to for ridiculous prices…I have a copy of Ivanhoe from 1895, complete with gold leaf edging, that cost me a whacking great five bucks…I can’t think of a better or more enjoyable way to pass the time than meandering through the stacks of a truly great used bookshop.

I haven’t done it so much lately in recent years because it’s hard as hell to find a really nice used book store in southern California, but one of my favourite pastimes is to spend hours and hours in used book stores, perusing the shelves for such literary treasures as youd never find at a Barnes and Nobles or on Amazon.com. Plus, old bookshops just smell better. I could just sit and breathe in one all day long.

Between that and the fact that you can get the most amazing tomes youve ever clapped eyes to for ridiculous prices…I have a copy of Ivanhoe from 1895, complete with gold leaf edging, that cost me a whacking great five bucks…I can’t think of a better or more enjoyable way to pass the time than meandering through the stacks of a truly great used bookshop.

One of the things I miss the most about Minnesota…and yes, I do miss Minnesota in all the ways I knew I’d miss it…is Stillwater. If I moved back to that state, I’d probably do my best to find a place in Stillwater. It’s a charming town and it has some of the best bookshops I’ve ever been to in my life, including a theological bookshop in the basement of a church up one of the most suicidally steep hills you’ll find in that otherwise flat state.

Stillwater is on the St Croix River, and right across that river is Wisconsin, known for its rolling hills. Stillwater is one of the few Minnesota towns built on some of those hills, and that’s just one of the reasons I like it. Not to mention that the St Croix is a breathtakingly lovely river, and the whole area is fantastically beautiful, especially in the autumn.

Amongst my favourite books to collect are cookbooks…but old ones. With the advent of the Internet, it’s become a lot easier to find medieval recipes for things, but there’s nothing that quite takes the place of a cookbook written in the 1800s or early 1900s. They are often replete with housekeeping tips of the day, as well as articles and advice on foods and the preparation thereof. But one of the best things about these cookbooks is how they “educate” women on not only how to run an efficient and pleasant household…and these cookbooks unswervingly admonish these housewives that it is their duty to please their husbands by doing so…but cookbooks of these periods also diverge radically from the beaten path of cookery and instruct these women on how to behave, as well.

For instance, one of the best cookbooks I have not only contains long-forgotten recipes from the beginnning of the twentieth century, some of which are really amazingly good, but they also admonish the owner of the cookbooks that she should be freshly bathed, laundered, and made up, the house should be clean and neat, the children should be changed and freshly clothed…and QUIET…by the time The Man comes home. Dinner should, of course, be on the table awaiting HRH The Husband upon his arrival, and she should make it a point to remove his shoes, put on his slippers for him, make sure that whatever poisonous substance he prefers smoking is readily available to him regardless of the discomfort it might bring to the developing physiology of his children or his wife’s health, and that she should be quiet, modest, and endeavor to refrain from talking about her own day in any way, since The Man needs peace and quiet after his stressful day in the sewer or driving a bus or pushing some papers around.

What any of this has to do with cookery is beyond my comprehension, but it does make for an amusing read.

What does have to do with the culinary arts, however, is the menu plans that are set out in this particular cookbook. A job I’m working on right now, in which the person being interviewed is wisely holding forth on what women should be served at dinner, reminded me forcibly of this cookbook. Aside from the fact that this individual’s profession indicates that in no way should he be intimate with women on any level, his comments have so far moved me to not only irritation but curiosity. How does this man know about this stuff? He’s a priest. The most he should know about is that it’s bad to drink the sacramental wine to get loaded and how to diddle little boys.

I acquired this cookbook that I’ve been talking about at a shop at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, which is actually a really fun place. More about that in another post, but I encourage you to Google it if youre at all interested in frontier history…it’s not the original fort, of course, but it is on the original location and has a huge number of original artifacts left, as well as actually having costumed employees there in period dress acting out the lives of the men and women who lived at Fort Snelling in the day.

The meal plans that it lays out include meal plans for children and adults, but what’s interesting about it is that it separates the adults into gender specific menus. Women, as this cookbook dictates, should eat as little meat as possible. Instead of such unfeminine foods as potatoes and meat, we should restrict ourselves to a more sensible diet of flowers, lettuces, and fruits so that we can eat daintily and keep our slender figures in order to please our husbands. Being women, we need not the more nutritious forms of sustenance.

However, a man needs to eat far more substantial foods to keep up their masculine…well uh, masculinity, I suppose…and therefore should be allowed to shovel every kind of red meat, starch, and otherwise manly foods into their maws until they are replete and belching, half asleep, at the dinner table while we shoo the children into their rooms so that Daddy can lounge around, farting and watching a football game, while we, in our perfect attire and makeup (complete with matching high heeled pumps), can tidy up the kitchen, presumably in time for the post-game blowjob that will send Our Man off to bed, there to dream sweetly of how good it is to be the king.

This priest guy that I’m transcribing right now reminds me forcibly of exactly why this cookbook both amuses and incenses me. It was written in the late thirties, and is chock full of such advice as has been long ago rejected by any thinking human being who possesses even the merest morsel of intellect and self-worth. Apparently, this gentleman on my tape this morning has no truck with either trait, at least when it comes to women. Which is no surprise, really, considering what the man does for a living.

It’s just good to see that the more things change, the more things stay the same. As far as I’m concerned, and contrary to Father Somebody’s peculiar beliefs, chicken is not a dish specifically tailored to suit the needs of women. I like chicken, but this guy makes me want to go out and eat a steak. And then vomit it right up into his stupid, ignorant, sexist lap.

Well, back to work. Twenty two minutes can seem like such a long time sometimes, you know?