Jacobs - Raja Rasalu - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

 Did you know this month included Independence Day?...No, not here in the U.S., but on the opposite side of the globe, where two countries sit uneasily side by side with their own Independence Days one after the other.

The transition from British colony to two separate countries came for Pakistan on August 14 and India on August 15 in 1947.  Here in metro Detroit we have well-established communities for each country, but less is obvious about a possible Punjabi community.  I have told for each here, but have yet to have anyone mention the Punjab region, which was split so each country has their own Punjab state.  Punjabi culture is lightly covered by Wikipedia, but a more thorough look at both states can be found on Encyclopedia.com.

ਰਾਜਾ ਰਸਾਲੂ

Don't know all that?  If not, you probably also have never heard of their unusual folk hero, Raja Rasalu. 

I discovered Raja Rasalu while prowling for Punjabi stories, since it would be part of each country's folklore roots.   Flora Annie Steel's classic 1894 Punjabi folktale anthology was Tales of the Punjab.  She calls him their chief legendary hero, but present day information often ignores him.  In the notes section, she also attempts tracing possible actual people and times, but concludes "his story is almost hopelessly involved in pure folklore. It has often been discussed in learned journals."  She names the journals and I could give other background here, but want to dive into the story instead.  I chose Joseph Jacobs' Indian Fairy Tales over Steel precisely because he combined and condensed the legends into a single story.  Jacobs took his version from Steel's collaboration ten years earlier with Major R.C. Temple called Wide-Awake Stories:  A Collection of Tales Told by Little Children, Between Sunset and Sunrise in the Panjab and Kashmir.  Yes, some of those stories fit the nursery tale set, but definitely not Raja Rasalu.  Her later book is so similar, I wonder how much Temple contributed as she supposedly took the legends from ballads of wandering Punjabi minstrels.

If you are familiar with storytelling Tale Types, you will see Jacobs combines several story types into his one story.  I admit Jacobs' language is a bit dated, revealing it was written in 1892.  Songs or verse also are inserted.  That's a common stylistic element in Punjabi literature.  A storyteller omitting it for normal dialog still would find this episodic tale lively enough to beg for a modern re-telling.    Sometimes that happens with public domain material because of its age.

Something else that happens is my copy of Joseph Jacobs Indian Fairy Tales has a tight binding.  Unfortunately this means sometimes you have to forgive the lettering in each page's margin.  Printers call that part of the page "the gutter."  I don't have a way to get this story out of the gutter, but think it's still worth reading.  I hope you don't mind the slight fuzziness and maybe even consider it part of the challenge of traveling back to this old tale.  If you want to read more go to Archive.org's digital copy of Jacobs' book.  They were able to copy an edition without this limitation.

UPDATE: Be sure to note the cover for Indian Fairy Tales and the various illustrations, including the humorous end illustration, by John D. Batten, who illustrated all of Jacobs' anthologies.

One quick note from Jacobs: Chaipur, I should explain, is a game played by two players with eight men, each on a board in the shape of a cross, four men to each covered with squares.  The moves of the men are decided by the throws of a long form of dice. The object of the game is to see which of the players can first move all his men into the black center square of the cross. ... It is sometime said to be the origin of chess.

LSK: Rather than compare it to chess, we know it as the Parker Brothers board game of Parcheesi.  Unlike the story, bet you don't have dice made out of the bones of skeletons, but then you don't have to defeat enchanted dice and keep your head from being cut off either.  After you read today's story, you'll have an interesting  story to tell about the game and its origin.

Jacobs ends the story there and, in my opinion, it's the perfect spot for a feeling of wrapping up the main part of the narrative.  If you really want "the rest of the story" (not a "happily ever after") you can check The Adventures of the Panjab Hero Raja Rasalu and Other Folk-Tales of the Panjab by the Reverend Charles Swynnerton, published in 1884, and mentioned by Jacobs in his notes.

I do like Swynnerton's closing to the Adventures and think it would fit well with a modern retelling, especially if it began with an introduction saying Major Temple believed it was possible Raja Rasalu might be a real person from the eighth or ninth century who ruled an area along the Indus River.  Swynnerton closes with: Some say Rasalu never died, that he crossed over or descended into the river Indus to lands unknown, and that, like King Arthur, he will one day return again.

That gives the story the legendary status it deserves.

On the other hand (not to be confused with the multi-armed Hindu deity, Shiva) in deciding how you might tell it, remembering the majority of Punjabi . . . Sikh and ye shall find.

Stop that groaning!  Thank heavens you don't have skeleton bones to throw.  I freely confess I would lose a game of Chaipur or Parcheesi if I had to refrain from puns, so don't challenge me to a game.

*************

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

 

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

   

You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/.  
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

"Crockett" - Colonel Crockett and the Honey Bees + "his" Almanacs about Eclipses - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

from The Crockett Almanac 1841

I've posted about bees and hornets recently (and even honey if you count the World War I recipes).  Old time "Crockett Almanacs" give us yet another story of these insects and also a 19th century look at eclipses.  August 21 we'll have the first total solar eclipse across the entire contiguous United States since June 8, 1918, so eclipses are something everybody seems to be talking about now.

Talking about folk heroes seems to make them last forever.  As for politicians, maybe they just seem to never die.  Davy Crockett was both a folk hero and a politician.  He officially died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, but "his" almanacs (1835 to 1856) were filled with Crockett tall tales supposedly written down by the publisher, Ben Hardin, who also is given in some tall tales as a friend and companion in some adventures.

Reproductions occasionally do not perfectly show a letter.  Might the type face have been just as bad in the original?  I don't know, but the language is certainly the original.  The almanacs attempt to sound and be mis-spelled as the public expected the frontier hero, soldier, and politician might have told the stories.  It is an interesting visual way to attempt hearing the backwoods language of that day.  When it puzzles you (and it will), try saying it out loud to see if you understand what is said.

Eclipses - 1840

Eclipses -1841

and then the story, but first a quick note.  Because the story is supposedly about a trick Crockett played on Teddy O'Rourke it opens with a description of the differences between Yankees and the Irish.  Don't let it "get your Irish up", I know mine was under control and I always, or way too often, "speak before I think."

This was the picture at the end of the 1841 almanac.

Even though the story's title is "Colonel Crockett and the Honey Bees, he's in the background watching the trick he played with Jimmy Flatfoot on Teddy O'Rourke to stop his bragging (not that Davy would ever brag)

Before leaving the idea of almanacs and eclipses, let's have some facts and a bit of fun.  You may want to check the almanac that is probably the most accepted since its founding in 1792, the Old Farmer's Almanac.  Here is their look at Total Solar Eclipses in the U.S.  Notice that they say "Accurate observations of solar eclipses in the 19th century were sparse until the solar eclipse of July 18, 1860."

Anybody who knows me knows I can never resist a pun, so I'll close with this lunar or loony riddle.  How does the Man in the Moon gets his hair cut? . . . E-clipse it. 

O.k. stop that groaning and enjoy the astronomical mania currently happening.  Can't find truly safe solar glasses?  Here's a video on how to make your own solar eclipse viewer.

************ 
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

 

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

   

You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/.  
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!

World War I Recipes

We interrupt scheduled stories to taste food from the past!

Logo for the WW1 Centennial channel

My historical programs can get tasty if I am asked to make suggestions.  In the past I've made suggestions for Victorian Christmas programs.  Now I'm being asked for similar recipes for my World War I program.  I'll give them here, but first want to credit their source as it's good for way more than just this.  Fortunately, Michigan's WW1 Centennial channel since 2012 posts wonderful videos each month on YouTube and has resources for Foodies seeking to go back in time.

Dennis Skupinski

Ann Arbor's Dennis Skupinski does an outstanding job of wringing out facts and photos each month.  Each December he has not only posted World War I recipes, but tested them, too.  I strongly recommend a subscription to those YouTube videos. The suggestions remind you to check it each month and browse it for all those back videos.

Michigan's WW1 Centennial

An additional resource he offers is a Facebook page, again titled Michigan's WW1 Centennial.  My only complaint? suggestion? really isn't a problem with what Dennis has done, I think highly of his work, but Facebook is a poor archival tool.  When his videos mention checking Facebook for the recipes, it's not always easy or even possible.  Unless you want to go to the university libraries of either Wayne State or Michigan State to view the microfiche, War Time Recipes by Janet McKenzie Hill, I recommend the videos.  If you want to see what I list here yourself, use the Closed Captions and the pause.  (You'll also see how often live CC done without human editing is ... dare I say "laughable"?  it's so wrong and yet is what the deaf must use.  Maybe "sad" is more accurate, but laughter replaces the problem of not having it at all.)

Most of the recipes come from the "Julia Child" of her day, Janet McKenzie Hill, who wrote War Time Recipes that was clearly produced by Proctor and Gamble -- almost every recipe uses their Crisco -- in association with the U.S. Food Administration. “It is dedicated to the American housewife as an aid to the preparation of hundreds of economical appetizing foods that will enable her to say without in the least sacrificing either tastefulness or variety of her meals.” Hill was an early practitioner of food science and scientific cooking. She was also the founder of the Boston Cooking School magazine in 1896.

As a further bit of background the videos explain: 

All homeowners were urged to sign pledges and “...housewifes with schoolchildren signed pledges that they would not leave a single scrap of food on their plate and not eat in between meals...”

Guess that's where my mother got the "Clean Plate Club" she proudly used to point out I belonged to since I was not a picky eater.  Then again, the ideas of World War I's U.S. Food Administration were recycled to World War II since this wasn't the War to End All Wars originally expected.  Even my fellow Baby Boomers later could be encouraged with the "Leave Nothing on Your Plate" mentality.  Those corn flakes also enriched Michigan's Battle Creek cereal factories.

Herbert Hoover was chosen to head the U.S. Food Administration. He already had the experience of doing this earlier, running the Belgium relief effort, supplying food there in 1915. He convinced President Wilson it should be run by a single administrator instead of a board. He refused a salary, saying it gave him the moral authority to ask the American people to sacrifice to support the war effort. His memoir states he saw his job as asking Americans to go back to simple food, simple clothes, simple pleasures.

The U.S. Food Administration in each state was to ensure the supply, distribution, and conservation of food during the war. This was to facilitate transportation of food, prevent monopolies and hoarding and maintain governmental power over food by using voluntary agreements and in licensing system. The country's volunteer efforts were to save meats, sugar, wheat flours, and vegetable oils. A request to sign pledges was made on Friday and by the following week Americans embraced meatless Mondays and Tuesdays and porkless Saturdays.

Dennis points out multiplying the butter saved by using Crisco (cottonseed oil), times all the Americans substituting it, made a large difference.  It certainly established Crisco as a household staple for generations. Besides that, the videos show various types of flour substitutions for wheat flour and for sweetening uses honey instead of sugar.

Note, all mixing is done with a whisk, not a blender.  In my own notations I use "T" for Tablespoon, "t" for Teaspoon, and "c" or "C" for Cup.  I will give the various recipes chronologically, providing the hotlink,  as found on the annual December videos and look forward to the 2017 recipe.  Those videos also give you pictures of the preparation and final product.

December 2012, #7

Michigan Muffins (don't know why Hill called them that, but it started off the series with Michigan's contribution

1 c barley or oat flour (saves over a cup of wheat flour)

½ c wheat flour

½ t Salt

½ t Baking soda

1 ½ t Baking powder

1 egg beaten lightly

3 T Crisco melted (saved about ½ stick of butter)

1 c thick sour cream or sour milk

Sift all dry ingredients into a bowl, add the egg, Crisco, and cream, and beat thoroughly. Bake in a well Criscoed muffin pan at about 350 degrees for 20 minutes or in Criscoed rings set on a hot griddle. When baked on the griddle, turn when the first side is baked to bake the other side. When the muffin pan cools, remove the muffins and serve with honey to save butter and sugar.

December 2013 

Holiday Meals of the U.S. Army during World War I

This is one time the recipes aren't by Ms. Hill, but from the military and it's a biggie.  The army recipes were for 60 soldiers, but Dennis scaled the recipes for 6. The link also shows old movies of the military cooks at work and military food transportation.

45 pounds of chicken becomes 4 and a half pounds.  I'm going to use the 10 % version, but the YouTube video shows the original if you want it.  I'm not sure my own scaling back on the other amounts is reduced precisely as he did it.  The manual also says the same method could be used for turkey as for chicken.

¼ pound minced onion, browned

1 pound bread crumbs

1 pound potatoes, mashed

1/8 pound flour

1/8 pound fat, butter preferred

Pick and clean chicken well, saving the heart, liver, and gizzard, which should be chopped fine and used in the gravy or stuffing.

Fill space vacated by entrails and craw (Lois - ?) with stuffing.

Sew up chicken with strong thread and bend the wings under the back and tie down to the body.

Make a batter with the flour and fat, seasoning it with salt and pepper, and rub the chicken with it before placing in the oven. After the chicken has been in the oven about 20 minutes, add a little hot water and baste frequently until done. This generally requires about two and one-half hours, depending upon the quality of the fowl. When the flour is brown check the heat. When done, the legs can easily be separated from the body.

To make the stuffing

Moisten the bread crumbs with water; mix with potatoes, onions, and giblets; season with pepper and salt, sage, thyme, or other flavors; stuff well into the chicken. The bread may be soaked in oyster liquor and oysters added to the stuffing; or celery, currants, or raisins, may be used instead of onions. Lemon juice or nuts may be added. This stuffing may be used with any fowl or fish.

Potatoes, sweet, candied

2.2 pounds sweet potatoes

butter

sugar

beef stock, strained

Wash the potatoes and boil until fairly well done; peel and slice lengthwise, spread in three layers in a bake pan, putting about one third the sugar and butter on top of each layer; pour the beef stock over the whole and bake in a medium hot oven (about 350 degrees) for 40 minutes or an hour.

For non-candied Baked Sweet Potatoes

Wash well and remove all defective spots; place in a bake pan and cover with a second pan to prevent evaporation while baking, and bake until well done, usually about 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

If desired, the potatoes may be peeled, rolled in fat, and lightly sprinkled with sugar and salt before baking.

Potatoes, cheesed

2.2 pounds potatoes

beef stock

grated cheese

Use any leftover cooked potatoes; cut about the size of a lima bean; season with salt and pepper; mix with the beef stock; add the grated cheese two or three inches deep over the bottom of a well-greased bake pan and bake for about 30 minutes in a quick oven or about 350 degrees. (Dennis didn't have any leftover cooked potatoes, so he baked his own first, giving him also potatoe skins as hors d'oeuvres.)

Cranberry Sauce

1 quart of cranberries

¼ pound of sugar (he notes this is less than commonly used now and makes a tangier version of the sauce)

Wash and boil the berries well; put in a clean boiler with about 1 inch of water; cover tightly and boil until the berries break to pieces and cover themselves with their juice; remove the lid and let simmer in order to dry them out. Sweeten with sugar, boil about five minutes and pour into an earthen or wooden vessel and cool. Serve cold with chicken or turkey, or nearly any kind of meat or cake.

December 2014
Back to the War Time Recipes of Janet McKenzie Hill.  I must say the Conservation Sandwiches don't interest me, but it's more personal preferences on their contents.  (I'm not truly a strict vegan, more flexatarian, and while I love cheese, it doesn't love me so I could eat #1 with a cheese substitute -- it's interesting how she finds a way to rescue stale bread.  Notice also this is before the days of buying pre-sliced bread.) 

Crisco dates back to 1911 and the name is a modification of the phrase "crystallized cottonseed oil" -- the original oil hydrogenated to remain solid at room temperature.  Today's Crisco is no longer a Proctor and Gamble product as it was sold to the J.M. Smucker Company in 2002, but more importantly the fat content has changed.  I suggest reading the above hotlinked Wikipedia article's section on changes in fat content, especially if you are diabetic.  That same article notes Crisco's marketing success came from their giving away cookbooks.

Sorry, I found that online and can't get it clearer, but love the vision it created of wartime support.

Conservation Sandwiches, No.1

Spread any variety of stale bread cut for sandwiches in a thick layer of grated cheese (dry). Sprinkle with salt and paprika and press together corresponding slices or shapes. Melt three or four tablespoonfuls of Crisco in a frying pan, lay in the sandwiches and when delicately browned on one side, turn to brown the other side. If the bread be very stale, beat an egg, add half a cupful or more of milk, with a dash of salt and pepper, and soften the sandwiches in this before frying them.

Conservation Sandwiches, No. 2

6 olives

1 or 2 chicken livers

Cooked salad dressing

Bread cut for sandwiches

Chop the olives fine, mash the cooked livers smooth, mix the olives and livers with enough dressing to make a smooth paste, and use as a filling for any variety of bread.

Simple Potato Soup

4 potatoes

1 onion sliced

2 T parsley leaves

¼ c celery leaves

1 quart boiling water

3 T Crisco

3 T flour

2 t salt

½ t Pepper

3 c milk

Pare the potatoes, cut in quarters, and let stand in cold water an hour or longer. Boil the potatoes, onion, and fresh or dried leaves in the water until the potatoes are done (Dennis notes that's about 20 minutes). Press the whole through a sieve and keep hot. Melt the Crisco; in it cook the flour and seasonings; add the milk and stir until boiling; add the hot potato puree, with more milk if needed.

Dennis also noted this soup can also be the base for clam chowder.

Flemish Carrots

The carrots may be canned, fresh cooked, or dried. They may be sliced thin, cut in cubes, or very young carrots may be cut in quarters, lengthwise. For a pint of carrots, melt 2 T. of Crisco, in it cook slowly ¼ cup of finely chopped onion and 1 T. of parsley. Keep the dish covered and stir occasionally. When tender, add 2 T. flour, ½ t. salt, ½ t. sugar, ¼ t. pepper; stir until blended; add 1 C. meat broth, and stir until boiling; add the carrots, drained from the water in which they have been boiled (or canned) and let simmer very gently 5 minutes.

December 2015

Cream Sauce

2T Crisco slightly melted

2T Flour

¼ t Salt

1 c milk

Mix until it turns into a crème

Eggs in Nest

1 C of pickled tongue or ham cut fine

1 C of Cream Sauce

1 pint of hot mashed potatoes

4 eggs

4 slices of tomato

4 T cracker crumbs

2 T of Crisco

Rub the inside of a large Au Gratin dish (Lois:glass casserole) with Crisco

Stir the meat in with the sauce and spread over the bottom of the dish

Above the meat form 4 nests of mashed potato

Break the eggs in the nest

Melt the Crisco, brush over the potato part with the Crisco, stir the crumbs into the rest

Set the slices of tomato betweeen the eggs, spread the crumbs over them

Cook in the oven until eggs are done, which will be about 25 to 30 minutes at 350 degrees

Sunny side up eggs inside mashed potatoes which are covered with Crisco to make them like hashed browns with ham and cream sauce spread around the sides.

Mayonnaise Dressing with Crisco

1 C Crisco unmelted

2 Egg Yolks beaten light

2 t Mustard

1 t Salt

¼ t Paprika

¼ t Black Pepper

4T Vinegar

Beat the Crisco to a cream, very gradually beat in the yolks, then the seasoning, and lastly drop by drop the vinegar

Tomato Salad

Peel the tomatoes, cut out the hard piece around the stem, and let chill.

When ready to serve, cut in slices, and set them on heart leaves of lettuce, carefully washed and dried.

Prepare the mayonnaise dressing by adding 2 to 3 T of horseradish.

When serving, serve a generous T of dressing on each slice of tomato.

With the mayonnaise dressing you can use it on other vegetables.

 

December2016

French Fried Potatoes

(Here's an interesting bit of historical trivia, I had no idea French Fries date back in the U.S. to 1802 when President Thomas Jefferson asked for potatoes to be served in the French manner at a White House dinner.)

Dennis in his preparation notes, while McKenzie doesn't say, russet potatoes are usually the type of potato used.

Pare or peel the potatoes.

Cut the halves lengthwise and then in pieces like the sections of an orange.

Let stand in cold water for an hour or longer and then dry with a soft cloth.

Soaking the potatoes removes the starch, keeping the potatoes from sticking together and eliminates the sugars that prevent the potatoes from achieving maximum crispiness.

Fry in hot Crisco to a rich straw color and until tender throughout.

Once they are done, drain them on a skimmer and then on a soft paper towel and immediately sprinkle them with salt and serve them at once.

Cooked Rice Muffins

1 c cooked rice

1 c wheat flour

1 c milk

4 T baking powder

2 T melted Crisco

1 T salt

2 T sugar

Mix the rice evenly with the milk and Crisco

A beaten egg may be added if desired

Sift in the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar and mix thoroughly

Bake in a hot Criscoed muffin pan about 25 minutes at 375 degrees

When filling the muffin pan, you want to fill up with batter about halfway full

After about 25 minutes your muffins will turn golden brown and ready to be eaten.

Pop them out of the pan once it cools a bit.

Cauliflower with Onion Sauce

Boil the cauliflower in the usual manner. When tender, set in a dish suitable for the oven or the table.

(Dennis adds this means you're going to boil your cauliflower anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on how soft you like it.)

For the Onion Sauce have ready as many boiled onions as will make enough for 1 cup of puree when pressed through a sieve (1 to 3, according to size).

Heat the cup of puree.

Add a c of hot cream

½ t of salt

¼ t of pepper

Beat in the yolk of 1 egg

Pour the sauce over the cauliflower

Have ready ½ a cup or more of ½ inch cubes of stale bread sauteed in 1 or 2 T of hot Crisco

Sprinkle these over the cauliflower and onion sauce

Serve very hot.

So what are you doing reading this?  Get busy cooking and eating in the World War I way.  Here are some postcards from the era to encourage you, including gardening when not cooking or eating.

Bailey - Cuffy ... part 2 - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

Fear of bees or bee stings is a common phobia.

Isn't it a good thing bear cubs can swim? Last week we saw Cuffy running for the river to stop the stinging after his attempt to raid a honey tree.  First let us see how he manages.

Afterwards I'll give a brief Anishinaabe tale from our Great Lakes Native American wisdom.  Along the way including some factual information and a source or two for other Native American lore.

Yellow Jacket or hornet

As I mention on my website's page about nature programs I offer,  I and my puppy puppet, Buzz,  especially want to help children with one of their biggest fears... BEES, while learning their vital role in our food supply.

When the Going Buggy in the Garden program was being prepared, various Nature links were selected.  The Storytelling Resources section of my website includes them in the page of Specialized Resources under Nature.   They mainly focus on insects, especially bees, but my years as a librarian let me find similar resources for your program.  The same page also includes tools to let me or you make puzzles and other handouts on your topic.

I promised a brief Anishinaabe tale related to bees and hornets.  

Bee (collected by a scientist) -- note its fuzzy hairs, unlike a hornet

Back in the early days after Gitchee Manitou (the Great Spirit) made the world, Nanabazhoo (also spelled and pronounced in many ways including Manabozho) was able to help with some of the early problems.  One of those problems was brought by bees, who said their honey and their own safety was endangered as they had no defense.   Nanabazhoo needed time to think of a solution and told them to come back later and he would help.  When the time came, the generous bees brought their cousins, the hornets with them.  Nanabazhoo had created stingers as a weapon for the bees, but the hornets took them, too.  While bees agreed to use the stingers only once and then only to defend themselves or their honey, the hornets made no such promise.  Hornets have awful tempers and will sting repeatedly.  So often people mistake the Yellow Jacket for the Bee and too often blame the bee.  

While there aren't many Native American legends about the bee, you can find a few at Native American Language Net and there's also this Cherokee tale of "How the Honey Bee Got Their Stinger " which shows some similarity and comes from First People - The Legends.  The late author and folktale collector, Louise Jean Walker, grew up in Michigan, so of course she did what she could to gather the old stories then in danger of being forgotten.  This story can be found in her Legends of Green Sky Hill.  She also created a companion book, Woodland Wigwams.  

All of this talk about insects reminds me of the time I quoted Ogden Nash, saying:

In His wisdom God created the Fly

and then forgot to tell us why.

Since so many Native American tales are Pourquois tales -- tales telling us why something is the way it is, I asked a Medicine Woman about the fly.  She pointed out their role in decomposition of dead animals, food, et cetera.  She knew many stories, but she never gave me one for the fly.  Maybe you can create one?  

In the meantime be thankful to the bee and keep it safe, for it is vital to our agriculture.  Next week I think we may yet have another adventure by Cuffy since this is a busy time for me.

*********

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain."  The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated.  I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century.  My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them.  I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.  

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

 

Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-

• There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection.  I have long recommended it and continue to do so.  He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm

• You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories.  There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
  
  Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"

The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:            

         - David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html

         - Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain

         - Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html

         - Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales

         - Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ and put in http://www.story-lovers.com/ in the search box.  I recommend using the latest "snapshot" on November 2016

       - Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html

       - World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ 

   

You're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to find some of these old links.  Tim's site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a full-time job.  In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she could no longer maintain it.  For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but using the Wayback Machine you can still see it.  At the Wayback Machine I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later year and clicked until I reached the Library at http://www.pjtss.net/library/.  
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.  I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.

You can see why I recommend these to you. Have fun discovering even more stories!