Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
Thank
you so much for your kind letter of the 17th. It is always a pleasure
to hear from you. I do appreciate your waiving the rules about
familiars to allow Wednesday to bring little Homer - she dotes on
that spider, and I don’t think she could consider Hogwarts home
without his company.
We
were delighted but completely unsurprised by the children’s Sorting.
Of course Wednesday is a Ravenclaw - she has always had a brilliant
mind, and it is rather traditional for the women in our
family. Slytherin might have been a possibility, with her cleverness
and ambition, but sadly (and quietly, between friends) I must admit
the wrong sort have rather taken over that House at the moment. Death
Eaters are so vulgar. Gomez, naturally, is over the moon about
our little Harry being a fellow Gryffindor - the world does need more
dashing, brave, and reckless men. They make life so interesting for
the rest of us, don’t you agree? And I am certain he will be safe
under your care, after his rather difficult start in life, poor
child. That aunt and uncle of his are just too terribly common to
protect him adequately - I am grateful Albus saw sense and left him
with us rather than her.
I
appreciate your bringing to my attention the small difficulty between
Harry and Draco - I shall have a word with Narcissa. (Lucius is still
being terribly silly about that little peacock incident, and refuses
to speak to Gomez at all. Men can be so ridiculously proud. And they
really did look so much better in black.) Really, though, Harry was
only defending his friend. I probably should warn you that Wednesday
writes that she is teaching young Longbottom a few of her more subtle
defenses - I sincerely doubt Draco will trouble him in future if he
uses those. I assure you, none of them cause permanent damage, only
temporary discomfort, and she is well aware that they are only for
self-defense, not mere childish aggression. Addamses do not start
fights, but we do finish them, and Wednesday has always looked out
for her brothers.
At
least that little incident allowed you to see Harry’s flying skills
in time to recruit him for the Quidditch team. I think he shall be an
excellent Seeker - he was always the best at bat-spotting on summer
evenings, and then there was the time he “borrowed” Gomez’s
broom to rescue Pugsley’s pet octopus Aristotle, who had developed an
unaccountable taste for tree-climbing, but had neglected to learn how
to climb down. It was a successful rescue, even though he was mildly hampered on his descent by Aristotle clinging to his face in terror.
Please
send my apologies to Severus for that unfortunate incident in Potions
class. I should have warned him that Wednesday was experimenting
with, shall we say, some variant recipes. I am quite certain,
however, that Miss Parkinson’s hair will grow back normally, and that
the snakes are only a temporary embellishment.
My
best regards, and do drop by for tea if you ever happen to be in the
neighborhood. Thing has perfected your favorite shortbread recipe - I
do believe he has a little crush on you. Or perhaps it is merely that
you are the only visitor we have had, outside of family, who is
sensible enough to shake hands with him without flinching.
They suddenly had money, fridges, freezers, and access to a variety of foods - all things that hadn’t been widely available before. Suddenly people had access to things that were beyond the dreams of people just a 100 years prior.
Enter corporations willing to go “oh yeah, you know what’s great (now that you can afford it)? Cold beef soup, served in a glass. Drink up your beef!”
Early 40s/50s foods are something I’m very passionate about.
They had no concept of what flavors tasted good together so they tried everything. The biggest ideas that were latched on to were things like loafs with layers that compose your entire meal and the suspension of basically anything/everything in jello (jello actually helped food last longer, because the gelatin sheltered whatever ingredients were used from bacteria. So, naturally, you put a fish in it).
Also pineapple. It was harder to get before then so the sudden availability of it made people go nuts. Bananas too to a degree.
Welcome to the wild and wacky world of Aspic, otherwise known as meat jello.
jello history is a fucking trip
i am pretty sure the entire 1940′s was made out of hollandaise and aspic
Aspics were around for a LONG time before the ‘40s… again, it was about the best way to keep leftovers edible.
IN FACT, ASPICS ARE HOW USING AGAR FOR PETRI DISHES GOT INVENTED
The science dudes started out using gelatin but a) some bacteria just dissolve the shit out of gelatin so it turns into goop and smells terrible and b) it melts at like 80-90F so you can’t incubate it at body temperature on account of, again, it turns into goop
so this lab tech named Fannie Hesse started using agar instead of gelatin
why? because agar had been used in southeast Asian cooking forever to make food do the gel thing, and it was starting to get adopted by European cooks to make things like ASPICS THAT DON’T MELT IN THE SUMMER
which apparently had been a thing that plagued European cooking previously?
anyway 50/50 this is a story about the triumph of girl power and also how to profit off of the knowledge & biology of non-European places, or “colonialism in a nutshell.”
the dudes in the lab had been futzing around for years trying to find different ways to make gels for growing bacteria, but none of them tried agar because none of them knew it existed. Fannie had learned it from a Dutch ladyfriend who’d learned it during her girlhood colonizing Indonesia/the Dutch East Indies, where people’d been using agar for centuries to make jellies that don’t melt in the tropics. European men at that time… did not cook. So it was pretty much impossible for knowledge of agar to spread through male social & professional networks.
so anyway that’s the story of how horrifying jello salads, colonialism, fucking off gender norms, and seaweed came together to bring us pretty much the entire science of microbiology.
straight boys are weak and pathetic, queer girls walk into the ladies changing room and see ten women naked, do they stare? do they say something inappropriate? do they make them uncomfortable? no because they have the common fucking sense to recognise when a situation is sexual and that people deserve the most basic level of respect to not be harassed, yet here we are banning shorts and low cut tops in school because straight boys are weak and pathetic
okay i made this post this morning and it has since had eighty two thousand notes, it’s been featured on reddit, facebook, twitter i’ve been sent multiple death threats and messages that i don’t even want to describe
and i have to apologise
i’ve seen the error of my ways
straight boys are not ’weak and pathetic’
straight boys are weak, pathetic and fucking annoying
