Throughout the course of my life I have met some extremely colorful characters.  I have a large circle of people who I am happy to call friends.  I have a lot of clients that I work for that I don’t really consider friends.  I want to tell you about a couple that fall into the former group.

These folks originally joined my group of acquaintances by becoming customers of mine. I was approached to update their existing business website, MagnetQueen.  It was a long process as their website was a bit larger than I anticipated.  Long jobs, as any developer or graphic designer will tell you, tend to stick with you.  This one introduced me to Brian and Liza,  Native New Yorker’s that migrated their business here to Tennessee.  They make Save the Date Magnets for weddings, birthdays, graduations, you name it.

Brian is a Fordham University graduate and Liza is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design.  Together they have owned and run their own successful business for many, many years.  They would tell you that they wish they could be a lot more successful but, what other person wouldn’t  tell you the same?   They are a fun couple that likes the arts and are superb conversationalist and over the years I have grown very fond of them.  Most importantly they make some of the coolest magnets you can imagine.  My refrigerator is covered with picture magnets and fun magnets they have made for me over the years.

If you are in the market for some unique invites to give for your next event.  I hope you will consider my friend’s work.  I think you will be very pleased. 

Here’s to you Brian and Liza.

http://www.magnetqueen.com

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Pecan Pie

    Pecan pie has a pretty murky history.  Pecans as a plan have their origins in Texas.  Pecans are an ancient food with evidence that they existed in the fossil record before the Indians showed up here in America.  That being said there are actually two widely agreed upon origins for the delight we know today as Pecan pie.  It seems that about half the historians attribute the pie to the French-American who settled in what is today known as Louisiana.  No known written recipe for pecan pie has ever been found dated before the early twentieth century.  This causes the other half of historians including the Karo syrup folks themselves attribute the origins of the recipe to mass manufacturers of corn syrup.  In any event that certainly helped to spread the joy of the pecan pie to the rest of America and beyond.

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Pumpkin Pie

   The basics of pumpkin pie go back to writings in medieval times sometime before the 1500′s where pumpkin was stewed with sugar and spices and wrapped in pastry.  When the English migrated to the Americas on that faithful voyage of the Mayflower they brought the humble pumpkin with them.  It became a staple of life. The colonists would cut off the head of the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and fill the insides with milk, spices, and honey. This was then baked in hot ashes.  I think it’s interesting how the early colonists used pumpkin meat as an ingredient for the crust of pies, not the filling.

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Apple Pie

    Americans would like to think of apple pie as being an American dish, unfortunately it is not. Way back in the fourteenth century the English were making meat pies as a staple. Fruits such as apples were substituted in the traditional meat pies and viola’ you had a dessert. Apple pie was a favorite dessert during the reign of Elizabeth I.  In Colonial times the taste of a dish was emphasized more than appearance and presentation. Pies were often baked with a “take-off crust”. The process allowed sugar and spices to be added after the apples had baked in the bottom pastry shell. Sliced apples were arranged in a pastry-lined pie pan. The pie was baked with the top crust loosely placed on top, but not sealed to the under crust. When the pie was done, the top crust was gently lifted off, sugar and spices were added and the top crust replaced before serving. Sometimes the top crust was baked separately from the bottom crust and assembled after both parts were completely cooled.

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Chess Pie

    The last pie to make my list is Chess.  This one seemed to be the hardest to pin down. Some “Pie Scholars”, think it’s a corruption of the word cheese. It seems the jolly old English used to make a lemon curd pie, which has a filling that bears a striking resemblance to the dairy product. Supposedly southern cookbooks used to describe pies with curd like textures as cheesecakes or cheese pies, even if they contained no cheese.  Another theory is that it’s a corruption of “chest.”  This theory is based on a story that chess style pies contained so much sugar that they could be stored in a “pie chest” (or “pie safe”) without spoiling, rather than a refrigerator, where most pies needed to be kept.  Another origin story involves a possible town of origin called Chester, England.

    There you have it.  Pies and their fantastic tales.  You can make and send me any of these pies you like.  Cheers!

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    Wiki tell us that a scarecrow is, traditionally, a human figure (or mannequin) dressed in old clothes and placed in fields by farmers to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops. These can be many different shapes and sizes often having cans, strings or metal wires dangling from them to make extra noise when the winds blow.

    The first scarecrows in recorded history were made along the Nile River to protect wheat fields from flocks of quail. Egyptian farmers put wooden frames in their fields and covered them with nets. The farmers hid in the fields and scared the quail into the nets.

    In Medieval Britain scarecrows were actually live boys around 9 years old or older. Known as bird scarers or bird shooers, they patrolled wheat fields carrying bags of stones. If crows or starlings landed in the fields they would chase them off by waving their arms and throwing the stones. When The Great Plague killed almost half the people in Britain in 1348 landowners couldn’t find enough bird scarers to protect their crops so they stuffed sacks with straw, carved faces in turnips or gourds, and made scarecrows that stood against poles.

    Native American tribes throughout North America used scarecrows to protect their corn crops. When Europeans began to settle in North America in the 1600s they stood guard in their fields to protect the crops they needed for survival.

     By the 1700s, the growing American colonies needed more and more grain and farmers decided that neither farmers nor bird scarers were protecting the crops well enough. Towns all along the Atlantic coast offered bounties for dead crows. So many crows were killed that in the 1800s a new problem arose. Corn borers and other worms and insects which were once eaten by the crows were now destroying more corn and wheat than the crows had. Towns stopped offering bounties and farmers went back to making scarecrows.

    Immigrants who moved to the United States during the 1800s brought with them a variety of ideas for making scarecrows. In Pennsylvania, German farmers built human looking scarecrows called a bootzamon or bogeyman. His body was a wooden cross and his head was a broom or mop top or a cloth bundle stuffed with straw. The bootzamon wore old overalls, a long-sleeved shirt or coat, a worn woolen or straw hat, and a large red handkerchief around his neck. Sometimes a second scarecrow was built to keep the bootzamon company. A bootzafrau or bogeywife, dressed in a long dress or coat and wearing a sunbonnet on her head, was placed on the opposite end of the field. The bootzamon and bootzafrau guarded cornfields, strawberry patches, and cherry orchards.

    Scarecrows can be both scary and fun, they make an excellent craft project and a super subject for research since their evolution seems intertwined with our own. We are very lucky to have such a great fall icon to delight and spook us.

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 No, it is not Southern slang for dodging things a chimp might throw at you.  Its a truly fascinating dish that seems to have it’s origins in the deep south of Louisiana.  The name Turducken is a portmanteau of turkey, duck, and chicken.  It is a dish consisting of a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The chicken and the rest of the gaps are stuffed, sometimes with a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird. 

     A November 2005 National Geographic article by Calvin Trillin traced the American origins of the dish to “Hebert’s Specialty Meats” in Maurice, Louisiana. They have been commercially producing turduckens since 1985, when an unknown local farmer brought in his own birds and asked Hebert’s to prepare them in the now-familiar style. The company prepares around 5,000 turduckens per week around Thanksgiving time.

     In all honesty the thing doesn’t look all that appetizing.  Still, I have always wanted to try one of these things but have never had the patience or skill to prepare one.  Its something that always grabs my attention when I see a newspaper article or a TV spot about it.  How bout you..are you ..GAME..?
   …sorry I had to, it was begging to be said.

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     Looks like the key to giving a bit of Thanksgiving dinner to the dog or cat is to give just a bit – moderation. Large amounts of unfamiliar foods will cause nausea, vomiting and/or diarrhea in pets. Instead, offer a small amount of turkey and stuffing mixed in with the dog’s normal food.  You really don’t ever want to give your dog a bone from any kind of fowl.  This is because the bones in birds are hollow and when a dog chews them they tend to splinter.  Remember that chocolate in any amount is toxic to a dog.  You may be tempted to feed them just a bit especially around the holidays BUT BEWARE.  ANY amount is harmful to a dog.  they may not exhibit sickness signs after eating a small amount but their body still has to metabolize the toxin and hours or days later they will be sick. 

     I will follow these rules myself and Skipper, that’s ma dawg, will surely have a great meal on T-Day, just like the rest of us!  Cheers to all!

My Dog Skipper!

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Ah its pumpkin pie time again! I love all pie but the pumpkin pie truley is the epitome of a delightful Thanksgiving meal  in my opinion. How much do you really know about ye ole pun’kin pies of old?

     Pumpkins are related to squashes, cucumbers, and cantaloupes. References to pumpkins date back many centuries. The name pumpkin originated from the Greek word for “large melon” which is “pepon.” “Pepon” was nasalized by the French into “pompon.”  The English changed “pompon” to “Pumpion.”  Shakespeare referred to the “pumpion” in his tale The Merry Wives of Windsor.  American colonists changed “pumpion” into “pumpkin.”  The “pumpkin” is referred to in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater and Cinderella.

   In the New World, the pumpkin’s ancestors can be traced back 9,000 years to Mexico. Native Americans used pumpkins for food long before any European settlers arrived by drying strips of pumpkin and cutting them into mats. They also cut strips of pumpkin and roasted them on an open fire to get them through the long winters. As centuries passed they learned many ways of enjoying the inner meat of the delicious and nutritious winter squash: baked, boiled, roasted, fried, parched, or dried. They also used pumpkin seeds for medicine. The Native American term for pumpkin is “isquotm squash.”

     The pumpkin pie originated when the colonists cut off the head of the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and filled the insides with milk, spices, and honey. Then they baked the pumpkin in hot ashes. Also, early colonists used pumpkin meat as an ingredient for the crust of pies, not the filling.

     Who knows who made the first pumpkin pie? But I ‘m sure glad they did!

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