RESCUING KNOWLEDGE Project, a CAGLIASTRO Endeavor

This is not a regular little cook book. It is a statement of the time in which it was written, 1893, in a place in the world where wealth and wonder crossed paths with traditions and pride. This book, offers recipes for Cakes, Confectionary, Desserts, Eggs and Meats, Entrees and Fish, then veers off into the most practical category titled Medical Department & casually moves into Miscellaneous, Pickles, Pies, Puddings and Sauces, Salads, Soup, Vegetables, Wines.This is of great interest...
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This is not a regular little cook book. It is a statement of the time in which it was written, 1893, in a place in the world where wealth and wonder crossed paths with traditions and pride. This book, offers recipes for Cakes, Confectionary, Desserts, Eggs and Meats, Entrees and Fish, then veers off into the most practical category titled Medical Department & casually moves into Miscellaneous, Pickles, Pies, Puddings and Sauces, Salads, Soup, Vegetables, Wines.This is of great interest to me not only for the unusual content, rather for the order of things. Medical Department placed right in the middle of all manner of recipes for treats and good solid meals allows for me to make the assumption that self-brewed curatives were as common as shortbread and roasted chicken. The placement and frequency of these note pages may seem random, however they were well thought out so that the individual using the book could keep data of the patient's (self or others) progress from the use of the remedies listed herein.Of course, I do not guarantee the effectiveness or safety of the remedies, I am, in fact, only the re-printer of this little book, adding only these structural improvements, and not changing a single letter or word within the original.... To the point of the beauty of language there is a recipe for Crème Puffs which ends with a message to the reader stating that "If these directions are followed, the results will be all that can be wished." Language such as a "quick oven" or a "slow oven" were the forbearers of the current language such as - bake at 375 for 20 minutes is now. My point is this - that the very structure of this book makes it clear that people were present - participating in the process of creating and consuming, that immediate gratification was not a strategy, and that there was, in place, a real and genuine presence of the common sense necessary to bake a cake from only three or four lines of directives. This is what the modern human mind lacks - training in patience and common sense - to fill in the blanks where necessary without hand holding or immediate access to research. In the Medical Department section, there is a zero pandering sense of things. "A Splendid Eye Water" and a "Never Failing Cure For The Dropsy" open the section. For asthma it is suggested that a muskrat skin be worn over the lungs with the fur close to the skin, a Sore Mouth is cleared by rubbing it with powered brimstone, Malaria is solved with barberry root and rare whisky, for Hysterics take the head of a pike caught in March and make a tea of it....and thrown in a few remedies for what ails one's horse.... There are cures for both Cholera and Chicken Cholera, four options to rid the self of Diphtheria and a solution for soreness of the breast.... Miscellaneous category, the most eclectic of the group, gives us inks, bug poisons, furniture polish, ways to manage brooms and methods of hunting & fishing. The final category, Wines gives us sixteen options including two for beer and one for vinegar. This shows that the making of wine and beer in the home was as everyday an occurrence as the roasting of meats.So why share all of this now? Why offer a book from 1893, a book whose wisdom is over a century old? The answer is a simple one....because the modern mind must re-learn the patience of learning in a time when teachers are forced to teach to test standards, we have the worlds grandest library on our phones, and when we gather together at the table for a meal it most likely came from a box or the hands of delivery. Whichever the case, our first act against the impatience of waiting to remove the covers from the takeout food is to look at our phones and check our email....or worse....to dull our minds with status checks, newsfeeds and noting the tally of seemingly innocuous likes which are eating away at the vitality and importance of time....THE SORCERESS CAGLIASTRO for North Sea Tales Publishing