One of the many reasons I love this blog is the readers' ability to find and share some amazing things.
Yesterday's post had photos of the Dallas Arboretum, where a strange structure could be seen. 1smartcanerican was puzzled by it and asked what it was. Sleuth (what's in a name?), came up with the answer: "It's a glass art piece by Dale Chihuly. The Arboretum is hosting an exhibit of his work. At night, the pieces light up."
Amy, who's another sleuth extraordinaire, posted a picture of one of Chihuly's ceilings, followed by the link to an image search, which has countless magnificent examples of his work.
Sleuth suggested a post about Chihuly (hint, hint!) and I'm glad to oblige. I didn't know him or his work, but now I'm hooked. Learning from each other is one of the nicest things about this modest blog. A big thank you to all.
Here are some examples of Dale Chihuly's works, including some very early examples, shown in the first picture:
The artist at work:
Further photos HERE.
Sunday, 3 November 2013
Saturday, 2 November 2013
It's that time of the year...
Mrsgunka sent us some photos of pumpkins, taken at the Dallas Arboretum. They reminded me of the recipe for a deliciously warming pumpkin soup, which I first published on my old food blog. I think it deserves another outing...
Pumpkin, carrot and beetroot soup
Ingredients
Pumpkin, diced
Carrots
Beetroots
Trimmed leeks
A couple of potatoes
Dry white wine
Paprika
Chicken bouillon
Onion and garlic
A small amount of grated ginger
Salt & pepper to taste.
Preparation
Dice onions, chop garlic, cut all vegetables into chunks. I didn't give exact amounts of anything, you can vary according to taste and how much soup you're making. In a large pan, fry the onions until golden. Add the veggies, mix well, add the garlic, paprika, ginger, white wine and enough bouillon for the amount of vegetables. Adjust seasoning. Simmer for about 1 hour. Check that everything is cooked, whizz the lot in a blender, re-heat gently, taste and adjust seasoning and serve.

Bon appetit!
Pumpkin, carrot and beetroot soup
Ingredients
Pumpkin, diced
Carrots
Beetroots
Trimmed leeks
A couple of potatoes
Dry white wine
Paprika
Chicken bouillon
Onion and garlic
A small amount of grated ginger
Salt & pepper to taste.
Preparation
Dice onions, chop garlic, cut all vegetables into chunks. I didn't give exact amounts of anything, you can vary according to taste and how much soup you're making. In a large pan, fry the onions until golden. Add the veggies, mix well, add the garlic, paprika, ginger, white wine and enough bouillon for the amount of vegetables. Adjust seasoning. Simmer for about 1 hour. Check that everything is cooked, whizz the lot in a blender, re-heat gently, taste and adjust seasoning and serve.

Bon appetit!
Friday, 1 November 2013
Things change...
It's amazing to look back and see how much things changed in the last 50 years or so. I wonder what the next 50 years have in store for us...
Labels:
evolution
Thursday, 31 October 2013
All Souls extravaganza (with cute update)
Every year, for three days, people around the world celebrate souls, saints and the dead: Halloween, All Saints and the Day of the Dead.
Trick or treating is most popular in the US, but this frightening group from Australia look very good too:
As we're very fond of a certain emerald island, I found some interesting tidbits from that part of the world:
Halloween is a widely celebrated cultural event in Ireland. It is known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna (Irish pronunciation: [ˈiːhə haunˠə] ee-hah how-nah), literally "Samhain Night". In Irish, Samhain is the name for the month of November. The medieval Irish festival of Samhain marked the end of the harvest, heralding shorter days and the "darker half" of the year. It is linked to the dead revisiting the mortal world, large communal bonfires and associated lore.
Houses are frequently adorned with orange pumpkins, or traditional turnip carved into scary faces; lights or candles are sometimes placed inside the carvings, resulting in an eerie effect. The traditional Halloween cake in Ireland is the barmbrack, which is a fruit bread. The Halloween Brack traditionally contained various objects baked into the bread and was used as a fortune-telling game. In the barmbrack were a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin (originally a silver sixpence), and a ring. Each item, when received in the slice, was supposed to carry a meaning to the person concerned: the pea, the person would not marry that year; the stick, "to beat one's wife with", would have an unhappy marriage or continually be in disputes; the cloth or rag, would have bad luck or be poor; the coin, would enjoy good fortune or be rich; and the ring, would be married within the year.
I also found some music related to the theme:
According to legend, "Death" appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance their dance of death for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.
In France, La Toussaint is the holiday to celebrate all saints (known and unknown) and the departed, when they take chrysanthemums to the cemeteries. The shops and supermarkets get flooded with large pots of chrysanthemums:
The graves of loved ones look very colourful:
I couldn't leave Mexico out, where El Dia de los Muertos is widely celebrated:
La Catrina (la calavera Catrina) has become the referential image of Death in Mexico, it is common to see her embodied as part of the celebrations of Day of the Dead throughout the country; she has become a motive for the creation of handcrafts made from clay or other materials, her representations may vary, as well as the hat.
La Catrina also appears in a mural by Diego Rivera:
People go to great lengths to look spectacular. This dress is made of paper plates, plastic cups and plastic spoons:
There are many other countries that celebrate death at this time of the year. Every culture had its own way to address the theme, which certainly gives people the opportunity to let their imaginations fly!
UPDATE
I had to add this picture of Halloween in the Kalahari, courtesy of Shapeshifterbelly:
Trick or treating is most popular in the US, but this frightening group from Australia look very good too:
As we're very fond of a certain emerald island, I found some interesting tidbits from that part of the world:
Halloween is a widely celebrated cultural event in Ireland. It is known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna (Irish pronunciation: [ˈiːhə haunˠə] ee-hah how-nah), literally "Samhain Night". In Irish, Samhain is the name for the month of November. The medieval Irish festival of Samhain marked the end of the harvest, heralding shorter days and the "darker half" of the year. It is linked to the dead revisiting the mortal world, large communal bonfires and associated lore.
Houses are frequently adorned with orange pumpkins, or traditional turnip carved into scary faces; lights or candles are sometimes placed inside the carvings, resulting in an eerie effect. The traditional Halloween cake in Ireland is the barmbrack, which is a fruit bread. The Halloween Brack traditionally contained various objects baked into the bread and was used as a fortune-telling game. In the barmbrack were a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin (originally a silver sixpence), and a ring. Each item, when received in the slice, was supposed to carry a meaning to the person concerned: the pea, the person would not marry that year; the stick, "to beat one's wife with", would have an unhappy marriage or continually be in disputes; the cloth or rag, would have bad luck or be poor; the coin, would enjoy good fortune or be rich; and the ring, would be married within the year.
I also found some music related to the theme:
According to legend, "Death" appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance their dance of death for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.
In France, La Toussaint is the holiday to celebrate all saints (known and unknown) and the departed, when they take chrysanthemums to the cemeteries. The shops and supermarkets get flooded with large pots of chrysanthemums:
The graves of loved ones look very colourful:
I couldn't leave Mexico out, where El Dia de los Muertos is widely celebrated:
La Catrina (la calavera Catrina) has become the referential image of Death in Mexico, it is common to see her embodied as part of the celebrations of Day of the Dead throughout the country; she has become a motive for the creation of handcrafts made from clay or other materials, her representations may vary, as well as the hat.
La Catrina also appears in a mural by Diego Rivera:
People go to great lengths to look spectacular. This dress is made of paper plates, plastic cups and plastic spoons:
There are many other countries that celebrate death at this time of the year. Every culture had its own way to address the theme, which certainly gives people the opportunity to let their imaginations fly!
UPDATE
I had to add this picture of Halloween in the Kalahari, courtesy of Shapeshifterbelly:
Labels:
France,
halloween,
holidays,
interesting
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Jack-o'-lantern
Carved pumpkins are a familiar sight at Halloween. I decided to find out the origins of the ubiquitous Jack-o'-lantern:
The story of the Jack-o'-lantern comes in many variants retold in different forms across Western Europe, with variations being present in the folklore of Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Wales, Germany, Italy and Spain. An old Irish folk tale from the mid-19th Century tells of Stingy Jack, a lazy yet shrewd farmer who uses a cross to trap the Devil. One story says that Jack tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree, and once he was up there Jack quickly placed crosses around the trunk or carved a cross into the bark, so that the Devil couldn't get down.
Another version of the story says that Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met the Devil, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting the Devil with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told the Devil to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (the Devil could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin/Devil disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack's wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped.
In both folktales, Jack only lets the Devil go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, the Devil had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and the Devil mockingly tossed him an ember from the flames of hell, that would never burn out. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which were his favorite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jack-o'-lantern.
Here's a traditional version:
Billy and his girlfriend Sandra carved their own:
Some people go to extremes. Here are some carvings by Ray Villafane (courtesy of mrsgunka).
The story of the Jack-o'-lantern comes in many variants retold in different forms across Western Europe, with variations being present in the folklore of Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Wales, Germany, Italy and Spain. An old Irish folk tale from the mid-19th Century tells of Stingy Jack, a lazy yet shrewd farmer who uses a cross to trap the Devil. One story says that Jack tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree, and once he was up there Jack quickly placed crosses around the trunk or carved a cross into the bark, so that the Devil couldn't get down.
Another version of the story says that Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met the Devil, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting the Devil with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told the Devil to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (the Devil could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin/Devil disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack's wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped.
In both folktales, Jack only lets the Devil go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, the Devil had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and the Devil mockingly tossed him an ember from the flames of hell, that would never burn out. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which were his favorite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jack-o'-lantern.
Here's a traditional version:
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| A traditional Irish Jack-o'-Lantern in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland |
Some people go to extremes. Here are some carvings by Ray Villafane (courtesy of mrsgunka).
Labels:
halloween
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