Grim's Hall

What Does a Stick of Eels Get You?

I recently discovered Historia Cartarum and a fun article there about paying rent with eels in medieval England. So what does a stick of eels get you? Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee, medieval and cartographic historian, attempts to answer that question. Here's his intro:

A question that has come up several times in conversations with people about eel-rents concerns the value of a stick of eels. The records tell us that X mill owed Y abbey Z sticks of eels per year…but what does that really mean? How much value is the abbey actually getting in their taxes? This is, unsurprisingly, a somewhat difficult question to answer.
There are very few handy charts telling us how much a stick of eels is worth, and it is difficult assessing this type of question from monastery records. Part of the problem comes from the fact that there are often several centuries between records of payment types, meaning that it can be difficult to make assessments of eel equity when rents shifted to currency. This is further complicated by the fact that eels had a specific value to monks that went beyond their more general market worth: since they were not considered flesh, they could be eaten during Lent and during other Church celebratory days that banned meat.
However, there are places where the archive lets us make an educated guess, and so here is a back-of-the-napkin attempt at finding the value in a stick of eels.

Click over for the math. And if you decide to pay your Cornell U tuition in eels this year, he'll give you an idea of how many you'll need to bring to the bursar's office.

Now That Would Be Edgy

The one I heard about today sounded like a joke to me: red leather? Fire imagery? Fake horns on their heads? That wouldn't have been edgy in 1979, after that decade of music. By 1985 Iron Maiden would have made it seem tame and mainstream.

Backup performers in dominatrix outfits? Displays intended as affronts to mainstream Christians? Have you heard of Madonna? She's not dead yet. Heck, neither is Ozzy Ozbourne, though I hear he decided to quit touring this year.

These kids should work on being able to write riffs like Black Sabbath. The parody was already done by Spinal Tap, long before they were born.

Or, if they really want to be edgy, learn to sing opera. I guess you won't get invited to the awards show, though.

VFD Gets its Money’s Worth

The ‘day’ opened with a midnight chimney fire, then a brush fire in afternoon, at which one of the trucks got stuck on muddy ridgeline precipice.

That took hours to free; then we had a meeting and evening training class.

I feel like I really earned my pay. As my father used to say, “If we keep this up we’ll get a raise, and next year we’ll make double nothing.”

Earl Hooker

While he was most famous for his slide guitar, which used standard tuning instead of the more usual open tuning and a short slide that allowed him to switch between slide and fretted playing, I can't find any videos of him playing slide. He was born in Mississippi in 1930 and died from tuberculosis in 1970, but in his day he was an influential blues player in Chicago and touring the US and Europe. John Lee Hooker was his cousin and he was influenced by Robert Nighthawk (early electric blues guitarist) and T-Bone Walker. Some of you may recognize this tune

Maybe from here

More below the fold.

Grim's Chuck Wagon Chili

Yesterday's recipe posting has me feeling like posting some more about food. There's a lot of good food writing on the internet, and I doubt that I have a great deal to offer in most areas. However, I make many good chili dishes in various forms. Here's another one.

There are many sorts of chili, I have learned in a life of loving chili. One of the chief divisions lies in whether one sears the meat first, or boils the meat first. Another lies in whether there are or are not beans included; another in whether the chilies used are green, dried brown, or red.

This is a red chili in the old Texas style. Meat is boiled raw rather than seared first.

2 pounds ground beef, 20%+ fat

Sufficient water to cover the beef

Additional beef fat ('suet'), up to 1/2 cup if beef is lean

Dried onions, 1/2 cup (add additional onion powder if desired)

Dried garlic to taste

1/2 to 1 TBS tomato powder (or substitute tomato paste)

1/4-1/2 cup dried New Mexico red chilies or guajillo chilies

2 ancho peppers

Chipotles to taste (at least 3, more if you like spicy chili)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

2 tsp sage

1 tsp black pepper (fresh ground)

Lime or lemon juice to deglaze

Salt to taste

Add meat to cast iron Dutch oven. Cover with water; add suet. Boil, covered with iron lid, until beef is soft. Add dried onions and garlic, some salt but not yet enough to finish.

Roast peppers and cumin in black iron, add water to soften once roasted and hot; puree; add to Dutch oven.

Add aromatics (sage, oregano, black pepper) while boiling.

Cook until flavors are well combined. Deglaze with squeezed lime or lemon 5 minutes before finishing. Alternatively, remove from heat (covered) while still boiling, and allow to rest overnight in a cool place. Return to boiling to sterilize. Cool and salt to finished taste preference.

A Plethora of Potentials

The local college that is putting on the EMT course for us also has training in fire fighting, motorcycle safety, casino gambling, bartending, and law enforcement.

That's quite a range. People used to tell me that studying the humanities was the road to maximizing your potential, but I don't think there's nearly as much spread between creative writing and history these days.

Grim’s Accidental Bacon-Garlic Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the manner of my grandmother, when I cook bacon I reserve the grease for later use. (I also reserve beef tallow and general pork lard.) The other day I sautéed some garlic in the bacon fat first, and just added it to my standard stock because when don’t I add garlic to a dish?

So tonight I found that my wife had purchased chocolate chips, which indicated to me that she wanted chocolate chip cookies. Therefore, I made cookies. Absently I forgot that the bacon grease was garlicked, and used it as I usually do. I realized my mistake when I smelled it baking.

It turns out that bacon-garlic chocolate chip cookies are fantastic. So, here is an opportunity for you to share in the benefits of my fortunate mistake.

Recipe:

Prior to baking, cook approx. 6 strips of bacon (I use applewood) in a cast-iron skillet. Add some fresh, crushed and diced garlic right at the end to infuse the bacon grease with garlic flavor. Remove bacon and garlic; use this for other dishes such as sandwiches, quesadillas, as a pizza topping, etc. Reserve bacon grease with garlic infusion.

Grim’s Accidental Bacon-Garlic Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I keep a pizza baking stone in my bread oven, but you probably don't need one.

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup garlicked bacon grease (if you didn't quite get 1/2 cup of grease, make up the rest of the 1 cup total fat with more butter)

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 full cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp maple syrup

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour*

1 12oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Soften butter and bacon grease; whip together with sugars, baking soda, and vanilla until fluffy. Continue beating on a lower speed as you add each egg. Add chocolate chips. Add flour in divisions to allow easy admixture. Spoon onto greased baking sheets; bake until cookies are browned across the top and at the edges, then remove to cool. Switch to cooling racks after approx. one minute. Eat hot and gooey, or save for later consumption.

* I used 1.25 cups King Arthur whole red wheat flour, and 1.25 cups White Lily Self-Rising flour; you can substitute any 2.5 cups of all purpose or similar baking flour. I like this mixture because the red wheat flour is very nutty, but then benefits from the lightness of the White Lily and its additional rising products. White Lily is the only flour capable of producing Southern biscuits, which are extremely light and tender. The red wheat flour is heavy and dense, so this mix gives you the nuttiness without the weight. A regular all purpose flour is probably just fine.

The Feast of Brigid

There is an ongoing debate about whether Brigid was an early abbess and saint whose life became intertwined with stories about an earlier pagan goddess of the same name; or, alternatively, if the folk tales later thought to be survivors of an earlier pagan tradition were themselves just spinoffs of the stories ordinary people came to tell about St. Brigid.

It is emblematic of our age that Ireland has decided to elevate her status to that of a third patron, along with Patrick and Columba, a celebration that entails her being depicted as a "kick-ass warrior poet and goddess" by the celebrity appointed to honor her. As Irish Times dryly noted, "Few people have described St Patrick as kick-ass." Just as per the recent post here and at AVI's place on the way in which Jesus was differently depicted by different ages, though, the 'kick ass warrior goddess' is the only one our age knows how to value; if she is to be important to our culture at all, she perforce must be important in that way.

What Brigid was really good at -- both the myths and the saint-stories agree -- was multiplication. She was reputed to be able to encourage or bar fertility, including of a pregnant nun (as one can multiply by zero, I suppose): "A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through the youthful desire of pleasure, and her womb swelled with child. Brigid, exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain." This has led to a pro-abortion NGO being named after the Catholic saint, which is an irony of ironies; what the Church thinks about that particular saint-story, I have not heard.

Irish Central has a collection of prayers.

The Postmodern Bill of Rights

The Orthosphere is being satirical today; Satyrical, even, in places.

"1. Congress shall make no law respectful of religion...."

Jaroslav Pelikan’s Life and Works

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name." – Jaroslav Pelikan

In a discussion over at AVI’s, james brought up Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), a scholar I don’t believe I’d ever heard of before but, after a bit of investigation, I truly wish I had.

Wikipedia tells us he was “an American scholar of the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and medieval intellectual history at Yale University.” A bit of a prodigy, he had earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary and PhD from the University of Chicago by the age of 22. He spent most of his career teaching at Yale. Coming from a line of Lutheran pastors, he also was ordained a Lutheran pastor early in life. Later in life he and his wife both became Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Wikipedia gives a humorous anecdote from his life:

While at Yale, Pelikan won a contest sponsored by Field & Stream magazine for Ed Zern's column "Exit Laughing" to translate the motto of the Madison Avenue Rod, Gun, Bloody Mary & Labrador Retriever Benevolent Association ("Keep your powder, your trout flies and your martinis dry") into Latin. Pelikan's winning entry mentioned the martini first, but Pelikan explained that it seemed no less than fitting to have the apéritif come first. His winning entry:

Semper siccandae sunt: potio
Pulvis, et pelliculatio.

The 30+ books he wrote which are listed on Wikipedia should provide something interesting for anyone in the Hall interested in Christianity, I would think. I’ll put the full list below the fold, but AVI recommends JesusThrough the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (1985). James read one of his 5-volume history, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (1973–1990).

Titles that also grabbed my attention included Bach Among the Theologians (1986), Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (1993), Faust the Theologian (1995), and What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem? Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint (1998). However, almost all of his work sounds interesting for me.

His life and more on his works are given over at Christian Scholars Online.

I’m happy james and AVI brought him to my attention. If you two read this, thank you!

I’ve included a long-ish selection of his works (copied from Wikipedia) below the fold.

Fancy "Dinner"

You have probably seen Hollywood movies in which, for a joke, an intensely masculine character played by someone like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold is taken to a restaurant at which tiny pieces of food are served as "dinner." I was taken to one such restaurant in D.C. during this last week, and the experience was much as Hollywood portrays it for laughs.

The menu was 90%+ a wine list, the less said about which the better. Though I was a guest and all such expenses were to be covered, the prices were so outlandish that I refused to spend even someone else's money on such a thing. In any case there were cocktails and champagnes provided as part of the meal, which already required breaking my January fast out of politeness to my host, so I did not feel that anything beyond water was necessary in addition.

The first course was what turned out to be a fried piece of pigeon, which was quite delicious but perhaps one and a half ounces fully cooked. It was arranged with a symmetrically tiny piece of some sort of hash, the two miniscule pieces of food arranged on a full-sized dinner plate that was decorated with a geometric drizzle of some sort.

The second course was pasta, and there were approximately four spoonfuls of it. It was good, as was the pigeon -- "squab" -- but it was obviously not intended to serve as a meal for a grown man.

The main course was billed as "surf & turf," and I think I know what that means: it means a steak served alongside a lobster or fish or the like. In this case it was about 4 oz. of slow-cooked beef shank, which again was very tasty; the 'surf' portion turned out to be the sauce provided on the side, which was made with ingredients that included fish.

Now this whole dinner was served over the course of two hours, with many lectures from wait staff about the particular ingredients used and cultural reference points -- one of the drinks they served was "Death in the Afternoon," which required some discussion of Hemmingway -- so I was good and hungry by the time the meal ended.

All was forgiven, however, when I returned to my hotel and found that the 'gift box' they had provided diners on the way out the door turned out to be -- I am not making this up -- an elaborately-wrapped cheeseburger. It would have been better hot, but the joke was well-played.

Next time, all the same, I'd prefer a real steak sizable enough that I won't mind if you keep the fish.

Dragons of Occoquan

While waiting for my evening flight, I visited the little riverside town of Occoquan.

Some Blues for Friday Night

Wild Coincidence

While here in DC, I caught up with a good friend from the Iraq war. We randomly went into an Italian restaurant because the place he wanted to eat was closed. This flag was in a frame there. The certificate has a picture of the Al Faw palace in Iraq, which was on Victory South where we were stationed together. The date of the certificate is a day we were there together, and it’s signed by the general who was our Corps commander.

Still at it

It's a month past Christmas, but my snowflake mania hasn't abated yet.

Years of War

The NYT is reporting that the Pentagon plans to increase production of 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine to 90,000 a month — in two years.

Without getting deeper into it, that accords with what I’ve been hearing up here in Mordor. They think they’re going to drag this out for at least two years, and bleed Russia white. Can you imagine the effects of 90,000 heavy artillery shells a month on a nation? Those are the big boy shells used by platforms like our Paladins.

Sorrows of Parting

It’s always hard to leave behind someone you really love.

I mean the bike, not the Winchester ’94.

I crossed the high pass at Panthertown this morning. It was 34 degrees and pouring. After a long day of airports I’m in rain-soaked DC. I’ll be here through Saturday.

Traveling Anew

Today I am packing for another trip to the DC region, my second in a month. I will be there for a week in case any of you are passing through.

Someday I hope I get to go somewhere more fun than DC and various other warzones. Once I did get to go to Jerusalem, for which I remain very grateful; and some of the warzones have had their attractions. The southern Philippines were truly beautiful, and Iraq was at least a field of honor and a place of great interest. Perhaps it is too much to wish to go to Scotland, or to Spain.

UPDATE: That piece is from the "Ladies Love Outlaws" album, which has also this funny song that I don't think I've ever put up here before.

And of course, for those who have gotten to travel widely, there's always the piece initially made famous by Hank Snow, and yet more famously recorded by Johnny Cash.

Two Differences from the Declaration

In the comments to the post on arms below, Tom asks after two differences between the logic I offer and the one from the Declaration of Independence.

GRIM:

The Declaration asserts two things that I’m not arguing here:

1) That there is a right to life (it is named, alongside ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness’);

2) That establishing a government is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for defending these rights.

I’m not arguing (1) because I am not sure about it. I’m not arguing for (2) because I hope it isn’t true.

TOM:

I would be very interested in your thinking on these two things you aren't arguing.

The latter is easily explained. I hope it will prove to be true that an adequate defense can be made through voluntary organizations of free individuals, which would not rise to the level of 'a government.' An adequately distributed capacity for resistance might make a populace sufficiently prickly, as it were, that even a tyrannical state would find it to hard on their throat to swallow.

One might argue that something like that proved to be true in Afghanistan. The analogy benefits from setting aside the question of what constitutes tyranny, and focusing purely on the dynamic of whether a free association can prove indigestible to the most highly-organized government. The Taliban's loose organization of families and those freely choosing to resist conquest proved impossible for the United States and its coalition to digest, though it kept Afghanistan in its gullet (as it were) for two decades. Previously the Soviet Union had a very similar experience, substituting for American technical proficiency significantly brutal tactics. That did not work either.

In other words, Joe Biden's favorite claim that resistance to the American government requires F-15s instead of AR-15s is likely exactly backwards. A government that depended on F-15s would have logistical chains that could be easily broken by the American military, quickly collapsing its ability to resist conquest and domination. A nation adequately provided with AR-15s could have a distributed capacity for resistance to those things that would be insuperable even by the US Army and Marine Corps even if they were provided with air superiority, fire support, and decades of time. We might do better to ship rifles to Taiwan than air defense systems.

That is what I hope is true. It does not admit of a logical proof such as I was offering in the post below, only pragmatic arguments. If it is true, though, then we can organize ourselves in the human future along the lines of anarchy: no leaders, no masters, no domination. Just free individuals defending each other's liberty, as we come together to do other worthy things -- whether churches or volunteer fire departments, accepting that the latter would require another funding model in the absence of grants from tax-funded state agencies. That would be a better way forward, one that lacked even the mechanisms for the grasping to exert power over others. It is the 'Black Flag America' that I hope someday might become the freely-chosen human future.

I will put the other question after the jump.

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