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Blood tongue
Blood Tongue or Zungenwurst is a variety of German head cheese with blood. It is a large head cheese that is made with pig’s blood, suet, bread crumbs and oatmeal with chunks of pickled ox’s tongue added. Has a slight resemblance to blood sausage.
It is commonly sliced and browned in butter or bacon fat prior to consumption. It is sold in markets pre-cooked and its appearance is maroon to black in color.
It is also sold in some delis as a cold cut.
Work = Freedom
“Arbeit macht frei” is a German phrase meaning “work brings freedom” or “work shall set you free/will free you” or “work liberates” and, literally in English, “work makes (one) free”. The slogan is known for being placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps.
The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps “as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.”
Although it was common practice in Germany to post inscriptions of this sort at entrances to institutional properties and large estates, the slogan’s use in this instance was ordered by SS General Theodor Eicke, inspector of concentration camps and first commandant of Dachau Concentration Camp.
The slogan can still be seen at several sites, including the entrance to Auschwitz I—although, according to Auschwitz: a New History, by BBC historian Laurence Rees, it was placed there by commandant Rudolf Höß, who believed that doing menial work during his own imprisonment under the Weimar Republic had helped him through the experience. At Auschwitz, the upper bowl in the “B” in “ARBEIT” is wider than the lower bowl, appearing to some as upside-down. Several geometrically constructed sans-serif typefaces of the 1920s experimented with this variation.
The slogan can also be seen at the Dachau concentration camp, Gross-Rosen concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, and the Theresienstadt Ghetto-Camp.
At Buchenwald, however, “Jedem das Seine” (literally, “to each his own”, but figuratively “everyone gets what he deserves”) was used instead.
In 1938 the Austrian political cabaret writer Jura Soyfer and the composer Herbert Zipper, while prisoners at Dachau Concentration Camp, wrote the “Dachaulied” (The Dachau Song). They had spent weeks marching in and out of the camp’s gate to daily forced labour, and considered the motto “Arbeit macht frei” over the gate an insult. The song repeats the phrase cynically as a “lesson” taught by Dachau. (The first verse is translated in the article on Jura Soyfer.)
American Chinese dishes
In the nineteenth century, Chinese restaurateurs developed American Chinese cuisine when they modified their food for Caucasian American tastes[citation needed]. First catering to railroad workers, restaurants were established in towns where Chinese food was completely unknown. These restaurant workers adapted to using local ingredients and catered to their customers’ tastes. Dishes on the menu were often given numbers, and often a roll and butter was offered on the side.
In the process, chefs invented dishes such as chop suey and General Tso’s Chicken. As a result, they developed a style of Chinese food not found in China. Restaurants (along with Chinese laundries) provided an ethnic niche for small businesses at a time when Chinese were excluded from most jobs in the wage economy by racial discrimination or lack of language fluency.
Dishes that often appear on American Chinese menus include:
* General Tso’s Chicken— chunks of chicken that are deep-fried, with broccoli and seasoned with ginger, garlic, sesame oil, scallions, and hot chili peppers.
* Sesame Chicken— boned, battered, and deep-fried chicken which is then dressed with a translucent but dark red, sweet, slightly sour, mildly spicy, semi-thick, Chinese soy sauce made from corn starch, vinegar, chicken broth, and sugar, and often served with steamed broccoli.
* Chinese chicken salad — Salad, in the form of uncooked leafy greens, does not exist in traditional Chinese cuisine for sanitary reasons, since manure and human feces were China’s primary fertilizer through most of its history.[citation needed] It usually contains crispy noodle (fried wonton skin) and sesame dressing. Some restaurants serve the salad with mandarin oranges.
* Chop suey — connotes “leftovers” in Chinese. It is usually a mix of vegetables and meat in a brown sauce but can also be served in a white sauce.
* Chow mein — literally means ‘stir-fried noodles.’ Chow mein consists of fried noodles with bits of meat and vegetables. It can come with chicken, beef, pork or shrimp.
* Crab rangoon — Fried wonton skins stuffed with artificial crab meat (surimi) and cream cheese.
* Fortune cookie — Invented in San Francisco by East Asian immigrants, fortune cookies have become sweetened and found their way to many American Chinese restaurants. Fortune cookies have become so popular that even some authentic Chinese restaurants serve them at the end of the meal as dessert and may feature Chinese translations of the English fortunes.
* Fried rice — Pan-fried rice, usually with chunks of meat, vegetables, and often egg.
Regional American Chinese dishes:
* Chow mein sandwich— Sandwich of chow mein and gravy (Southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island).
* Chop suey sandwich — Sandwich of chicken chop suey on a hamburger bun (North Shore of Massachusetts — the only known remaining restaurants serving this specialty are “Genghis Salem” and “Salem Lowe.” Both are located at Salem Willows Park, Salem, Massachusetts. This sandwich is traditionally wrapped in a napkin cone and eaten with a fork).
* St. Paul sandwich — Egg foo young patty in plain white sandwich bread (St. Louis, Missouri).
McDonalds: The McDLT
The Big N’ Tasty is the latest in a series of sandwiches that were designed to compete against the Whopper sandwich from Burger King. The first sandwich in this line of products was the McDLT sandwich. The McDLT was sold in a novel form of packaging where the meat and bottom half of the bun was prepared separately from the lettuce, tomato, American cheese, pickles, sauces, and top half of the bun and both were then packaged into a specially designed two-sided container.
The consumer was then expected to finalize preparation of the sandwich by combining the hot and cool sides just prior to eating. The company discontinued the sandwich in 1990 to appear more environmentally friendly as it moved away from polystyrene packaging which was integral to the McDLT “experience”.
The McDLT’s marketing focused on variations of the theme “Keep the hot side hot, and the cool side cool.” A 1985 commercial released to market the new sandwich featured Jason Alexander.
The McDLT was eventually succeeded by the McLean Deluxe in 1991. The McLean deluxe was a lower fat sandwich that included carrageenan to replace the beef fat in the patty and a low calorie mayonnaise. While the sandwich tested well, it failed to catch on after the national roll-out and was discontinued in 1994 in favor of the new Arch Deluxe, an adult oriented sandwich that featured a higher quality roll and a dijon mustard based mayonnaise. This sandwich was also unsuccessful and was discontinued in 1996.
The Big N’ Tasty was introduced in 1997 and was originally tested in the California market, while the Big Xtra was test marketed in the Northeastern United States as the MBX; during the simultaneous testing phase, either one could be sold depending upon the test market. The Big N’ Tasty sandwich was phased in nationally in 2000, displacing the Big Xtra in the United States. The Big Xtra became the basis for the Big Tasty sandwich in some international markets.
Post-mortem photography
Post-mortem photography (also known as memorial portraiture or memento mori) is the practice of photographing the recently deceased.
The invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 made portraiture much more commonplace, as many of those who were unable to afford the commission of a painted portrait could afford to sit for a photography session. This cheaper and quicker method also provided the middle class with a means for memorializing dead loved ones.
Parents posing with their deceased daughter.
These photographs served less as a reminder of mortality than as a keepsake to remember the deceased. This was especially common with infants and young children; Victorian era childhood mortality rates were extremely high, and a post-mortem photograph might be the only image of the child the family ever had. The later invention of the carte de visite, which allowed multiple prints to be made from a single negative, meant that copies of the image could be mailed to relatives.
The practice eventually peaked in popularity around the end of the 19th century and died out as “snapshot” photography became more commonplace, although a few examples of formal memorial portraits were still being produced well into the 20th century.
A post-mortem photograph of a middle-aged man. The body is arranged so as to appear lifelike (circa 1860).
The earliest post-mortem photographs are usually close-ups of the face or shots of the full body and rarely include the coffin. The subject is usually depicted so as to seem in a deep sleep, or else arranged to appear more lifelike. Children were often shown in repose on a couch or in a crib, sometimes posed with a favorite toy or other plaything. It was not uncommon to photograph very young children with a family member, most frequently the mother. Adults were more commonly posed in chairs or even braced on specially-designed frames. Flowers were also a common prop in post-mortem photography of all types.
The effect of life was sometimes enhanced by either propping the subject’s eyes open or painting pupils onto the photographic print, and many early images (especially tintypes and ambrotypes) have a rosy tint added to the cheeks of the corpse.
Later examples show less effort at a lifelike appearance, and often show the subject in a coffin. Some very late examples show the deceased in a coffin with a large group of funeral attendees; this type of photograph was especially popular in Europe and less common in the United States.
Post-mortem photography is still practiced in some areas of the world, such as Eastern Europe. Photographs, especially depicting persons who were considered to be very holy lying in their coffins are still circulated among faithful Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians.
Cure for Dysentery? Camel poop
Dysentery (formerly known as flux or the bloody flux) is a disorder of the digestive system that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the feces. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.
Dysentery is initially managed by maintaining fluid intake using oral rehydration therapy. If this treatment cannot be adequately maintained due to vomiting or the profuseness of diarrhea, hospital admission may be required for intravenous fluid replacement. Ideally, no antimicrobial therapy should be administered until microbiological microscopy and culture studies have established the specific infection involved. When laboratory services are not available, it may be necessary to administer a combination of drugs, including an amoebicidal drug to kill the parasite and an antibiotic to treat any associated bacterial infection.
Furthermore, Lewin (2001) reports that “… consumption of fresh, warm camel feces has been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy (probably attributable to the antibiotic subtilisin from Bacillus subtilis) was confirmed by German soldiers in Africa during World War II.” In addition, sheep feces contain the same antibiotic as camel feces. There are numerous reports from German soldiers of the effectiveness of sheep and camel feces being effective cures for dysentery.
Wilson’s Meats Meeting Film #1- Jim Henson
In a Jim Henson comedy short from 1965, Scoop and Skip bring viewers behind the scenes at Muppets Inc. while they produce a commercial for Wilson’s Meats.
Pogo Alice Remix, remixed
This is the music video for the Pogo Music remix of Alice and Wonderland, but with a different soundtrack underneath.