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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1959-02-19, Page 6The Eyes Had Lovers. of literature in FX'anO.e. are preparing to .celebrate this year the 160th anniversary of the birth of a genius who Wrote. more and worked harder than any other writer known to 'Wry T-Ionore de Balzac, lie wrote nearly one ilkindred novels, seventy of which were Major ones, and countless short stories and newspaper articles. He was a podgy little man, only 5 ft, 2 in, tall, but Many lovely women he had never Met fell in love with him and wrote him love letters, declaring that his romantic writings "laid bare the soul of women" as other books had done before. Balza e was something of a dandy.. He bad amazing eyes, which those meeting him never forgot. "There was nothing like those eyes," wrote a friend, years afterwards. "They had life, bril- liancy and magnetism. Yet he had coarse features, a big nose and a double chin, His hair was black and bushy," Just before his death in 1850 a doctor said that he might live a week at most. "A week of fever!" Balzac • muttered, "That. gives me time to write another book!" Santa's Sack Full Of GoIdt CROQUETTES when it will flake easily on test- ing with a fork and is an opaque white shade to the centre of the portions. Makes 3 or 4 servings. * * * woollen underwear, They dang- led and kicked as Santa yelleciz "Quiokt Coom, somohodrl AY not get t'rough dis yavtlish bolo," Several men stood on 'the bunkhouse table, pulled, tugged, and eventually lowered Santa to the floor, He wore a .white drill parka, a stocking cap>. .and beard as white as cotton, which pqw appeared to be growing from the side of his face! Fling- ing a burlap sack. ill front of 1(10ndy, he turned and strode towards the door. "Hey," Hans yelled, "ain't you goin' back up the chimney?" - "Tot by dam sight," Santa re- torted, Klondy heard the thump of a ladder against the bunkhouse, then the fading tinkle of sleigh- bells as Santa headed back over the hill, A miner opened the sack and dumped the presents in her lap— gold nuggets, nugget-chains, five- and ten-dollar gold pieces, white ermine skins, lovely Arctic fox furs. But no. doll's house. All the way home she never said a word—until Mother asked her what was the matter; then she told her. Up jumped her father. He went over to the table and cut and. hammered at some- thing. A little later he called "Merry Christmas, Klondy" He'd cut the bottom out of a maple syrup tin which had been designed and shaped like a house. He'd poked holes in the painted window and set the tin over a lighted candle, The light shone through the little holes, and real smoke curled up from the chimney—the opening for pouring out the syrup. Klondy sat in front of it, star- ing, staring. "I think it was the. nicest Christmas present I ever had," she says. "I thought I'd tell you I've been here just on twenty-five years," said the timid employee to his boss, hopefully. "So," boomed the employer, "it's you who's worn the holes in the carpet." SALMON Good fish deserves a cook's best care. Here are two tips worth remembering. To preserve a fish product's fine appearance, handle it as little and as gently as possible during and after cooking. To preserve its fine fla- vour, take care not to overcook it, Fish has no tough connective tissue and so doesn't require a lengthy cooking period to make it tender and to develop its fla- vour. It can be baked, broiled, steamed, poached or fried with excellent results. Recommended cooking times are useful as a guide to tell when fish is cooked, Usually they are based on the measured thickness of a product rather than. on its weight. * A * How can you tell when fish is cooked? The indications are as clear as traffic lights. A piece of raw' fish- whether pink, white or cream coloured has a watery look. During the cooking process the juices become milky in col- our, giving the flesh a whitish tint. This colour change is un- mistakable, When the flesh has taken on an apaque white tint to the centre of the cut, it is com- pletely cooked. At this time the flesh will separate into flakes when prodded with a fork and if there .are any bones present it will separate 'from them easily. Fish -cooked beyond this point tends to lose juices, dry out, and become increasingly tough and flavourless. A seafood curry is a conveni- ent main dish to serve during the Lenten season. It's quick and easy to make, it's an excellent means of using up leftover cook- ed fish or shellfish, and de- sired, it can be prepared in ad- vance, refrigerated, and then heated before the meal. Basically a seafood curry con- sists of one or more varieties of cooked or canned seafoods in a curry-seasoned sauce, 'accompa- nied by fluffy cooked rice and side`dishes of condiments: It can be as -bland or' as hair-raisingly hot as the taste demands, and the condiments which accompany it can be many or few. ,FISH CURRY 1 pound cooked fillets (2 cups flaked, cooked fish) % cup chopped onion 1 tart apple, peeled & chopped 2 tablespoons butter, melted 2 teaspoons-curry powder lee teaspoon. salt 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk 1 tablespoon lemon juice 3 cups hot, cooked, rice Flake fish. Cook onion and ap- ple in butter for about 5 minutes or until soft. Blend salt and curry powder with .flour and sprinkle ,over the mixture, Stir in milk gradually. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Add lemon juice and fish. Heat mixture until piping hot, Serve on hot, cooked rice. A. few, raisins mixed with the rice are an at- tractive and 'delicious garnish, Makes 4 servings. * * SALMON LUNCHEON CROQUETTES 1 can (I ounces) salmon 1 cup seasoned, cooked, mashed potatoes 1 egg, beaten 1 tablespoon chopped pimiento 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon grated' onion IA teaspoon salt teaspoon pepper Dash cayenne Dry bread crumbs (about 1 tablespoon)' 1 egg, • lightly beaten I/2 cup dry bread crumbs Drain and fiake.salmon, mash- ing bone with a fork. Mix•first 9 ingredients listed, them add enough dry bread crumbs so that mixture can be handled '(1 to 2 tablespoons required). Shape as desired; dip in lightly beaten egg, then in dry bread crumbs. Chill• for at least 1 hour. Fry in deep hot ,fat (375°F.) for about' 5 minutes or until golden brown. Drain on absorbent paper. Serve plain or with a sauce. Makes 4 servings. IN STOCK — Batty Lou Cowger Wears abbreviated western get- up to advertise the San Antonio, tenth anniversary 'stock show and, rodea. Wendy Nelson will never for- get her first Christmas With the tough goldminere of ()pi* Creek, Alaska, though she was a child at the time, I-ler father, Warren Nelson, had left their Soul It Dakota home for the Klondyke goldrush in '58. Four years later, she and her mother went north to join him. The last lap of the journey was by stage coach from Nome to, Council, along the coast over the frozen Bering Sea. A mile offshore there was a splintering crash and the coach stopped, Brower, the driver, began yell- ing and his blacksnake whip cracked like gunfire. Looking out, one of the passengers order- ed everyone to pile out of the coach, The two leading horses of the six-horse team had gone through the ice! Klondy and her mother scrambled on to a hummock and stared at the black, jagged hole in the ice where the two horses were rearing and floundering in the running sea, Brower did the only thing he could — chopped the animal loose to save the rest, then took a gun and shot them out of their misery. Later he said to Klondy, "Guess you think I was pretty •hard about them horses — I can't let myself git to like 'em, If I ever git to like 'em, then it's harder when I got to do what I just done." They were 10 days reaching Council. The rest of the journey was by dog-sled. They were ac- companied by Big Hans, a man from Ophir Creek, •'who kept taking swigs from one of a num- ber of jugs he was carrying. On the way the whole team bolted off the trail and over a sharp cornice after a flock of ptarmigan. They capsized the sled, pitching Klondy into a snow-bank at the bottom of a gully, where she was almost buried alive, As Hans floundered down after her, and began kicking around in the loose drifts, Klondy's mother screamed at him: "There she is! Right behind you." "I know where she is," he snarled, "I'm looking , for my jug." " With Corey Ford, Klondy Nel- son gives a vivid account of life in the Klondyke in "Klondy: A Daughter of the Gold Rush". They describe a Christmas party in the miners' bunkhouse at Ophir Creek, The Christmas tree was lighted with miners' thick candles wired to the branches. They shone on strings of red cranberries, gilded corks, and a star at• the top, cut from a baking-powder tin. ut there weren't any presents, though Klondy had prayed night- ly to Santa Claus for a doll's house. Her lip quivered and, noticing it, one of the miners chuckled: "Don't worry, Klondy, Santa will be showing up any minute now. Won't -he, Hans?". "By Jiminyi - he' better!" Big Hans muttered, "That's 'what I paid him for." Theyd hired a Lapp herder to dress up as Santa and drive his reindeer team right up on to the roof banking extra snow ,against the bunkhouse. so that .the •sleigh could climb the slope, There was no chimney for Santa to come down, only a stovepipe; so they'd loosened two boards in the roof to make a trapdopr. Then sleighbells sounded in the distance. Closer they came, then. right ,on to the eoof. Amid the prancing of reindeer hoofs, Santa's voice could be heard bel- lowing, "Whoa, you yavils! Steed still!" There was a loud thumping and scraping and snow Sifted on to the floor. Then •a pair of Lapp ,reindeer boots with turned-up toes came through the ceiling, followed by stocky legs in red MISS. BRITISH TV—Cuddling her pet -koala doll is Janet Munroe, England's "Miss Television of 1958". She's been appearing' on U.S. TV. finement to quarters, for the discomforts incident to intimate contact with shish and wet snow Were real indeed. Nevertheless, it was hard to sit In My window chair and watch the fringe of icicles on the eaves of the house next door drip slowly back to their natural element. I had watched those graceful pendants mature, and regretted their die- olutien. Although Grandma's restric- tions on my activity were rather severe, I was not deprived of all association with the thaw and its works. Close relations were possible at least four time • a day. Even my grandparent could not set aside the decision of the sovereign State of New York, that a boy roust be edu- cated, regardless of the weather; so, unless conditions were utter- ly impossible, I slogged to my classroom and back, one round trip in. the morning, another in the afternoon, The return journeys at the end of, the school day were pro- longed by engineering projects such as the damming, with soggy snow, of a gutter at a crossing so that the water would back up into an imaginary Lake George and then overflow like the spill- way at the town reservoir, An- other interesting job was the construction of sluices through aging drifts to facilitate the escape of the eager, icy flood that awaited release from the ruts of the road. The manufacture of snow- balls on one's own premises, was also an important chore; a fel- low must take advantage of the soft snow while he had it, and it was possible to devote ten or fifteen mintues to this work be- fore his grandmother realized that he was home. Her dislike of wet feet and wet clothing— his,. in each case—seerne incom- prehensible to him. But it did no good to plead; Mother Na- ture had been adjudged an unfit companion during the January thaw. The thaw had a by - product which, I must admit, was pleas- ant. Imprisoned in the living room on soggy afternoons, I would yield eagerly to Grand- ma's suggestion that I maneuver my lead soldiers or read about the battles fought by my story- book heroes. "They're much better than snow fights," she'd say. "And it's nicer in here where it's warm and dry. . . . Now why don't you show me how Pickett charged at Gettysburg?" Grand- ma had seen my reenactment of Confederate valor times without number, but she always was willing to be favored by another demonstration. She would vary the diversion by reminding me that I could play I was outdoors—and very far from our Academy Street, too. The locale of this game ewas the Arctic where,, I had heard, there were no January thaws. The big lozenges that dominated the pattern of our rug made realistic—and oh so safe and dry!—ice floes; a boy could skip from cake to cake while his grandmother encouraged or ap- plauded, as circumstances re- quired. Then, prestol—our thaw was over as quickly as it had come. The morning after its departure the kitchen window was so heavily painted with frost that I could not look out as I ate my oatmeal. The remnants of the snowman and fort, when I in- spected them, seemed to have taken courage from the change, and I knew I could make re- pairs. Best of all was Grand- ma's reminder of things to come: "Well, the paper says we're in for another long cold snap, We'd better get your skates sharp- ened!" Big Ben To Have His Big Day Grandma And The January Thaw The worst month in a Mohawk Valley boy's year was January. Perhaps I should say is January, because the deep-rooted meteor- OlOgicai miseries of that despica- ble period pan't have changed, even, in, five decades, As a juvenile and amateur ob- ferver of the weather, I decided that January provided a most unsatisfactory start for a new, year. Obviously the commence- ment of a fresh calendar was an Important event, and I suggest- ed to Grandma that it would be better if it took place on May 1, She agreed, but reminded me that inasmuch as we had to live with January for many days, the sensible attitude was to make 'the best of it. After all, the cold, sleet, snow, wind, ice, and thaw were the inescapable costs of the coming spring. The thaw—ale that was the winter of my discontent! Arriv- ing soon after the Christmas vacation, it desolated our coast- ing and skating, ruined our ski slopes, demolished our snow houses, turned the streets into canals, and generally immobili- aed the younger generation. Boys and girls could handle weather that packed the town in the deepest of freezers, for there were recreations that re- etuired cold. But in the melting 'time, life became seriously cir- cumscribed, at least for me. Grandma was adamant on one point I could not play outdoors in the slush and soak of a Jan- uary thaw. ."No use pestering me," she'd say on an afternoon or a Satur- day when the liquidation of win- ter's assets was well under way. "You're not going out in that mess." And I didn't. The thaw arrived slyly, sneak- ing upon us in the night. When I went to bed the evening be- ore, all would be well. The snow castle I had built near the kitchen steps looked as solid as its Camelot counter-part in my King Arthur book; the tiny back-yard skating rink I sprin- kled daily for nocturnal freez- ing seemed good for the rest of the winter; and Story Street hill, which ended at our corner, promised many more sled rides. Grandma had an uncanny weather sense; she seemed to be a human barometer. Opening the front door after supper, she'd inspect the sky, sniff, and shake her head. "January thaw," she'd an- nounce. "I wouldn't be surpris- ed if 'it came tonight." And it usually did, with an escort of tarn. The period of warmer temper- atures lasted only a few days, but the destruction of things a boy held dear was appalling, even In that short Interval, Christ- mas snowmen lost flesh at an alarming rate; their coal eyes shed black tears down their shrinking tummies. The snow fort which Freddie Winters, Jack Niles, and I had held against a fierce attack by the boys in the next street yielded meekly to 50 degrees Fahren- heit, Tunnels we had dug in the snowbanks along the sidewalks became uninhabitable, and we were warned against using them, writes John L. Cooley in The Christian Science Monitor. We knew, of course, that more !told and snow were as certain as the- approaching school examin- ations, and that helped some- what, But boys live for the mo- ment, and the havoc wrought by the January thaw diShearten- ad us. Frankly, however, I did not regret too deeply my con- ' 1/ / 8 ISSUE 8 — 1959 * * The male Kodiak bear weighs around' 1,500 lbs., while the Po- lar bear's weight runs around 1,100 lbs. the an Ifidi Jr, edrtfiii teeter 'Grande National' M ti• arailed What Wee:, iliet a Ville or, "he QUICK SALMON PIE 1 can (15% ounces) salmon 1 can (10 ouncesr'peas, drained 4 tablespoons butter 4 tablespoons flour 3Y2 teaspoon salt Dash pepper 2 cups liquid (liquid from the canned salmon plus milk to Make up volume) 8/4 cup grated Cheddar ,cheese 1/2 recipe baking powder biscuits (1 cup, flour) Drain and flake salmon, re- serving salmon liquid to combine with milk. Melt butter; blend in flour and seasonings. Add liquid gradually, and cook over low• heat until thick and smooth,,stir- ring constantly. Add cheese and stir until melted, Add peas and salmon. Pour into a greased 11/2 - quart casserole. - Arrange small biscuits on top of salmon mix- ture. Bake in a hot oven pre- heated to .450°F, for 10 to .15..f minutes, or until the biscuits are golden brown. Makes 6 servings. * SALT WATER ROLLS 1 pound fresh sole fillets Sa lt ,P epperk- ns clunks Dill pickle or g,lier- % 'cup chopped onion 2, tablespoons butter 1 can (7% ounces) tomato sauce 3,4 teaspoon salt Sprinkle each fillet with salt and pepper, Place e thick strip of dill pickle or a gherkin on each fillet at the broad end. Roll up fillets like a jelly roll. Place roll-ups close together in a aerial] greased baking dish. Cook in'butter for abetit.5 minutes or until tender' but not browned. ‘Stir , tomato saute and salt, Bring to simmering temperature then pour over fish. Bake in a. hot oven preheated to 450°F,, for 15 to 20 minutes or until fish will flake easily on testing with a fork and is an opaque white shade throughout. Makes 3 ,or 4 servings. 6 * CRISPY FILLETS 1 pound frozen fish fillets evaporated milk % teaspieeti salt 2 teaspoOtis lemon juice 1/4 BtteOOuti Crushedt cornflakes Cut frozen fillet bleek into or 4 portions of equal size. Core , title evepotated nnilk, Salt, and lemon juice in 0 shallow Dip fillet portions in Henk e then coat With eteished cortiflakes. - Place iii a. Shallow, greased ing dish. Dot with butter, Bake in a hot been preheated to 450 5 F., allowing About 20 minutes' cooking tihle Per inch thickness of fillet hinek, Thr, fel, le rooked This is Big Ben's centenary year. The British House of,Com- mons just reminded the govern- ment and has asked what com- memoration is planned for the world-famous clock. Big Ben, by means of radio, chimed around the world dur- ing World War II, not only as a symbol of British defiance -and resolution but also as a symbol of freedom for other 'millions in Europe and elsewhere. ' A Spokesman for the govern- ment, Harmar Nicholls, Parlia- mentary Secretary, Ministry of Works, said 'he was consulting the appropriate •authorities about a suitable commem'oration. He said there was some question about what the appropriate day would be. Mr. Nicholls told the Corn- coons: "I understand the clock mechanism first came into regu- lar use on the 31st of May, 1859, and the bell itself — to which the term 'Big Ben' is usually held to refer — on July 11, 1859." Big Ben has become a sym- bol of 'the British people just as the White House ,or the Statue of Liberty has of the Americans and the Eiffel Tower of the French. It is probably the most photographed object in Britain. Big Ben has four faces eon, tamed in a 320-foot-high tower. The faces are 221/4 feet in diam- eter. The minute hands are 14 feet long and weigh about 200 pounds each. The striking mechanist-1i is operated by What are called trains, three of these trains, Weighing altogether nearly two tens, carry on their methodical functions high above. Westinin- stet and enable Big Ben to keep excellent time. The chinies which precede the striking Of the hours, quarters, halves, and three-quarters' are set to the lime'. All through' this honk Lord be my guide, Arid by Thy poWee, No foot shall slide: his, then, has been the greet block's inspiring and tabbing Message 'for close to a century, ARCHA EOLOGICAL UMBRELLA ,-- A Meet' canapy protects , , dating Warn the year 1350, It is located at the Gaga , _ Coolidge, Aril, The 'fewer was part of a defetiSiVe twill -.OrirliY. 60 feet high,. is built f6 Withstand 100 Kr h-,, , EN THE NEWSBOYS' TRADITION — If you can't walk through 'the drifts,, walk over 'efri„ thcieti the philosophy of bald hltee. bergere 11, who ditiVeri The Elkhart' paper despite any weather,