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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1955-07-28, Page 2Up in northern Michigan you will see wayside stands and small bakeries selling Pasties — a rich, flaky pastry holding a well -sea- soned mixture of meat and vege. tables. (By the way the "a" is !pronounced short so that Pastie rhymes with "nasty" rather than "tasty" although the latter is really the word for them. Cornish settlers who came from Cornwall, England, about 1830 to explore the lead and copper Wales in this area, brought with them their traditional dishes. The one most generally adopted was the Pastie often called "Cousin Jack Pasties." In place of sandwiches, Corn- ish miners took Pasties, eating them hot or cold. The story goes that the Pastie is crescent- shaped because it was carried in the miner's hip pocket! Just as popular today, th Pas - tie is eaten as casually in this area as the hot dog and ham- burger is eaten in other parts of the country. They make heatrty snacks and are good lunch box or picnic food, too. When served as 'a Cornish meal the menu might consist of the delicious Pastie with mush- room sauce and pickles, Devon- shire cream (clotted cream) and Saffron cake in the dessert role. Tea, of course, for the beverage, with a tossed salad to top things off. CORNISH PASTIES 2 cups flour 1 tsp. salt 2/3 a shortening 5-6 tbs. cold water 1 c finely diced raw potatoes xis c finely diced carrots % c sliced onions lb. round steak slieed about ?i" thick and cut into %" pieces 2 tsp. salt pepper 2 tbs. parsley water 1. Sift flour and salt into a bowl. CREED BY SHERMAN — Matt Carter, former slave, is 103 years old, but his memory is still vivid enough for him to describe the CM! War days when he was freed by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman during the Union leader's march to the sea. The centen- arian lived on a plantation near Pheni City, Ala., then. He was the property of a Doctor lingersaw, who bought him for $500. jI(s 2. Cut shortening into dry ingre- dients until mixture is the texture of coarse cornmeal, 3. Add cold water until dough is stiff. 4. Roll dough on a lightly floured board; cut into 6 -inch rounds. 5, Put a layer of potatoes, car- rots, onion and meat on half of each round. Sprinkle each with 1/4 tsp. salt, pepper and about 1 tsp. parsley and y tsp. water, 'v. Dampen edges of pastry, fold over and crimp edges, Prick top. 7. Bake on cookie sheet in a pre -heated oven at 400° for 10 min., then 350° for 30-40 min. or until well browned. Here's a Swiss -style spinach which may appeal to those who ordinarily can't g e t excited about this vegetable. Swiss Style Spinach 2 pounds fresh spinach (or a 12 -oz. package frozen spinach) 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon flour ... 2 pounds fresh spinach (or a 12 -oz .package o frozen spinach) 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon flour 3/ teaspoon ground nutmeg 2/3 cup milk Salt and pepper to taste Wash and stem spinach and cook covered in water, adding 1 teaspoon salt before cooking. Drain, chop coarsely, and toss with the following sauce: Melt butter in saucepan, stir in flour, salt, pepper, and nut- meg until well blended. Stirr in milk slowly. Cook, stirring, until smooth and thickened. Serve hot. Four servings. * * * The next time you cook fresh snap beans, serve them with this unusual sauce. Wash beans, cut off tips, and cut into 1 -inch pieces. Place in saucepan with about 1 inch of boiling water. Add ?i teaspoon salt to 1 pound beans. Cook until crisp -tender, lifting cover 3-4 times during cooking. Serve with Vinaigrette Sauce. Vinaigrette Sauce 1,.1 cup French dressing 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 1 tablespoon chopped green. pepper 2 tablespoons finely chopped pickles 1 teaspoon chopped chives Combine all ingredients. Beat well with hand or electric beater. Serve on hot, cooked beans. * * * Serve this tomato rabbit in your chafing dish for a light, hot supper. Whip it up on your kit- chen stove and serve in the cha- fing dish at the last minute, if you like. Tomato Rabbit '2 cup finely chopped celery x/. cup chopped green pepper xal cup chopped onion 2 tablespoons fat 2 tablespoons flour 2%s cups fresh or canned toma- toes (No. 2 can) 1 cup grated cheese 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs, beaten Melt fat in skillet and cook celery, green pepper, and onion 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently. Blend in flour. Add tomatoes, cheese and salt. Cook over low heat; stir constantly until mix- ture thickens and cheese melts. Gradually add some of the to- mato mixture to beaten eggs; mix well, then pour all back into the tomato mixture. Con- tinue to cook over low heat; stir constantly until thickened and creamy — 2-3 minutes. Serve on toast or crackers. Six servings. NO LITTLE LITtER — Miss Priss feels she needs an icebag atop her head as she contemplates her outsized litter of 14 pups. Four of the English boxer's youngsters are fanned ouf to "wet nurses" because Miss Priss ran out of faucets. DOUBLING IN BRASS — Don Butterfield, left, and Harry London team up on the two -headed tuba featured by the Cities Service Band of America during concerts. It is the only instrument of its kind in use today. Both musicians blow at the same time, but only one of them fingers the single set of valves. Puffing and valve -pushing have to be synchronized perfectly to get the desired result. Why People Take To r. ixerm t s ife For the last thirty-five years of her life a rich Scots woman,. who was once a lovely and pop- ular hostess, sought strict pri- vacy behind barbed wire in` her lonely mansion near Edinburgh,.. it was revealed when she died some time ago, aged ninety-five. Notice boards warned intru- ders away from the house which: once rang to the sound of music and happy, carefree laughter. The barbed wire emphasized• the threats. And everyone ven- turesome enough to persevere in their efforts to establish contact with the woman was likely o ybe chased by dogs kept for 'h :. purpose. Sharing the woman's strange hermit -like existence was her son. A few hens and a vegetable garden supplied most of their needs. On the few occasions they were seen to leave the house they travelled in .a car whose win- dows were curtained off. At her request the old lady was buried in a private burial ground near the house. Now her son lives on their alone to tend the grave of his mother, whose fortune has been estimated at $1,250,000. It is known she obe tained a divorce in 1910 and af- terwards resumed her maiden name. What drives some people to cut themselves off from the world and lead a solitary existence? Many have done so in the past; many still do so in 1955. Sometimes it is shattered ro- mance, sometimes grief for a loved one, long dead or missing. Sometimes, again, it is avarice or fear. There are records of hundreds of men and women in Britain alone who never left their homes for years. Some spent their days and nights in rooms which be- came dust -buried museums of the past. When these pathetic hermits have died it has sometimes been weeks or months before their bodies have been discovered. Holidayers staying at a little coastal town in England some years ago were intrigued by the sight of a dilapidated cottage in a thicket within a few hundred yards of a lonely beach. They decided to look at it more closely. They walked along the weed - covered path and peered through dirt -laden windows into rooms where enormous cobwebs hung. Suddenly they had a shock, for they saw staring out at them through a landing winclow the lined and tragic -looking face of a once lovely woman, Now she was old. Her hair was awry, her clothes unkempt, The holidayers quickly withdrew. From a gamekeeper living in the neighbourhood they heard that evening the strange story of the woman's reasons for living as she did. A pretty young bride of World War 1, she had gone to live there with her merchant seaman hush band. The pair were devoted to each other. Whenever he return. ed to sea she was disconsolate, but they planned that he should quit it at forty-five and take a part-time job ashore. One day his ship was mined in the ;North Sea and lost with all hands. The young wife was in- consolable. Her haapiness wrecked, she decided to live on alone in their pretty cottage. Why? Because— she told her startled relatives and friends—she had a strong presentiment that he would re- turn there one night from the sea. Ten years passed. The tragic widow never abandoned hope. She began, however, to shun all company, refused to talk even to tradesmen and left then notes of her requirements and money in the cottage porch. Then she began to go regu- larly at midnight every night and in all weathers down to the beach with a lighted lantern. She would stay there half an hour waving it towards the sea and then walk slowly home. Gradually she became a. com- plete hermit, did no housework, but never neglected her strange nightly vigil. They found her dead on the beach one stormy night eighteen years after her husband's death, the lantern still burning beside her, Police had to dig a tunnel to reach a starving North London hermit who lived for four years in a small room barricaded with a two -foot thick wall of odds and ends. They tunnelled through the rubbish and when, the room was cleared seven tens of milk bot- tles, old tins and other "junk" were carted away to a refuse dump. The hermit had let his hair grow so long that it was like a fur collar over his shoulders, he wore only a loin -cloth as if he had come straight out of the jungle and he pleaded with the police to give him food annd then leave him to die. Faded letters found in the room gave evidence of a broken romance. There was also a pic- ture of a lovely fair-haired girl who had jilted him and so caused him to live alone in his bar- ricaded room. Another man who was crossed in love shut himself away from mankind in a hut in a deserted part of Essex for fifty years. His story was published in a newspaper. Next day a woman penetrated his extraordinary sol- itude—the first he had seen for halt a century. She proved to be a relative of the girl the hermit had loved, And she had to tell him the news that the girl, although she had married another man, had died abroad of a broken heart, ut- tering the hermit's name, Neighbours in Yorkshire brought to light the story of an- other recluse who never left his room in a busy city for ten years and ate so little food that he was a living skeleton when wel- fare workers went to his assis- tance. This man had taken a vow of lifelong bachelorhood. because he "had always hated women." He had only .six shillings in his pocket and a bank balance of five shillings, but his room was stocked with art, treasures worth $40,000 and there were no fewer than 8,000 books scattered about. William Adams, who was About That Famous "Bettor Mousetrap" You learn something every day Like the fact that the famous "mousetrap" quotation attribu- ed to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the subject Of a never-ending literary controversy, originated in Oakland. The quotation, as oft -repeated, is: "If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, Or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house , .in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." That was a theme frequently expounded by Emerson, b u t while the mousetrap reference made it known around the world, no reference to such an article appears in any of his writings. In his "Journal" Emerson re- peated the idea with several variations, declaring the world would find a skilled attorney, men who can pipe or sing, or paint, or raise good corn, or sell wood or pigs, or make better chairs, or knives, or crucibles, or church organs. But nowhere does he leave a written mention of mousetraps. It appears certain that the mousetrap quotation was made verbally by Emerson in a lec- ture he delivered in 1871 in the old Hamilton Church, predeces- sor of Oakland's First Unitarian Church. It was first printed in an an- thology, "Borrowings," which was published by the women of the latter church in 1889, to raise funds for church activities. Years later, when controversy over origin of the quotation de- veloped, lyirs. Sara B. Yule, wife of an Oakland judge, John Yule, confirmed that she had recorded it in her notebook at the time of the Emerson lecture here. Mrs. Yule had made a practice of not- ing such statements and her col- lection provided much of the material for "Borrowings". At one time Elbert Hubbard, founder of the Roycrafters, main- tained he had written the mouse- trap phrase, but it was published earlier in "Borrowings." Incidentally, worshippers at the First Unitarian Church will be interested to know that, the central portion of the altar from which the Rev. Arnold Crompton now preaches was made from the desk at which Emerson stood when he lectured here and de- livered the famous phrase 84 years ago.—Oakland (Calif.) Tri- bune. 22% OF HOMES HAVE TV SETS An estimated 820,000 Cana- dian homes had TV sets last September, or about 22% of the country's households. There were some in every province, but the bink were in Ontario (478,000). and Quebec (266,000). British Columbia had the third Iargest number (51,000) and Manitoba the fourth largest (14,000). THE ATOMIC AGE Clemenceau once remarked that modern war was far too serious to be left to the Generals, Can it be that modern science is far too serious to be left to the Professors? known as The Hermit of. the Fens, lived alone for many years in the heart of Cambridgeshire, surrounded by thirty-eight cats all descended •from a pair of Persian kittens. He used to say he kept cats "for luck." They gave their own- er warning of any visitor and were, he said, better than the best house dog. The old . man lived principally on roots, net- tles and other wild plants. His home was a hut no bigger than a fowl -house, but he called it "Marshland HalI." Everything Stops For Tea Except Jumbo London remains the insurance capital of the world, with New York a poor second. Lloyd's and famous companies in the City cover such risks as whale -hunt- ing in Antartic seas, hurricanes in Central America, Australia's wool harvest, cancel caravan treks across the Middle East's arid wastes, and every kind of sea risk. Struck by roaring seas oppo- site Sugar Loaf Mountain, at the entrance to Rio de Janeiro harbour, the 17,5000 -ton s.s. "Magdalena" began to break in two. She had been insured in February, 1949, for • £2,500,000, and her cargo of meat and oranges were covered for about £250,000. On May 11th, Royal Mail Lines notified their Lon- don brokers to proceed with collection of total risk. On May 16th the brokers wrote out a cheque for 12,295,970 l Os. Od.— one of the largest single cheques ever handed over. London also covered a lorry carrying sixty-six chests of tea on the road from Neriamangal am to Alwaye, India. Unforun- ately, on his travels; the driver met a bull elephant running amok. The trumpeting bull, after smashing and hurling into a stream two lorries laden with timber logs, turned its fury on the tea truck. It first dislodged some of the top tea chests, then shoved the whole truck into the stream, overturning it on top of the wrecked timber lorries. For Jumbo's onslaught a British firm paid out £1,500. Infectious Jaundice: There were 1,182 cases reported in 1952, more than four times the normal or expected number. HOLEY HAIRSL READTH — That dark tine down the center is a human hair. The curving line is a wire cine -thousandth of an inch thick, threaded through holes drilled in the hair. The holes were made by instrument makers at General Electric's Engineering Laboratory. They used a one -mil. (001 -inch) drill which is too small to be seen with the naked eye and so deli- cate it can be damaged on con- tact with a piece of facial tissue. Wttaa atalaa ice WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT — Herman J. Wiedel, manager of an ice company, has an ideal 'hobby for these hot clays He makes Ito sculptures hi his 28.degree plant studio. Here he. works on the figure of a swan, with an ice statue of a dog in the background.