#biscuit — Public Fediverse posts

It is a full biscuit morning here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am babysitting my son's dogs + a bestie's dog + the Yorkies.

A lot of mute time on my Zoom meetings today!

#Baking #Biscuit #Appalachia

“There is nothing inherently gloomy about the newspaper obituary page. Done well, it should capture life rather than wallow in death.”*…

In an excerpt from his new book, veteran New York Times obituary writer Sam Roberts muses on the form and on how words give shape to legacies…

Tuck Everlasting is a cautionary tale about a family of the same surname who, by inadvertently discovering the proverbial Fountain of Youth, is forced to reconcile with eternity. When I was assigned to write the obituary of the book’s author, Natalie Babbitt, I wondered whether she had continued pondering immortality herself. It turned out she had. Not surprisingly, her own take on eternal life echoed that of the fictional family patriarch, Angus Tuck. “I think that living forever would be a terrible thing,” I quoted her as saying in her Times obituary. “It would be boring, sad and lonely.” Babbitt died when she was 84. But Tuck and her other novels endure as Babbitt’s legacy for readers. So does my obituary, which in 2016 revealed her motivation to become an author: She was inspired to write Tuck, she said, when her four-year-old daughter woke from a nap crying because she was scared of dying. Babbitt had intended to become an illustrator, not an author, but pivoted after taking one writing course in college. She had enrolled because her husband hoped to become a novelist and she wanted to understand the challenges he faced.

Back at the Daily News, obituaries weren’t the best way to achieve immortality. We mostly ran one-paragraph squibs for members of the paper’s family, of printers, pressmen, and their immediate relatives. Instead, like most tabloids, the News thrived on the reported details of murders, assassinations, and suicides. Few news stories generated more of a sensation than death in all its dimensions. No less an authority once defined “news” than the ancient newspaper deliverer—a beloved man known as Bo Gee, who was decades too old to be described as a newsboy—weaving up Second Avenue with a wire shopping cart brimming with Chinese-language newspapers, calling out the headlines as he delivered the papers to Chinese bars and restaurants on Manhattan’s East Side. He began his route in Chinatown, where the papers were printed. Subscribers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side were often a day or two behind the headlines because the last stop on his evening route depended largely on the number of drinks he had finagled from bartenders along the way before he was too wobbly to walk any farther. When a colleague of mine, the columnist Jimmy Breslin (who described him as “a small, thirsty man”), asked him which headlines sold the most papers, he responded unhesitatingly. He didn’t need a public opinion poll or a focus group of readers or a real-time digital analysis of clickbait: Two were surefire circulation boosters. One was war! The other: big guy dies!

Taken separately, obits constitute an individual’s legacy. In aggregate, they can capture the social and cultural currency of an era. Which people are worth remembering? Which values are worth celebrating? How do we measure success and failure, good and evil, achievement and defeat, social rank and professional standing? How many of the one hundred thousand people now immortalized in the periodically printed historical compilation Who Was Who were deemed worthy of obituaries at the time of their death? How many of the more than 33,000 contemporary notables included in the latest editions of Who’s Who will get obituaries when they die? (That the titles of those reference books don’t include question marks suggests that the listings themselves are indisputable, a questionable supposition when the price of inclusion by some publishers seems to be for the “whos” to buy at least one copy of the book. An entry for Michael Fowler Cullis, a former British diplomat, describes his recreation as “writing obituaries for friends.”)

People want to be remembered, and we want to remember them, or, at least, we do. “Obituaries commemorate a life at the point where it is completed by death. Yet the completion is also depletion, in the sense that the life is constructed as meaningful precisely at the point where it stops,” Professor Clare Brant, who teaches literature and culture at Kings College London, has written. “They act as the first version of a biography—sometimes the only one, although Wikipedia has closed the gap with each life story seemingly waiting for a death sentence.” But as valuable as Wikipedia can be, the New York Public Library notes, “Obituaries provide an important tool to researchers by offering biographical information on individuals that may not be readily available elsewhere. In many cases, the obituary supplies the only biographical data extant on a person.” Philip Sutton, a genealogy librarian at the library, told Legacy.com, the self-proclaimed world’s largest commercial provider of online memorials and guest books, that obituaries may reveal the married name of a daughter identified years earlier in the census only by her maiden name; that by identifying an immigrant’s specific birthplace, obituaries can also invigorate research on a family’s roots.

To me, obituaries evoke the heartrending backstories of the characters in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, the unfulfilled promise of Joe Crowell, who got a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated first in his class: “Goin’ to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France. All that education for nothing.” Emily is dead, too, but so consumed by nostalgia—before being persuaded that “live people don’t understand, do they?”—that she descends from the town’s cemetery and wants to return to her past life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, until the Stage Manager reminds her, “You not only live it but you watch yourself living it. And as you watch it, you see the thing that they, down there, never know. You see the future. You know what’s going to happen afterwards.” “When I think of an obituary, it’s as objective as journalism can be, a story on someone’s life,” Holly Shreve Gilbert, a journalism instructor at Oakland University who was the interim president of the Funeral Consumers Information Society, told Molly Birnbaum of Atlas Obscura. But “hyper-local journalism is dying, and so is the obituary of the local person.” Gilbert added, “Now, if it’s on Legacy.com or Facebook or a blog, we’re basically whitewashing everyone’s lives. We’re all happy. Everyone is happy.”

Well, not everyone.

Obituaries are a reminder that when you die, someone else gets the last word on your legacy—or, at least, the first of the last words. And for all the beloved and respected and cherished and valued that punctuate paid obituaries, don’t forget that families can try to perpetuate irreverent descriptions unilaterally to settle scores when one is no longer in a position to retaliate or respond. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Malcolm declaims of the repentant Thane of Cawdor, who was executed for treason, “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” If the Thane got the benefit of ambiguity, Florence Harrelson of Chelsea, Maine, had no such luck when she died in 2024 and her daughter, Christina Novak, placed a paid obituary in the Kennebec Journal. Wasting no words, the four-line obit read that the 65-year-old Henderson died “without family by her side due to burnt bridges and a wake of destruction left in her path.” It continued, “Florence did not want an obituary or anyone including family to know she died. That’s because even in death, she wanted those she terrorized to still be living in fear looking over their shoulders. So, this isn’t so much an obituary but more of a public service announcement.”… 

Read on… The art of the obituary: “Speaking for the Dead,” from @longreads.com.

* Nigel Starck

###

As we remember, we might send healthy birthday greetings to William Oliver; he was born on this date in 1695. A physician and philanthropist, he was a founder of the Royal Mineral Water Hospital in Bath, England, which opened in 1742 and continued to serve patients until 2019, often with treatments involving the geothermal springs at the Roman Baths.

But Oliver is better remembered for a culinary contribution. In a search for food that would suit his dyspeptic patients, he created the Bath bun. But as that proved too fattening for his rheumatic patients, he invented the “Bath Oliver” biscuit, a hard, dry cracker made simply from flour, butter, yeast and milk, and often eaten with cheese. Shortly before his death, Oliver confided the recipe to his coachman Atkins, giving him at the same time £100 in money and ten sacks of the finest wheat-flour. The fortunate recipient opened a shop in Green Street, and soon acquired a large fortune. The “Bath Oliver” is still a well-known type of cracker.

Best opshop purchase ever! Kekspresse (biscuit press) from the Western Germany era.

So much fun to use 😁

Got any great cookie/biscuit recipes (plant-based preferred)? Send 'em my way... The biscuit factory is open for business 😆

#recipe #cookie #biscuit #foodie #NZ

Since the past post was a bit deep and one needs a lot of caffeine to appreciate, here’s a post one only needs eyeballs for. And maybe an interest in font sizes or packaging design. Or recipes and food. Or chemicals, yikes.

When I was a graphics designer in 1973, I learned to never use a font size under 4 pt and very rarely, because that was the smallest most people can read. Packaging has gone crazy with labels that maybe have the main label 12 pt and all the rest 9 pt to 4. I’m sure it’s not only older people who struggle. Jimmy Dean packages are the worst I’ve seen. For microwaveable breakfast muffins a transparent package with the tiniest of words.

And I’d like to know how their test kitchens thought exactly 90 seconds at 30% the first heating and then exactly 55 seconds on high the next heating would be best. How many people using a microwave will use a defrost setting or even know what a 30% setting is? Look for the tiny red 4 pt type at the lower end.

For that matter, a “high” power varies quite a bit. But the manufacturer sure does know 90 seconds, then 55 seconds is right. And 1-2 minutes resting. FYI, this family tried these and now 9 remain in the freezer. It’s been 3 months. Who wants to go to all this work when we are usually on a hurry.
#Breakfast #Bisquit #Biscuit #JimmyDean

Not really a biscuit person, unless the choices look like these.

#biscuit #food #photo #picture #taste

British Longhair Sisters Enjoy ‘Supervised Garden Time’ Like Little Fairies https://www.allforgardening.com/1720836/british-longhair-sisters-enjoy-supervised-garden-time-like-little-fairies/ #Biscuit #blueberry #garden #GardenFairies

This is the arrangement of the top biscuits when you first open a can of Khong Guan Red Assorted, one of the products and also the most famous one from Khong Guan Indonesia. This is like a tradition for me every year to post about this since I buy this every year

#khongguan #khongguanbiscuit #khongguanbiscuits #food #foods #biscuit #biscuits #cookies #cookie #waferbiscuits #wafercookies #indonesianfood #indonesianfoods #indonesiancookies #indonesianbiscuits #ilovefood #sofiaflorina #ソフィアフロリナ

This is officially just an account for me posting food lol #food #cookies #2016 #tumblr #hashtag #raspberry #lemon #ginger #biscuit #cookie

I spent part of my lunch break in Nero's. It's nice to escape from the office and have a read without any distractions.

#coffee #biscuit #literature #reading

Can a cookie tin be a work of decorative art? Yes.

When the UK's Licensed Grocer's Act of 1861 first allowed the sale of individually packaged groceries, decorative cookie tins ("biscuit tins" in the UK) got their start. These simple metal boxes were soon embossed with 3D detail, and decorated with colourful lithographic prints.

They sold as Christmas gifts for children. (UK grocer Marks & Spencer continues the tradition.) Later tins appealed to adults, and decorated middle-class homes across Britain's empire.

By 1890, the mass-produced tins mimicked other objects in shape—first baskets, then collectable art like Chinese vases.

The 1912 "Bell" biscuit tin below has a faux copper finish. It's in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection, and was made for Reading, UK, biscuit makers Huntley & Palmers. See the image description (ALT text) for details.

Today's biscuit tins are sometimes sold in UK fundraisers.

#art #design #VictoriaAndAlbert #museum #cookie #biscuit #tin #container

Les Whippets sont-ils bien nés à Hochelaga-Maisonneuve ?
https://estmediamontreal.com/whippets-creation-hochelaga-maisonneuve/
#Montréal #MHM #Hochelaga #Maisonneuve #biscuit #Whippets #alimentation #industrie #industrialisation #histoire #image #patrimoine

I have been trying to do things in the evening with my hands that aren't doomscrolling and/or being on late work calls. Behold, paint markers and pebbles! This is something I find difficult because I have v poor fine motor control and consistency with my physical control but it has been really rewarding to concentrate on in a low stakes way. Plus, the colours come out so deep and satisfying.

#posca #dyspraxia #doodle #tea #biscuit #cake

Ouuggghh oaahwaaaa hggrrrr!!! if it wasnt for you meddling kids!!!

did I just hit the custard cream #biscuit jackpot?

Biscuit wearing some of the outfits I wore this year!!

Biscuit is a specialized PostgreSQL index for fast pattern matching LIKE queries

https://github.com/CrystallineCore/Biscuit

#HackerNews #Biscuit #PostgreSQL #index #fast #pattern #matching #LIKE #queries #database #technology

Elvira Daisy prefers finishing her last biscuit in bed. #dog #dogs #canine #canines #furbaby #furbabies #pet #pets #companion #companions #family #familymember #familymembers #breakfastinbed #cozy #snuggles #breakfasting #brunching #comfort #furry #fuzzy #biscuit #bed #lounging

#MardiPatisserie

Words about Saji from Haneen 🧡

"Through a piece of biscuit, his gaze told a thousand stories."

📷 by Naeema

🕊 https://gofund.me/e8e853a83

[Rapha]

#GazaVerified #photography #photographie #portrait #children #biscuit #story