Eggnog Pie and Glitter in Your Eye

 

I have never been much of an eggnog fan, but because I like creative baked goods to change up my breakfast routine, I was intrigued by references on social media to eggnog pie. I waited until Dear Husband acquired his annual half gallon of the stuff, and then when he realized it was going to expire faster than he could drink it, I discovered that this pudding pie is surprisingly easy to make:

1 1/2 cups of your favorite eggnog

1 cup of heavy cream or 2 cups of whipped topping

3.4oz package of INSTANT vanilla pudding

1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

Graham cracker pie crust

Before

Mix the eggnog, pudding mix, and nutmeg together until thick (5 minutes).

Whip the cream if necessary (stiff peaks! turn the bowl upside down over your head!).

Then fold the latter into the former.

Pour into pie crust, make the top look pretty with your spatula, then chill for 3 hours. 

During

Here are some photos of our Christmas decorations. We compromised on a wreath and garland with two types of greenery and pine cones for contrast but no glitter or fake snow.

(Yet the light-up reindeer in the backyard DOES have glitter, and where it was unboxed in the garage still looks like a unicorn massacre scene.)

Dear Husband wants to extend the icicle lights across the front of the roofline, but we'll have to figure out how to plug everything in and THEN how to hold up the lights, as currently someone has to leave the house and go around the corner to un/plug the outside lights; there's another outdoor outlet on the other side of the house, but it's behind a bush. It may be easier to wrap a strand of lights around the light pole.

After

Serve with an extra dash of nutmeg and/or cinnamon! It's just the right consistency, creamy, with a little tang as an aftertaste. I have been pairing a slice with a dark tea (like Irish Breakfast or Cinnamon Rooibos) and a little fruit (clementines, grapes) for breakfast.

No Room at the Inn

We had such a delightful time brunching at The Inn on Negley last December, that I decided to make us reservations again this year. Maybe I also wanted to test the theory that one of the reasons we have such fond memories of that trip is because it was only the second time we had eaten in public since the pandemic began (the first being an early Monday evening reservation at The Grand Concourse to celebrate our birthdays in July).

Reader, it was everything we needed/wanted it to be the second time around. The food was delicious, the teas were interesting, the décor was festively fancy, the mood music was jazzy, and the company was the best. 

I think the waitress was new, but we nabbed an abandoned, several-days-old newspaper from a nearby table with which to amuse ourselves, and that was part of the treat, since we get all of our news online or via the radio these days. He read the main section, and I took the one on arts and culture.

The meal started with fruit cups, mini-breads, and juice. Just like last year, Dear Husband ordered the sweet entrée (French toast), and I had the savory (cheesy eggs baked with artichoke hearts). I did notice that his loose-leaf White Christmas tea was bitter from steeping by the time I tried it, while my Gingerbread Festival tea bag could be removed once it was as strong as I liked it. We took our eggnog cheesecake bites to go, since we were as stuffed as the parlor armchairs! Gives a whole new meaning to "no room at the inn"...

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

What are you doing to treat yourself this holiday season?

Holidays Around the World [sic]

Between Dear Husband having extra rehearsals and performances, and me having end-of-the-year deadlines, we could easily find ourselves on December 24 without a tree, decorations, Christmas letter/cards, or gifts. I gave myself a few days of vacation in early December so that we could "do Christmas" together. 

We kicked off with a work holiday party (for me) on Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon, we met up with some church friends at the University of Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning for the first Nationality Rooms Open House since the pandemic began. 

The Nationality Rooms were originally going to be decorated for countries on the first floor, Pennsylvanian "pioneers" on the second floor, and various aspects of Pittsburgh on the third floor. Due in part to the Great Depression, 19 rooms on the first floor were completed from 1938-1957. A further 12 have been dedicated on the third floor since 1987. All but 2 are also used as  classrooms--the Early American and Syrian-Lebanese rooms are protected by glass and opened only with a guide. Local heritage groups raise the money and create the design, and then the University promises to pay for upkeep in perpetuity.

When vising the Nationality Rooms, you have to make sure to look up! This is the painted recessed ceiling in the Greek room. 

The ceiling of the Chinese room was gorgeous. I learned that (usually) only the Emperor can have a 5-fingered dragon like this specimen; everyone else has to make do with 4 fingers. Other thoughtful details include a Fu dog for luck and the names of famous scholars painted high on the walls in gold, with a space left blank as if to say, [YOUR NAME HERE].

In the Romanian room, this glass mosaic, created for the 1939 New York World's Fair, depicts the Prince of Wallachia refusing to renounce Christianity; he and his sons were executed by the Ottoman Empire in 1714. Below is the colorful crown molding of the Polish room.

Naturally, the Weihnachtsbaum in the German room was well decked with apples, pinecones, and candles. The stained glass windows with Grimms fairy-tale designs are very pretty, and there are four inlaid wooden mosaics with characters from epics; this one shows Siegfried slaying the dragon.

The Czechoslovak room is made of wood and painted to look like a Slovak farmhouse. That's first Czech President Tomáš Masaryk looming over the little paper figures in the creche scene.

Grandfather sheaves of grain on the left, and copper- and wood-working on the right, from the Ukrainian room. There was a YouTube video playing of a woman singing a harvest song on a well-dressed sound stage.

One of the newer rooms (dedicated 2012), the Turkish room was one of my favorites (and I think was the most expensive to date). In addition to  beautiful woodwork on the ceiling, walls, and pull-down desks, I love the seaside mural behind the false windows in the background of the photo above. Below, there was magnificently painted tile artwork.

This is part of the mosaic on the floor of the Israeli heritage room on the third floor, which also contains a reproduction of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that says, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks...."

Why the "[sic]" in the blog title? Reflecting the make-up of the University of Pittsburgh community in the 1920s and '30s, Europe is over represented, while South America is not found at all, and the entire African continent has to make do with a single room, dedicated in 1989. To the right is the carved entrance door in a Yoruba style; it depicts the ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Benin, Kongo/Angola, Kuba, Mali, and Zimbabwe.

The rooms are supposed to reflect national culture pre-1787 (when the university was founded and the U.S. Constitution written), but most of these countries didn't exist as such then (Italy [1861], Germany [1871], Romania [1877],Czechoslovakia [1918], etc.). Even Armenia gets a room! And it didn't attain autonomy from the Soviet Union until 1991!

The German room, for one, celebrates its creative geniuses from at least 2 centuries, with the names of Lessing, Goethe, Beethoven, and Brahms carved into the dark wood running around the room, which is otherwise supposed to look like a Renaissance German university like the one at Heidelberg.

The light in India's room was beautiful, which just made the stonework and brick stand out even more. (The architectural firm won an award for this design, which approximates a courtyard in the famous Nalanda University of the 4th-9th centuries.) All the rooms are decorated for Christmas if that is the winter holiday the majority of the population celebrates, but the Chinese room was decked out for Chinese New Year (coming up on the year of the rabbit), and this one for Diwali, the festival of lights.

The last room we visited was the Japanese room, where children were learning to fold origami. I wished that the elderly gentleman who was directing traffic here had offered a little spiel of facts as in some of the other rooms, but maybe it was just as well, as despite choosing only half the rooms, A. and J. were ready for a late lunch, and DH and I were tired of the crush of people. I tried and failed to buy an afternoon snack from the table set up downstairs, so we went home for a quiet evening in front of the fireplace, where I could read more about the rooms on Wikipedia.

Monday we will get and decorate a Christmas tree. DH has big plans for lights on the outside of the house, and since many of our strands and nets are 10-15 years old, we will have to make a hardware store run to get new supplies--I'm also thinking of splurging on some light-up (rein)deer for the front yard. On Wednesday we have reservations for Christmas brunch at the Inn on Negley, since we had such a good time last year.

P.s. Visiting the Nationality Rooms reminded me of my friend and mentor, John Erlen, who very kindly took me and my family to visit the Czechoslovakian and Austrian rooms when they were in town for Thanksgiving our first year in Pittsburgh, back in 2016. <3

Holiday Traditions, New and Old

Inspired by the Great British Bake Off and a partially used canister of whipped cream in the refrigerator left over from an ice cream social, I went looking for a recipe for soft gingerbread to make for breakfasts this week. We don't keep molasses in the house (do you?), so I substituted maple syrup. It was a nice dark variety, and since I'm not such a big fan of hard gingerbread, I thought it was an inspired choice.

Later on, we happened to pass by the famous life-sized creche in downtown Pittsburgh. I had known it existed but nothing else about it. While discussing the Christmas stories in the Gospels the next morning at Sunday School, I learned about its interesting history. You see, there had been a creche on the grand staircase in the Allegheny Courthouse, and a Christmas tree, menorah, and "liberty" sign in the portico of the City-County Building. The ACLU objected over the Establishment Clause, and the Supreme Court eventually ruled in 1989 that the tree and menorah cancelled each other out, but the creche had to go.

Despite all that, the Christian Leaders Fellowship put up a creche--on what was officially city land--in 1996. In 1998, city leaders sensibly decided it couldn't be displayed there. Eventually they found a sponsor in a businessman who had traveled to Rome a few years earlier and was so inspired by the nativity scene at St. Peter's Basilica, that he got permission to duplicate the 64-foot-wife, 42-foot-high, 36-foot-long stable and its figures (there are 20 people, animals, and angels). It is erected in the plaza at the foot of the U.S. Steel Tower (the one that has UPMC in big letters at the top) in time for Light-Up Night in mid-November and taken down after Epiphany. 

What the lady in Bible study told us is that at one point the magis' robes were torn from the weather, and there weren't enough funds to repair or replace them, but the local Jewish community stepped in with money to help continue this display "for the glory of God," even though it is not their tradition.

I probably should have set the butter out sooner, as the batter was kind of lumpy, and the final product had butter spots. Surprisingly, it was not very sweet at all, and in fact I thought it needed the whipped cream. I asked Dear Husband to do his best Paul Hollywood impression and tell me whether the cake was "moist" or "underdone." He thought it could have used another 5 minutes in the oven, which means the recipe was 10-15 minutes shorter than I needed--perhaps the oven in our new house runs cool.  It had already caramelized the edges the way some people like their brownies, so this cake must be done when the top is evenly browned. I look forward to trying this recipe again. In which case, we'll have to start keeping the fridge stocked with whipped cream...

Thrifty & Crafty

I have an occasional Zoom "craft date" with friend J.R., when we chat over video while she weaves or sews and I mend or do other crafty projects, like the "surgery" I performed on two Styrofoam "hell cat" Halloween decorations that needed weighted bottoms to make them less likely to tip over in the wind. (A scowling guard feline looks so much less fearsome on its side.)

This month I tackled the green-glass desk lamp I bought second hand whose metal based was wonky. I couldn't get the central disk to line up with the two outer rings, so I invested in a mini-glue gun, harvested some sturdy cardboard from a box in the attic, and created a green-felt-wrapped layer to even out the bottom. Now it no longer rocks against the wooden desk.

I'm pretty pleased by the way it turned out.

When the lamp was finished, I used some of the corner scraps to pad the paws of the iron mouse doorstop I thrifted for the attic door. We have to prop it open so Rosamunda can get up and down from her litter box, but when the weather was warmer and the windows were open, the door banged every time there was a draft. Now there's a bright idea.

"Cholera and Fear" / "Die Cholera und die Furcht"

"'Tis the season," said one of my colleagues, to explain the sudden influx in gifts from patients in a single morning clinic session. One woman who "stress bakes" brought her provider a veritable pyramid of goodies. Others picked up pre-packaged chocolates: foil-covered milk-chocolate balls, Ghirardelli squares, locally famous Sarris chocolate-covered pretzels. You can see that by the end of the day, we had made significant in-roads.

The same morning, the parents of one of my special-needs patients gave me a jar of home-made, preservative-free plum jelly. His father reassured me that he was evidence it was safe, as he had eaten it for years. I did once throw away the fish spread a patient made because my colleague pointed out it was made from "bottom-feeders" who consume who-knows-what, but I felt safe putting this on a bagel with cream cheese. It has an interesting sour-sweetness, and I am delighted they thought of me. Why, then, did I photograph it with my most recent column in the local medical society magazine? Because the parents mentioned they had seen my name in it while picking up the mail for a friend, read the poem and my translation, and were impressed. Since it has already come out, I will share it with you here.

„Die Cholera und die Furcht.“ Von Hermann Friedrichs.           

Schwüle Nacht—Am Thor der heil’gen Stadt,
Die einst Welt und Geist geknechtet hat,
Pocht ein Fremdling mit dem Schwertesknauf:

,,Hollah, Pförtner, schlieβ daβ Thor mir auf!“
            Schaurig dröhnt der Ruf durch Nacht und Graun,
Und des Wächters helle Augen schaun
Forschend in des Pilgers Angesicht:
,,Deiner Stimme, Fremdling, trau‘ ich nicht!

Harre drauβen bis der Morgen graut—

Diese Stadt hat Gott mir anvertraut!“
,,Gott ja sendet mich!“ ruft Jener wild.
,,Komm und prüfe meinen Wappenschild,
Hab‘ vor kurzem erst ihn aufgefrischt,
Wo der Nildunst mit dem Smum sich mischt—
Emsig mäht mein Schwert, wenn ich es schwinge,

Fiebergluthen stählen seine Klinge!“

            ,,Doch der Pförtner, vor Entsetzen bleich:

,,Dennoch,‘‘ spricht er, ,,wehr‘ ich dir mein Reich,
Leistet du mir nicht den heil’gen Schwur,
Mir zu nehmen tausend Seelen nur.
Denn ich weiβ, du bist ein Nimmersatt,

Schafft gern mehr, als Gott geboten hat.“
            Jener schwört. Der Pförtner läβt ihn ein.

Düster schleicht ein Schatten hinterdrein—
Eine Alte, bleich und abgezehrt,
Mit des Allgewalt’gen Schild beschwert.
            Fragend miβt der Pförtner die Gestalt,

Doch ihr Blick durchzuckt ihn meh und kalt—
,,Gott, erbarme dich der tausend Seelen!“
Spricht er schauernd, ,,laβ sie dir empfehlen!“

            Wochen flohn—Die Stadt füllt Schreckt und
Graus.

            Wild, verzweifelnd schaut der Pförtner aus

Nach den Bahren, die vorüberziehn,
Nach den Bürgern, die der Stadt entfliehen.
Heiβ durchwühlt die Adern ihm der Zorn,
Ihn verwundert bangen Zweifels Dorn.
Immer neue Bahren ziehn vorbei,
Immer lauter hallt das Wehgeschrei.
Ach! schon fünfmal tausend liegen todt,
Und noch immer mehrt sich Leid und Noth.
            Endlich kehrt der Gottgesandte wieder,
Läβt zur Rast sich mit der Alten nieder;
Doch der Pförtner fährt ihn grimmig an:

,,Tausend, schwurst du, ungefüger Mann!
Und du brachst den Eid?“

                                                Der Andre spricht:

,,Nein! Denn mehr als tausend schlug ich nicht!
Was darüber, nahm dir diese da,
Stets, auf Schritt und Tritt, war sie mir nah—”
            ,,Und wer ist dies Scheufel?“
                                                ,,Blicke hin,
‘s ist die Furcht, die schlimmste Würgerin!“

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“Cholera and Fear.”  By Hermann Friedrichs.

On a humid night that oppressed matter and spirit, a stranger banged on the door of the holy city
with the pommel of his sword. “Hollah, porter, unbar the gate for me!”
            The shout boomed gruesomely through the night, and the guard’s bright eyes looked searchingly at the pilgrim’s countenance: “I do not trust your voice, stranger! Wait outside until the morning dawns—God has entrusted me with this city!”
            “It is God who sends me!” replied the other roughly. “Come and examine my escutcheon [crest]. I’ve just cleaned it where the Nile miasma and desert sandstorm mingle. My sword reaps assiduously when I swing it, [for] the heat of fever hardens its blade.”
            The porter blanched at the horror: “Nevertheless,” he said, “I will defend my territory against you, if you do not render me the holy oath, that you will only take a thousand souls. Because I know that you are a glutton who likes to do more than God has allowed.”

            The other swore. The porter let him in. Grimly skulked a shadow behind him—an old woman, pale and emaciated, burdened with the shield of the omnipotent one.

            Questioningly the porter eyed the figure, but her stare seared through him, painful and cold. “God, embrace the thousand souls!” he shuddered, “May they be commended to your care!”

            Weeks flew by, and the city filled with terror and dread. The porter watched with fury and despair as the stretchers passed by and as citizens fled the city. Hot anger coursed through his veins, as the thorn of doubt deeply wounded him. Always new stretchers went by, always louder rang the painful cries. Ach! Already five times a thousand lay dead, and the suffering and need continued to increase.

            Finally, the One sent by God returned with the old woman and sat down to rest; grimly the porter rounded on them: “A thousand, you promised, reckless man! Didn’t you break your oath?” And other replied: “No!  Because I felled no more than a thousand!  What is more, you must understand, she was always close on my heels—”          

            “Who is this monster?”  

            “Look over there, ‘tis Fear, the most terrible destroyer!”

 
Citation: Hermann Friedrichs, “Die Cholera und die Furcht,” Die Gegenwart 26 (1884): 86.

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Miasmata, citizens fleeing in panic, a plague sent from God, a moral punch line warning of the evil of fear itself—surely these are not imagery one would associate with a modern, industrial, scientifically-advanced country. And yet, this poem was written not when Europe first encountered cholera in the politically restive early 1830s, nor in 1848 when revolution also broke out (again), nor even during repeat epidemics in 1853-55 or in 1866-75. “Cholera and Fear” appeared in the weekly family magazine Die Gegenwart in 1884. From Calcutta (now Kolkata), Dr. Robert Koch (1843-1910) had just announced that he had identified the cause: Vibrio cholerae. Coming so soon after his identification of Bacillus anthracis in 1896 and Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882, it was yet another triumph for himself and the German state that financed his research in Germany, Egypt, and India.

Interestingly, at the dawn of the “bacteriological revolution” (c. 1880-1930), popular imagery of cholera included both reproductions of drawings of comma-shaped bacteria as seen through a microscope and vivid, medieval imagery like exotic mists and sword-bearing phantoms. Hermann Friedrichs’ (1854-1911) poem drew heavily from motifs of colonialism, Orientalism (West vs East, Europe vs Asia), and militarized nationalism then circulating in Imperial Germany

I thought a lot about this poem at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I considered how older means of coping with disease and societal disruption mingled with new discoveries, such as the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence and then mRNA vaccines. While hand washing, mask wearing, and quarantine (or “social distancing”) are tried and true, we have had a hard time giving up xenophobia and the kind of isolationist mindset that hoards vaccine until it expires instead of sending it to low-resource countries. I wonder what future historians will think when they look back to this period and its ubiquitous spiky virions.