Perusal of the February 2008 archives
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 26
Lark's Tongue Aspic
As requested by the kind Dowager Larsen - My Great Aunt Venice Galubrious' recipe for lark's tongue aspic here transcribed.Enjoy in good health.
Pickling Ingredients
* 6 ounces of salt
* 2 ounces of bay-salt
* 1 ounce of saltpetre
* 3 ounces of coarse sugar
* cloves, mace, and allspice to taste
* butter
* common crust of flour and water
* three dozen mid sized larks
Instructions
Gather three dozen year-old wild larks, fall is the best season, when plumped for winter. Thump the birds gently a quarter inch above the apex of the beak with a half-sized marble avian knocker - a brass knocker will do in a pinch. Place the forked end of a silver tongue lasher firmly under the furthest reaches of the tongue, and give the lasher a quick thrust forward, making sure to avoid dislodging teeth or bile. Remove lark toes for garnish later, and discard the remainder of the bird. Lay the tongues for a fortnight in the above pickle, turn them every day, and be particular that the spices are well pounded; put them into a small ramekin, just large enough to hold them, place some pieces of butter on them, and cover with a common crust. Bake in a slow oven until so tender that a straw would penetrate them; take off the skin, fasten them down to a piece of board by running a thin skewer through the root and another through the tip, at the same time straightening them and putting them into shape; lark's tongues a traditionally chilled in the shape of shepard’s crook – signifying peace. When cold, trim off the unsightly roots.
Have one and a fourth quarts of aspic jelly in the liquid state. Use a mould of copper alloy, the chemical reaction will create a pleasant greenish tint to entirety. With a pinking vegetable cutter, cut out leaves from cooked beets into fancy shapes, and garnish the bottom of the mould with them. The smaller the shapes the more elaborate may be the designs. When garnishing with small shapes, pieces are so difficult to handle that they should be taken on the pointed end of a larding-needle and placed as desired on jelly. Add aspic mixture by spoonfuls, that designs may not be disturbed. When mixture is added, and firm to the depth of three-fourths inch, place in the lark tongues, taste buds up. If sides of mould are to be decorated, dip pieces in jelly and they will cling to pan. Pour in the remainder of the jelly and set away to harden. To serve: Dip the mould for a few moments in a pan of warm water, and then gently turn on to a dish. Garnish with pickles, parsley, and the raw lark's toes. Pickled beet is especially nice.
Seasonable at any time.
Serves 3
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 26
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 24
Lucia's little secret
The morning sun streamed in through the bedroom curtains, bathing us in a sense of well being, I felt everything had been set right. It was at that moment that I discovered half of my moustache had been shaved off. A cloud covered the sun, and a feeling of foreboding entered my day. Downstairs we found the offering of milk had been accepted – but the glasses been thrown against the wall, and the broken shards pressed dangerously - pointy end up - into the cracks of the floor.We cleaned up the mess and made breakfast. I was overwhelmed by the thought of standing in front of a class and beginning my lecture on the Victorian’s search for ultra-violet avian bio-mass. I felt my respectability would we hindered, extrapolating on the topic with half a moustache. In addition I did not savor the idea of leaving the girls home alone with the angry creature. I took the day off, and exasperated, sat before the fireplace staring at the dancing flames, contemplating what move we should make next. It was at this point that my youngest daughter, Lucia, timidly approached me. From behind her back she brought forward a miniature keychain with three tiny little keys. Lenore looked on from the doorway.
“What’s this?” I asked –
“It’s the Boggart’s” Lucia pulled her gaze up from the floor “when we found the things in the wall, I took these. They were cute and tiny, I didn’t think he would miss them.” The keys slid forward in her hand. As I picked them up they made a small sound like wind chimes, as I dangled them from my forefinger.
“Well,” I said, “what do you think we should do?”
“Give them back?” she replied
“It might not be as easy as that.” I explained that the boggart had abandoned it’s nest, and that it wouldn’t intentionally take anything from a household - it must be either clearly cast off as unwanted, or clearly presented in a grand gesture before the its front door, so that there is no question for what the object is intended.
The challenge before us was to find the boggart’s new den. We divided the task. I took on the attic, and in the dim light of the dormer window I squeezed through the rafters and shuffled around the old trunks and broken chairs. My hair gathered spider webs as I peered with my lantern into small nooks and crannies. All I found was two bats, a dried up field mouse, and a long lost recipe for lark-tongue aspic. I emerged from the attic stairs coated in cobwebs but looking forward to a tasty lunch.
The girls were having greater success in the basement, they had searched through the coal bin, furnace and cistern, and found only a confused toad. It was, at last, in the root cellar they discovered what appeared to be a piece of the boggart’s hoard, apparently abandoned on the way to its new home. The piece of the doll’s head was perched among the pipes shooting through the brick wall, waiting for the return of its owner. Further along the crumbling wall, hidden by the dark, was a small hole where the brick had completely crumbled away, and in front of the hole appeared some telltale tiny footprints.
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 24
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 24
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 18
» Please Provide Your Valued Opinion
Cream and Sugar
As much as I wanted to shelter my daughters, there was no denial now that we had a house brownie, and it had gone wrong – we had upset the delicate balance that had existed between the creature and our human world. We cleaned ourselves of squash soup and dusted off my volumes of research on Brownies and Boggarts and sat together around the table in the dim light becoming re-acquainted with facts.Brownies are inordinately fond of their hoards and are as attached to them as we might be our own children. If the hoard is disturbed, it is equally disturbing to the mind of the brownie. The discovery of a well-hidden hoard, often centuries in the making, can result in disgruntlement, but usually not metamorphosis, of the creature. Much like a barn cat with its kittens, once the scent of a human is detected on the creature’s objects it finds the need to transport the cache piece by piece to another secret location. Indeed, this is why I had taken pains to be as careful as possible – using the silver tongs - in replacing the objects back into the wall.
Lenore, Lucia, and I sought out a pry bar and pulled apart my woodwork to expose the brownie’s den only to discover....nothing. Everything, each broken bit of doll head, bead, button and shiny key had been removed. It was all gone. Still, we had attempted to be respectful. We had carefully replaced everything, and so we were left with the question; why this torment?
We referred to the book again. Could we appease the creature, or had we made an enemy for life? The book fell open to a flat oiled piece of brown paper with a transfer of a sweet sugary print marked upon it. I told the girls of my research into Brownies and Boggarts in western Europe, where I found the most concrete evidence of existence at the Maison Farfadet in the small village of Tumulus Saint Michele in France. It was there that, after forgoing the tradition of placing ale in a small hole in the ancient stone at the back of a local brewery, a Boggart had taken to playing tricks on the patrons. Least tangible of these tricks was the smearing of lipstick on the collars of local tradesmen, and souring of ales and wines. I made my way to the village one summer, following up on leads and rumors, and there one grey morning I saw with my own eyes the tavern’s tabby cat tied with tea bag strings to a cutting board inside the pastry display. Small powdered footprints, some two and a half inches in length, trailed off toward the cellar.
At Wiseman’s Bridge Inn, at Saudersfoot, Wales, I had made the acquaintance of a Lady Charlotte Fishmarble. The elderly women told me her family had a 16th generation brownie who insisted on keeping the family house fastidiously tidy and had a particular fondness for balancing teacups, sorting sugar cubes and polishing doorknobs. “You must be very careful, and not offend,” she told me, “The Brownies believe it is their duty, their privilege to serve their chosen family. My mother once took it into her head to rearrange the crockery – the brownie flew into a frightful rage, made a right mess of the place – but a bit of cream and honey put him right again.”
This was far from the only documentation of the Brownie’s taste for dairy products. A Widow from Seattle told tale that she was once in a similar situation, and found that milk and sourdough bread with honey worked miracles; farm families in New England appeased the errant house Boggart with Maple syrup and goat cheese. But, what if this Brownie (Was there really any question that ours was now a boggart?) was lactose intolerant? The wrong peace offering could be very poorly received. The last thing we needed was an angry boggart with gastro-intestinal distress storming about our house. As we sat around the table in our soup-splattered dining room we decided we had little choice but to take our chances.
I took to the icebox and poured out the top of the milk bottle – where the majority of the cream had risen. We stirred in great dollops of honey and poured the concoction into etched glasses – placing one each in the north, south, east and west corners of the house. We crept up the stairs and all climbed into the big four poster bed, drifting into a fitful sleep as sleet beat down on the slate roof. Just as we would begin to fall into slumber our eyes would pop open as windowpanes rattled and beams creaked in the winter night.
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 18
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 12
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 11
» Please Provide Your Valued Opinion
A Tangle
Lifting each item with silver plated ice-tongs, we painstakingly catalogued each item in the brownies’ collection, then the girls passed them back as I stood on a stool and carefully secured the items in the wall. I hammered up the rest of the wainscoting, and surveyed my work happily. But troubles were brewing behind the slats.Our house, once a cozy and crowded but well organized space, became disheveled. Sooted cobwebs appeared in the corners of the rooms, swaying gently in the winter drafts, lights flickered, cracks spidered down the wavy glass of the windows, floorboards creaked, hinges moaned and bedsprings sighed. The entire house appeared to tilt dramatically to the west. Sitting down to my desk one evening, I found that I had drifted some nine feet in the course of an hour, as my chair rolled along the tilt of the floor. So absorbed was I in my work that I was not aware of my migration until I looked up from my cherished volume of the “The Sainted Toadstool of Clapham Junction and other Sacred Fungi of Great Britain” to find I had rolled into the study’s fireplace, my backside roasting above the embers. I leapt up, knocking my head against the mantelpiece and sending a biblical rain of taxidermied tree frogs down upon me. For the sake of my own health I found it necessary to tie my office chair to the leg of my desk with a length of twine.
These were minor inconveniences, compared to the changes occurring to the other occupants of the household. Each of those winter days, as evening came on, our great yellow hound would begin to whine and barked at shadows in the dim blue night. She began to grow great bald spots and in the mornings we would find her, red-eyed, staring intently at the wainscoted wall. She slept before the fire during the day, and at night we would hear her toe nails clicking as she paced the floor. I grew certain she had lost what little sense she had once had, and feared she had contracted mange from the woodchuck pelt she found in the woods late last fall.
There were changes in the girls as well. They whispered covertly to one another as the winter’s sun arced its path across their bedroom floor. They spent the days building contraptions from the odds and ends from the garden shed, and old instruments scavenged from the College’s science department. Late one night I heard the staircase creak and groan, I grabbed hold of the nearest weapon and crept around the corner and leapt out. There was a scream as Lenore, in her nightgown, was confronted by her father emerging from the shadows brandishing a can of corned beef.
“My hair” said Lenore breathlessly, “I woke up with it like this.” A black cameo brooch, once her mother's, was set twisted up in a knot on the top of her head. We sat together for a half an hour in the dim early morning unfurling the pin in silence. But this turned out to be only the beginning; the following nights saw alarm clocks and teaspoons twisted tight to the girl’s scalps. We tried braiding their hair before bedtime, a ritual that made me miss their mother, they even took to wearing bonnets tied closely to their heads. But every morning a good hour had to be spent untwisting tin soldiers, eyeglasses, fountain pens and rutabagas, and brushing out their beautiful golden hair.
The house continued its downfall, entire rooms of paintings would be found askew on their hooks, and unpleasant scents wafted out of the fire. Rumbling came from deep in the basement and the plumbing gurgled, bubbled and spat. One Sunday, as we sat down to dinner, the girls and I paused with our spoons half raised to our mouths as the sound of scurrying and rolling came from above us in the ceiling. “A squirrel storing nuts” I chuckled a little nervously. Lenore and Lucia stole looks at each other and raised their eyebrows. We continued our dinner, trying our best to ignore the distraction until a chunk of plaster fell from above, landing squarely in the tureen, sending forth a wave of squash soup. We looked up in time to watch helplessly as a cascade of billiard balls crashed upon the table sending cutlery flying and shards of blue transfer-ware ricocheting around the room.
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 11
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 07
» Please Provide Your Valued Opinion
How it Began –
The stinging cold of January’s New England months had forced our small family inside, and I had taken the time between semesters to begin the process of wainscoting our laundry room, where awkward wallpaper was still an ever present reminder of our old home’s former owner. The wainscoting was going up easily, board after board nicely dovetailing into one another with a snap. I was hammering away, the girls playing by the fire, when a large chunk of the horsehair plaster (The wall had always bulged a bit) fell away with a loud crash. When the enormous cloud of plaster dust settled, my daughters emerging from the fog, standing silently with wide eyes. I followed their eyes past their plaster covered father to the hole in the wall where they were staring.There, wedged carefully among the slats, was a collection of odd objects – magazine covers, keys, shards of glass and big pearly buttons. A violin’s scroll weaved its way through the other objects, and a bisque dolls head’s empty eyes looked back at us from the darkened space. I reached out and grasped hold of an enameled watch face, and before the girls could scream “NO!” there was a clatter of objects falling out onto the floor.
“That,” Lenore Declared “is the hoard of a house brownie!”
This simple statement filled me with both pride and concern. Like my daughters, I too had believed in the existence of the “others”; the magical creatures that fill the pages of childrens books and are passed down in stories by toothless crones. As a young boy I had spent my summer afternoons searching them out in the fields and pastures around our home and even dedicated my college studies to research, seeking out proof of their existence, spending what was left of the Galubrious accordian fortune traveling to the Moors of England, hiking to small villages in India, and snorkeling in the farm ponds of New Hampshire, collecting news of sightings and stashing away soil samples and foliage specimens. But concrete proof was elusive and the money ran out. Eventually I found the muffled laughter and whispers behind the hands of my colleagues too hard to take. I gave up my passionate search and instead gave myself over to the study of anthropomorphic biology.
My research stayed with me – collecting dust on the shelves of my office. Boxes filled with labeled bottles, paper clippings, wing fragments and toad scrapings. I dragged them like an albatross from one small college town to another, tenure denied when my past research was un-covered. I wanted to burn it all, but at the same time didn’t want to cut that last connection with the other world. It now seems inevitable that before she could even read I found Lenore, dressed in her late mother’s lace fringed frocks and hats, leafing through the volumes of photographs and notes. It became her refuge, my journals her building blocks, my study; her playroom. As I sat in the dim light preparing my next days lecture, she would perch herself on stacks of books in my “library” closet, holding up each corked vial, thumbing though drawings of fantastic creatures, and, when she was old enough, reading clippings and journals to her younger sister Lucia, as if they were fairy tales and picture books.
My concern rested in my daughter’s character. She had a maudlin, far away demeanor, that went beyond the loss of her mother, but instead signaled to me that she was living in another world, and was most likely beginning a journey down the same lonely path of my own youth.
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 07
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 07
About Our Organization
Dr. Galubrious and Daughters is the nation's first fully bonded service dedicated to on site removal and confirmation of the existence of others.Dr. Galubrious, (DD, Cavendish College, Cambridge, England; S.T.D. Castle College, Windham, NH), combines his scientific and well honed research skills with the technological, creative, and paranormal abilities of his daughters, Lenore and Lucia.
The goal of the team is to document for science and lend aid to those in need of assistance in dealing with magical creatures. The Galubrious team specializes in fairies, but are experienced in dealings with boggarts, gnomes, banshees, grindylow, dugbogs, pixies, porlock, and merpeople.
We implore the public to aide us on our quest, as we believe that increased awareness through registered sightings and proper documentation will help reverse trends of species decline due to carelessness, indifference and loss of habitat.
If you have photographic or other supplementary evidence such as newspaper clippings, flower clippings, or toenail clippings - please transmit them to me electronically via digitalized media: Dr.Galubrious@gmail.com. I am anxiously awaiting your detailed correspondence.
Composed by Dr. G on Feb 07