Charles W. Moore

Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii

In December 2020, archaeologists at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii announced that they had found the remains of these two men and the dog as they were excavating this ancient food establishment, known as a thermopolium.

Researcher: Spaces like this thermopolium provide archaeologists like me with a realistic portrayal of what Roman food culture was like in comparison to sensational portrayals of Roman food culture

The researcher re-constructed a typical meal based on article in the link below at the end of the text. The preparation is given next and this is the real “meat” of the article.

Preparation

1. Prepare the dough for the mensae: Dissolve the starter in the water, combine with the flour and salt, then knead the dough, cover it, and let it rest for one hour in a warm place.
2. Place the duck in a pot, submerge it in water, add the dill and pinch of salt, and bring it to a boil. Cover and simmer on medium-low for 45 minutes to create a light broth. If you’re feeling brave, add a few snail shells, goat bones, and pork bones to the broth for added flavor.
3. After the mensae dough has rested, cut the dough in half, and fold each half into a ball. Using a rolling pin or the palm of your hand, flatten each ball into a disk. Cover with a damp tea towel and let the dough rest for another 30 minutes.
4. In a pan, combine the olive oil and fish sauce with the oregano and coriander, then heat on medium-high.
5. Remove the duck from the broth pot and sear it in the pan along with the oil, fish sauce, and herbs. Drizzle with half of the defrutum (or grape molasses). Once the duck has browned, remove it from the pan and set it aside. Keep the drippings in the pan.
6. In a bowl, combine the remaining defrutum (or grape molasses) with the red wine vinegar, honey, diced dandelion greens (or cicoria), ground black pepper, lovage, cumin, coriander, and asafoetida and whisk it all together.
7. In the pan, add the flour and duck fat (or lard or unsalted butter) to the drippings and make a roux by dissolving the flour and fat together on low heat. Use a whisk to prevent clumping.
8. Combine the mixture of honey, vinegar, and spices with 1 cup (215 grams) of the duck broth and slowly add the liquid to the roux in the pan, on low heat, whisking it together until it begins to thicken into a sauce.
9. Cook both mensae by either heating a grill or a frying pan with olive oil, on medium-high. Place each mensa onto the hot grill or pan and grill it until it starts to inflate. Then flip it over and grill the other side until golden brown. Lower your heat if the mensae are browning too quickly before inflating.
10. Place a large dollop of the sauce on each serving dish. Slice the duck meat into bite-size morsels and place them on top of the sauce. Drizzle with additional broth to surround the duck morsels and garnish with sprigs of fresh oregano.
11. Slice the grilled mensae into wedges and serve them alongside the sliced duck to soak up the sauce and the broth.

Now take your bowl of braised duck and your bread, and imagine you’re in a Pompeiian popina. Find a stool where there’s enough light to see the food in front of you. You may have to sidle up next to a stranger so make sure your coin purse is secure. Best make this your last cup of wine. The ground always trembles beneath your feet when you’ve had too much and it’s doing so right now. Not to worry, the broth and bread will sober you up just enough to stagger out the front door past that dog that won’t stop barking at something off in the distance. Scratch his head to distract him, then say goodbye. Time to go while there’s still daylight. Is it daylight? The air outside has a strange yellow hue to it, and an acrid smell, and the earth feels as if it’s still trembling periodically as you steady yourself on the edge of a fountain. It’s probably just the wine but you’d better get home quickly. A dark cloud is forming above Vesuvio and it looks as if a storm is on its way.

* Correction: This article originally stated that Pliny wrote the letter in 79 AD. It was several decades after the eruption, around 106 AD.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/recreate-the-menu-of-pompeii-ancient-pub?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b756f82470-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_01_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-b756f82470-70922829&mc_cid=b756f82470&mc_eid=248b0bf054

What Christian Citizens Owe Government Leaders

Four Obligations from the New Testament

George P Wood on January 22, 2021

https://influencemagazine.com/en/Practice/What-Christian-Citizens-Owe-Government-Leaders

FOX satire

A 2020 Recap

End of 2020

December: No break, even at the end of the year.

One would think that after a pretty terrible year it would end well. Nope, not for us at least. SAM said she wanted to go to the grocery and since I had been in the RV since the cold snap started, I told here I would take her. I dropped her off at the entrance of Walmart and told her where I would meet her at the end of the row. It was very busy and the row extended, as did other rows too, a long way out.

I parked at the end of the row and was surrounded by vehicles. As time passed the rush seemed to dissipate and one then another and another left leaving me more or less isolated out in the boondocks. I was stationary, in Park and trying to tune the Amateur Radio and all of a sudden CRUNCH and I was thrown forward and to starboard. A guy driving a 25’± RV hit my aft port side of the Civic. I jumped out and told him to stop moving. Well, the next hour was spent taking pictures of each other’s data and calling the police (who did nothing but run both the RV & Civic plates). The officer said it was private property and did not write up police reports in cases of no bodily injury’s. We continue to try and sort out the repairs and other post crash data.

The rest of the year summary

This year 2020 started out with us in our RV at the Escapees Rainbow’s End RV Park in Livingston, TX.   We commute from Livingston to see family on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.  We enjoyed being with the family on many of the days during this holiday season. Covid-19 had not become a major issue yet but this Influenza B was a killer too. We lost a couple of friends.

After New Years Day we started to prep for our early January travel but on the morning of our departure our slide would not retract.  We finally found someone to repair the hydraulic system. On the way East along I-10, we stopped at a Lodge in Slidel, LA. We were going to spend time in New Orleans but Covid 1-19 was rearing its head and left early

Farther to the East along I-10 we stopped at Summerdale/Foley/Fairhope area to check out the Escapees RV Park.  We really enjoyed our time here and explored the area from Pensacola to Mobile.  The highlights were touring the Battleship USS Alabama (BB-60) and Submarine USS Drum (SS-228) plus we went several times to watch the Blue Angels fly at NAS Pensacola.  We left Alabama mid-April and since Covid-19 was in full swing and accelerating we drove straight home with two overnights enroute near Athens, AL and Columbus, IN. 

Our Summer was spent more-or-less hunkered down in our small town.  We did become Boondockers Welcome hosts, an organization, whose members allow free camping on their property and enjoyed talking with new arrivals – socially distanced of course – down at the beach watching bondfires.  Our summer ended with prep for the Fall departure, lawn work and chainsawing all the wood from the summer storm.  The bad news for the summer was the 15” DIAMETER TREE THAT FELL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HOUSE ROOF.  Our insurance company was great but some of the repair crews not so much.

This 2020/21 Christmas season finds us in Southern Alabama.  We are staying all season in a RV Park.  It is a rather spacious park that is perfect for Covid-19 separation.  However, nothing is happening in the park as all buildings are closed and all social groups are banned except the biking group. Every evening at 4 PM we go out riding for 3 miles – some, like us, ride even further. We also walk most mornings for a mile+ while being lead by our little dog. 

May God bless you and your families for the remainder of this year and into the next.

If There’s Any Justice

Stephen Miller is an American government official who serves as a senior advisor for policy to President Donald Trump. His politics have been described as far-right and anti-immigration. He was previously the communications director for then-Senator Jeff Sessions.

Mother of Evangelists

“Many Samaritans in that city believed in Jesus because of the woman’s word when she testified, ‘He told me everything I’ve ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.Many more believed because of his word, and they said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is truly the savior of the world’.” (John 4:39-42)

Photini: Mother of Evangelists. The link below will take you to an amazing story that I had never heard of before. It is not too long and worth the read. It is the written version of Eastern Orthodox church oral history passed down throught the generations.

https://knowyourmothers.com/photini-mother-of-evangelists/?fbclid=IwAR3w-SFhriBUf-2SeHqUwAJ7qBUTERXY7UL465Th-s1M6VObkP_q8kJ8e8k

The story of Photini is one of the longest stories in the Bible about a woman and it is the longest conversation that Jesus is recorded as having with anyone. Photini is allowed just as much speaking time as Jesus, however she remains unnamed in scripture.

Positive / Negative View

Perhaps, it is possible, just possible, that very poor people from farming villages pooled their $$ together to risk a last chance for the brightest of their community to escape to the “Land of Opportunity”.

Positive: This is similar to my grandmother, who came from Denmark in very early 1900’s, spoke flawless English, became an American citizen and raised my father who sent all his three kids to university , who then matriculated and sent their children to various areas of advanced learning. I will not even discuss all the grandchildren who are excelling as police officers, college professors, engaged in entrepreneurship, extended military excellence++. A worthy kid, given a chance, will become exactly the same given the opportunity.

Negative: A Trumper posted on FB all the children in detention were not brought here by their parents but were brought by drug cartels, slave traders, et. al. And it follows the mindless rhetoric passed to unthinking people by the propaganda machine of shrewd, calculating and unpatriotic Americans.

Religious Based Healthcare

New York State accused a major Christian group on Tuesday of deceiving customers by illegally offering health insurance to as many as 40,000 residents since 2016.

The state filed civil charges against Trinity Healthshare, the Christian group, and Aliera, a for-profit company that markets the plans. The complete article is below:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/health/health-insurance-christian-cost-sharing.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR1lToS_i3v5z70zpqb6ZniqE0rO2XFsgOGYLx4XkA3leNBIKsd5Sb9JmMk

Source – nytimes.com: New York regulators said patients were often left with thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills. A woman with leukemia was denied coverage for an emergency hospital stay that cost thousands of dollars because she was told she had a pre-existing condition. Aliera denied a $15,000 claim for breast cancer treatment, according to regulators, while another patient said even routine doctor’s visits were not covered by Trinity.

Clickbait

I did a speed read of this article but should have read it in more detail – perhaps I will do that this afternoon.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-34213693?fbclid=IwAR0Z1IF8NBfUasZZP5ky5ow7cPzJiZF8h9DJu5H4ZNZgVGcRCd5rmErJiCE

It is a golden rule of journalism, taught to any news reporter at the beginning of their career – your introduction should grab the reader straight away.

If you cannot hold someone’s attention for a sentence, you have no hope of getting them to read the rest of your article.

The same is true for headlines; stark, witty or intriguing ones can draw the reader’s eye to a story.

Headline writing has long been considered a skill but, in the digital age, a new word has become synonymous with online journalism – clickbait. Ha ha, did I get your attention? Finis.