Happy Thanksgiving 2011 (US)

[Valentine]

Length of forearm from elbow to fingertips, IIRC.

In forum-related topics, I seem to recall that that's a traditional length for some of the Craft tools.

You indeed recall correctly.
And yeah, it's a good length for things.

I just don't always have a ruler on hand! But I generally have my forearm conveniently with me.

(Also, I have very fond memories of that Cosby bit. "...am I on Candid Camera?")

[KittyVel]

Happy Thanksgiving to our US members. While the holiday has strong Christian overtones in the US, the basic idea of thanking the Gods is something common to all religions. How are you celebrating?

We watched the Macy's parade and the dog show, then my Nana came to visit for the day. We cooked all day, stuffed our faces, then went to bed. XD I offered half of my meal (which consisted of green beans, stuffing, turkey, baked mac and cheese, and yeast rolls) to the gods and goddesses and thanked them for everything they've done for me, and thanked the plants and animals for their sacrifices. Overall, it was a very good day.

[victoreia]

You indeed recall correctly.
And yeah, it's a good length for things.

I just don't always have a ruler on hand! But I generally have my forearm conveniently with me.

I'm assuming that means the inside of the elbow to the fingertip? 'Cuz for me, that's just about twelve inches.

(Also, I have very fond memories of that Cosby bit. "...am I on Candid Camera?")

My dad had that on LP, and transferred it to cassette when I was about six, so we'd listen to that all the time.

[stephyjh]

Huh. Apparently I'm an old-fashioned cook - I wouldn't dream of taking a cake out of the oven unless it passed the toothpick test. Just going by the clock alone doesn't always work - probably because oven thermostats aren't always accurate.

Sunflower

Usually the cake will pull away from the sides of the pan at about the same time.

ETA: One of the recipes from my great-grandma calls for a five-cent hershey bar. I still haven't figured out how much that is.

[victoreia]

Usually the cake will pull away from the sides of the pan at about the same time.

ETA: One of the recipes from my great-grandma calls for a five-cent hershey bar. I still haven't figured out how much that is.

I'd figure they meant a whole bar, but that still doesn't help, since bar sizes have changed a lot (and, I daresay, often) in the last century or however long it's been since Hershey started making chocolate......

[Valentine]

I'm assuming that means the inside of the elbow to the fingertip? 'Cuz for me, that's just about twelve inches.

I measure outside the elbow, but my cubit is also bigger than yours. Classically, the forearm minus the hand is about a foot--whatever your proportions, generally the radius-and-ulna portion of the arm will about match the length of your own foot--and with the hand it's a bit over a foot. The old Old Kingdom "royal cubit" is in the neighborhood of twenty inches or fifty-two centimeters, from what we know, with 28 divisions for hands and digits. (Seven palmwidths, four fingerwidths each.)
From checking on myself, the notion that a cubit ought to be seven palmwidths means I have to measure from the tip of the elbow, and even then--maybe I've got big hands--my cubit's about six and a half palms, so there's that. (My "cubit" is about 18.5" or 47cm. It's kind of impressive to think that whoever defined the "royal cubit" was, as such, probably bigger and taller than me--when you consider that humans today are statistically larger even than humans of five or six generations ago, or look at furniture from the 1700s. My arm's smaller than that bygone pharaoh's, and I am not a small woman at 5'8"/173cm. Either nutrition in Old Kingdom Egypt was significantly better than I would've guessed [though I suppose of course it was for royalty], the "royal cubit" was an exaggeration, or that person was, compared to the average person on the street, enormous.) I mean, this is part of why they switched from eyeballing your personal cubit/inch/foot/fathom to measuring tools like cubit rods, and from there to standardized measurements--for any large or collaborative project, it's a nightmare.

For just me around the house, though, trying to figure out where a new couch will fit in my living room, cubits are jim dandy.

[sailor]

I'd figure they meant a whole bar, but that still doesn't help, since bar sizes have changed a lot (and, I daresay, often) in the last century or however long it's been since Hershey started making chocolate......

http://www.hersheyarchives.org/exhib...itSectionId=44

The weight of the 5 cent chocolate bar depended upon the price of cocoa. Hershey was committed to offering a 5 cent bar, and changed the weight as needed to maintain the price. So, you'd have to know which week a person was talking about.

[Owl]

Usually the cake will pull away from the sides of the pan at about the same time.

ETA: One of the recipes from my great-grandma calls for a five-cent hershey bar. I still haven't figured out how much that is.

Well, as an almost old fart, the 5 cent hershey bar was the 'regular' size in the early 1960's and probably some time before. Then they got smaller before they got more expensive. You know how they have 'regular' and 'king size' of many candy bars now? The king size is generally about what a regular used to be when I was really young. About the same as full size 'nicer' brand candy bars are (Lindt, Green and Black's, Theo, Chocolove).

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Happy Thanksgiving to our US members. While the holiday has strong Christian overtones in the US, the basic idea of thanking the Gods is something common to all religions. How are you celebrating?

I just got back a day or two ago from our annual Thanksgiving family reunion. We go up to my Aunt and Uncle's house up near San Francisco. Most of that side of the family is Mormon, but my Aunt has a pretty good pagan streak and every year we have the Fairy Walk, where we all (well, all the kids, and those of us adults who are willing) walk around their estate looking for fairies and their dwellings. This year the event ended with erecting a circle of candles, reciting a spell, and leaving them gifts we made for them.

The less spiritual parts of the event are Frisbee-Golf, a talent show, and the "Bear Hunt." On the bear hunt we make wooden weapons, which are different every year, sometimes swords or knives, sometimes rubber-band guns, or bows, or tomahawks. Then we follow the path along the creek into the (relative) wilderness. Of course, we never actually found a bear, and it would have been horribly irresponsible to take a bunch of kids hunting a bear for real. This year, most everyone else was busy, so my niece and I went on the bear hunt ourselves.

Some years there is also an Art Class taught by my uncle, or a movie trip. We always have our big Thanksgiving Dinner, with a Turkey, Green Bean Casserole, Cranberry Sauce, Yams, and Mashed Potatoes. The next morning we all go into town for sticky buns and Black Friday Shopping at the galleries, boutiques, and book stores, and antique shops.

This year we also had an unexpected Wine Tasting for the 21+ crowd. It was better than I expected, as I don't typically like wine.

[SunflowerP]

Blame the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Foodways Blog, not me

I looked briefly at the CWHF site, too, but didn't do a search, just checked the glossary and a couple of other "logical" places, and didn't find anything.

<does search, out of curiosity>

Oh, I see how that happened - they don't directly explain it at all, you had to suss it out by comparing the old recipe text to the modernization. Always a tricky business, and easy to get tangled up with.

I'm seeing one instance of "slow oven" converted to 325* (caraway in cookies, hmm, that sounds good), one instance of "moderate oven" converted to 350*, one instance of "slack oven" converted to 250*, and one instance in which I think it came up in the search simply because it includes the word "oven" (which suggests it's not worth my while to try searching by different oven "speeds"; I probably got 'em all).

Looks to me like a "slack oven", in example 3, is even slower than a "slow oven", or might be roughly synonymous - since the modernized temperature is at the low end of what VR calls "slow", it's hard to tell for sure, and either one makes sense to me from a linguistic POV.

I suspect those cookies in the first example had a temperature adjustment while the recipe was being modernized, likely so as to give a result in line with modern expectations of what a cookie is like - the original recipe doesn't give a time, but I'm guessing it would have been longer than the modern recipe (8-10 min, which is typical of modern cookies), which I surmise would have a slightly different result in terms of browning and/or texture (at a guess, less Maillard reaction, so less browning/crispiness at the edges, while still cooking the centre through).

Hmm, I might just experiment sometime to check my surmises, since I liked the sound of those cookies anyway, and since a softer cookie would suit my personal tastes.

I think I'll also search more widely (i.e., consult various bits of the Wikifamily, do net-wide searching, perhaps check some hardcopy cookbooks), since we've only got the two sources so far and they don't quite agree. If nothing else, I'll likely find me some useful sites I don't yet have bookmarked.

(Yep, I'm geeking out now. I'm a food/cooking geek, a language geek, and a history geek; this convo hits all three.)

Sunflower