as an exploratory journey through that old party question: if you could have a drink with anyone in history, who would it be? History is full of people you’d love to have a drink with. Let’s meet a few.
as an exploratory journey through that old party question: if you could have a drink with anyone in history, who would it be? History is full of people you’d love to have a drink with. Let’s meet a few.
Have a drink with: King Edward VII, aka “Bertie” Sportsman, monarch, don’t mention the lobster Ask him about: Holiday weight gain It’s movie awards season, which means I have been trying to catch up on all the “for your consideration” titles I didn’t get to over the course of 2021. Last week I caught Spencer,…
Have a drink with: Hugh Henry Brackenridge Attorney, nog enthusiast, clothing optional Ask him about: Pork as medicine It’s the holiday season, and that means it’s time for nog. Where did eggnog come from? If you look into it, you get a linguistic soup of suggestions (“nog” being an old word for strong ale, or…
Have: a piece of cake. It’s….pleasantly aged? Ask: is it past its sell-by date? According to the BBC, last week a slice of cake from the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana sold for £1,850 at auction (about $2,500 USD). A piece of one of the couple’s twenty-three cakes, the slice had been…
Have a drink at: Your College Dining Hall Cabbage: now with extra protein! Discuss: FOOD FIGHT Today, a college’s dining hall is part of its overall outreach in the competition to attract students, and to keep them happy and achieving while they’re on campus. So much is put into the food and the architecture that…
Have a drink with: Joseph Priestley Chemist, radical theologian, likes bubbles. Ask him about: favorite La Croix flavor? Part of social life for well-to-do Europeans in the eighteenth century was to visit a spa town – someplace like Bath in England, or the town of Spa in Belgium – and “take the waters.” Not unlike…
Have a drink with: William Banting Keto, paleo, intermittent fasting? Nope: BANTING. Ask him about: before and after pics When the Paleo diet became popular in the early oughts and the ketogenic diet more recently supplanted it as a nutritional craze, keen-eyed historians noticed something familiar about these diets’ recommendations to hork down all the…
Have a drink with: The Early Birds There’s only one 10 o’clock in the day, and this ain’t it. Yell along with them: Go the @%(# to sleep. In the past week alone, major publications have promised that a good night’s sleep may be the key to successful business, effortless parenting, a better sex life…
Have a drink with: Walt Whitman Contains multitudes; also coffee cake Ask him about: Baking with pork fat Walt Whitman is today remembered for a lot of things. He is the expansive, energetic chronicler of vibrant American life and spirit. He liked nude sunbathing. He grew one of history’s great beards. There was nothing he…
Have a drink with: Your Friendly Postwar Congressional Republicans Reducing sauces AND the national debt… Ask them about: Recipes for your Labor Day cookout In 1962, then-Congressman Gerald Ford lent his name to The Republican Congressional Cook Book, a collection of recipes and peppy political axe-grinding given to constituents. “It is our hope that as…
