The path to?

ByJohn Brown

Is this not delicious? I found it on istockphotos.com and couldn’t stay away. I want to be on that trail. I want to know what’s around that bend. Holy moly, the feeling of this photo is just marvelous.

So I bought a copy. It’s by stellalevi.

Wicked Tree Path

Zing, Baby!

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    Black Chokecherry Syrup

    ByJohn Brown

    When you live where we do, you cannot hope to landscape likes folks in a warm suburb. First of all, at 6,000 feet with a min temp of -30 Fahrenheit you can’t grow a lot of warmer climate plants. Second, the deer seem to eat everything else you do grow. So we’ve been looking and I think I’ve found a tree to add.

    I actually found it earlier when I was biking around the beautiful Round Valley and had to stop and go back to revel in the delicious fragrance. But I didn’t know what it was at the time. I do now. 

    It’s the black chokecherry.

    It grows naturally up here. Has beautiful fragrant blossoms in the spring. And it produces fruit that can be made into a delicious syrup. Oh, the raccoons like it as well.

    Now when you eat the raw berry, unless you eat it late in the fall, you’re in for an astringent, alum after-punch. But we picked the berries up a canyon behind our town after the first frosts. In fact, many of our berries were wrinkled. They just fine raw. Even Lilia, my pickiest eater, enjoyed them.

    We picked about 1.25 gallon ice cream buckets of the stuff. Then we followed this recepie and made about 4 quarts of syrup.

    • 3 cups chokecherry juice (see first step)
    • 3 cups apple juice (not from a store, but cooked from apples)
    • 6 1/2 cups sugar
    • (I’ve heard some folks add 1/4 teaspoon almond extract for a stronger cherry taste)
    1. Wash chokecherries, place in a large kettle, barely cover with water and cook, covered, for about 30 minutes till the cherries are soft. Mash gently and strain the chokecherry juice through a sieve or cheesecloth.
    2. Do the same with the apples.
    3. Pour the juice into a large kettle; stir in the sugar.
    4. Cook on high, stirring constantly.
    5. Boil hard for 1 minute.
    6. Remove from heat and skim foam.
    7. To can: Pour hot syrup into sterilized hot jars to within 1/8th inch from top.

    It’s absolutely delicious on pancakes. 

     

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  • So that’s where Tolkien got “Orc”

    ByJohn Brown

    Tolkien was a master of words with sounds that connote meaning. But I often find that a lot of his work was not produced from thin air. Case in point: I was looking today at the word “ogre.” Check out this etymology from the OED.

    French ogre (late 12th cent. in Old French in sense ‘fierce pagan’, c1300 in sense ‘man-eating giant’, attested again from 1613; also hogre (1704 in the passage translated in quot. 1713 at main sense)), further etymology uncertain and disputed.

    French ogre is perh. < classical Latin Orcus, the name of the god of the infernal regions, Hades, Pluto (further etymology uncertain), with metathesis of r (perh. influenced by words such as bougre BOUGRE n.), or perh. < post-classical Latin Ugri, Ungri, Ongri, applied by early writers to the Hungarians or Magyars (see UGRIAN n.). Cf. (< classical Latin Orcus) Middle French orque hell (16th cent.; prob. a later reborrowing), and also Italian orco demon, monster (13th cent.), Spanish huerco devil, personification of death or hell (1330-1900), Sardinian orcu demon, and early modern Dutch orck unruly person (Dutch regional ork). Spanish ogro (1787-1900) is a borrowing from French ogre.

    In folklore and mythology: a man-eating monster, usually represented as a hideous giant. In extended use: a person resembling or suggestive of an ogre; a cruel, irascible, or fearsome-looking person.

    But Tolkien’s not the only one using his brains. Here’s one from Robert Jordan.

    sangrayle, -grayll(e, seynt graal, 7-9 sangreal, 9 sangreall. [a. OF. Saint Graal ‘Holy Grail’: see SAINT a. and GRAIL.
      The pseudo-etymological form sang roial (confusing the word with SANG-ROYAL 2) appears in AF. of the 15th c.: see Godefr. Compl. s.v. SANC. Another spurious etymology formerly common appears in the following quot.:
      1685 STILLINGFL. Orig. Brit. i. 13 Others think that the word was Sangreal, being some of Christ’s real blood..said to be somewhere found by King Arthur.]

    1. = GRAIL.

    a1450 Le Morte Arth. 10 The knights of the table Round, The sangrayle when they had sought. c1450 Merlin ii. 32 Thi boke shalbe cleped the boke of the seynt Graal. 1470-85 MALORY Arthur II. xi. 88 Soone after the aduentures of the Sangrayll shalle come among yow and be encheued. 1808 SCOTT Marm. I. Introd. Epist. 268 He took the Sangreal’s holy quest. 1871 G. MEREDITH H. Richmond II. 145 They bear the veiled sun like a sangreal aloft to the wavy marble flooring of stainless cloud.

    Zing!

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