by Nigel Scotchmer | Feb 24, 2025 | Recipes
“Carpe rutabaga folia!” – Horace, Odes 1.11 (The cruel mocking of rutabagas by carving them into Jack O’Lanterns, practiced in Ireland and Scotland) Rutabagas, and their cousins, white, red, and purple-top turnips, are a generous-hearted, kind and forgiving root...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Feb 24, 2025 | Recipes
Today we tell another sad tale of famous foods and vegetables left to compost. Juana was a Soladera Tamal of the Mexican Revolution, 1910 – 1920, and her Herculean strength and invincibility so frightened her enemies that they erased all memory of her – even changing...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Feb 24, 2025 | Recipes
The Last Cry of the Parsnips The original Beef Parsnip Parsnips, before the advent of cane sugar from the Caribbean in the 18th century, were used as a sweetener. Parsnips were so valuable Emperor Tiberius permitted Germania to provide parsnips as tribute starting in...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 29, 2024 | Essays
The blind need a helping hand, but a disability can be a gift A maidenhair tree, or ginkgo biloba A recent article in the Spectator[1]...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 19, 2024 | Ramblings
“Meet me at the gate to Yu Garden” – Anonymous My neighbour across the street ran the ‘Maple Leaf Express’, one of the exit routes from Hong Kong when the British returned it to China in 1997. He regaled with me stories of incompetent Canadian government officials...