There are a few basic precautions one should always follow when setting a volatile substance alight in one’s home. The first of those is to always have a charged fire extinguisher within easy reach. Next up, make sure you’re not near anything flammable like curtains, and that there aren’t any bottles of booze in the […]
READ ONI’m sentimental about bananas for a rather odd reason. Once, as a young fellow, I happened to circumnavigate the globe. Not by boat, but by train (and of course, air). The longest stretch on the ground was through the (then) U.S.S.R., which took me weeks to cross. I’d procured a special visa which allowed me […]
READ ONIt might surprise more than a few of you to learn that Carmen Miranda is more than a just a mainstay character of the torch bar scene. She was a real live person, the most successful woman in the glory days of Hollywood. In fact in her day she was the most successful woman, period. […]
READ ONA survey of the historical banana literature (which fills entire rooms at my local library) reveals quite a bit of disagreement over where the word “banana” comes from. Some say that it derives from the Arabic word for “finger”, which makes a good deal of sense. Others argue that it’s a Guinean word. I’m not […]
READ ONThis woman is clearly inspired by this woman. But did you know she was drawn by this cartoonist?
READ ONI did my best to be non-confrontational yesterday, since Lord knows, I don’t want any trouble. However a few of my loyal readers out there registered complaints about what they saw as my overly-kind treatment of UFC. One of you also pointed out, not without merit, that Cecil Rhodes isn’t a terribly precise parallel to […]
READ ONSo then, we know that Bananas Foster was invented in New Orleans, primarily because New Orleans was a main port of entry for bananas coming in from Central and South America. Why did so many bananas enter the United States there? Simply because New Orleans is not only situated on the Gulf of Mexico, it’s […]
READ ONBakers as a group tend to have very full liquor cabinets, though not much of what’s in those cabinets is anything anyone — outside of a bunch of college kids on a spring break bender in Mexico — would much care to drink: green apple schnapps, white crème de cacao, walnut palinka, elderberry eau de […]
READ ONIt’s nothing you can’t get off the Brennan’s web site, but then I try to make joepastry.com a one-stop shop. I generally cut this recipe in half, which is plenty for 2-3 people. ½ stick butter 1 cup brown sugar ½ teaspoon cinnamon ¼ cup banana liqueur 4 bananas, cut in half lengthwise, then halved […]
READ ONA study says that 40% of Twitter messages are pointless babble. I wonder what the statistics are on baking blog posts.
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