Prescriptions, Recipes and Treats

The sharing of recipes and other formulae is ancient and is at the root of every cultural advance. What is not freely shared is stolen from one people and used by another.
Over the weekend I watched a program about the sack of Rome by the Vandals. Pity. Robbery, rape and pillage. However, as a historian, I do ask for your consideration, "How had the Romans come by these treasures?" Hmmm? 
You know that tribes of people on every continent had terrible recipes and healing concoctions and other tribes had hit on better ones.
Magda's roasted badger marinade made everyone queasy and gassy, but no one knew any better way to fix the critter. Then, one of the hunters dragged home a woman from a distant land that sneaked some of the Colonel's herbs and spices into the stew pot while Magda was hunting and gathering something else and "Dang!" the badger meat fell off the bones and the gassy concert never came. The recipe was reinvented, claimed by Magda, and shared.
Somebody chewed on burdock and got relief from aches and pains and even gout. Burdock is found in many of today's medications - just as eyebright and feverfew are used for VISION issues and to reduce FEVER.
Now there are some really bad things (in my opinion) still in circulation and making modern humans queasy and gassy. They are still showing up at church dinners and family potlucks.
Rx and recipe are the same. Foods that taste medicinal and medicines that taste like food ought not to be.
Medicines ought to taste bad and food ought to taste good. Bad tasting medicine weeds out the people that are just pretending to be sick.
My great aunts made great use of varieties of alcohol in their holiday baking and undue further saturation of what they had baked.
I thought frag grenades and bouncing betsys were awfully dangerous, but try choking down a 10 month old rum ball with a chunky Christmas nog that was never set too close to the candles.
Prescriptions that we miss include paregoric. This drug was opium stewed in alcohol. It would settle any raging stomach and quiet any restless child. I'm sure that it was over-prescribed and socially abused.
Children were drugged because their parents were tired. I really cannot image THAT.
We do share things like NOT cleaning glass with paper towels when newsprint is CLEARLY better ... but then you have to read a newspaper to have the paper for cleaning windows but reading the news might make you so upset you don't care if the glass falls out of your window frames.
Not everything Marie Calendar makes is worth eating. Yep, I do occasionally have a one and only meal and usually she is dependable. But, her new lasagna boily, drainy dish for one was so bad the dogs would not fight over it.
Photographers experiment and share darkroom and exposure secrets.
Calligraphers play with ink and gouache.
Players play ...
Where did I put my badger marinade recipe? B for badger or M for marinade or R for roadkill?
By the way, enjoy the muffins! They are too good not to share. © tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com