Beth Emmott

Illustration from Breakfast, Dinner and Supper, by Maud C. Cooke

My grandmother gave me a number of early kitchen tools, most of which I could identify. One, however stumped me. It was cast iron and no one I asked could come up with its use. Many suggestions but …

This weekend our house is to be on a house tour and I was straightening up my cook book shelves and on the highest—I need a ladder to reach it—I keep old cookbooks. One, Breakfast, Dinner and Supper, by Maud C. Cooke, 1897 had illustrations of different tools and there it was page 104. A FISH SCALER.

Engraving of cast iron Fish Scaler c. 1897

Maud C. Cooke tells:
“Pour vinegar over fresh fish to make the scales come off easily…To scale a fish hold it by the tail under water (which is salted) in a deep pan… scrape the scales from the tail towards the head. The scales will come off easier under water and will fall to the bottom of the pan instead of flying about.”

Our turn for the theme dinner rolled around this Feb. and this year we chose Japan. Once a year, each couple chooses a theme, makes the main course and the others bring appetizers, first course, dessert, wine and this time Sake.

We had a wonderful time researching menus, seeking places to purchase ingredients and trying out the preparations in order to have some idea what we were doing the night of the dinner.

Setting the table and choosing dishes for all the various things served at once was a challenge and fun. My Mom has given me dishes that she had bought on Okinawa when we lived there in the early fifties. So, we took liberties with some of their purposes and added others, picked up some bamboo mats and tied our napkins with twine.

Table setting for Japanese Theme Dinner-First Course

Table setting for Japanese Theme Dinner-Main Course

Using the book, Japanese Family-Style Recipes by Hiroko Urakami, our main course was:

Wakame Seaweed Miso Soup (Wakame No Miso-Shiri)
Yellowtail Teriyaki (Buri No Teriyaki—we used Striped Bass)
Simmered Japanese Squash (Kabocha No Nimono)
Braised Daikon with two ground sesame seed sauces—black and white. (Furofuki Daikon)
White Rice with a side of Tsukemono (Pickled Cabbage)

This was the last fun thing we’ve done in a while as this was the night Bob’s leg began acting up and that’s been a very long story, but now he’s on the mend and …

A month ago my husband was hospitalized with a seriously infected knee joint and I spent many hours visiting. These photos were all taken and adjusted with my iPhone and various photo apps. I really don’t like spending time in hospitals even as a visitor, but . . .

Click here for Larger Views and More Images . . .
or view in Flickr

Last fall I drew a pumpkin a day for the month of October. I used my iPad with the app Sketchbook Pro and drew them all with my finger. I have also down loaded their mobile app for my iPhone and have been experimenting with that. I went to a lecture by Dan Marcolina who has done a lot of work with photographs on the iPhone and with different apps to manipulate images. (He has a book on the subject, iPhone Obsessed: Photo editing experiments with Apps.)

Sooooo, I’ve been playing with my phone. In addition to Sketchpook pro which lets one add photos to layers to use with their drawing tools, I’ve downloaded Tiffen’s Photo fx which contains all sorts of filters, grain presets, etc, etc, etc! There are so many other apps but this is where I’ve begun.

Working with iPhone photos and apps.

Been awhile. The holidays and then start of school. But things are settling down—a bit.

I teach a class in typography and whenever I cover a subject I see examples of it and its abuse everywhere. I’ve been covering the use of quotation marks, apostrophes and prime or hatch marks.

(Prime marks are straight up and down and are used with numbers to indicate inches or feet. Quotes and apostrophes are curved or slanted, depending on the font. )

They are used incorrectly so often that people have begun to accept them when they would not accept a straight up and down comma. (Hopefully!)

It was my Mom’s birthday and we took her out to dinner. The food and service was very good but the typography was all over the place. The other samples are within a few blocks of her condo. So, Type Geek had to document them. (click image for larger view)

Exterior sign for Aldo’s

Two more exterior signs—same restaurant

Logos on plates and menus

Two signs—two apostrophe treatments—same place.

What’s this?