Curacao Liqueur

So you have sensed a theme with my last entry have you? I decided that while I'm on my articles will be themed, having to do with my vacation. So how did a liqueur get named after a place? In the late 1400's when the Spanish colonized Curacao one of their many plans for using the island was to grow their beautiful sweet oranges. Little did they know the oranges had another plan. The climate and soil were not good for the plant, the oranges that grew were evil tasting bitter tiny oranges and were abandoned. Not even the islands burgeoning goat population would touch them. At some point in the 1800's someone figured out that even though the oranges sucked the orange skins contained a lot of sweet oil and that when soaked in alcohol (because if it tastes good, lets face it, someone has soaked it in alcohol) thye made curacao liqueur. This alcohol is naturally clear but the company decided their product needed to look more tropical so it is often colored blue or orange.

If you've been reading my posts you know that I am headed out on vacation. While I am gone I will only be posting every other day, starting tomorrow. Have a wonderful fourth of July!
    -Jes

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pictofigo-Vacation.png

Who started vacations?

I'm headed to Curacao for a week and so I decided to do some research on the history of vacation in the United States. Who was the brilliant person who came up with this concept of sunshine and laziness. Their isn't really an answer to this. The idea evolved over time and highly religious early america had a love hate relationship with the idea. Originally vacation meant the time where teachers and students were not at school. AKA vacating the school. People would take this time to do other things, often work. By the mid 1800's people start noticing that stress is doing bad things to business men. Doctors start proscribing vacations for peoples health, only people with money can really do this though. With the dawn of the automobile and trains people start thinking about taking farther trips for themselves. Trains companies realize that they can get more business by building hotels at one end of their line. Some religious people are still worried about the idleness of vacation at this time and so some christian groups run hotels offering far fewer temptations, no smoking or drinking and so on. As transportation improved and infrastructure arose vacationing evolved into what it is today.

Keeping it cool

I'm not sure why our generation has gone refrigerator crazy, we seem to think it makes everything last longer, but it doesn't. Putting some things in the refrigerator is flat out detrimental to their health. I'm not suggesting you do any of these things based on my meager experience but their is always more research that you can do. So, how did people survive before refrigerators?

Eggs
 Working at a living history museum I learned that eggs do not need to be refrigerated. Of all things I would think eggs do, but nature has provided for them so when their is a baby chick growing in side they wont go bad, duh, makes sense or their wouldn't be any chicks. Eggs have a substance called bloom on them that helps protect them for any bacteria or nastyness getting inside of the shell so unwashed eggs will last well out of the fridge I think we kept ours for about two weeks. Washed eggs that you have bought from the store are more questionable. They have been washed really good to get rid of the bacteria but sitting on your counter the could acquire more, they could acquire more in your refrigerator if it isn't clean but the temperature will make the bacteria grow more slowly.

Butter
Unless it is hot enough to melt your butter flat out you don't need to refrigerate it. We have kept better on my counter at home for my entire life and I have never seen it go bad. We keep the sticks we aren't using in the freezer and the stick we are on the counter in a butter dish to keep out the fuzzes and bacteria. Margarine will last forever but in a lot of cases it will puddlize at a lower temperature than butter.

Hard Cheese
Here is another dairy product you don't need to refrigerate, in fact, as long as the skin has been left on it is pretty hard to do anything to a good hard cheese. The skin of cheese was not for eating, unless you had to. The skin was to protect the yummy part from the everything else. We stored our cheese on a board in a cheese closet and while we kept our house clean at the museum dust gets everywhere. I have never seen this happen but if you have a true hard cheese and you get a moldy spot supposedly you can cut it off and the rest of the cheese will not have been effected.

Bread
Keeping bread in your refrigerator will make it stale. Bread starts to dehydrate as soon as you take it out of the oven and the refrigerator only speeds this up to six times faster.

Onions and Garlic
These two vegetables do not approve of moisture, it makes them get yucky. You have probably noticed that most of your produce from the store is a bit damp. Storing these in a drawer in the fridge together is not good for your onions and garlic, they would prefer to be left out where there is good circulation at room temperature.

Fire cats go!

A warfare manual by the siege warfare professional Franz Helm from around 1530 includes a curious illustration of a cat carrying fire. The manual suggests that when left with no other options, capture a pigeon or cat from the local area, and strap a bomb or fire to its back in a container. The idea was that the freaked out animal would run home and light the city on fire. However cats being contrary as they are, would probably run under your ammunition wagon or snuggle onto your commanders lap. Which is probably why we don't have any record of fire cats used in battle.

Ridiculous yet dignified: Graduation regalia

Graduation regalia began in the 1100 and 1200's  when universitys began to form up across Europe. The only job at this time that required a degree was the Clergy. So the regalia was modeled after the typical robes of the clergy which made up a large section of scholars. From the mid 1300's onward colleges many colleges began regulating what their students could and could not wear, gowns became even more standardized. It was not until the late 1800's and only in the United States that specific cut, color, and details were standardized by most colleges to indicate very specific things such as area of study. The caps, also called mortarboards because they resemble the boards masons hold mortar on came into the picture in the 1400's. In many colleges it was against the rule to wear hats so instead students took up caps and mortarboards, originally mortarboards were only for doctorate students and signified their position as a teacher.

Your turn to hold down the castle, I mean fort

La Crete Fort was built by the English on Jersey an island off the coast of France to try and keep Napoleon from invading. Ironically it still ended up with a french name meaning "the ridge". During World War II the area was captured by the Nazi's and used for military operations. Now a days the fort is used to defend peoples privacy, on vacation. If you want to go live in a fort, or a castle which this basically looks like, this is your spot. You can stay here for seven days in peak season for only about 1600 dollars which is about half of most other comparably sized castles in the UK and on the European coast.