Myth | Lore | History

The Quiet is Loud & old Filipino restaurants

| Food, Myth | Lore | History, The Quiet is Loud

Firstly: Happy Filipino Heritage Month! 🇵🇭 There’s an old-school style of Filipino restaurant called “turo-turo1.” The name is an example of classic Filipino word reduplicating, and stems from the word for pointing at something. They’re often located in strip malls, and the typical feature is their cafeteria-style presentation, all food laid out in warming trays that you point at and someone dishes up for you. They’re also known as “carinderias,” and started out as a […]

The Quiet is Loud & old Filipino restaurants Read More »

pre-colonial-filipino-history-fantasy-novel-inspiration

Historical inspiration for my fantasy novel: Pre-colonial Philippines

| Myth | Lore | History, Writing | 2 Comments

Twist the Branch (formerly Seeker of the Lost Song) is a historically-inspired fantasy novel merging medieval Finnish & pre-colonial Filipino elements, and I wanted to share two elements of Filipino history I included. Dulang, a low table One of my favourite tidbits from my research is that pre-colonial Filipinos ate at a low table, sitting on the floor. Part of me worries that readers will think “Hey you stole that from Japan!” – but Filipinos

Historical inspiration for my fantasy novel: Pre-colonial Philippines Read More »

A Mrs Beeton Recipe: Nut! Sandwiches!

| Food, Myth | Lore | History

Say hi to the grossest historical recipe I’ve ever made! A little while ago, I was talking to a friend about the “Vegetarian Cookery” section of my c.1938 copy of Mrs Beeton’s Household Management. I told them that I was pleasantly surprised at some of these recipes.⁠ Then I saw the recipe for “Nut Sandwiches.”⁠ Nut Sandwiches – from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management Ingredients – Walnuts finely chopped, Mayonnaise sauce (p. 211), cayenne

A Mrs Beeton Recipe: Nut! Sandwiches! Read More »

A Mrs Beeton Recipe: Celery Croquettes

| Food, Myth | Lore | History, Reading

Recently I thought it might be a fun quarantine project to revisit my copy of Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, c.1938, and make another historical recipe from the book. I narrowed it down to two that I thought would be fairly easy and interesting, and asked my Instagram followers to choose which one I should make – celery croquettes won out! This book is one of my prized possessions. I’ve made a few recipes from Mrs

A Mrs Beeton Recipe: Celery Croquettes Read More »

How to Be a Victorian, by Ruth Goodman

Reading Ruth Goodman’s “How to Be a Victorian”

| Myth | Lore | History

Ruth Goodman is one of my favourite historians. I’ve watched several of her shows and have seen her as a guest on other history programs, and am always impressed by how she tries to live as period-authentic as she can during a project. I don’t have that much commitment to anything! I’ve recently finished her book How to be a Victorian, which I was very excited about. If you’ve read this blog before you’ll know that

Reading Ruth Goodman’s “How to Be a Victorian” Read More »

history of fictional worlds

The history of fictional worlds

| Misc., Myth | Lore | History, Places, Reading, Writing | 2 Comments

In 2016, I wrote the following blog post for my history blog, The Small Histories. I was thinking about it again recently and wanted to share it here as well – book lovers will appreciate it! Also, I had to actually laugh out loud when I read “I’m not a worldbuilding sort of writer” – Oh if only the me of 2016 knew that worldbuilding would be ALL she’d do just two years later!

The history of fictional worlds Read More »

Secret Lives of Great Authors

| Myth | Lore | History

Note: This post originally appeared on Wordscience, a now defunct writing-focused blog of mine, on March 15, 2009. I was recently flipping through that blog’s archives and came across this post, which I thought would be neat to share here too. I’ve recently shared another post from that blog, “Weather, history, and the origins of words,” which you can read here. The title of this entry is the name of the book I just finished reading, which

Secret Lives of Great Authors Read More »

Masters of Doom

| Myth | Lore | History, Reading

The early days of home computers and video games has always been a particular interest of mine. In fact, it’s my stock answer for the “if you had a time machine” question – while I would love to visit all sorts of historical periods, I’d probably fare a bit better in the early ’80s as a very liberal, non-religious, mixed-race woman than I would in the Tudor era, for example! Masters of Doom isn’t a

Masters of Doom Read More »

Exercise for women in the 1910s

| Myth | Lore | History

Between my recent Instagram post about Gibson girls and revisiting a favourite article detailing how the ideal woman’s body has changed over the past hundred years, I’ve had the 1910s on the brain a little bit. I’d remembered an episode of Edwardian Farm where Ruth and her daughter were demonstrating the calisthenic exercises that became popular for women during the late 19th century, so I thought I’d investigate other exercises that were suggested for women

Exercise for women in the 1910s Read More »

victorian visiting

Etiquette of morning calls and visits of ceremony

| Myth | Lore | History, Reading

One of the reasons I love reading Victorian/Regency novels is that I get a glimpse of the everyday rituals, strange to us now, that were so important to the people performing them. One of those rituals that always seemed at once charming and terrifying to me was the obligation of the morning call 0r social visit. So much seemed to hinge on those visits! For example, from Jane Austen’s Persuasion: “Where shall we go?” said [Mary], when

Etiquette of morning calls and visits of ceremony Read More »

Scroll to Top