Just like Tech Sergeant Mom used to make

In my poking around, I have found an interesting recipe.

My readers who have served in an army may remember chipped beef on toast, also known fondly as "shit on a shingle."

Well, if the Second Armoured Division drops by for dinner, here is a platoon sized recipe for the recipe, which you may find in The Army Cook (published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1942).

Beef, Dried, Chipped on Toast

2 pounds fat, butter preferred
1 pound flour
4 13 ounce cans evaporated milk
4 gallons beef stock
7 pounds chipped or sliced dried beef
2 bunches parsley, chopped fine
1/2 ounce pepper
130 slices bread, toasted

Melt fat in pan and add flour. Cook a few minutes to brown flour. Add milk and beef stock, stirring constantly to prevent lumping. Add dried beef and cook five minutes. Add parsley and pepper. Serve hot on toast.

I think that this technical manual must have had a lot of recipes for dried food. I have a World War Two-era issue of National Geographic which has an article which explores how the U.S. Army tried to save space on supply ships by drying as much food as possible. Two pictures with the article show a big mountain of food and the car-sized bundle of food parcels that it made once it had been dried and preserved.

An Emily Litella moment

Please excuse this test post.

"Never mind!"

"There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals that Chuck Norris allows to live."

More little-known Chuck Norris Facts for your amusement.

"This comic strip sucks in all cultures"

The inimitable Tim Blair reposts some amusing examples of what might happen if popular cartoons had their own take on that Muslim cartoons fuss.

Movie sign, er I mean, tract sign!

Two of my favourite things are combined, as some online wags do a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 debunking of a Jack Chick tract.

Quiescent all over

About two weeks ago, the CBC aired a documentary called Shakin' All Over.

I thought it was good as far as it went, but it had some flaws.

How can you *call* a show "Shakin' All Over" and not talk about the pre-Burton Cummings Guess Who and their interesting experience with their cover version of that song? It was one of the first Canadian hits in the U.S. top 40.

Inexcusable, since even Les Classels, Quebec's singing "Men From Glad", got a few seconds of screen time.

The show assumed that Canadian pop and rock had to wait for the Baby Boomers to come along, before it started to have an impact. That would be news to Paul Anka (whose popularity in the U.S. was such that the National Film Board made a documentary about him, Lonely Boy, in the early 1960s). It would also be news to Bobby Curtola, The Beau-Marks, The Diamonds, etc., all of which had some hits in the U.S. in the late 1950s and 1960s.

You could detect a subtle attitude that the filmmakers had. Canadian rock only started to exist when leftish baby boomers with their free attitude towards sex (the CBC aired some footage of a topless dancer that one band had hired as part of a publicity stunt) and their progressive attitude towards politics (Buffy Sainte-Marie was profiled at some length) came along.

The CBC can put subtle biases even in an interesting documentary like Shakin' All Over.

I don't believe it

Here's Girl on the Right, playing along with one of those blogger "tag" games that I am never asked to participate in:


Four jobs you've had:

Florist, escort/dominatrix, recruiter for an oil company...

I think that she can't be at all serious with that particular answer. What do you think?

An investment

My blogging friend Kevin Michael Grace is hoping that you can help him to make some improvements to his swell blog. Do lend him an ear.