Pasta (1840); Mid-West & Windy City

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE IN CIRCASSIA
DURING THE YEARS 1837, 1838 AND 1839
by James Stanislaus Bell
London: Edward Moxon
in two volumes
1840

   "Pasta" is all over this book.  This further destroys OED's/M-W's 1874 "pasta."
   "Shuat"--a national drink--should also have been entered in the OED a long time ago.
   I'll be going to these countries in 30 days.  This is the trip that I had planned last September.


VOLUME ONE
Pg. 7:  He and I mess together...
("Mess"="Eat"--ed.)

Pg. 28:  Fresh supplies of pasta* and meat (either stewed or roasted)--pasta and goat's milk-pasta, or Turkey-corn bread, with honey, are kept sending in upon me, to satiety.
*A thick porridge made of millet.

Pg. 32:  ...a great mess of thick pasta, with a wooden boel stuck in the midst, filled with a sauce of milk, walnut-oil, and capsicums...
   ...then succeeded a bowl of milk with pasta mixed in it...

Pg. 64:  ...the immense pasta-cauldron was slung; and on this pasta (without even salt to season it), and a morsel of hard white cheese, and a vegetable soupe-maigre of Turkey corn and haricots...

Pg. 65:  ...cold pasta and some hard-boiled eggs...

Pg. 68:  ...we are (as the Americans say) "camped out."

Pg. 91:  ...it is called gomil, and is a mixture of flour (millet, I believe) and honey.

Pg. 94:  The pasta is here far better, both in quality and cooking, than in the south; but to me the most remarkable dish was one of butter and honey mixed, and eaten with pastry enclosing pressed curds...

Pg. 146:  ...having made many of their adversaries "bite the dust."

Pg. 299:  ..._konak_*...
*Bizim is the Circassian word for a host and proprietor.
(Both "bizim" and "konak" are used several times.  OED does not record "bizim."  OED has 1852 for "konak"--ed.)

Pg. 387:  ...bughu (a grain for making pilaff)...

VOLUME TWO
Pg. 118:  ...a bowl of shuat (millet-flour, honey and water fermented)...

Pg. 127:  Shuat--the national drink of Circassia--is generally served in immense wooden bowls with one handle (cut out of one piece of wood)...

Pg. 142:  ..._pete_ or kitchen-house...
(OED does not have "pete," which is mentioned here several times--ed.)

Pg. 180:  ...--a sort of _unfriend_, as Scott calls it--...

Pg. 373:  ...an abundant repast of meat and pasta, with a fermented beverage from the south*...
(The beverage is not named but well-described--ed.)

--------------------------------------------------------------
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE MIDWEST--I went to the web site.  I didn't see a section on food & cookery.  Is it to be smooshed into the section on Folklore?  If anyone wants a Chicago hot dog, and a Chicago pizza, and a gyro, and Thousand Island dressing, and Johnny Marzetti, and Stouffer's Dutch Apple Pie, and New York Texas Toast from Ohio...
   Or maybe "I'm from Missouri--Show Me," Hoosier, Sucker, Michigander, Mistake by the Lake, Windy City...

CHARLES DANA, NEW YORK SUN, WINDY CITY--The new NEW YORK SUN makes its debut tomorrow.  It makes so little sense, but you have to wish the publishers well.  The DAILY NEWS loses money.  The NEW YORK POST loses money.  Ad revenue is way down.  The NEW YORK TIMES just won seven Pulitzer Prizes. Still, New York City doesn't have a single good newspaper, and the TIMES (I criticize Safire--and he's the best columnist!) needs to be challenged.
   A backer behind the NEW YORK SUN is Conrad Black, who also owns the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES.  I'm looking for that Chicago newspaper to do an article this week.  The Dana myth will probably be mentioned again.
   For the record:  I e-mailed the NEW YORK SUN to clear up Charles A. Dana's name.  I got no reply.
   There have been several Dana biographies before 1950, and the myth is NOT there.  This is from THE SUN SHINES FOR ALL: JOURNALISM AND IDEOLOGY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES A DANA (Syracuse University Press, 1993) by Janet E. Steele:

Pg. 61:
"Don't pay any attention to the nonsensical claims of that Windy City."
--Charles A. Dana (1)

Pg. 179:
1. Quoted in David Lowe, _Lost Chicago_ (New York: American Legacy Press, 1975), 149.  Charles Dana was the first to call Chicago "that Windy City."  He used the phrase in the _Sun_ in 1890 in reference to Chicago Mayor Carter Henry Harrison's "nonsensical" claim that his city was the logical choice to host the Columbian Exposition of 1893.  I am indebted to Martin Schram for this reference.