A “country syllabub,” from Eliza Leslie, 1837:

Mix half a pound of white sugar with a pint of fine sweet cider, or of white wine; and grate in a nutmeg. Prepare them in a large bowl, just before milking time. Then let it be taken to the cow, and have about three pints milked into it; stirring it occasionally with a spoon. Let it be eaten before the froth subsides. If you use cider, a little brandy will improve it.

“Let it be taken to the cow” would be a good title for a cookbook. Or a folk-rock album.

I am reading this. It is a good story in a lively translation. I am enjoying the intellectual act of reading it. But the book as physical object is one of the sorriest and most pathetic excuses for published material I have ever paid money for. The paper is thinner and coarser than some newsprint I have seen, the binding is flimsy and may not survive a single reading. Shame on you, University of Minnesota Press. May Balzac’s ghost haunt your nights until you are driven mad with despair and drown yourself leaping from the Pont Neuf.

Beneath insistent chirping of a cardinal
From autumn-bare branches, cold-fluffed morning
This dull reverberation of wood and metal,
Tearing down one half-lived house, building another.

I should soon have been bankrupt in business in 1884 if the public temper then had been like it is now—grasping, hustling, competitive…. Nobody asked for an estimate—indeed there was a fixed price for all the new work that was done. The only chance for me to make more profit would have been by lowering the quality of the output; and this the temper of the men made out of the question. But of profits I understood nothing. My great difficulty was to find out the customary price. The men didn’t know. I worked out long lists of prices from the old ledgers, as far as I could understand their technical terms.

—George Sturt, The Woodwright’s Shop (1923)

One great thing about using powdered milk paint for frames is that I can mix up only the two or three teaspoons that I need at a time and minimize waste. Another great thing is that to get 4-oz. jars for mixing such small amounts, I have to make a lot of pimiento cheese.

Hosing out the garbage dumpster this morning I thought, “M is for maggots!” and found myself composing a sort of Young Victorian’s Guide to Pestilence.

A is for ANTS, that march in formation,
Ravage our picnic and consume our collation.

B is for BEDBUGS, that nip in the night—
So shake out your mattress, and make it up tight!

C is for COCKROACH, whose nocturnal skittling
Frightens the maid, and ruins the victualling.

There being no call for this whatever, I’ll stop there.

If people go down to the end of the town, well, what can anyone do? Not much, it seems. Not much at all.

Not knowing what to choose from my fall CSA last week I got triple green tomatoes and this morning made green tomato marmalade from Putting Food By (3d edition, 1982), which may be over the years my most-consulted cookbook. Lemon makes it gel; the tomato gives an earthy undertone.

I posted a page of frequently asked questions about my carving for those who can’t come to shows in person to ask them.

Suggested listening for October: The first season of RKO’s The Shadow, starring Orson Welles. (And in case you find yourself wondering, Blue Coal really was blue).