Use by

Useful stuff from The New York Times: “The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow.” And there’s always the exhaustive site Eat By Date.

One thing I don’t understand: the Times says that “Mustard lasts forever.” Eat By Date says one or more years (except for homemade mustard). But mustard often has a rapidly approaching “Best by” date on the container. Is that merely a ploy to sell more mustard?

Sauce from a jar?

The Washington Post tests twelve marinara sauces. The winner costs $10.49 for twenty-four ounces. Questo è pazzesco!

As the Post acknowledges, you can also make your own sauce. They offer a recipe.

I’ve been making sauce since 2010. It’s ridiculously easy, and I would bet that anyone’s homemade sauce would be better than any sauce from a jar. If I’m wrong about that, I’d prefer not to know.

Here’s a recipe I use. Here’s another, much simpler one for Coppola/“Godfather” sauce.

And here’s another more elaborate preparation, from Catherine Scorcese, filmed by her son Martin.

RAG

In today’s Los Angeles Times crossword, by Brian Thomas and Brooke Husic, the clue for 34-A, “Ellington composition,” is wildly off. The answer: RAG. No, just no.

It’s true that the earliest Duke Ellington composition is “Soda Fountain Rag,” but to identify Ellington as a composer of rags is to be, no pun intended, clueless.

It’s curious to me how crosswords seem to go awry about jazz. E.g., identifying Jelly Roll Morton as a SCAT singer, identifying Mel TORME as a “cool jazz pioneer.” No, just no.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[Typing with at least — at least — 200 Ellington LPs and CDs in the room.]

Today’s Nancy

Olivia Jaimes continues to reinvent the Sunday strip.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Bronx games

I found the first of these photographs traveling up Fordham Road in Street View of 1940s New York. I found the second by searching for the block and lot numbers in the archive of Bronx 1940s Tax Photos.

This recreational area (no address) stood near the intersection of West Fordham Road and University Avenue. It was part of the Old Croton Aqueduct Walk. In the first photograph, the building in the far distance is 2406 University Avenue.

[The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

When I typed the block and lot numbers into the archive, I was surprised to see that those are horseshoe players behind the shuffleboarders. Is that a bocce court in the middle? No, just wishful thinking, I think.

Notice too that there’s lots of laundry hanging to dry.

Here’s much more about the remaining traces of the Croton Aqueduct. No games, no laundry at West Fordham Road and University Avenue these days.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : Bocce in Brooklyn

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Steve Mossberg, is a challenge, the northwest territory in particular. 1-D, four letters, “Sound like ‘Grrr!’”? Yes, exactly. But I got it.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, nine letters, “Skewered then served.” I have eaten many a kebab. But this term is new to me.

8-D, five letters, “Name on Perfectly Moist mixes.” Perfectly moist? Ideally damp? Eww.

11-D, ten letters, “Password, from the Bible.” My starting point, learned from a podcast.

17-A, ten letters, “Sizable print makers.” Pretty Stumpery.

24-A, five letters, “Doing what's dignified.” This clue's syntax is off, just off.

27-D, ten letters, “Part of the Boston Celtics logo.” I can’t believe I spelled it correctly on a first try.

29-D, ten letters, “How foxgloves flower.” Eh, not quite, Michael.

29-A, five letters, “Toon bearded brawny bully.” Everything old is new again.

39-A, four letters, “Swamp thing.” LOL.

44-A, three letters, “What’s left.” Ouch.

64-A, nine letters, “Omission of conjunctions in prose.” My first thought was PARATAXIS, a word I cherish from my first acquaintance with modernist poetry, but no — that'd be an answer in a dream.

My favorite in this puzzle: 56-D, four letters, “Brooklyn, briefly.” Represent.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“No mother”

“No mother, no mother — no mother — should go through what I’m going through right now”: RowVaughn Wells, whose son Tyre Nichols died after being beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee. From a press conference earlier this afternoon.

Rapolski’s

In the novel it’s just Rapolski’s. But let’s call it what it is: a candy store.

Steven Millhauser, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright (1972).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard) : What’s a candy store?

Domestic comedy

“Basmati?”

“No, chasm rice.”

I wanted to give Elaine credit, but as she pointed out, I labeled the jar some time ago. Blame it on the “Summer Breeze.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

“Fascinating implements”

Visiting the seven-year-old artist Edward Penn, who lives in a room in the heated basement of his parents’ house and doesn’t go to school.

Steven Millhauser, Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943–1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright (1972).

Edwin will later remark that only three of his contemporaries exercised an influence on his life: Rose Dorn, Arnold Hasselstrom, and Edward Penn, the last of whom was the only one to leave a lasting mark. “Oh,” Edwin adds, “and you too, Jeffrey.”

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

[That last fascinating implement seems to join several French curves to a template for drawing shapes. Can such an implement be found outside Edward Penn’s basement?]