Tea at Trianon: John Wayne’s Corn Dodgers

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, July 28, 2023

John Wayne’s Corn Dodgers

From Kent Rollins:

If you happen to be a fan of John Wayne, you may have heard of corn dodgers a time or two. Corn dodgers are a uniquely American food. Throughout the western expansion over the Oregon Trail, folks were in a hurry to get to their destinations. They had to carry everything that could sustain them along the way, so dried goods like corn meal were the bulk of their diets.
Traveling over these long distances with no trading posts or truck stops along the way meant they needed to be completely self sufficient. You couldn’t just pull the wagon over for an Allsup’s burrito. A corn dodger was a quick and easy recipe that could get some nourishment into the travelers and get them back on the road as fast as possible. The corn dodger is a food made of cornmeal, salt, and any other foods or herbs that could be foraged along the way. For this week’s video, we made the corn dodgers two ways: the traditional way, and a more tasty modern way. Both recipes are at the bottom of this blog. In the movie True Grit, the cook only had a tea kettle of hot water, some corn meal, and maybe some salt and hog fat if there was any left over. And that’s all there was to it. These things were pretty bland and would probably get pretty hard if you left them out for a while. (Read more.)