Rev. Jensen evidently thought Mrs. Grote's sandwich tasted pretty good. His wife, however, was not amused.
Mrs. Jennie Jensen, in her court action, charged her husband with "taking several bites from Mrs. Grote's sandwich at a picnic party while refusing to take even one from hers."
That sounds like an interesting challenge. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the book doesn't tell you how to eat the entire tree. Instead, it's mostly about using the needles and bark in recipes.
But some searching on YouTube produced a video that delves into how to eat the entire tree. The catch is that to do so you'll need to pulp the wood and transform it into cellulose powder. Which is probably beyond the means of most people. But the video notes that cellulose powder derived from spruce trees is in many products, including parmesan cheese, pasta sauce, and ice cream. So almost everyone has eaten (highly processed) Christmas trees already.
1929: Evangelist G.W. James, who preached against "barbecue sandwiches, cigarets, high-heeled shoes, short skirts, bobbed hair and other modern ideas," announced he was discontinuing his services due to low attendance. If the folks of Normalville wanted to hear him preach, he said, they would need to "indicate a desire for him to resume".
We've previously posted about "cheese candy", which was the invention of Wisconsin lumberman Stuart Stebbings. Another of his inventions was cheese-filtered cigarettes. He was, apparently, a man driven to find new uses for cheese.
Lab tests demonstrated that a cheese filter could remove 90 percent of the tar in cigarettes. A hard cheese worked best, such as Parmesan, Romano, or Swiss. Although an aged cheddar could also be used. Or even a blend of cheeses.
In 1966, Stebbings was granted Patent No. 3,234,948. But as far as I know, his cheese-filtered cigarettes never made it to market.
The Pickle Peace Plan was championed by the Picklers Planetary Unity Party which, in turn, was a creation of the Pickle Packers International, an industry association. It had two main planks:
Instead of a red telephone or bomb button, heads of governments should have a jar of pickles handy. At the first sign of hostility, they would send pickles to each other instead of missiles.
If war did break out, all politicians would be required to don uniforms and do the fighting while everyone else watched it on television.
William R. Moore, executive vice president of the Pickle Packers International, noted, "We picklers think that with such a peace plan, both sides would either come to a quick armistice or talk themselves to death. Either way, we the public would benefit by such action."
While preparing veggies for Christmas dinner, Shaunagh Roberts was surprised to see the face of Jesus staring back at her from a Brussels sprout. Though she admits it might also be Johnny Depp. (I think it looks a bit like Einstein.)
She says, "I didn't have the heart to cook him so I left the sprout in a corner cupboard and he just sat up there for a little while. After he stopped looking like Jesus he got put in the green recycling bin."
Imagine the insults suffered by the dweeb forced by well-meaning parents to carry this lunch pail to school.
The objects children take to school can communicate messages. In the 1970s, the U.S. government encouraged more general use of the metric units of weight and measure, units that had been adopted in almost all other nations. To teach children about metric units, some parents purchased this lunch box.
In what has apparently become an annual ritual, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services has warned Wisconsinites that 'cannibal sandwiches' (aka raw beef or tartare sandwiches) pose a health risk, and that it's really better to cook the meat first.
Somehow I've gone my entire life without knowing that there was such a thing as cannibal sandwiches — let alone that they're considered a Christmas tradition in Wisconsin.
The traditional recipe for a cannibal sandwich is raw ground beef spread open-faced on rye bread. Salt and pepper the meat. Then add a few raw onions. Some people like a dash of Worcestershire on the meat. The sandwich should be served very cold. And it's common to have it with a beer.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.