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My apology to you, wwh, for reading your sentence too hastily. So, Maynard put the head on his own bowsprit. That's clear now, I see. Sorry for lackadaisical reading.

Geoff: Does skol really come from skull, or are you pulling our legs?

An interesting note on pirates: They used to vote before carrying out missions, such as they were. If I pirate had been disobedient, they'd even vote whether or not to leave him on an island. There were famous female pirates, too, but I've forgotten all their names. If you go googling about, you can find various designs of skull and crossbones, some of which were truly bloody-curdling. I can just imagine how innocents felt when seeing those ghastly flags (or whatever they're properly called) come over the horizon..... Shiver me timbers!

WW


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another interesting note about pirates, is a point of view. NYC (and many of the coves and inlets that exist in the area) were home to pirates. in an independant free spirited way, many ships and captains tried to avoid the port exsise taxes.. and would try to under cut the 'legally' registered english ships --the only ones permitted to run rum in american (pre independance america) waters.

NY, which was founded a trading (not religious) colony, was always keen for a bargain.. and lots of people were interested in cut rate rum.. no questions asked.. and the rum runners were seen as shrewd business men!

but rum running was illegal, and once you started working the wrong side of the law, every legal 'british' ship was your enemy.. should you encounter one, you could let yourself be taken in, lose the ship, and all the profits, or blow the british ship out of the water, steal her cargo, and not leave anyone around to tell what happened.. so it was a small step from being a rum runner to being a cut throat pirate. back home in NY, on land, it was very hard to procecute.. and many a pirate had a fancy NY house!
(NY pirating continued, and continues.. look at Merrill Lynch, and the stock market..what is being pirated, how has changed, but shading goings on are a real part of the NY business scene)


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>>tradition has it that his skull wound up as a punch bowl in a Williamsburg, VA, tavern.

I don't know how that could be. Wouldn't the punch kinda flow out through the eye sockets. Waste of perfectly good punch I say!!



#71524 05/28/02 08:34 PM
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Ocracoke is one of my favorite places in the world. It's an island about 15 miles long (a wide sand spit actually) that you reach from the north via a 45-minute (free) ferry ride from Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The ferry to the south is a larger one which costs $10 or so for a car and passengers.

The island is uninhabited except for a small town at the south end that surrounds Silver Creek, which is a very beautiful little harbor no more than 250 yards across, with a mouth that's not more than a hundred feet wide. No idea of the depth, but probably no more than 15 to 20 feet.

There's a Coast Guard station and a lighthouse there, and a fairly lively tourist business during the summer.

I spent a couple of weeks there in July of '76 and you could walk nude on the beaches north of the village all day and not see anyone else except a few other free spirits similarly clad. Didn't want to do that too close to town though, because the Dare County sheriff's people had a bad habit of arresting those miscreants and parading them through the center of town wearing nothing but a pair of handcuffs (behind the back of course!) I asked the deputy why they did this, and he replied they didn't want these perverts to destroy the evidence of their crime by putting on clothes.

Ocracoke's name is the subject of some debate, with the most interesting being the belief that Teach was told that he would be executed when the cock crowed in the AM, so he spent the early moring calling out, "Oh, crow, Cock." Personally I beleive that's more than likely a crock, and that it's an aboriginal word or name.

After I met Peggy on line we hied ourselves off to Ocracoke Island for a vacation in mid-March. NOT a good time to go unless you want to spend all of your time under a large number of quilts. But that's another story.

I think Jackie's there or near there even as I write.



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Ypou have to plug the eye sockets with your thumbs!

I generally use my skulls to serve craniumberry juice. Most of my guests end up with red thumbs.



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Most of my guests end up with red thumbs.


Sounds like they're drinking a lot of that cranberry concoction [craniumberry--omigosh!] in order to dye their thumbs red! Is this a form, perchance, of Seabreeze in a Skull????

Blasted regards,
WordWoozy


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you can also check out the Archie McFee web site (its a real commercial web site, so i'm not making a link.) it sell some interesting stuff.. like jello mold in the shape of a human brain. you make any red jello, add on or two drops of blue food coloring (it's not quite purple, but a drabber red) and some cream, sour cream, or milk to mixture for part of the liquid. (1.5 cup water, .5 cups cream) it makes a drab solid colored pink. (not quite grey, but like a brain suffused with blood) Mold in brain shaped mold, unmold and garnish with, gummy worms, or gummy bugs.. it looks great on a bed of meringue, (line a bowl with tin foil, then with a layer of meringue, bake in slow oven till set and crisp, but not browned.. remove from bowl, break into peices (looks broken pieces of skull bone..)

my son's birthday was close to halloween.. so we had weird parties.. i also have a recipe for chocolate and ginger cookies, (sort of log shaped) served in a bed of grapenuts.. (think about it.. oh, gross!)

meringue also was good for making tomb stones, to put on beds of chocolate pudding, (also garnished with gummy worms. and bugs.. ) kids really liked these gross foods..


#71528 05/28/02 10:57 PM
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What does meringue mean, by the way, in French? In English it means: whipping up egg whites till stiff, beating in sugar, placing on top of some substance to bake, and baking till golden brown with little sugar prespiration spots of amber. Talk about one word covering a lot of directions!

And, of troy, how does one go about forming meringue tombstones? This sounds like something interesting...

Blackbeard would be turning in his grave to think his demise had led to discussion of meringue tombstones and gummi worms!

Oh, Dr. Billlllllllllllllllllll!!! I know you're out there!! What does meringue mean?

R.I.P regards,
WordWraith


#71529 05/28/02 11:22 PM
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meringue is the same in French WW. Best known for covering on lemon pie (drooling profusely as she write this - yummmm)


#71530 05/28/02 11:28 PM
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according to my dictionary, it means exactly what you said, egg whites, beaten stiff, with sugar, and baked.

there are several kinds of meringue, basicaly, soft, medium and hard. soft meringue has less sugar, and is often browned..(lemon meringue pie) but hard meringue (four egg whites, 1lb of 10 X sugar) is called royal frosting.. even with out baking it dries (quickly!) to a hard, candy like shell) a medium meringue is stiffer, and can be put into a pastry tube, and piped into shapes (it is stiff enough to hold any shape.) bake it at 200 to 250 degrees (f) for about 1 hour.. it will still be white (very, very, light beige white) it will be crisp, and dry.. this kind of meringue is used to make pastry shells, (or molded in a rounded bowl, it makes a good sourse for skull bones.)
if you want to know about italian meringue, or nougat, we'll have to move to the "words from German thread" or PM's since this is becoming a food thread all to fast!


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