Bhu
2016-09-08, 12:47 AM
So how many of y'all watch PBS cooking shows? Specifically Cook's Country and America's Test Kitchen. They're hosted by a dapper old bowtied fellow from vermont named Christopher Kimball. Seems like a nice, laid back sort of guy.
But then I read his letters. See everytime Cook's Illustrated comes out he pens a folksy letter to go with it, and a website called the Toast has archived them. They start slightly ominous and descend quickly into creepy pasta as time goes on. Seriously, you could run a vermont based horror campaign from these. A few brief samples:
'You ever wonder what’s watching you from underneath the dirt while you’re plowing a field? Something is. Something surely is. Nothing blinks in the dirt.
It’s my understanding that trees are just the gnarled hands of witches that have been buried face-up in the earth. But it’s the ones that have been buried face-down that you have to look out for.'
'Sure, searing a piece of meat seals in the juices. But it seals in a lot of other things, too. Things you wouldn’t want to get out, things you wouldn’t want to see the light of day, if you came to know them.
Ask yourself in the coming New Year if you’re really scrambling your eggs slowly enough. Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if you are. Turn that flame down. This isn’t a race.
You can fit a lot more than a Dutchman in a Dutch oven. No guarantee you can keep him in there, of course.'
'Folks used to have common sense. They didn’t plant their potatoes too close together, lest they develop strange habits not native to root vegetables, and learn to speak to one another when their stalks swayed in the night winds. They never burned an old rabbit dog before the daffodils came in. They parked their cars facing toward home when they went in the Old Forest, so they didn’t offend anything that still moved in there when human eyes weren’t looking. They never killed a cow twice and they never made hay without spilling blood on the threshold, and they never spilled blood on the threshold without nailing the house-spirits into the wall behind the chimney. They kept their shoes in the walls and their virgin bones buried in the foundations. They never opened a bottle unless they were willing to make a deal with the witch who lived inside. They kept their unguents separate from their elixirs separate from their tonics separate from their balsam physics. It was always spring, then. Always spring after spring after spring after spring, and the people stayed young and happy and their throats never sank into their breasts and their smiles were painted onto their lips and never came off, never never never.
It’s not like that now.
Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring?
I don’t. Nobody does. Something different’s coming after spring this year, something that isn’t named summer, something that casts a long shadow and laughs without making a sound.'
'There are ways to hurt a man so that he wishes he didn’t know his own body, and there are ways to hurt a man so that he can’t recognize his own mind, and you have to know both of them if you want to make really fluffy croissants.'
'What can you do with an old assistant-wife after she’s finished? Well, friends, here in Vermont you can trade her to the first stranger you meet at a crossroads for a sack of molasses sugar and a witch-glass. Or you can wall her alive in the orchard; the next year’s crop of apples will be small and bitter, but every year thereafter, they’ll be crisp and fresh and red and white as you could possibly please. She also makes an excellent substitute for buttermilk, if you haven’t any to hand.
Do you know why they call them long johns? I do. I do. But I won’t tell, not for any price. I can’t tell. Only two men under the moon know the promise I made thirteen steps from the graveyard all those years ago to learn it, and neither of us are telling.'
But then I read his letters. See everytime Cook's Illustrated comes out he pens a folksy letter to go with it, and a website called the Toast has archived them. They start slightly ominous and descend quickly into creepy pasta as time goes on. Seriously, you could run a vermont based horror campaign from these. A few brief samples:
'You ever wonder what’s watching you from underneath the dirt while you’re plowing a field? Something is. Something surely is. Nothing blinks in the dirt.
It’s my understanding that trees are just the gnarled hands of witches that have been buried face-up in the earth. But it’s the ones that have been buried face-down that you have to look out for.'
'Sure, searing a piece of meat seals in the juices. But it seals in a lot of other things, too. Things you wouldn’t want to get out, things you wouldn’t want to see the light of day, if you came to know them.
Ask yourself in the coming New Year if you’re really scrambling your eggs slowly enough. Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if you are. Turn that flame down. This isn’t a race.
You can fit a lot more than a Dutchman in a Dutch oven. No guarantee you can keep him in there, of course.'
'Folks used to have common sense. They didn’t plant their potatoes too close together, lest they develop strange habits not native to root vegetables, and learn to speak to one another when their stalks swayed in the night winds. They never burned an old rabbit dog before the daffodils came in. They parked their cars facing toward home when they went in the Old Forest, so they didn’t offend anything that still moved in there when human eyes weren’t looking. They never killed a cow twice and they never made hay without spilling blood on the threshold, and they never spilled blood on the threshold without nailing the house-spirits into the wall behind the chimney. They kept their shoes in the walls and their virgin bones buried in the foundations. They never opened a bottle unless they were willing to make a deal with the witch who lived inside. They kept their unguents separate from their elixirs separate from their tonics separate from their balsam physics. It was always spring, then. Always spring after spring after spring after spring, and the people stayed young and happy and their throats never sank into their breasts and their smiles were painted onto their lips and never came off, never never never.
It’s not like that now.
Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring? Do you know what comes after spring?
I don’t. Nobody does. Something different’s coming after spring this year, something that isn’t named summer, something that casts a long shadow and laughs without making a sound.'
'There are ways to hurt a man so that he wishes he didn’t know his own body, and there are ways to hurt a man so that he can’t recognize his own mind, and you have to know both of them if you want to make really fluffy croissants.'
'What can you do with an old assistant-wife after she’s finished? Well, friends, here in Vermont you can trade her to the first stranger you meet at a crossroads for a sack of molasses sugar and a witch-glass. Or you can wall her alive in the orchard; the next year’s crop of apples will be small and bitter, but every year thereafter, they’ll be crisp and fresh and red and white as you could possibly please. She also makes an excellent substitute for buttermilk, if you haven’t any to hand.
Do you know why they call them long johns? I do. I do. But I won’t tell, not for any price. I can’t tell. Only two men under the moon know the promise I made thirteen steps from the graveyard all those years ago to learn it, and neither of us are telling.'