Author: Ms. R.

It’s not often one needs to make a batter for a cocktail, but so it is with the Tom and Jerry, a Christmas party staple in the American Midwest. The drink begins with a frothy batter of separately beaten egg whites and yolks folded together and mixed with sugar and warm spices. When served as a party punch, the sweet batter is often ladled out of special Tom and Jerry punch bowls into matching cocktail mugs, along with hot……

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After being photographed with a cross in one hand and an automatic rifle in the other, Father Hovhannes became a viral sensation in Armenia. He says he never intended to become a symbol of defiance during the recent war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the region within Azerbaijan that has attempted to break away and declare itself the “Republic of Artsakh,” with the support of the Armenian government but no other forms of international recognition. “I was showing that we need both……

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It’s pretty likely that there is exactly one product from Madagascar in your home right now—no more, no less. That product is vanilla, and Madagascar is at the moment the world’s leading producer of this ubiquitous natural flavor—despite the fact that Madagascar is a very strange country to be the world’s leading producer of vanilla. Vanilla, at least the vanilla we eat, is not native to Madagascar; it originated some 10,000 miles away. Madagascar is also a chaotic place……

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The village of Ečka is best known for its Kaštel (Castle), which is now a hotel, and its Art Colony. But just a short walk away from the Kaštel—one of the best preserved and most popular castles in Serbia, famous for the composer Franz Liszt playing piano there as a nine-year-old boy—are the ruins of an old water tower that looks like a part of a film set.  The inside is graffitied, plants are colonizing the roof, and the walls are deteriorating. The……

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To this day, fishing and seafood represent a very significant part of Shetland’s economy. The main fish caught from the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean waters surrounding the archipelago include herring, cod, and mackerel. The first of these has been historically very popular in the Netherlands.  Between the early 17th and late 19th-centuries, Dutch fishing fleets chasing after the bountiful herring and other valuable shoals off the coast of Shetland would often dock in Lerwick during the summer. Large……

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Trentino Alto Adige, now an Italian region, was contested between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I, with much of the fighting concentrated in Southern Trentino. The area was located around the former border between the two powers. Here, thousands of people lost their lives in combat. Now, the remains of around 20,000 soldiers from both sides of the conflict are contained in the Sacrario Militare di Castel Dante (Castel Dante War Memorial). The war memorial is……

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According to legend, three monks miraculously found an icon of the Virgin Mary hanging from a myrtle branch on the island of Chios. The Nea Moni, or New Monastery, now stands on the site of this discovery, and it contains both centuries-old artwork and an ossuary filled with bones from the area’s greatest tragedy. Per the institution’s founding story, those three monks visited Constantine IX, then exiled on the nearby island of Lesbos. Told the story of the icon and a vision……

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