Author: Ms. R.

THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE JANUARY 8, 2022, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. On my countertop, an unassuming white toaster sits next to a fiery red stand mixer. In the drawers below are a giant cleaver and a dinky, battery-powered milk frother. In the bottom cabinet, my great-grandmother’s Dutch oven, which she used to make goulash during the Great Depression. There’s also a Bundt pan shaped like an octopus. Your kitchen……

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On July 18, 1863, the townsfolk of Clayton, Alabama, buried William T. Mullen between two bottles of whiskey. The specially shaped tombstones are a fitting tribute to a man who loved his drink. Mullen lived hard and died young. He was born in Talbotton, Georgia, on June 18, 1834. By 1860 he had moved to Clayton and met the county jailor’s daughter, a young woman named Mary Williams. The two married at the jail on September 11 of that……

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Virginia City, Nevada, is well known for many things: the V&T railroad, prosperous silver mines, and as the place where Mark Twain began his writing career. One lesser-known fact about Virginia City is that it played an important role in the origins of psychedelic rock n’ roll.  By the mid-1960s, Virginia City’s cheap rents attracted young, idealistic hippies in droves. In 1965, a group of friends purchased an old hotel and transformed it into the Red Dog Saloon. Chandler……

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You might put sugar in your coffee. In Malaysia, though, the beans for a traditional cup are roasted with not just sugar but margarine as well, before they’re ground-up and brewed. The result is a strong, caramelly cup of coffee.  Despite the global trend of chrome-plated cafés and high-tech coffee roasters, there’s still lots of demand for old-school kopi. Perhaps that’s why Antong Coffee Mill, Malaysia’s oldest roaster, is still in business.  Not only does the mill make the old-fashioned coffee,……

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Next to the big Daramombe Hill (where according to the local customs you can not complain or you will get lost), you can find different small hills consisting out of different sized boulders. Such hills also go by the name of kopjes. The rock paintings are scattered around the kopjes, some are very clear and big while others are small and slowly fading away. You can also encounter a graveyard of the first missionaries who build the school in……

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The Rough Wooing was the last war fought between England and Scotland before their crowns were joined in 1603. The union came at the cost of a series of brutal 16th-century clashes. The reason for all the bloodshed was the English attempt to force the betrothal, or wooing, of Mary Queen of Scots, then an infant, to the English heir Edward IV, then a child. After the Scots suffered a defeat at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547……

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The day’s first kill is barely recognizable, a burnt sienna smudge on the dark pavement. Dr. Merav Vonshak kneels in the cool November morning and pulls out her phone and ruler, documenting the tiny, crushed body of a Pacific newt. By spring’s end, she and the other Newt Patrol volunteers who keep watch over this four-mile stretch of road in the foothills of Northern California’s Santa Cruz Mountains will have recorded around five thousand of them—one of the single……

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Kadriorg Palace, or “Catherine’s Valley,” was commissioned by Peter the Great of Russia for his second wife, Catherine I. Surrounded by 70 hectares of wooded parkland with an ornamental lake, formal gardens, and several museums, the complex sits on the edge of Kesklinn district of Tallinn. The palace, designed by famed Italian architect Nicola Michetti, is an exquisite example of Petrine Baroque architecture, which flourished in St. Petersburg in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Great Hall at Kadriorg……

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Strolling along Green-Wood Cemetery’s Atlantic Avenue one may come upon a magnificent cast metal bear perched upon a headstone. One might assume that this was put there during the cemetery’s heyday of grand sculptures and mausoleums in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries, but while this particular grave has been there since 1900, the bear is a more recent addition. William Holbrook Beard was a painter who studied at the Düsseldorf Academy and later relocated to New York in 1861…….

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Jetting into Hingham Harbor lies a cluster of drumlins, glacier-carved, spoon-like, hills that rise above the coast around it. John Brewer purchased the land in the 19th century and built an estate for raising cattle. Within 30 years the peninsula was entirely owned by the Brewer family. At the end of the 1800s, the family contacted Frederick Law Olmstead, a famous architect now known for his role in the creation of New York City’s Central Park, as well as……

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The Canadian town of Malartic is inexorably linked to the mining industry. The earliest surveys revealing the presence of gold deposits date back to 1923. Soon after, in 1929, the town of Malartic was founded. And in 1935, the first underground exploitation started. Canadian Malartic Gold Mines Ltd provided the first infrastructure in the company-owned village, but after the first influx of workers, this arrangement was impractical, and an actual town started developing. By 1939, three more mining companies……

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