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Sunday, October 25, 2015

Stew!

Kristin has a brilliant post on stew, especially as it would have been eaten in a pre-industrial fantasy world.  A taste:
Obviously, no one’s going to be cooking up a pot of stew over their campfire after marching 20 miles.  But in an inn or tavern, where the proprietor and staff have been there all day?  Perfectly reasonable.  Far more reasonable than steak, in fact.  For one thing, most of the meat on a cow (or any other quadruped) isn’t tender enough to be turned into steak.  It requires long, slow cooking in some kind of liquid (also known as “stewing”).  Even more so before the advent of modern factory farming and feedlot practices.  And, before the invention of refrigeration, most of the meat people ate would have been salted, dried, and/or smoked.  Salted meat especially needs to be soaked and boiled before it’s palatable again–an excellent candidate for stew.  It doesn’t make sense to kill a large animal for fresh meat unless there are enough people around to eat it before it spoils.  So you might do this for a wedding or other special occasion, but the suggestion that a typical inn serving ordinary travelers should specialize in steak instead of stew is a bit ridiculous.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Mysterion is now open for submissions.

The title gets at the most important point: Mysterion is open for submissions, from now until December 25th.



There's more, though. Mysterion also has cover art (shown above), and will be fundraising via Patreon.  Have a look at the website for more.

Saturday, October 03, 2015

Enigmatic Mirror Press

This post is a slightly-modified version of a post originally appearing on the Mysterion website.

The small independent press producing the Mysterion anthology--basically Kristin and Donald and whomever they can subcontract work to--now has a name. We're calling ourselves Enigmatic Mirror Press.

This is a reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12, which says, "For now we see through a mirror in darkness, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." In Greek, the part that says "through a mirror in darkness" reads:
δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι
ἐσόπτρου transliterates to esoptrou, and means mirror, while αἰνίγματι transliterates to ainigmati, which means obscurity or darkness; ainigmati is the origin for the English word enigmatic. The verse itself is about the difference between our limited, mortal understanding here in this life, and the truer, fuller understanding that we will have later. In the ancient world, all mirrors obscured, since they relied on polished metal rather than the metal-backed glass of modern mirrors. The difference between the distorted reflection in one of those mirrors and seeing someone face-to-face would have been obvious to the ancient reader. And the imagery reminds us that the understanding we lack is not only of concepts, but also of God, and that we do not yet know him as he fully knows us.

Our anthology's name speaks to the mysterious in the Christian faith; our press's name reminds us of the limits of our understanding--at least for now.