If you love curry, you’ve undoubtedly tasted turmeric and loved its unique, taste-infused flavor. However, you may not know much about this amazing spice. Well it’s time to change that and become familiar with an ancient ingredient that possesses incredible healing properties. Today’s recipe is for Turmeric “Golden Milk,” an extremely simple but fantastically powerful drink. Also, it’s National Dairy Month in the United States, so you can celebrate the goodness of dairy while enjoying the health benefits of turmeric. Continue reading
Bon Appetit Wednesday! The Magic of Ancient Turmeric
AntiquityNOW Presents: Fact or Fiction? Fish Sauce Doughnuts
We at AntiquityNOW love to be surprised, and what better way to be so than to take a walk through history. History is the ultimate trickster, turning what we think we know around at every opportunity. What really happened eons ago? Finding out can be befuddling, baffling, shocking and soooo amusing. So in that spirit of amusement and befuddlement, we announce our whenever-we-feel-like-posting-it new blog series, AntiquityNOW’s Fact or Fiction. Buckle up. It’s going to be quite a ride.
Last week was National Doughnut Day and we don’t think it’s too late to celebrate. Did you know that doughnuts can be traced back to a Greco-Roman treat of fried dough coated in fish sauce?
Fact or Fiction?
HOVER YOUR CURSOR HERE TO SEE THE ANSWER
*Click here to read even more about the history of doughnuts!
Posted in Blog, Culinary, Culture, Fact or Fiction
Tagged AntiquityNOW, donuts, doughnuts, Fact or Fiction, fish sauce, National Doughnut Day
The Rose in History: Power, Beauty and the Sweet Smell of Success
June is National Rose Month, so we thought we would pay homage to this lovely flower. Roses have a storied and ancient history. Their delicate petals, their splendiferous hues, their enticing fragrances and their visual presence has inspired civilizations from time immemorial. Roses have been around for some 35 million years and evidence of their past glories have been found in the far reaches of the ancient world. Let’s explore their history further as we take a walk through the beauteous Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon, where the ancient and modern find common blooming rights. To make your stroll even more memorable, steep some rose hips tea, sit back and relax to the sumptuous tones of Enya’s China Roses. Continue reading
Posted in Art, Beauty, Blog, Culinary, Culture, Holidays, Public Life, Recreation, Science and Technology
Tagged ancient botany, ancient flowers, ancient rose, AntiquityNOW, flowers, National Rose Month, rose, tea roses
Bon Appetit Wednesday! National Herbs and Spices Day
Today is National Herbs and Spices Day! We thought it would be the perfect time to remind you of some ingenious and delicious ways the ancients made use of herbs and spices. Not only did they season their food, they also used these ingredients medicinally. Explore below the recipes along with their fascinating histories that have tickled the palate and nurtured the species through the millennia: Continue reading
Nature, Ecotherapy and a Peek into the Past Through National Parks
Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.
UPDATE! This post was originally published on September 9, 2014. In several countries around the world,
students are gearing up for summer break, an exciting time of fun, sun and long-awaited vacations. If
you live in the United States, your family may be planning a trip to one of the many national parks. There
are a wide variety of places to visit, packed with rich cultural heritage, fascinating pieces of history, grand
architecture, breathtaking natural vistas and heart-pounding encounters with wildlife. Before you go, take a minute to read our post below to learn about the ancient history of natural settings and how our park system came to be. Also, if you want a truly memorable experience, check out this article in The New York Times on how to get the most out of your national park visit.
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When you first enter Crater Lake National Park, it’s easy to imagine you’ve stepped thousands of years into the past. Crater Lake in Oregon was created when Mount Mazama erupted close to 8,000 years ago, and ignoring the RVs visiting the park today, it’s easy to imagine it has not changed much from what it must have looked like after the ash settled. Continue reading
Bon Appetit Wednesday! Roast Chicken With Ancient Grappa
Here’s a recipe that will whisk you away to Old World Italy. Its star ingredient is an underappreciated spirit that is making a comeback in modern society, grappa. The recipe, Roast Chicken with Grappa, is warm, rich and full of Italian goodness, but first we need to learn a bit about the grappa that makes it unique. Continue reading
Posted in Bon Appetit Wednesday, Culinary, Culture
Tagged ancient food, ancient recipes, ancient spirits, AntiquityNOW, Bon Appetit Wednesday, grappa, pomace
AntiquityNOW Month: Factoid Friday! Ancient Cheese and the Mummy of Invention
Image credit: Wang da Gang
Cheese may not be the first thought that comes to mind when Chinese mummies are mentioned, but some of those very mummies—dating back to 1615 BCE—have been found with curds of cheese on their persons. Have we piqued your curiosity? Click here to learn more about how the Chinese made cheese thousands of years ago, including their innovative technology using the ancient superfood kefir (recipe included).
Posted in Blog
Tagged ancient cheese, ancient history, ancient kefir, AntiquityNOW, AntiquityNOW month, cheese mummies, Chinese mummies
Strata: Portraits of Humanity, Episode 7, “Historical Archaeology in Downtown Boise” and “South Carolina Pottery Kiln Excavation”
Episode 7 of the new documentary series Strata: Portraits of Humanity, produced by AntiquityNOW’s partner, Archaeological Legacy Institute, considers what we uncover about a society through the remnants of its existence. In this two-part episode we observe how discarded items become touchstones for past lives—relics that capture times, places, memories, social status, gender roles and cultural attributes. And we ponder how future generations will remember us when they come upon what we in the 21st century have left behind. Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Art, Blog, Culture, Education, Public Life, Strata Curricula
Tagged AntiquityNOW, Archaeological Legacy Institute, Archaeology in Boise, cultural heritage film, cultural preservation, pottery excavation, South Carolina kiln, Strata Portraits of Humanity, The Archaeology Channel
Bon Appetit Wednesday! Ancient Ricotta and a Simply Delicious Tart
Ricotta. Image credit: Fugzu on Flickr
Did you know that soft, delicious ricotta cheese isn’t really a cheese at all? It’s actually a by-product of cheese-making. We’ve assembled some facts about the history of this extremely versatile “cheese,” along with a simple recipe for a ricotta tart that combined with any seasonal fruit makes for a treat of sweet perfection.
So, ricotta isn’t a cheese. It’s actually a creamy curd that has been cooked twice. The excess whey leftover when making cheese is skimmed off and then recooked, at which point the albumin in the whey solidifies and becomes the ricotta cheese we know and love. Of course, something this delicious has many potential origins, but it almost certainly evolved, as so many ancient foods did, out of necessity. It came from “peasant thrift, dairy farmyard recycling and domestic frugality.”[1] There are a few things we know for certain about ricotta’s past. Continue reading
The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival 2015
The Archaeology Channel, a program of Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI), has just completed another successful annual International Film and Video Festival. Packed with insightful and provocative films as well as lively and important discussions on the significance of cultural preservation, this year’s festival touched minds and hearts with its depictions of how precious and vulnerable our world heritage is.
The festival’s mission is:
To exhibit for our audience the wonderful diversity of human cultures past and present in the exploration of our place in history and in our world. To promote the genre and the makers of film and video productions about archaeology and indigenous peoples.
You can see all of the festival’s winners on the TAC website, but we’d like to highlight the winners of Best Film by Jury Vote and Audience Favorite. Each film had an important message to share and did so beautifully, using the art of film to capture the images and stories of the ages. Continue reading
AntiquityNOW 