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TRAVEL THROUGH TIME NEWS FEATURES

CREATIVITY ENHANCEMENT

TRAVEL THROUGH TIME

TRAVEL AND MEMOIRS

TIME CAPSULES

EVENTS NEWS FEATURES

A. Hart, M.A.

Managing Editor

News and Scripts.

Historical-Themed Events Travel, Drama & Food Writing

A. Hart

PO Box 4333

San Diego, CA 92164 USA

By A. Hart, M.A.

TRAVEL THROUGH TIME TO THE PRESENT AND FUTURE WITH HOLOGRAM ART IN VENTURA, CALIFORNIA, USA: HOLOGRAM ART CAN MOTIVATE KIDS AND PARENTS TO THINK ABOUT THE SPECTRUM OF STARLIGHT THAT SHINES IN HOLOGRAM ARTWORK…..CREATING SCULPTURE WITH COLORED LIGHT

VENTURA ARTIST INTRODUCES CHILDREN, TEACHERS, PARENTS, AND ARCHITECTS TO USING MOVING LIGHT AS SCULPTURE:

THE MOTION OF THE VIEWER MOVES THE ART.

More female artists and architects are working with holograms and kids to introduce them to the idea that art and technology are growing closer. Viewer-controlled light motion gives the art lover choices because it offers interactivity. It’s a new dialogue between the viewer in motion and the artist’s metaphor.

Artists are using colorful beams of ceiling window light to create 3-D art so kids will see that the stuff of stars is what's in holographic sculptures. Three-dimensional light-based works are attracting the attention of architects and environmental artists.

Shaping light shapes the universal archetype of world conscience and consciousness, and Ventura, California, is the heartland of the environmental art movement of women in holography. The distant arc spanned is between art history and modern art as technology and art become one.

Sally Weber, a Ventura, California-based holography artist creates art with light, especially public art exhibits in museums, galleries, and public spaces around the world. After graduate studies for a Master of Science in Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T.’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Weber focused on holography and environmental art. This area of holography is particularly attractive to architects and public art sculptors.

Weber used holographic elements in her research with a variety of lighting techniques for architectural work as well as art sculpture for public exhibit in Europe and locally. Light, as holography is a transitory medium. Her sculpture piece, Alignment (1987) utilized light projected from holographic film contained in a seven-foot high curved acrylic structure.

As the viewer walks from side to side, three separate lines of light appear. In the front of the sculpture piece, the three lines of light converge to form one stable pillar of light. As the viewer walks past the sculpture, the colors of light mix to create new shapes and forms, as the spectator becomes one universal form inside the light beam. Weber’s holographic sculptures also are exhibited in Germany in public places.

Weber’s "Signature of the Source," (1997) measures nine feet in diameter. Using custom holograms and glass, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, German commissioned the sculpture. "Signature of the Source," focuses a shaft of light in space on a ceiling of the museum. The column of light pierces the center of the circular window and expands to hover in space four to five feet above and below the window surface. As viewers walk around the balustrade viewing the installation in the ceiling window above them, they see light as rays of color moving up and down and twisting around the exhibit’s central core.

The hologram of colored laser lights race and dance like jets of color. The form portrays a sense of energy expanding from the lights in a star’s spectrum. The rays move out from an unseen source. Light becomes dimensional and dynamic as color in flux. The feeling experienced is the whole philosophy of change and movement forward in this sculpture.

Holographic sculpture seeks to draw a parallel between the changing states of energy, matter, and mind. Light is radiated packets of energy known as photons. The spectrum and energy within stars that beams outward and scatters is what this sculpture portrays. As stars explode and scatter, the particles recombine into new stars again. Eventually some of that matter becomes human, and at a point, becomes mind. This is the message in Weber’s holographic sculptures. Art and technology also combine to become a signature.

Signature also refers to the evidence left behind that signifies the presence of what once was there and is now recombined into something new again. The holographs are light being used in its purist form, as color. Metaphorically, the holographic art of Sally Weber explores wonderfully the transition between energy, mind, and matter by propelling light as holograms.

As vertical shafts of light transform and hide the source of the emission of light and show the motion of light as change occurs in flux. The motion and movement of the viewer activate change. As the viewer moves through space and time, the creative and transformative process changes by the choice of the viewer’s motion. This symbolizes mind revolving around an axle, gathering light and color into its core. This is the essence of creativity through transformation.

"Signature of Source" spent two years in the making. It shines from its installation into the ceiling window of the museum above a fountain in the older part of the building. Weber designed the holograms for this exhibit in her Ventura, California studio using a white-light transmission technique for the 2.5-meter diameter window. A fixture lights from above the artwork. The reflection of light bounces off a mirror positioned five meters above the circular ceiling window. A specially constructed attic room houses the lighting assembly.

Anything emerging from the motion of the viewer now has the energy to move itself forward into time and space like a radiant jet stream of light, color, the stuff of stars, or thought. "Signature of Source" is on permanent display at the Earl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany. The museum’s Web site is http://www.fernuni-hagen.de/www2bonsai/LII/KEOM.home.html.

"Holography often has been misrepresented and consequently misunderstood by the public at large. The vast potential of the field is just becoming recognized and incorporated into numerous technologies," says Weber. As a field it's well beyond the little moving eye images of the 70-80's and the bogus interpretations of Princess Leah and Star-Trek.

"As an artist I have always tried to investigate the juncture between art and science, philosophy and metaphor. All involve quests for an understanding of what it is to be human in its multi-facets. What I perceive is that the arts and sciences are not at opposite ends of the spectrum of knowledge from each other, but actually closely akin, as if on the circumference of a wheel like all fields of human endeavor, both trying to define the nature of the axis within. I work with light as a dimensional medium."

Whether using the motion of sunlight across the sky to alter the effect of an installation throughout the day or year or seeing light projected into the space in front of an installation, both give the viewer a different idea of light as a medium. An installation using light no longer has to be projected onto a surface, but can exist in the same space as the viewer and alter how it looks by the viewers movement through the environment.

"Light is a material capable of focus that can be defined spatially and seen dimensionally. With the number of advances in technology allowing us to see both further back in time and space via the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellites (even over the web), we come to see ourselves in a very different relationship not only to each other, but too our planet and the universe," Weber emphasized.

"The scale and implications are stupefying. Similarly, if we look at imagery in terms of metaphor, the intent of an abstract installation might effect viewers more like imagery developing from a dream, semi-unconsciously. They can point towards a personal understanding or a new approach depending on the interpretation of the viewer. Art has more to do with the development of self than its critics would like to acknowledge. Denying anyone that opportunity not only limits the potential for a culture at large, but also the development of self-fulfilled and independently creative people which is the core of any progress."

Other holographic sculptures by Weber include "Threshold of a SingularityA Memorial," (1989), in acrylic, metal, mirror, glass, water, and optical panels (82 X42 inches), with a diffractive screen. In Weber’s holography exhibits, stable pillars of light turn to radiating mixtures of colors and forms as the spectator begins to walk through the focus. The holographs are a metaphor for mind and star energy moving and recombining through space and time.

Weber’s solo exhibitions, installations, and commissions also include, Hologramme, Germany, 1996, In Light, 1995, Germany, Celestial Chance, Los Angeles, CA, 1994, Birds with J. Sanders, Indonesia, 1993, Evidence of Time, and Dual Cascade, Moreno Valley, CA, 1993, Falling Light, Phoenix, AZ, 1992, Flight of Fish, Oxnard, CA 1990, Alignment, Southbridge, MA, 1987, Parsifal’s Request, M.I.T. Museum, 1986, Lightscape, MIT, 1982, and Sun Cycle, MIT, 1981, as well as many selected group exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Canada, Carmel, Santa Barbara, Long Beach, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Lincoln, MA between 1982 and 1997.

HOLOGRAM STORES TO VISIT AS YOU TRAVEL THROUGH TIME OR SPACE

The Hologram Store is part of Lazar Wizardry. Their excellent catalog tells how holograms are made. The retail division of The Hologram Company (Sumon, LLC) and Lazer Wizardry consists of seven stores located in San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Orlando, Myrtle Beach, SC, North Myrtle Beach, SC and New Orleans.

Stores vary in size from 1,200 to 1,500 sq. feet. The stores' inventories consist of giftware incorporating holograms. These include wall art, watches, jewelry, and souvenir type gifts. The stores are owned and operated by Sumon LLC of Lakewood, CO.

In the near future, several more stores will open in tourist-oriented cities. The wholesale division of Sumon LLC is in Lakewood, CO. Its 5,000-square foot warehouse distributes to retail customers across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Inquiries from Europe and South America are cultivating an international interest. What’s the successful hologram market all about?

The $150 million hologram market is twelve years old and growing. In a Chilton Company study, when Uddeholm Steel Corporation placed a four-page insert that included a hologram of a toy soldier in Iron Age magazine, 89.5 percent of readers noticed. The point is that 47.4 percent read more than half of the ad, compared with 15.8 percent for the closest contender. 

The overall effectiveness index of the hologram ad rated the highest marks of any advertiser for the year. A decade before, American Bank Note Company placed a hologram ad in Food and Drug Packaging magazine. A readership research company survey revealed that 86 percent of the readers remembered the hologram, six times above average, and the highest score ever recorded for the magazine.

Francis Tuffy, a holographic specialist, at Astor Universal, Inc. a Kansas foil manufacturer, reported that customers are pulling holograms into the general consumer and printed business markets. "Business products professionals are buying up the holograms," said Tuffy. "Distributors satisfy end-user demand by selling the accounts on its value-added aspects." Tuffy emphasized that the value of holograms is a selling point. Holograms aren't cheap. "They're not for price-shoppers," said Tuffy.

Holograms are expensive. Customized holograms cost around $5,000 before reproduction. Manufacturers' stock art can drop prices to $2,500-$3,000. The company, AD 2000 offers a 300-plus image "Holobank (R)", similar to a stock photography stable.

For customers who can't afford commercial holograms, Tuffy advised shoppers to consider holographic patterns instead of images. Patterns pulled from inventory are designed with the same color-changing holography, but they are lacking the up-front customized art changes. Anyone who wants to learn how to create holography can train at L.A.S.E.R., (the Laser Arts Society for Education and Research.)

Holograms are used for security applications for financial documents such as credit cards and stickers--to make tampering difficult. "They can't be photocopied and are hard to simulate," according to Nancy Phillips, CFC marketing manager at Pro Forms, Inc. in Visalia, California.

Pro Forms is one of a number of growing sources for trade holograms that purchased holographic application equipment, making the firm successful in offering security holograms. Pro Forms purchases holograms from a supplier with specialized holographic equipment.

Their supplier creates the holographic art to individual specifications. Distributors profit most by matching products with specific purposes. Suppliers are contracted to customize the art. Most people are familiar with holographic art galleries and their franchises in shopping malls. Publishers use promotional holograms for book covers, greeting cards, calendars, holo-poetry, direct-mail letters, brochures, stickers, collectibles, trading cards, packaging, trade-show displays, merchandise tags, and key chains.

Hologram-transfers are placed on T-shirts. On garments, holograms are applied with hot-stamp foil or laminated with film. In a pressure-sensitive format, they can be run through an ink-jet or impact printer for imaging. In the future laser printers will be able to work with holograms.

Reach holographic companies such as AD 2000, Cherry Optical, Holaxis Corporation, Hologamas De Mexico (mass produced holograms), Holographics North, James River Products, Transfer Print Foils, Inc., and Blue Ridge Holographics (photoresist mastering for embossed holograms) on the Internet. All these firms' addresses, and holography publications such as Holography Marketplace, Your Industry Connection are at the Internet's Website: http://hmt.com/holography/in.

     Holograms are light-wave recordings of a laser reflected off of an object. When placed under ordinary light, the hologram will replay the image of the original object. The viewer sees the recreated light waves, perceiving the object as if it were still there.

The holographic film records an infinite number of views of the object. A photo records only one view. So when you look at a hologram, your left eye sees a different "apparent" view of the object than your right eye. So the image appears three dimensional. Moving holograms are motion pictures filmed specifically from 3 to 20 seconds in length. They can be used to create animated holograms. The moving holograms are called "integral holography."

Hologram businesses are moving forward, since holograms can also be made from flat photos and artwork. The laser will recreate only what it sees and record it. Making a hologram from a sculpture or three-dimensional object is the secret of success. Pulse lasers make holograms from live subjects in motion.

The profitable hologram business is becoming more than framed artwork of three-dimensional illusions decorating homes or offices. Holograms are customized to detect fraud on cards, barcodes, certificates, bank notes, and bills. Holobank (R) sells a collection of stock hologram products such as bookmarks, business cards, buttons, calculators, coasters, diffraction labels, notepads, key chains, stickers, magnets, shirts and garment transfers, wall plates, and holographic security applications.

  Peter Scheir, CEO of AD 2000 Inc., a New Haven, CT-based manufacturer who imprints his own holograms on promotional products. "Use holograms for impact," Scheir said. "Messages are enforced by a customer's name and slogan on a hologram.

"People keep holograms," said Scheir. "Potential customers give us new leads. People call us who have kept our hologram business cards after 12 years. They've also displayed our other holograms on their desks for a decade."

For further information, contact the educational institute that trains holographers, L.A.S.E.R., P.O Box 24-153, San Francisco, CA 94124-0153. The Association of Professional Holographers is coming soon to the Website: http://hmt.com/holography/in. Also try http://hmt.com/holography/ho for articles on how businesses use holography. If you’d like to know more about The Hologram Store, contact SUMON, LLC, 5805 West Sixth Avenue, Suite B, Lakewood, CO 80214. Phone (303) 462-1648. Fax (303) 462-0599.

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Anne Hart, M.A. is a freelance writer and columnist in local travel, art, technology, foods, self-help, personality research, and career development, and author of 51 books. Anne Hart is a playwright who enjoys viewing and thinking about how can be used to motivate and inspire artists, architects, grandparents, parents, teachers, and children, and has written 17 plays, 51 books, four novels, and more than 300 articles as a fulltime freelance writer since 1959. She holds a master's degree in English with emphasis in professional and creative writing from SDSU and a B.S. in English Education (writing ) with emphasis in science writing from NYU as well as psychology teaching credentials, a minor in commercial art, and writes books about new media journalism, creativity enhancement, and books on home based businesses. Her latest books include Winning Resumes for Computer Personnel, published by Barron's Educational Series, NY, and many other books on writing and personality preferences, career development, fiction, plays, and journalism.

Write, re-create, and plan for events such as weddings, rites-of-passage, welcome-to-family, holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, ancient king-and-queen coronation ceremonies and scripts for weddings, parties, and re-enactments, graduation, commemorations. Bar Mitzvahs, Confirmations, Welcoming Into Family, and all types of life-passage ceremonies.

Entering a new stage of life, career, or making a transition? Celebrate with an ancient -themed event.

Ancient themes for a variety of events, parties, ceremonies and costume dramas. Plan your wedding or welcoming-in event as an ancient king-and-queen coronation ceremony or ritual.

Learn how to write your own script and plan your ancient themed, time travel, or special ethnic or costumed event. Re-create the foods of other times or lands.

What shall it be, ancient Egypt, the Silk Road Caravan, Biblical, Asian, Rome, Greece, Sumeria, Exodus, Babylon, Caucasus Mts., Central Asia, Rroma (Gypsy), India, Native American, Bali, Africa, Pacific Island, Far East, Icelandic Saga, Khazar, or Trans-Steppe nomad? Ancient Rome, Greece, or 9^th-centuryViking or Prehistoric era-themed event?

To what period of history do you want your event to time-travel? Also: Write your own life story or corporate history for future generations.

Create an ancient ceremony or event for your celebration--welcoming a new member of your family, workplace, or leaving home for a new world.

WRITE YOUR MEMOIRS AS TIME CAPSULES ON DISC, ONLINE, OR IN PRINT. CREATE SCRAPBOOKS OF ANCIENT CEREMONIES RE-CREATED FOR YOUR EVENT.

Costume dramas planned along with ancient-style food re-creations, scripts for ceremonies and rites-of passage, vows, prayers, rituals, and holiday events. For birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, bar-mitzvah, confirmations, eulogies, graduations, celebrations-of-life, in ancient styles and rituals as re-creations of ancient life. Scripts and memoirs. Write your own or have one written. Events planned and arranged on ancient themes.

 Example:

LEARN HOW TO WRITE SCRIPTS FOR ANCIENT-THEMED EVENTS, WRITE YOUR MEMOIRS, CORPORATE HISTORIES, OR CREATE TIME CAPSULES.....AS YOU PLAN ANCIENT-THEMED EVENTS AS PAGEANTRY, CEREMONY, OR CELEBRATE LIFE-STAGES, TRANSITIONS, AND WELCOMING CEREMONIES. Plan and/or write for your own circle or for others as a creative expression enterprise, hobby, or as a time capsule for future generations.

HOW TO PLAN CHILDREN'S ANCIENT CLASSICAL OR BIBLICAL THEME PARTIES (OR RITES OF PASSAGE CEREMONIES) AS ANCIENT KING AND QUEEN CORONATIONS

A favorite is King Solomon weddings where he marries the Egyptian princess with costumes, drama, a script for a coronation or wedding combined with a coronation event. You write the script as if it came right out of a Cleopatra or Exodus-type biography, play, or novel. Ideally, Passover is the right time for an ancient theme scripted event.

Expect the event to cost anywhere from $300- $500 for a home-based toga party, the standard SPQR (Senate and the Roman people) recreated around a Sauna, pool, Jacuzzi, and back yard barbeque with taped recordings of ancient Roman and Greek music and a buffet of grape, pomegranate, or other fruit juice and meat, fowl, or fish pies, honey cake, berries, grapes, and raw vegetable juices, to $10,000-$30,000 for the coronation of the confirmation, bar/bat mitzvah kid or birthday children as Pharaoh and Queen of ancient Egypt, circa the golden age, 18th dynasty, 1,200-1,300 B.C.

An ancient rites of passage event, holiday, or birthday party is a costume drama. So let's work through a popular one, the event of coronation of the ancient Egyptian royalty. The birthday kids could be brother and sister who are role-playing queen and king for a day, or a famous figure from ancient history. Guests participate. On the invitation, you'd tell them to appear in costume of the period stated on the card. Easiest and least expensive to recreate is Cleopatra's era in Egypt, 70-30 B.C.

After you've given your host kids or families and friends a budget--in this case, $10,000 for a bar mitzvah, confirmation, or kids-and-parents participating together in a relative's birthday party, holiday event or even a relative's wedding on stage in an auditorium, hall, hotel, church basement, rented school gymnasium, rented theater or large, empty artist's loft (the cheapest to decorate and rent for the evening), the next thing you'll need is a clergy person or designated official for the king and queen who participates in the coronation, which can also include a family bride and groom or a classroom of kids celebrating a rites of passage event, to read when vows are exchanged.

You'll need a person legally authorized to conduct rites of passage events, birthdays, or weddings, such as a minister or other licensed or certificated person who will sign the marriage certificate and either quickly file it in a courthouse's recording department for marriages or give it to the bride and groom to file in court the next day. Marriages must be recorded to be legal.

After you arrange someone to legally crown the king and queen in the mock coronation, you and participate in the re-enactment of your ancient costume drama, you'll need a script for the host, the king, queen or birthday kid to play the bride, groom, or re-enact any other rites of passage from adoption into a family to graduation from kindergarten. To participate in a relative's wedding, you'll need a clergy person to read and follow in this wedding. Prepare several scripts to show clients. You can plan ancient history parties for kids in any history clasroom from elementary school through college age. The historic event is excellent for proms and graduations at any age of the child. It's a way parents and children can hold an event and participate in a party together as a family joining with them other families in celebration of a life passage event, holiday, birthday, or welcoming ceremony.

A good mix is to have one or two scripts each for ancient costume drama coronations based on ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, Israel, India, China, Japan, or customize to meet the needs of each ethnic group you want to target, such as ancient Java, Phillippines, Vietnam, Native American, Polynesian, Romany (Gypsy), Viking, Russian, Arabic, Mesopotamian, Sumerian, or the land of your own origin. It's much easier to research your own background's ancient wedding customs and combine the script with genealogy services of subcontractors, costume designers, musicians, and caterers.

In a typical script, you'll write what each person does at a specific moment in the coronation-wedding ceremony. Here's a script for a re-enactment of Cleopatra's coronation, which you can use as your basic ancient wedding ceremony in a costume drama re-creating ancient Egyptian weddings. At the moment the music, either live or taped stops: The bride begins to speak or read this script and then hands it to the groom who says the same, except substituting the word 'queen of the hearth' for 'king' or 'pharaoh of the hearth.'

"I, (insert your name or ancient name--put real name on marriage license), father, mother, brother, sister-loving goddess, the ever living Isis, solemnly pledge my sacred troth that as Queen (King) of the hearth, of the two lands, I will keep and defend, uphold and govern with all my domestic goddess powers, the laws and customs of my realm, pledging my faith to my groom, my country, and my people with the help of Isis and all the other gods that have ever existed on his planet in its past and future, until the day they call me to their bosom. All this do I Queen (or King) (insert name), solemnly vow in this marriage and coronation as queen (king) of my domain.

As the ceremony begins, the multitude assembled prostrate themselves on the rug or carpet, foreheads touching the floor. They are signaled by an attending to slowly lift their heads to view the bride and groom (queen and king) being carried in a chair painted gold, like a throne or on a decorated bier, which can be as cheap as a stretcher. (The mock king and queen sit up with folded legs and hands in the prayer position held with bent elbows and palms facing to the side horizontally, or in the Egyptian pose--one arm extending in front and the other arm extended in back with horizontal palms facing outwards.) The bride and groom carry a crook and a whip in each hand, the sign of royalty in ancient Egypt.

As the king and queen are carried up the aisle by four strong men dressed in ancient Egyptian costume and headdress, the couple are set down in front of a stage. They walk up to the stage followed by the clergy person. The best man and parents and in-laws stand first beside them in costume.

The clergy person, priest/priestess, places the two crowns of upper and lower Egypt on the head of the bride and groom. This is a big bubble-shaped red, white and gold hat which can be made from lightweight cardboard or plastic and covered by metallic fabric. The red cobra crown of lower Egypt was called the Lady of the Spells, and the white, conical bulbous-tipped vulture crown of upper Egypt was called the Lady of Dread. The clergy person reads from the script, "With this heavy crown, I give you the weight of responsibilities." This sentence is repeated as the clergy places the crown on the head of the king and queen. The reason for the big crowns of ancient Egypt is to symbolize the weight of responsibility the couple will have in their commitment to the marriage just as in their symbolic commitment to their coronation as king and queen of a real domestic realm of their own.

Then the clergy person repeats for king and queen, "With these crowns of upper and lower Egypt, I instill in you the significance of the awesome trust that the immortals are placing in you. "A moment of silence, please to remember the long chain of those who have worn these crowns before you for five thousand years." Chimes are sounded, then finger cymbals or "zills." to sound a change in "mini-scenes."

The clergy person says, "Bring in the rings." An attendant or child brings the coronation rings or necklaces forth. The clergy person takes the rings, necklaces, or other trophies and pendants chosen (better than a crown for kids) from the pillow or box and hands them to the king and queen who place the rings on each other's fingers. The script says, "With these rings, I seal my trust, responsibilities and commitment.

After this coronation ceremony, your customized and personal incantation will be read. Give the king and queen a chance to write their own rites of passage ceremony script after the coronation one. It will personalize their wedding to give individuality to the costume drama and bring them back to reality. This final script could be their own preference, or their own religious rite, or any other custom wording the couple wants to work into their second script. It should not run longer than three paragraphs.

Trumpets blare. Music begins. All rise in the coronation. Festivity begins. What foods to serve? Stay authentic. Serve ancient Egyptian style home barley and wheat salad with Nile perch or any other white baked fish and raw vegetables, pomegranate juice and grapes. Serve raisin juice and grape juice. Cleopatra favored pomegranate juice and honey cake, with fruits of all types found in the Mediterranean. A Macedonian Greek cuisine, especially Greek olive salad, Moussaka (eggplant dish) and other eastern Mediterranean foods are appropriate to serve to emulate Macedonian-ruled Egypt, circa 25 B.C. It's easy to call a Greek or Egyptian caterer in almost any large city. From where to do get the costumes and music?

Several companies make ancient bridal gowns, specializing in ancient

Egyptian, Persian, Sumerian, Biblical, Mediterranean, Greek, Roman, and North African

ceremonial gowns and wedding party costumes. You can buy patterns also for ancient costumes and have any dressmaker sew them for the wedding party for costs ranging from $150 to $500. Or make cheap costumes from patterns out of polyester. Or rent costumes for kids.

Figure attendants or guests won't pay more than $150 for their own costume if you add a family rites of passage ceremony to your own wedding ceremony where children will take part.

So let the guests wear their own cheaper versions of ancient costumes, such as togas made from sheets or improvised versions of Indian saris. Try first century A.D. weddings with biblical attire that emulates the nativity scene for authenticity. To start this business, you don't need capital of your own beyond stationary. However, your budget for those who are paying for the wedding should average $2,000 to $10,000, plus cost of hall rental. Flowers and props are the most expensive items. Foods are second most expensive.

The first step is making out a budget and getting paid in advance by the couple or their parents. You can't go over budget. This isn't a movie set, but you'll want to budget up to $1,000 for a videotaping in broadcast or industrial quality tape with a rented video camera from a studio that makes commercials for private businesses.

A camcorder recording will fade after repeated use and duplications for family members and friends. Write the wedding guests into the script. You can offer video tapes of them in their starring roles in this coronation-wedding costume drama. It will have a longer life than the usual wedding videos.

The $30,000 Biblical event splurge is growing in popularity with the ancient Hebrew rites in the Eastern Mediterranean ancient tradition complete with ancient musical instrument replicas and dances right out of movies such as Ben Hur.

Pick any era of history. Ancient Egypt for wedding costume dramas and coronations is most popular, coupled with a cruise--down the Nile or down the Hudson. More ancient rites of passage events are being set on indoor barges and docked boats of all kinds. Although you can always rent stage and movie props for decor, here are some businesses that specialize in making ancient Egyptian gowns for bride and groom:

Custom-designed costumes sell for around $500 and up. An hour-long videotape uses live models to illustrate design and draping of Roman clothing in "Let's Wrap," The Art of Dressing Roman Style, (1,000 years of Roman Costume), by Norma Goldman, from American Classical League, Miami University, Oxford Ohio 45056, (513) 529-7741, or fax: (513) 529-1516. (ACL Tape V1). To take costume design classes or order an ancient wedding costume to be designed, you may write to one of California's outstanding, award-winning costume designers and teachers: Julia, of Julia's Costume Designs, 17269 West Bernardo Drive, Suite 109, San Diego, CA 92127-1158, or call (619) 485-7087. Her exquisite designs are featured in the 1992 book, The Costume Makers Art, by Tom Boswell, Lark Books, NY.

Ancient coronations can be staged to raise funds. Once you learn the skill, weddings can be costume dramas or coronations, and coronations can be staged to present another cause, such as raising money for charity. Suppliers advertise in magazines such as Mideastern Connection, Inc. PO Box 181572, Casselberry, FL. 32718-1572.

This magazine covers Middle Eastern performance, weddings, music, dance and ethnic culture and provides the most current news and entertainment information available in the world. For ancient Egyptian furniture replicas, contact Ghazala USA, 7736 Fay Ave., La Jolla, CA 92137, phone (619) 459-5949.

For further information, write to: The Apparel Guild, Penn Arcade, Seventh Ave. & 33rd St., New York, NY 10001 (212) 279-4580. Or write to the Educational Foundation for the Fashion Industries, 227 West 27th St., New York, NY 10001 (212) 760-7641. To network with merchants, and costume designers: Write to Habibi Publications, PO Box 90936, Santa Barbara, CA 93190 (coverage of merchants and events, national and international, performers and merchants network listings, quarterly magazine).

For suppliers and performers or props, write to the Middle Eastern Culture and Dance Association, (MECDA), PO Box 946, Rosemead, CA 91770, southern California quarterly magazine and monthly newsletter of events: Sameda, PO Box 40378, San Diego, CA 92164. Your suppliers--caterers, prop manufacturers, costumers, decor suppliers, set designers, and musicians are the vendors you talk to first before you begin to plan anyone's ancient wedding.

Read some of the biographies of ancient kings and queens to research descriptions of their royal coronation ceremonies. Study ancient sacred services, rituals of anointment, and celebrations to welcome a newcomer into the family. As there is a prayer for every event, so is there a ceremony, pageant, or event that can be staged as a costume drama. Whether it's a wedding or the naming of a new pet, child, or house-warming celebration, do don regal array and time travel there for your next event.

At my Websites you'll find my courseware and inspiration to help you enhance creativity in time travel event planning with ancient themes. You'll also find tips on how to write your memoirs or corporate histories as time capsules for future generations.

Time travel through this galaxy. Be not contained. Move like a blade of grass upward toward the light. Colonize the empty spaces of the universe. And best of all, plan your next event with an ancient theme by writing your favorite costume drama script for the ceremony. Your memoirs could have universal appeal to many outside your family. Your next event could be a fascinating time travel experience to ancient life.

Where do you want to have your next event--in the ancient Middle East or Mediterranean, India, the Far East, New World, or Pacific? Rome or Greece? Egypt? Biblical lands? Europe? Africa? Uncharted areas? New Frontiers? Some marriages made in Heaven could be staged there in a costume drama. Or plan an ancient music event with costumes, décor, and ceremony in the land and time period of your choice. Creativity is encouraged. This site is about helping you to write the scripts the participants and guests as characters in an ancient costume drama will portray. Plan your event as a re-creation of ancient times and places.

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SCRIPT FOR ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STYLE ROYAL CORONATION WEDDING SIMULATION:

HERE'S THE EGPYTIAN ROYAL CORONATION CEREMONY. YOU MAY HAVE A PRINCESS CHARACTER PRESENT THERE FOR THE PRECEDING SCENE OR USE IT AS A WEDDING OR OTHER LIFE-PASSAGE CEREMONY AS A CORONATION EVENT.

FOR A WEDDING, WRITE YOUR ACTUAL WEDDING VOW CEREMONY SEPARATE AND CUSTOMIZED BEFORE YOU INTERMINGLE IT WITH THE CORONATION RITUAL CEREMONY.

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CORONATION RITUAL:

SFX: CLASHING CYMBALS AND BELLS, TINKLING FINGER ZILLS (CYMBALS)

As the scene opens, the music of lutes, lyres, and harps sounds. A nye (Middle Eastern flute that has two pipes and a rather nasal sound), wails. A trumpet blares. Then a chorus of men begins to chant as they slowly march down the aisle. Flower petals are strewn by girls in costume standing on each side of the aisle.

The bride and groom are seated on gold tasseled cushions. They rise and are led up several steps to the dais where two gold-winged thrones await them. The thrones are painted in Egyptian blue, turquoise, gold, and Egyptian red and white and covered with hieroglyphics. Most of the throne is painted a metallic gold or in gold leaf simulation with gems imbedded on portions of the throne in areas that do not actually touch or poke at the bodies of those seated there. Mount the gems on the throne on the sides and back or on the sides of the arm rests or throne legs. The royal escutcheon, emblem, or "logo" is draped above the throne. 

Draped over the thrones are the cloth of the state, of upper and lower Egypt. Above the throne is a great golden-colored disk shaped like the sun. The couple is led to the throne and seated. They smile and look out at the guests. A designated official playing the part of the "priest's" assistant removes the glowing white and gold cloaks of the couple, hereafter called Pharoah and Queen. The royal couple now is flanked by fanbearers in ancient Egyptian costume.

Guests include those playing the characters of attendants, soldiers, courtiers, and chamberlains. The soldiers are in ancient Egyptian costume of the 18^th dynasty. Soldiers wear sandals strapped high with mantles and striped Egyptian headdress. The priests wear "bald" wigs so it looks as if their heads are shaven.

Each guest wears a special head dress to represent the country he or she is visiting from, such as the vulture-crowned Hittite royalty ,Babylonian, Aegian, Caucasus Mountains Scythian, European, India-Hindu style, Persian, Hebrews, Trojan, Circassian, Central Asian, Nubian, Minoan,, etc. Joseph, the Hebrew governor of Egypt, shows up with a family of Hebrews visiting Egypt. Ambassadors from China and Central Asia show up with silk gifts. Early Greeks in bronze-age costume appear along with the ambassadors from Cyprus. The Phonoecians (modern Lebanon) appear in costume bearing wooden gifts. Each guest wears a distinctive head dress or coronet to represent his/her land of origin or rank and title.

THE RITUAL: ACTION:

The ritual begins as the royal cup bearer brings in the orange-blossom-scented "holy" oil. The cup bearer dips his fingers into the stone cup or jar and anoints each of the royal couple in the center of their foreheads.

SFX (sound effects):

MUSIC. We hear the thump of a goat-skinned drum or early "dumbegh"--a Middle Eastern drum in a one, two, one two three rhythm. A flute wails its nuance in a minor key, keeping rhythm in a hypnotic dance, to the hand-drum beat.

ENTER:

The royal regalia bearers march slowly down the aisle. They carry an insignia on top of gold and white silk cushions with tassels. On one cushion is the great crown for the bride and on the other cushion is the great white crown for the bride. The crowns also can be blue, gold, or white, or a combination of colors.

Another regalia bearer marches down the aisle bearing whips, these small symbolic whips to be carried by the bride and groom or each of the royal couple, and a regalia bearer behind him or her, carries a cushion of gold with tassels on which the "crook" is borne. This is a small, striped crooked stick.

A regalia bearer follows with a cushion bearing the scepter.

The last regalia bearer carries a cushion which holds two "sacred uraeus." This is a replica of a "golden-carved asp," one for each of the couple, shaped as a head dress.

The regalia bearer hands each golden asp replicas to the high "Priest" who then places the sacred uraeus on the groom's head first and then on the bride's head. The uraeus head dress is shaped like a cobra head that juts out when placed on a wearer's forehead.

The regalia bearers then had the crook and the whip to the high priest who, in turn, hands the crook and the whip to the groom and then to the bride. (Or, if this is not a wedding, to each of the couple at the same time.) The two each take the crook and the whip and cross their arms over their chest in a crisscross fashion of Egyptian custom of the time.

SFX: The flutes and drums stop. All is silent.

GUESTS:

BOWING DOWN.

Everyone in the room bows down, prostrating themselves on the floor with face touching the floor, knees bent. No one looks up as the Pharaoh and Queen are both crowned at the same time by the high priest.

The custom dictates that anyone looking up is cursed.

The high priest places the crowns on each of the couple. The male is crowned first if there is one priest, and with two high priests, both the male and female are crowned at the same time with one high priest on each side of them.

The Pharaonic crowned is placed on the head after it has been anointed and after the sacred uraeus cobra headdress is placed on each of the royal pair's heads. The double crown now goes on each of the of the royal couple's head. There are two crowns that fit together to make the double crown. The first is the red cobra crown of Lower Egypt. It's called "The Lady of Spells." The second crown that fits into the first like a puzzle, is the white, conical crown that has a bulbous tip and is shaped like a Hittite vulture. (The symbol for the Hittites also is the vulture, and many of Egyptian royalty, such as King Tutankhamon, were of royal Hittite origin.) However, the vulture is the official crown of Upper Egypt. It's called the Lady of Dread.

Custom is that the crowns and the emblems are extra heavy to emphasize responsibility and trust that the wearer must carry. The trust and responsibility were to the Egyptian gods.

HIGH PRIEST CHANTS HIS INCANTATION. GUESTS RISE.

The high priest begins to chant his ritual incantation. As his incantation starts, the guests arise.

The music begins first by cymbals clashing. Trumpets and flutes wail their nuances of delight. A chorus of singers begins to sing wildly to the harps and other stringed instruments joined by the flutes, trumpets, and lyres, the hand-held drums, tiny bells, and finger cymbals (zills), tambourines, and other tinkling sounds, the nye flutes with their double pipes, and ancient stringed instruments.

A chorus of singers continues chanting to the melody.

THE OATH BEGINS.

A coronation oath which can be customized to fit the rites-of-passage, life-passage, or other ritual ceremony, whether it be a wedding, birthday, anniversary, or any other celebration occasion now is spoken.

A wedding can also follow with its individualized-written script for each of the couple's ritual or in the case of one individual, an individualized rites-of-passage oath or pledge. If this is a birthday party, or celebration for a new career, graduation, or promotion, the individual takes an oath similar to a resolution for the future. For a new baby, a welcoming-into-the family oath takes place, and the baby is the royal subject of this royal coronation simulation.

The oath is preceded by an incantation from the high priest. It is exalted. The royal couple or individual is announced first by the high priest before the person takes the OATH.

OATH:

I, ( fill in your real name, NOW KNOWN AS (an Egyptian nick name), Creator-and family-loving divine light within, the Everliving, solemnly pledge my sacred promise that as QUEEN (OR PHAROAH)

and Liege of the Two Lands, I will uphold, maintain, and govern with all my creative powers, the customs of my realm, pledging my promise to my creators, my people, my responsibility, and my trustworthiness

with the help of Isis and Osiris, and all the Egyptian gods, goddesses, and those of all the lands in this world and others, until the day that I start a new life once more. All this I do vow as my pledge.

THE HIGH PRIEST REPLIES:

The Oath of Fealty I give you from the Three Estates: Our priesthood, nobility, and people.

THE ROYAL AMBASSADORS FROM OTHER LANDS AND EGYPTIAN NOBLES NOW APPROACH THE THRONES. Each of the nobles gives the prostration, then bends on one knee with the other leg stretched out sideways with the right arm in a clenched fist pointing to the left chest as a salute and head bowed.

THE NOBLES CHANT:

I take the oath and vows to my lord (and lady) as a sacred compact between you, the rulers invested with the crowns of Egypt, and we, the ruled according to the ancient laws of our kingdom.

THE HIGH PRIEST REPLIES AS HE READS THEIR TITLES:

I now invest you with the divine light of the great who came before you, living image of Amon, children of the sun, the chosen of Ptah, the heavenly. Nightengale of Egypt, the Ka and the Ba, the soul and the word, Creator-loving, Family-loving goddess and god, divine light, young Osiris and Isis, life-giving creator of the new and bridge-bearer of the ancient, tradition of traditions, wisdom of the serpent of knowledge and choice, may you reign in serenity, reach for the stars, and may you live forever.

ALL PEOPLE PRESENT REPEAT THIS INCANTATION AFTER THE PRIEST IS DONE.

The whole assemblage with one voice repeats the incantation of the priest once, and then, all together

Speak:

May you live forever. Hail King (insert Egyptian name). Hail Queen (insert Egyptian name).

May your divine light live forever. May you live again and again forever.

THE ROYAL COUPLE (OR INDIVIDUAL) NOW RISES FROM THE THRONES.

All the mantles or royal robes are now removed so that only the costume and head dress remains on the individuals. The costume now consists of a garment with a thin robe over it. The heavier robes are removed by the attendants who assist the priest or the regalia bearers. The royal couple or individual now slowly walks down the aisle as the music wells up. Flower petals are strewn in their path.

ALL SUBJECTS KNEEL AND PROSTRATE THEMSELVES as the royal couple or individual walks by. Then they assume a bowed-head position, clenched right fist to chest with one leg thrust outward to the right side. They salute and remain bowed as the royals pass by moving down the aisle.

The subjects remain kneeling. Each of the royal couple or person is now handed a bouquet of flowers by the high priest who rises from his kneeling position half way down the aisle as he meets the royal couple or person. The royal couple takes the bouquet of flowers (native to Egpyt), and places them on an altar to the side. Then the ROYAL COUPLE OR INDIVIDUAL PROSTRATES THEMSELVES IN FRONT OF THE ALTAR. Incense is burned by the royals and the high priest. There is a sacred altar flame and more incense is thrown on it. The side of the room, halfway down the aisle is decorated as a miniature temple.

THE ROYALS TURN AND WALK DOWN THE AISLE TO A BALCONY. It faces the outside and the people. There, they make their appearance to the masses of people in the street below. As they make their appearance, the crowd sinks to its knees and bow deeply.

THE CROWD CHEERS. HAIL (NAME) HAIL (NAME). Use the word for "hail" in ancient Egyptian, not in English. It's available from a dictionary of heiroglyphics or from the local museum or Egyptology professor.

The high priest and a female relative of the royal couple such as mother, aunt, sister enters the balcony to join the royal couple standing there facing the public. The high priest and female relative is followed by a regalia bearer with a gold cushion. She removes a gold wreath from the pillow and crowns the high priest with the gold wreath. The priest's head is shaven or he wears a "bald" wig. The female relative then takes a sack of precious gems and pours them onto a table on the balcony to show the priest, and then puts them into a gold silk bag. She hands the gems to the high priest as a gift.

The crowd cheers wildly. They approve. The priest nods and bows.

The royal couple retreat from the balcony, enter a bier, and are borne by eight bearers down the aisle for the rest of the way until they disappear from sight out of the room.

Procession down the royal road:

The royal couple enters a golden litter and sits on two gold-colored chairs. They are carried in a procession followed by marching soldiers in front and in back. The soldiers are followed by marching priests who carry thuribles and religious regalia such as emblems.

In the order of procession, the first litter contains the relatives of the royal couple, the second litter, the royal couple, and the third the nobles. Guards follow in the rear of the three litters.

The scenery for a set include a huge golden sun. The sunshine glints off the golden robes. The idea is that, in multimedia simulation, the sun is supposed to glint off of the gold robes to make the royals look as if they were glowing like fire as children of the sun. In computer simulation, the winding procession moves along wide streets followed by many musicians who clash cymbals, bells, and finger zills (finger cymbals.)

These musicians are followed by the drummers, then the lute and harp players, the chorus of singers, the flute players, and the nye players (two-pipes on the flute).

The royals are seated on cushions on the golden chairs in the litter. The get out of the litter and walk up the steps to the dais. The are again seated on the thrones as sacred songs are chanted by an ever-growing chorus of voices welling up as the sun glows.

One chorus is composed of eunuchs and another chorus of young females. The royal fan bears move on each side of the royal couple as the scene fades out....At last we hear the chorus of voices.

SFX: THE MUSIC FADES OUT UNTIL WE HEAR ONLY THE HAND-DRUM, THE FLUTE, AND SOFTENING VOICES, FINGER-CYMBALS, AND HARPS.

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THE JOURNEY BEGINS......

Writing the Historical Genre as Fiction, Drama, or Memoirs

LIFE STORIES AS TIME CAPSULES

HISTORICAL PLAYS, STORIES, MEMOIRS, ESSAYS, AUDIOPLAYS, AND LIFE STORIES

RESOURCES FOR STORYTELLERS AND STORYWRITERS, FICTION, CONTENT, AND INSTRUCTION FOR CREATIVE WRITERS.

Writing content material for storytellers and storywriters. Writing history as memoirs, fiction, drama for time capsules....Also, anthropology through fiction, and fiction through ethnology.

By: A. HART

TIME CAPSULES

The Wise one Who Invented Writing

Plan an ancient Sumerian-themed event or "Opening of the Mouth Ceremony" to commemorate something new that arrived by spoken word. Excite the imagination with pomp or parade with a time-travel script based on your own story excerpt. Re-create ancient scenes.

 By dripping torchlight that flickered against the silence of the dark, Etana, thirteenth shepherd king of Sumer, fashioned the statue himself in the bit-mummu, the special divine craftsman's house.

Before the king, the floor rippled with stripes of shadow. Two priestesses shattered the torchlight within the shrine house into motion by waving fans that appeared to arch and stretch.

Etana leaned forward seeking to span a more distant arc. His eyelids fluttered. He swayed to the deep voices of the priests as they uttered one, long note on the syllable, kur (mountain). Suddenly, he heard a faint hissing that appeared to rise from behind the enormous obsidian eyes of his personal statue-god.

At once Etana recognized the loud voice he heard clearly as if from a bird perched behind his ears. Its cold command left no space to think between the hearing and the act. He had to obey.

"Carve the statue one cubit high," the voice dictated. He followed every measurement with perfection as the figurine seemed to tell him.

"Hear my words," he carved at the base of the statue. The statue's voice seemed to come from behind the eyes. It told him how to create it.

Etana slipped the wood deftly under his obsidian knife, reeling with the voice he heard, and then a chorus of voices, and finally the eternal chanting of the priests in the fragrant blackness.

He stood in the shrine room of the great god-houses of Nippur, the holiest city in Sumer. Etana gazed out at his god's enormous eyes and squinted as if blinded by the sunburst of light. He pushed beads of malachite across the statue's beetling brows which rose in high relief against the torchlight.

The shafts of incense smoke quivered, sweetening the warm air with myrrh. Finally, the young king took a deep breath and ran his fingers across his shaven head. "Let the pit-pi begin. Let the opening of the mouth ritual commence as I take up my sceptre."

The tall, pale-faced man stared ahead. His eyes blazed like a topaz sunburst. Etana fixed his gaze on the face of his personal god which arched and receded by the torchlight. As the full moon rose to its zenith overhead, the procession began with Etana plucking his 12-stringed harp.

The flat, high whistle of a reed flute melted into the nuances of delight as the goat-skinned drums beat out a one, two, one-two-three march.

He began the daily ritual of the temple by washing, dressing, and feeding the statues. As two attendant priests sprinkled pure water, a young and beautiful priestess of Inanna enrobed the figure in golden fringed garments layered in sheepskin ruffles from the shoulder to the feet of the wooden statue.

In front of the god were tables on which Etana placed flowers and then, as a shepherd king, the flesh of sheep, bulls, goats, deer, fish, and poultry.

The first young priestess brought date wine bread and honey cakes topped with roasted figs. The hundred-priest-long line of food undulated on a bier carried above their heads. Then the priestesses and priests abandoned the statue-god to enjoy the meal alone.

Etana retreated through a side door in the bit-mummu and went into the shrine room followed by the priests. Then, after the moon traveled its path across an arc of sky, Etana returned unseen, sniffed with disdain, and ate what the gods had left.

He watched the eyes of the statue as he stuffed himself with food. He was alone, and the torches were giving their last dying sparks when a young priestess entered the shrine room.

She moved swiftly through the side door to the bit-mummu, and seeing Etana alone eating before the god whispered, "I see you're keeping your god in good temper."

"If you wonder whether I'm appeasing the liver of the gods," Etana said hoarsely, "it's only at the expense of my own liver." He swallowed the last handful of sheep's flesh and reclined against the tables.

"I'm Sarai," the priestess smiled. She brought more offerings of butter, fat, honey, and sweetmeats and placed them beside the food still overflowing on the table before the statue-god, Enlil.

An angry voice resounded in Sarai's head, admonishing her. She stopped a minute to listen to her vision which she heard and not yet seen. Then a sunburst of light appeared before her eyes as if emanating from the statue's eyes. She listened and waited, and with her hand extended, reached out to touch the light. The voice was condemnatory. She immediately obeyed its cold command.

"Throw yourself at the feet of the king and beg his forgiveness, for the king is your personal god." She repeated the words to Etana.

"I'm a shepherd, not a god," he answered. Rise woman. Can you not face your god eye to eye as an equal?"

Sarai hurried from the shrine room, leaving Etana behind the table overflowing with food and offerings. A priest returned to see what the god had eaten only to see Etana finishing off the morsels.

"Let the opening of the mouth begin," he announced to the priest. "And find Ninhursag, that wise crone who dwells in Ur--the mother of Tamar, who's son is Abram. Only she can make the olden gods speak again."

"Find her at once," Etana cried. "Find my exceedingly wise commander, princess of all the great gods, exalted speaker, whose utterance is unrivaled. Summon Ninhursag now!" The priest clutched his figurine and obeyed his king with the promptness that he obeyed his personal god. Etana leapt up and hurried from the bit-mummu into the blackness of the warm night.

The line of priests to the god Enlil marched first, then the high priestesses of the goddess Inanna, walked behind. The girls' fringed cloaks shivered in the hot wind that swept up from the river's edge. The sheer, transparent linen of their tunics clung to their skin, bejeweled with beads of malachite.

They oiled their tightly curled dark brown hair until it shined black and drew the coils under gold bands in braided buns. The priestesses painted their pale gold skin with lime to appear even more like alabaster. They brushed yellow ochre on their cheeks, lips, and nails.

The Sumerian women who served their goddess, Inanna, stared ahead with eyes of shimmering silver that glowed transparent in the torchlight, or doe-eyes of honey, pale green, or ebony. They drew black lines of khol across their brows connecting them across their foreheads like bat's wings.

"Let the washing of the mouth ceremony begin," a priest announced as he led the procession. The king left the shrine room and stepped into the courtyard beside the great temple at Nippur.

The king gave a hand signal summoning Ninhursag, a wise old priestess. She proceeded behind him to the river's edge. Behind her four priests carried a bier on which stood the wooden statue of the king's personal god, Enlil. The god with its face of inlaid jewels rocked back and forth as the priests strained to hoist the heavy weight along the path by dripping torchlight.

At last, Ninhursag stood facing the statue eye to eye as an equal. She did not know to kneel or grovel in the face of the god or in the presence of the steward-king who was a shepherd.

Imbedded in ceremonies and incantation, Etana plunged his hand into a gold vessel filled with holy water scooped from a stream of the Eurphrates at Nippur. He washed his god's wooden mouth seven times as the priests faced the statue east, west, north, and then south.

Ninhursag of Ur, called the wise old lady of the mountain by Etana, sprinkled holy water and rubbed frantically at the statue's mouth to make it speak. The priests shook the statue, pounded at its mouth, rubbed its inside with a solution of tamarisks, reeds, sulphur, gums, salts, oil of pomengranate, and date honey mixed with precious stones.

A hissing sound arose, but the god's speech was dim and too distant to be understood. Etana wailed more incantations. The priests sounded the drums and reed flutes. The priestesses danced, flung their fringed cloaks, unwound their sashes of indigo and scarlet, and sank back into nuances of delight, but still the god did not speak loudly enough to be understood by the king.

Etana gave his own incantation, and then summoned Ninhursag, the oracle. He led the god-statue by the hand back into the street as the priest bellowed, "Foot that advances, foot that advances..."

Etana stopped at the golden gate of the great temple and looked to the heavens. The priest, followed by Ninhursag, took the hand of the god and led the statue into its own golden throne in a niche. Two priests set up a golden canopy, and Etana, himself again washed the mouth of the god.

Ninhusag stepped behind the king as the torchlight threw her high cheekbones into bold relief. She narrowed her eyes to slits and spoke in trance. "I will make Enlil speak." Her fingers snapped in rhythm to the drums pounding against the silence of the shrine room. "I will approach my personal god," said Ninhursag. "The god which only I can hear will summon Enlil and An, father of the heavens."

"The gods have abandoned us," a priestess shouted from the crowd.

Etana whirled around, startled. He rested his large hand on Ninhursag's bare shoulder.

"Wise old woman of Kish," Etana commanded. "What tale will you tell us tonight?"

"A tale that will open the mouth of that god you just carved." The crone's eyes rolled up so only the whites showed, red veined and dirty.

She soon fell into trance at the sound of Etana's harp notes and began to speak first in tongues and then in a sing-song rhyme. As the torchlight bathed her face in eerie shadows, her voice rang out as if the leader of a chorus in the oldest and purest Sumerian dialect. It was not overgrown with the many words of Akkadian from the kingdom of Babylon that now rose in the north and began to change the language of Nippur.

"It is like in the olden days with the olden gods, before the Hittites and before the men of Babylon," Etana sighed. "Woman, what tale, I say? You try my patience with your many words."

Her rhyme grew more rhythmic as she sang to Etana's harp in oral poem. "I shall speak of the first king of Sumer, of Rim-Sin and his god, Enki, and of the man who invented writing and of the woman who gave him the writing for a kingdom. He took it to all the world.

"Name this king," Etana called out.

"Enki, and his ili bestowed Rim-Sin, king of Larsa who said the king is my god, sharru-ili." The woman sang in rhyme to the twang of the twelve-stringed harp.

"Show me where he is on the downward curves of the Tree of Life," Etana commanded. Ninhursag saw in the mist a great yellow light that spread out into a gold bush. In it she had a vision of Etana as her personal god. Then she burst into song as her king as a god spoke to her. She heard Etana's voice as if it were a bird perched behind her ear.

Ninhursag raised her bony hands and threw her silver-hair back. She sang in rapid-fire rhyming every other line exactly as her personal god-vision dictated to her, word for word.

THE FIRST KING OF SUMER

The King Who Invented Writing

Rim-Sin, the first king of Sumer, stood on the virgin soil at Kish. For a long while he watched the distant wheat field as farmers with shaven heads and beards threshed the moist stalks with stone sickles.

He heard them singing. And he began to sing with them as he drove his sheep forward into the lush green until they reached a branch of the long river.

Rim-Sin was twenty and thought about how he was to choose a bride before the full moon signaled the harvest. The steward king climbed the tower as the salmon sky faded.

From the highest point he watched a young priestess bathing naked but for a belt of gold coins about her hips and ankles. She waded in the stream until the darkness of night covered the stones where she stood feeling the white water rush over her pale gold skin.

The young king watched the moon move across the sky and the stars slowly circle toward the mountains. In the east, the peaks of the Zagros mountains like two barren horns faded, white-capped and misted in the land of Elam.

Rim-Sin marked a grid with lines, plotted the path of the stars and planets and the times of plantings. He stared into the stars, trying to see a form in them and looked down again at his wet clay tablet with three scratches for every full moon, above circles for every crop planted before the moon would cycle again.

In the blackness below, the faint flicker of torchlight grew larger. He looked down from his tower as the priestess moved slowly up the stairs of the tower.

"Have you chosen your bride, yet, Rim-Sin?" The young king swirled around, surpised and bemused at the fourteen-year-old girl standing at the entrance to the room where he watched the heavens.

Her sheepskin tunic fell in rows of wool fringes below her hips. She wore only a necklace of lapis stones above which she twirled nervously as she spoke.

"Ninti," lady of life, Rim-Sin addressed the priestess. "Would you no longer serve your goddess if you were the one I choose as my bride?"

"Can we not both serve Ninurta, the youngest god in the heavens, as well as my goddess, Mammu?" Ninti dipped her finger in the wet clay and drew the sign of the 'cutter,' the tool used to cut the umbilical cord.

Rim-Sin stared for a moment at the fine-lined drawing of a cutting tool she had scratched in the clay. He looked out at the stars and then back at the four straight lines that made a picture of the cutter.

"Can we not both hear the words of Mammu and Ninurta?" She repeated. Blood fired from her voice. Rim-Sin cringed at what he saw.

Rim-Sin had a vision and heard the voice of his god, Ninurta commanding him to write down all the words for his stars and planets he had watched since he was a child.

He picked up a sliver of bone and made more scratchings in the wet clay. At first he drew two lines at angles and then one straight line down the middle.

"This is woman," he laughed. Ninti slowly walked over and looked in the wet clay. "Woman?" She saw what he had drawn and blushed to her toes.

"You will be my bride," Rim-Sin shouted. He raised his hands and closed his eyes. As she moved toward him, he rushed past her down the stairs and ran through the wheat fields to the god house.

The same priestess broke Ninhursag's trance as she shouted once more, "The gods have abandoned us."

"No!" the crone snapped, hushing her with a circular motion of her extended arm. "We have abandoned them."

Etana reflected for a moment. "The territory of our gods has changed when the king of Babylon swept away our borders."

"That's why the gods no longer speak," Ninhursag wailed hoarsely.

"They do speak," Etana insisted. "We no longer hear them. We won't hear them again until I restore Nippur as the great center of medicine and healing and the gods of Babylon and Sumer are one."

"When will that be?" Ninhursag turned to the crowd.

Etana rose. "When a woman sits eye-to-eye with you again on the throne as your personal goddess. Ninhursag must reign once more as the lady of the mountain people of Kur."

"Inanna! Queen of heaven, speak now!" Ninhursag sighed.

Etana kissed the hem of the crone's cloak. "Continue your song, wise woman of the mountain, whose grandfather is half Sumerian and therefore, people of the book, whose father is an Hittite and whose mother is an Amorite, and whose daughters play mother goddess to the Syrians. I must know how writing sprang from the olden gods of Nippur."

Ninhursag listened to the loud voice rushing in the spring's torrent and repeated the epic rhyme in perfect hexameter until dawn. The voice thundered only to her.

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Also see: The Ancient Themed-Events Scripts and Stories Sites:

Create:

Scripts and/or stories or plays for Time-Travel Events, Ceremonies, Rituals, Storytelling, Education, or Pageants, Life-transitions, Celebrations, Holidays, Memoirs, Weddings, Anniversaries, Birthdays, Bar-and-Bat Mitzvah, Confirmations/Communions, Promotions, Graduations, Life-Passage Ceremonies/Rituals, or to mark important occasions, a variety of ethnicities, religions, historical times, holidays, celebrations, and customs to commemorate stages of life, welcoming into the family, and beginnings or transitions.

Writing Stories and Scripts for Ancient Themes and Ancient Themed Events To Mark Holidays, Transitions, Weddings, Celebrations, and Anniversaries.

Home page:

The introverted feeling memoirs writing site is at:

My book on educational applications of type for writers of fiction and memoirs: writing for the new paradigm media is at:

or another version at:

A. HART'S TRAVEL WRITING COOKBOOK SECTION:

COOKING THE INFP WAY (AND WRITING ABOUT COOKING).

QUICK AVOCADO FROZEN DESSERT

2 ripe and peeled avocados, mashed

1 pint of nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt

1/2 cup shelled green pistachio nuts

1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds

1/4 cup shelled black walnuts

1/4 pignola nuts (pine nuts) fried in olive oil to a light brown hue

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/4 cup orange blossom honey

Fold yogurt into mashed avocados and puree in blender with 1/2 cup of skim milk or soy milk.

Pour into storing and freezing bowl

Add all the nuts and seeds. Re-freeze the yogurt mixture until firm. Drizzle honey on the top and add a festive green cookie or candy to decorate.

So, if anyone wishes to publish this cookbook, please get in touch by email. Perhaps it might work well packaged with your related product. The material is available for publication. If you are selling something that might be enclosed with a booklet such as this on cooking with liquors and liqueurs, wines, champagnes, beers, and or any particular food product, perhaps your customers might find my book useful in the package or as a corporate gift. And now, here's my cook booklet.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN STYLE BEER MEAT STEW

It's a meat or Nile Perch casserole, whose flavor is vastly improved by the use of beer.

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 pounds of boned fish chunks, boneless beef or veal, or lamb chunks, or goat meat, or half and half of a variety of meats or fish, or for vegetarians (modern-style, substitute wheat meat (Seitan) or tofu (soy bean curd), cut in 1 inch cubes 3 cups beer or ale 3 cups beef bouillon 1 teas. salt or salt substitute to taste, if desired, or use a quarter cup of lemon juice for salt-free diets.

12 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

6 medium-sized potatoes, peeled & cut into i inch cubes

6 teaspoons Extra Virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons chopped scallion tops or chives

Place the oil, up to 4 tablespoons, or less to taste, in Dutch oven or large deep skillet-pot. Add meat, fish, or meat substitutes, and onions. Cook, stirring, until onions are transparent. Add beer bouillon, salt, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Add more beer to make sufficient liquid to cover meat. Simmer covered over low heat for 20 minutes. Add potatoes.

Continue simmering, covered, until meat is tender and potatoes have fallen apart and thickened the beer and bouillon broth, about 2 hours. (Optional)Cut the 6 teaspoons of oil to 6 dollups. Ladle the oil in each serving of the stew and sprinkle with chopped green scallions. Use modern beer, or *ancient-Egyptian style beer which tastes sweet, and somewhat like raspberry-flavored beer.

BLACK SEA BEER & SHRIMP DINNER CHOWDER POT

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon. extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp. pepper

2 tbs. chopped Italian-style parsley

Simmer shrimp (haddock may be used in place of shellfish), with bay leaf and clove in beer for 10 minutes. Remove shrimp or fish and set it aside. Strain broth into a soup kettle. Cook potatoes and celery in 3 tbs. olive oil for 5 minutes. Add water and cook 5 minutes longer. Combine shrimp (or fish), potatoes and celery with beer-seafood broth and simmer 5 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Add milk and bring to boil. Remove from heat, add margarine, salt and pepper, stir and serve garnished with parsley. Serves 4.

BEER & CRABMEAT A LA KING

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

bottle dark beer, heated to boiling

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 tbs. flour

salt to taste or substitute herbs

2 cups milk

1 cup canned crabmeat, boned & flaked (or flaked chicken, may be used)

3 hardcooked eggs, chopped with or without yolks.

1/2 cup cooked mushrooms

1 pimiento, chopped

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Cover green pepper with beer and cook until tender. Add beer broth to extra virgin olive oil. Stir in flour, salt and mix until smooth. Slowly add milk, stirring until sauce thickens. A rich sauce can be made by using evaporated milk and regular milk of 1 cup of each. Add'pepper and remaining ingredients. Serve hot for 6 to 8.

NEW WORLD COLD AVOCADO SOUP WITH VERMOUTH AND SHERRY

1 cup dry, light sherry

1/2 cup vermouth, dry

2 cans madrilene

1 avocado

1 cup non fat sour cream or nonfat plain yoghurt

1 teasp. grated onion

chopped dill

dash of salt or salt-free herbs, and pepper or turmeric to taste.

Put madrilene into a bowl. Put avocado through a sieve into madrilene, blend in sour cream, add sherry, add vermouth, add salt and pepper and onion. Blend well and chill about 4 hours.' Pour over sliced natural, meunster or Monterrey jack cheese cut into tiny cubes or strips at bottom of soup bowl. Garnish with dill and savory. Serves 4.

SCALLOPS IN MULLED WINE

1 lb. scallops

3 oz. red wine

4 oz. water

1 cinnamon stick, broken

Dash Angostura bitters

2 whole cloves

1 tsp. allspice

juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup olive or canola oil

bread crumbs, seasoned.

Lightly brown scallops dipped in bread crumbs in the safflower oil in a skillet. When scallops are tender, place on paper towel to drain oil. Combine red wine mixture to boiling point. Strain in large service dish, add lightly browned tender scallops and serve with a ring of sliced lemon on top.

CHICKEN IN MULLED CIDER WITH WHITE WINE AND GRAPES

1 baked chicken with skin and bones removed,(or soy chicken substitute) cut in chunks or boneless breasts of chicken, skin removed, baked, roasted or boiled in water until tender.

2 quarts hard or non-alcoholic cider

1 cup white wine

3 oz. applejack

Dash Angostura bitters

1/2 teaspoon allspice cinnamon stick 6 whole cloves 2 oz. gold label rum 2 cups seedless grapes white sauce

Heat all ingredients in a pot until the mixture reaches the boiling point. Strain into a warmed earthenware or silver serving platter.

Prepare the white sauce or use canned. White sauce is prepared by adding a tablespoon of flour and a teaspoon of cornstarch to chicken stock or drippings from the roasting pan, salt, pepper, until thickened, or thicken canned cream of chicken soup with flour, cream, and cornstarch, while cool so no lumps form. It is recommended to use a can of white sauce to cut preparation time and prevent lumpy white sauce from appearing.

Add this white sauce to the mulled cider and white wine and add the cooked chicken, boned and skinned. Place the grapes on top, serve buffet-style.

(A glass of Scandinavian Glogg. Use leftover servings as punch.)

Dash Angosture bitters

1/2 cup sugar

1 pt. red wine

1 pt. sherry

1/2 pt. brandy

large raisins

unsalted almonds

Heat bitters, sugar, wines, and brandy in large casserole. Ladle mixture in warmed mugs or glasses in which raisins and almonds have been placed. Makes about 11 quarts or 10 servings. Save 4 servings to add to recipe below:

DINNER:

6 oz. ham or fowl, cut into strips 1/4 inch thick

6 oz. raw breast of chicken, cut into strips 1/4 inch thick

1/4 cup Cognac

1 onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs (2 slices firm white bread)

cup dry white wine

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/4 pound lean fresh pork, goat, or lamb

1/4 pound beef, chicken, pork or calf liver

pound raw chicken meat (light or

dark or mixed)

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 egg or two egg whites, well beaten

salt to taste, if desired, and/or teaspoon each of nutmeg, thyme, allspice, tarrogon teaspoon freshly ground black pepper I cup of Glogg, or more to suit taste Thin slices of blanched salt pork (about 6 oz.)

1 bay leaf

Put ham or fowl, chicken breast strips and Glogg and Cognac in a small bowl to marinate. Cook onion in oil until very soft but not brown. Combine bread crumbs and wine and mix to a paste. Add more Glogg. Put garlic, pork or fowl liver, chicken meat, olive oil, onion and crumbs through meat grinder twice, using finest blade.

Stir in egg or egg whites and seasonings and beat with a wooden spoon until all are well blended in. Fry a small patty of the mixture, taste it and adjust seasonings if necessary. Line a 112-quart loaf pan or terrine with thin slices (1/8 inch thick) of fresh salt pork, or for your health--tofu or wheat meat (Seitan), (simmer salt pork or meat substitute in water to cover for 10 minutes, drain, rinse and dry).

Pack about 1/3 of the forcemeat in the bottom of the dish on fat layer and press down evenly. Lay half of the ham and chicken breast strips on top lengthwise in alternate strips. Cover with another 1/3 of forcemeat, the strips and the last of the forcemeat. Press it down evenly all around, then cover with pork slices and a bay leaf.

Cover tightly with foil and set in a roasting pan containing hot water to the 1/2 depth of the meat. Bake at 350 degrees F. for about 2 hours, or until the paste has shrunk slightly from sides of the dish. The bubbling juices around it should look clear and yellow, no longer pink and cloudy. Remove dish from roasting pan and pour out excess water. Set dish back in pan and put a smaller loaf pan on top of the foil to fit snugly inside the top of dish.

Fill it with a heavy can or two to compress the paste and give it a firm texture when cooled. Cool totally, then refrigerate it, still weighted down. Flavor imp-roves if it is allowed to ripen in refrigerator 2 or 3 days. Unmold onto a board or platter. Provide a knife so guests may cut Danish paste into slices about 1/3 inch thick. Serve with crisp thin toast soaked in hot mulled wine or with crisp bread of any type. Provide cocktail plates and forks. This makes 24 servings. It will keep for 10 days in the refrigerator. Flavor and texture will lessen if frozen.

SPARE RIBS WITH SCOTCH AND VERMOUTH

2 oz. Scotch

1 oz. sweet vermouth or dry vermouth, as preferred

cup lemon juice

4 lbs. lean spare ribs in one piece

4 small tart apples, peeled, cored, chopped, preferably greenings

1 cup prunes, plumped, pitted, and chopped

1 teaspoon salt or salt substitute herbs

1/4 teaspoon pepper dash angostura bitters

Have the butcher crack the spare rib bones in half lengthwise. Trim free of excess fat. Combine chopped apples and prunes. Spread spare ribs with a layer of fruit. In a bowl pour scotch and vermouth and lemon juice with bitters together and stir till blended. Fold spare ribs in half as you brush on or pour on the liquor, using 1/4 of the liquid.

Skewer or toothpick the edges together. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour the remaining liquor over the top. Place in shallow baking pan. Roast in 350 degrees. F. oven for l 1/2 hours. Serve with red cabbage boiled in water, drained and marinated in hot vermouth and scotch, pickled beets soaked overnight in scotch, and gravy made from the drippings. When drippings cool, skim off any fat and reheat, adding more vermouth, pour hot over top of beef and serve.

NOT ANCIENT, BUT HISTORICAL: NEW WORLD: FRANKFURTERS IN TEQUILA AND WHITE WINE SAUCE

1 lb. small cocktail frankfurters

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup dry white wine

l 1/2 oz. tequila

1 cup heavy cream

Toasted bread

1/3 cup chopped parsley 6 slices bacon, fried

Stick a fork into franks to prevent bursting during cooking. Heat margarine in skillet and brown franks in it. Sprinkle with flour. Stir in tequila and white wine and heat franks thoroughly. Stir in cream. Heat but do not boil. Spoon over toasted bread. Sprinkle with parsley, and garnish with bacon slices.

BACON WITH WHISKEY-PARSLEY SAUCE AND RUM

Made with flavorful bacon, such as canned bacon, smoked, or pre-cooked bacon, this dish turns out to be aromatic. I also highly recommend for their delicious flavor, the products of Mahogany Smoked Meats. They are located at 2345 N. Sierra Hwy, Bishop, CA 93514 (619) 873-5311.

1 1/2 pounds thinly sliced lean bacon or bacon substitute soy or wheat product such as "mock bacon". If you don't eat pork products, use bacon substitutes such as soy, beef bacon, or wheat-meat products. Vegetarians can find soy or other vegetable-based products that look and taste somewhat like bacon in organic, health, and natural food stores.

SAUCE:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or Canola oil

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup cream or evaporated milk

1 teaspoon salt or salt substituate herbs

1 teaspoon sugar

1/3 cup minced parsley

2 tblsps. extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup whiskey

1/4 cup rum

Fry bacon until crisp. Drain. Marinate in mixture of whiskey and rum. To make sauce, use cold pressed extra virgin olive oil as was used in ancient times instead of butter as was used in Victorian times. Drain bacon from mixture of whiskey and rum and add liquor to melted butter. Stir in flour, add more flour to keep thickening sauce. Gradually stir in milk or cream. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly.

When smooth and thick, stir in salt and sugar. Stir in parsley just before serving. Pour sauce into gravy boat and top with 2 tablespoons of olive oil which has been diluted by adding a teaspoon of rum, blended and re-chilled. Serve sauce hot over bacon. Note: If your low-cholesterol diet cuts out bacon, serve over any hot cooked poultry, meat, vegetable burger, noodles, or main dish.

 COLD ROAST VEAL WITH BRANDY,, RUM AND VERMOUTH SAUCE

Cold Roast veal, turkey, or chicken, sliced or a combination of all 3 leftover meats.

 SAUCE:

3 tablespoons margarine

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup rum

1/2 cup vermouth

1 cup apple brandy

1/2 oz. lemon juice

SOME CHICKEN STOCK, veal stock or beef bouillon cubes dissolved in hot water to make 2/3 cup of liquid salt, pepper, 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg 3 tablespoons margarine 3 tablespoons whipped cream or nondairy whipped cream substitute.

Melt 3 tablespoons margarine in heavy saucepan and stir lemon juice in flour. Gradually stir in chicken or veal stock and all liquor, together. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the nutmeg. Simmer longer if necessary. Taste for seasonings. Add salt and pepper, if necessary. Fold in whipped cream. Makes about 3 cups of sauce.

BAKED AVOCADO AND SALMON WITH GIN

meat, meat substitute, or poultry can be used.)

4 tablespoons low-fat mayonnaise or mayonnaise substitute

Shake gin, lemon juice and egg white. Set aside. Cut avocados in half lengthwise. Remove pits, rub inside surfaces with lemon juice and set aside. Blend a small amount of olive oil into gin mixture with flour and gradually add milk, stirring continually over low heat until sauce is smooth and thickened.

Add seasonings, salmon, egg, and stir until well blended. Heap salmon mixture in center of avocado halves and bake in 375 deg. F. oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven. Top each with mayonnaise blended with 1/2 oz. of gin.

Bake 5 minutes longer. Serves 4. Vodka, scotch, white wine, rose wine, vermouth, sherry, rum, or bourbon may be substituted for varying flavorings for each avocado prepared. Also leftover martinis may be taken from the cocktail shaker and blended with the mayonnaise and baked in with the salmon. Never waste that great liquor! It imparts to meals a delicious aroma that whets the appetite.

WHISKEY CUSTARD OVER MEATLOAF

1/2 cup blended whiskey or bourbon

4 eggs

salt, pepper to taste

4 cups milk

2 teaspoons gin

2 teaspoons almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup grated celery

1/2 cup wheat or soy germ

salt or herbal salt substitute and turmeric or pepper to taste

1 can soy, wheat, barley, or beef gravy, or 1 pint homemade gravy

good melting cheese -- mozzarella, Romano, Parmesan, jack cheese, Swiss, Muenster, or American cheese, sliced--about

3 or 4 slices or use fresh, non-processed cheese of your choice.

Blend meat, 1/2 cup water, wheat germ, salt and pepper, celery, gravy, together and pack into a loaf pan deep enough to be less than 1/2 full. Put in 350 degrees F. oven for 15 to 20 minutes to bake.

While meat is getting lightly brown and half cooked, prepare custard separately. Then remove meat. It's done in 45 minutes.

Beat eggs enough to mix yolks and whites well. Stir in milk, seasonings, gin and whiskey. Pour into l 1/2 quart baking dish. Set in pan containing 1/2 inch of water. Cook at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes at least, until a silver knife stuck into the side (not center) is clean.

Cool. Chill. Remove meatloaf from oven when done. Carefully turn the whiskey custard on top of the meatloaf in the pan. Melt the sliced jack, mozzarella or Muenster cheese slices and pour melted cheese blended with 2 teaspoons of bourbon over top. Serves 6.

Note:

To bake a delicious ancient Egyptian-style or modern Caucasus Mountains style beer bread, use any dark bread recipe and add dark beer for any amount of liquid called for in the recipe.. Brush the top crust with beer slightly beaten into egg whites for a shine and a fragrance. Serve hot.

This is an excellent way of serving beer that has gone flat overnight in the refrigerator when the cap was left off.

In all your homemade bread and coffee cake recipes, if you substitute dark beer for water, you can make traditional Icelandic beer bread, yeast coffee cake, or even cookies and Scandinavian logs (cookies). (For grown-ups only.)

LIQUOR MAKES EXQUISITE DESSERTS

MOCHA APRICOT COGNAC PUDDING

(a subtle blend of coffee-cacao-apricot-cognac flavor)

Prepare a box of vanilla or chocolate pudding according to directions on package. However, instead of adding 3 cups of milk, add only two cups of milk.

Instead of the 3rd cup of milk add 1/3 cup strong coffee or expresso coffee and 1/3 cup coffee liqueur and 1/3 cup of cognac.

Prepare according to directions, heating, stirring constantly until pudding thickens. Pour into pudding cups, baked tart shells, a pie or molds. When chilled top with this exquisite sauce:

Mix 1 oz. apricot brandy and 1 oz. triple sec. (orange) with:

1 tbl. brandy

2 tbl. strong cold coffee

l 1/2 tbl. gold label rum

6 tbl. cognac

2 tbl. creme de cacao

1 tbl. kirsch

l 1/2 tbl. Irish whiskey 2 cups whipped cream or nondairy whipped cream substitute. cup honey

Blend all the liquor with the honey and add 3 tablespoons of flour or cornstarch. Thicken, stirring constantly over low heat, adding more honey and/or sugar, until sweet to taste. When it thickens to a sauce texture, let cool and harden, fold in the whipped cream and top pudding with sauce. Serve beside a bowl of chilled canned apricot halves.

CAFE CAROB

1 quart best-quality (made with honey) ice cream, coffee flavor

1 teaspoon instant powdered coffee

6 tablespoons dark Jamaica rum

2 tablespoons Kahlua

1/2 cup whipping cream or whipped nonfat topping such as nonfat tofu whipped topping.

Buy the very best hard coffee ice cream, nonfat yogurt, or tofu-based frozen coffee or mocha-flavored dessert. Dissolve the instant coffee in the rum and Kahlua. Blend rum into ice cream with fork. Return to freezer and re-freeze.

It is served a little soft. Just before serving, whip cream until thick and nearly stiff. Ripple quickly into ice cream. Spoon into small coffee cups. Serve with a spoon. Makes 6 servings. You can top with a dash of nutmeg, cinnamon, or grated chocolate if desired.

RUM AND WHISKEY IN LEMON SHELLS

1 cup sugar, orange honey, amazaki, (found in many natural, organic, or health food stores, a Japanese-style sweetener made from brown rice koji) or brown rice syrup sweetener

2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin or vegetarian agar-agar

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup white rum

1 tablespoon whiskey, scotch or bourbon

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

2/3 cup fresh lemon juice

dash salt or salt substitute if desired

6 to 8 large lemons or oranges for shells

2 unbeaten egg whites

Turn refrigerator to coldest position. Mix sugar, gelatin and milk. Stir over very low heat until gelatin is melted and milk is scalding. Do not boil. Add rum, scotch or whiskey and set aside to cool, or it will curdle when you add lemon. Slowly stir in ,lemon peel, juice and salt. Pour into 2 small or 1 large tray and freeze until snowy.

Cut tops off large perfect lemons and oranges. You can use half and half, lemons, oranges. Each gives a different aroma perfume to the sherbert. Remove pulp. Cut a thin slice from bottom of lemon so it will stand upright. Put mushy glace (sherbert) in bowl with unbeaten egg whites. Beat until fluffy. Heap into orange or lemon shells. Freeze overnight, with control at normal. Re-move from freezer 15 minutes before eating.

CIRCASSIAN POACHED FRUITS WITH VODKA, BRANDY IN VANILLA CREAM SAUCE

Fruits poached in a vanilla sauce are served with a Balkan-Black Sea-Caucasus-style cream sauce of brandy and vodka.

Combine 2 cups water, 1/4 cup sugar, a 1-inch piece of vanilla bean, split and scraped, 1 tsp. vanilla extract. Simmer 5 minutes. Add 10 peeled fresh fruit or peach halves, whole nectarines, pears, apricots or a combination of several fruits. Remove fruits to a glass bowl. Add 1 tablespoon each of brandy and Grand Marnier or kirsch. Simmer syrup another 2 minutes to thicken slightly. Pour over fruits. An hour before serving, add a dozen whole strawberries or a cup fresh blueberries. Top with 2 tablespoons of vodka. Serve with Brandy Sauce.

Brandy Sauce: Soften a quart of good vanilla ice cream and quickly beat in 3 tablespoons apricot or other brandy. Fold in I cup heavy cream, whipped until thick. Remove to freezer until firm. Serve in separate bowl with poached fruits.

PLUMS IN SHERRY & VERMOUTH

1 can purple plums (1 lb., 13 oz.)

1/4 cup sugar, dates, raisins, orange honey, or brown rice syrup or fruit juice concentrate to sweeten (purpose is to sweeten. Use the one that is healthiest for you and has the taste you want.)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 2-inch spiral lemon peel

2 tablespoons sherry

1 tablespoon vermouth

1 tablespoon gin

2 tablespoons lime juice

1/3 cup finely chopped almonds 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil or Canola oil.

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Vanilla nonfat frozen yogurt, ice milk, vanilla-flavored fozen tofu-based dessert, or good old fashioned vanilla-bean studded ice cream.

Gently heat plums with sugar, cinnamon, and lemon peel in moderate oven or over low heat. Sprinkle with the sherry, vermouth, and gin. In a heavy skillet mix the almonds, olive oil, and brown sugar. Stir over medium heat 5 minutes, until mixture smells "sweet" and looks bubbly-brown.

Turn onto a plate and cool. Top each serving of hot plums with a scoop of ice cream. Crumble almond crunch and sprinkle on top. Makes 4 servings.

BLAZING HOT PEARS WITH VERY COLD WINE CUSTARD

3 egg yolks

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1/3 cup sherry

1/4 cup dark red sweet wine

8 large,pear halves, canned

1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, if desired.

2 tablespoons sugar, fruit juice concentrate, or brown rice syrup

8 macaroons

1/4 cup blanched almond halves

dash nutmeg

(optional)

3 tablespoons cherry brandy

or use 3 tbl. sherry and 1 tsp. honey, rice syrup, apple or pear juice concentrate, or sugar

First create the sherry sauce. In the top of your double boiler, away from heat, beat egg yolks and sugar with a beater till light and fluffy. Gradually beat in sherry.

Put just enough hot water in the bottom of the double boiler so that the top pan does not touch it. Put the boiler together and place over low heat. Stir sauce with a whisk over hot, not boiling water until smooth and thick, about 7 minutes. Refrigerate, covered, until ice cold.

Stir till smooth. Place pears in a shallow baking dish with 3 tablespoons fruit syrup mixed with 3 tablespoons sherry or cherry heering or cherry brandy. Coat with a tiny amount of warm olive oil, sprinkle with sugar, if fresh pears are used.

Keep sugar to taste, if needed. Crumble macaroons into centers. Toss almonds in a little oil or buttery substitute not full of transfatty acids, and sprinkle almonds on top of your custard. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Baste occasionally. Serve hot with ice cold sherry sauce. Grate fresh nutmeg over top. Serves to 6.

DAIRY MEAL & FRUIT WITH RUM

STUFFED CHEESE BALLS IN MELON WITH RUM & COCONUT

2 medium melons such as honey-dew, Persian melon, or cantaloupes

1 pint low-fat cottage cheese

2 cups fresh pineapple, in bite-size pieces (or canned, drained)

1 cup seedless green grapes

The grated rind and juice of an orange

1/4 cup honey

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, 1 cup flaked coconut, 1/2 cup dark Jamaica rum 1 cup fresh berries,(strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, or any berries in season.) Sour cream, yogurt (plain) or sherbert.

Form cottage cheese balls with melon scoop. Halve cantaloupes. Remove seeds. Cut one row of melon balls around edge of cavity. Mix with pineapple, grapes. Grate orange rind over fruits. Add orange juice to honey, lemon juice, coconut, and rum. Mix with fruits. Hold off on berries.

Set cantaloupe halves on plates. Arrange cottage cheese balls around melons on top. Add berries on top of fruits. Shells should be filled. Top with yogurt or sour cream blended with rum and honey in equal parts, about 2 tablespoons each. For dessert, add sherbert.

For lunch this delight, preceded by a cold avocado soup or served with melba toast is great. Serves 4.

CHAMPAGNE SOUR CREAM SAUCE

(Delicious served with the baked avocado and salmon recipe on page 31 of this book, or over lean veal and eggplant or on veal parmigiana.)

2cups champagne

1 pint sour cream

1 ripe mashed avocado, blended well with no lumps

teaspoon onion powder

teaspoon garlic powder

cup lemon juice or lime juice

1 small package of soft cream cheese

1 pimiento chopped

Salt & pepper to taste

Blend the sour cream, mashed avocado and soft cream cheese into the onion and garlic powder. Add pimiento, lemon juice. Blend together. Gradually beat in the champagne, using enough to achieve a thick cream sauce consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. Blend in enough champagne so that the sauce is thick and creamy and stands in peaks when beaten. Serve over any meal to highlight it and bring out the utmost flavor.

Note: By leaving out the avocado, salt and pepper and pimiento, and by adding 1/4 to 1/3 cup honey, champagne sour cream sauce may be used to spread on cake or heap on fresh fruit as a delightful champagne cream sauce. If you have remaining champagne left over, use in place of water in baking a cake or blend in with cooked food.

BEER PANCAKE BATTER

(Excellent for coating fried chicken, fish, cutlets, vegetables and chops or fried fruit.)

1 cup dark, whole-grained flour

1 cup lukewarm beer

2 egg whites

Spices of your choice or lemon juice

Spices can be: pepper, thyme, rosemary, basil, oregano, cumin, curry powder, saffron, parsley flakes, onion powder, garlic powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger (with ginger beer), dill, etc. depending on what use you have for batter-fried chicken, pancakes, fried eggplant, zucchini, fish, chops, etc.

Sift flour, beat lukewarm beer gradually into the sifted flour and (optional) spice. Whisk until frothy. Leave until required for use. The success of a good batter is in mixing cold air into a smoothly-blended batter. The mixture must be well beaten.

CHAMPAGNE BATTER

Use same recipe above, minus beer, substitute dry, white champagne or sparkling dry white wine in same proportion. Use batter to fry into pancakes and serve with strawberries and champagne topping, or dip fruit such as pineapple, apples (in rings), bananas, pomegranates, etc. and fry batter-dipped fruit in deep fry pan in light safflower oil.

Use spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and honey to sweeten batter and serve with berries or other fruit and whipped "creme" made from evaporated skim milk.

Also use champagne batter to coat fried foods in deep fry cooker. Use beer batter to try poultry and fish, champagne batter to fry fruits, or use as a pancake in making pan shortcake. Decorate pan-baked or fried shortcakes with berries and non-fat whipped creme-style toppings.

COOKING MEDITERRANEAN AND TROPICAL WITH LIQUEURS, BEERS, WINES, AND CHAMPAGNES.

Cooking with liqueur, beer, wines, and liquors is affordable, adaptable, practical and dependable in meal preparation. Creative cookery needs a vehicle, and you will find none and beer for stews. Wine roasts. Gin and rum accent foods. Gravy made from beer is nutritious.

Some, but not all of the alcohol content burns up in cooking process. Scientists used to think all the alcohol burned up in cooking, but recently, studies revealed that much of the alcohol still remains in food after cooking. Captured is the flavor and aroma in the pot to savor. Shrimp in beer with the shell left remaining broth is used in all stocks and stews.

Not a drop of expensive liqueur goes to waste in preparing desserts, and for cooking food with wines, champagnes, ales, liqueurs, and beers, the aroma and taste improves the flavor, which remains an individual taste. Could we call it the broth whose time has come? The more familiar types of beer for cooking hearty meals are lager, clear bodied, about 3% to 5% alcohol. Bock, used with meat is heavier. The somewhat sweet flavor when added to barbecues and stews, soybean dishes and breads, adds depth or dimension.

Ales are heavier than lager beers and have a slightly higher alcoholic content. They are less sweet and darker. Porter is sweeter ale, used for cooking vegetable dishes and sweet and sour fish.

Stout is stewed in cheese and poultry dishes. Beer is used as a stock for gravy. It is nutritious and zesty. Use your darker beers for beef and light beer for shellfish and dairy.

Beer is brewed and fermented from malt grains. It has a very low alcoholic content and is the most highly nutritious of the liquors.

Beer is the least expensive liquor to be used for cooking. Lager clears and light-bodied with about 3.5 percent alcohol is great for soups in which bones, meat, vegetables are simmered. Bock, heavier and darker, with a sweet flavor is good to add to bread dough for added nutrition and aroma Substitute the beer for water or milk. Ales are heavier than lager beers, have a slightly higher alcohol content, and are darker and bitterer. So don't add ales to delicate soups, like creme of beer-and-lemon chicken soup, or celery stocks.

Use in heavy meat and fish stews where lots of spices and margarine are added with other flavors coming from the vegetables, bones, hearty meats, and other stockpot additions. Porter is a sweeter ale best in which to boil shrimp, crab, other shellfish, scallops, fish, and for making old fashioned chowders.

Stout is very dark, has a stronger hop taste and a higher alcohol content. Lace, baste, and simmer stout with cold roasts, meats and poultry or vegetable protein meat substitutes basking in a cold juice made from marinating and stewing in Stout.

Proof is a measurement of alcoholic strength. Each degree of proof equals one half of one percent of alcohol -a 100 proof whiskey contains 50% alcohol. The 86 proof whiskey you buy contains 43% alcohol. Most straight whiskeys are 100 proof. Blended whiskeys are 86 proof. Canadian whiskey may be 90 proof. London gin is a higher proof. Brandy may be at least 80 proof. Liqueurs, which you'll use in concocting desserts, are a lower proof, but high in sugar/ calories.

The alcohol may evaporate in cooking, but it won't when you add it to uncooked or chilled foods. The sugar will remain, cooked or uncooked.

Let's take a look at cooking with the hard liquors. 

The hard liquors in cooking:

Liquor has its own special language.

 Whiskey is the leading alcoholic beverage in this country. For cooking, it's practically unknown as an ingredient. The most usual varieties are bourbon, Scotch, rye, blended, Canadian, and Irish whiskeys. A straight whiskey is distilled, then aged without blending. A blended straight whiskey contains a blend of several straight whiskeys, as "blended bourbon." Whiskey can be incorporated in pork dishes such as bacon with whiskey-parsley sauce, baked beef and vegetables with a whiskey sauce.

Bourbon is made from corn predominating with other grains. So if you're among those allergic to corn products, don't use bourbon. A sour mash bourbon is given a longer time to ferment, resulting in a smoother, lighter, more expensive bourbon whiskey. It's used in such dishes as sour mash bourbon and whiskey custard over meatloaf and other originals. 

Scotch Whisky (spelled without. the "ell), is made predominantly from barley. It's good to know the grain since many people have allergies to corn, wheat, etc. and can choose the liquor distilled from a grain they can "take." It's distinctive "smokey" flavor comes from the peat fires to which the green barley malt has been exposed. Add that smokey flavor to the smoked meat dishes, bacon bits, etc., and you have yourself a hickory-flavored meal. 

Canadian Whiskey is a blended whiskey made from rye, corn, and barley and blended with neutral spirits. It's light in flavor, color, has more rye and barley than the corn-grain blended whiskeys. Try baking your own rye bread with added Canadian whiskey. 

Irish ske, is made from barley. It's not smokey. The heavy flavor is good in stews and braised meats or heavy roasts. 

Gin, like whiskey, is distilled from a mash of grain. It's flavored with juniper berries and other flavorings. Gin is clear, colorless. Try frankfurters in gin or in gin and tequila, distilled from the cactus plant. Yellow gin is blander, more expensive. Holland gin has a strong taste and is used in blending. Forget it for cooking. Sloe gin is made from sloe plums. How about sloe plum gin over blazing hot plums and cheese tidbits?

Vodka is the national drink of Russia and Poland. It's distilled from wheat. Vodka is similar to gin, less aromatic. Bake it in your bread or combine with meatloaf for a new slant on uncooked Tatar steak. (Chopped raw meat, spices and onions blended into a raw meatloaf with Vodka, as eaten by the hordes of Tatars in Asiatic Russia.)

Be careful here. Raw meat can contain live pinworms. If you cook the loaf, the alcohol evaporates, and the Vodka doesn't kick you back. Never eat raw pork!

Rum is made from sugar cane or molasses. It comes from the Caribbean area. White label, light rum is clean and delicate in flavor. Try over coffee-mocha-chocolate ice cream and cake in a cafe Carob rum sauce. Gold label rum comes from Cuba.

It's lighter in body, but darker in color and with more flavor and aroma than the white label rums. The flavor is full, so use in all egg desserts over frozen desserts, eggnog, pies, cakes, custards, and fruit compotes. Heavy rum comes from Jamaica. It's darker and heavier than the other rums.

Tequila comes from the cactus.

In Mexico it's combined with sausages, artichokes, sliced olives, sour cream, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, grated cheese and mashed beans and ground beef and eaten in a flat bread burrito or taco (a Mexican wrap-around thin-flat E-read, like a flexible raw pizza circle, lightly browned, but bendable, and wrappable). Brandy is a distilled wine, high in alcoholic content. Brandy is usually made from grapes and other fruit.

The most common are cognac, apple brandy, cherry, plum, and apricot. They're very sweet. Use brandy in desserts or over cold roast ham or veal as a basting sauce. Apple brandy over ham is delicious. Apricot brandy over veal is a Greek specialty.

Plum brandy over barbecued ribs with oriental vegetables is out of this world. If you want the "feel" of aromatic liquor and don't want to spend the money for the hard liquor, wine is the next least expensive liquor to beer to pour into your cooking. Let's look at the inexpensive wines:

Wines are used to cook lean poultry in such as turkey baked in a white wine creme sauce with green grapes and blueberries, or lean veal and eggplant in a white wine cheese sauce.

Red wines and white wines, sweet wines and dry wines, natural wines and fortified wines, still wines and sparkling wines are cooked with various dishes -- such as baked avocado and flaked fish in sparkling champagne with a champagne-sour cream sauce. Year of vintage makes a difference in European wines, but in domestic, it doesn't matter. Your wine dealer will guide you and suggest the best wine to select. Chablis should be added to lighter foods, chicken, fish, shellfish, cheese dishes, brains and sweetbreads.

White Bordeaux are frequently called Sauternes. All the dry white Bordeaux or Sauternes are served with the same light foods as are the white Burgundies. The very sweet Sauternes are served as after-dinner toppings to desserts and over crepes. German wines and their domestic equivalents are popular with shellfish.

Champagne is best added to poultry dishes and sweet and sour shrimp served in a chafing dish.Cream Sherries are best mixed with desserts and with nut dishes, such as pecan-sherry pie. Fruits go well with the brandies and wines.

Vermouth is more aromatic than sherry because of the addition of herbs, roots, spices and peels in its making. Dry vermouth (also called French vermouth) is light in color, should be served well chilled and served in a cold avocado soup with dry vermouth, sherry and madrilène. Or sweet vermouth, also called Italian vermouth) is darker in color. It is served hot, added to a dish of barbecued spare ribs with scotch and vermouth.

How deliciously vermouth drenches the spare ribs when mixed with lemon juice and basted over broasted or barbecued ribs, turning on a spit! It just relates to tart greening apples with a dash of angostura bitters. Other sweetened aromatic wines you can use when cooking with liquor are Dubonnet and Amer Picon or liqueur made from artichokes.

The sparkling wines, sparkling Burgundy, the dry champagnes are perfectly acceptable in a champagne sour cream sauce over baked avocado and salmon over veal and eggplant, or veal parmigiana.

Red Burgundies are the heaviest of red wines. Use them to flavor poultry or cold roast veal. The heavy red Bordeaux can be served with veal, eggs and cheese dishes and with chicken and green grapes to create a wine sauce. Americans call Red Bordeaux "clarets". The Bordeaux bottle is distinctive. It has high shoulders and a short neck. The well-known French red Bordeaux wines are St. Emilion and Pomerol (heavy). Medoc and Graves are lighter.

Other familiar red wines are the Italian wines. These wines are mixed in pasta sauces or with meat and vegetable dishes such as squash stuffed with meat and rice, marinated and drenched with red wine, or eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, or other stuffed vegetables packed with ground veal, chicken or fish. Rose wines are lighter. Their more delicate flavors go well on basted ham, pork, as a base sauce for making cold cuts look fancy, and over salads with some hot, mulled spices added to dress up fruit salads.

White Burgundies are referred to in the U.S. as Chablis. White Burgundies are bottled in the slope-shoulder type of bottle. The domestic "Chablis" includes such varietal wines as Pinot, Blanc, Chardonnay, and Folle Blanche. These wines are mixed with lighter foods such as chicken salad and sliced chicken, fish, shellfish, light cheese dishes -whipped up in a soufflé or cheese omelet, and basted over sweetbreads, and organ meats.

White Bordeaux called "Sauternes" here are dry, not sweet or heavy. Use them over light foods -- poultry, fish, shellfish, cheese-egg, salads, fruits, such as poached fruit and vanilla sauce with the white Bordeaux beaten into the sauce, whatever your favorite sauce would be -- over the poached vegetables, fruits or dairy meals. Vegetarians love the zest this wine gives to vegetable cutlets. Just pour it into whatever sauce you use, salad dressing, or blend into your favorite vegetarian recipe.

German and Alsatian wines are bottled in tall, slender green bottles. Moselle is sharp. German wines are light and dry and taste best with shrimp or fish. Just cook the fish in the wine or add to your favorite recipe.

White wines do not keep as well as the reds, and should be stored in the refrigerator.

Dessert wines are sweet and have a higher alcohol content than dinner wines. They are served at room temperature over poached fruits, such as a mocha apricot pudding, or over lemon shells and with blazing hot pears with very cold wine custard.

Add dessert wines such as Malaga and the tawny ports -- but not the rubies -- to custard and pour over custard, spiced or heated, if desired. Dessert wines can be served also blazing hot over ice-cold desserts and dotted with a spice, like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, etc. They can also be poured over a cheese-and-fruit course served at room temperature for dessert or late night snack. Try Malaga over stuffed cheese balls in a melon.

Cream Sherries are the sweetest Sherries and go well with coffee ice cream and chocolate cake. Try Olorose, deepest in color of the sweet, Spanish Sherries. It has a mellow, nutty flavor that adds something aromatic to oriental and almond-dishes or pastries.

What if you're a calorie-counter and you'd love to cook with liquor?

There's a general rule when cooking with hard liquor. Gin, vodka, blended and straight whiskey, Scotch, rye or bourbon. These are used to baste and blend in with spare ribs, frankfurters, bacon, roast veal, beef) vegetables and meatloaf. The number of calories in these hard liquors is determined largely by their proof (alcoholic content).

Each ounce you use in cooking contains one calorie for every degree of proof. For example, a 90 proof gin blended in the baked avocado and salmon casserole, contains 90 calories per ounce of gin.... An 86 proof Scotch is 86 calories per ounce. If you are watching the pounds, you can put this information to work in two valuable ways:

First cook with those liquors that are lowest in proof. Choose 86 proof bourbon rather than a l00 proof straight whiskey. Make up your mind if the added liquor is going to be cooked in the meal, where the alcohol content will evaporate in the cooking process. Or if the liquor is poured into a cold sauce, not cooked, note all the calories will not burn out as the alcohol evaporates. Second, drench your best proof of whatever liquor. An 80 proof gin has fewer calories than a 90 proof gin or vodka.

Generally, you can estimate the number of calories in most distilled liquors by applying the calorie-per-ounce proof method. But keep an eye out for spirits floating high sugar content: Rum, cordials, and brandy.

If you're baking roast veal with brandy, the calorie count will be different than if you're over poached fruit without brandy. Remember that sugar calories won't evaporate in cooking like alcohol calories will.

Beer and ale have the fewest calories of all alcoholic beverages. For example, lager beer contains about 14 calories an ounce. Light ale about 12 calories an ounce.' In cooking with beer, you can create a highly nutritious "pot likker" containing a good deal of Vitamin B in such creations as beer and veal stew, shrimp boiled in beer with the skin on (highly nutritious -- the beer draws out the flavor from the fish), crabmeat a la king, beer gravy for all roast meats and poultry.

Cook franks in a beer sauce. It tastes "Russian", because in the Black Sea area, and the Caucasus Mountains as well as in parts of Scandinavia, beer is used to boil almost all hearty stews of meat, chowders, and braised foods. Let beer be your base or stockpot liquid. But what if you're a calorie-counter and you'd love to cook with liquor?

There's a general rule when cooking with hard liquor. Gin, vodka, blended and straight whiskey, Scotch, rye or bourbon. These are used to baste and blend in with spare ribs, frankfurters, bacon, roast veal, beef, vegetables and meatloaf. The number of calories in these hard liquors is determined largely by their proof (alcoholic content).

Each ounce you use in cooking contains one calorie for every degree of proof. For example, a 90 proof gin blended in the baked avocado and salmon casserole, contains 90 calories per ounce of gin.... An 86 proof Scotch is 86 calories per ounce. If you are watching the pounds, you can put this information to work in two valuable ways:

First cook with those liquors that are lowest in proof. Choose 86 proof bourbon rather than a 100 proof straight whiskey. Make up your mind if the added liquor is going to be cooked in the meal, where the alcohol content will evaporate in the cooking process. Or if the liquor is poured into a cold sauce, not cooked, note all the calories will not burn out as the alcohol evaporates.

Second, drench your food in the lowest proof of whatever liquor is chosen. An 80 proof gin has fewer calories than a 90 proof gin or vodka.

Generally, you can estimate the number of calories in most distilled liquors by applying the calorie-per-ounce proof method. Keep eyes out for spirits floating around with a high sugar content: Rum, cordials, and brandy.

If you're baking roast veal with brandy, the calorie count will be different than if you're serving brandy. Sugar calories won't evaporate in cooking. And scientific studies have shown that the alcohol content doesn't evaporate entirely either when a product is cooked.

Beer and ale have the fewest calories of all alcoholic beverages. Lager beer contains about 14 calories per ounce, light ale about 12 calories an ounce. In cooking with beer, create a highly nutritious "pot likker" containing a good deal of vitamin B in such creations as beer and veal stew, shrimp boiled in beer with the skin on. In this highly nutritious stock, the beer draws out the flavor from the shrimp.

Serve beer and crabmeat a la king or beer gravy from shrimp to serve over oriental vegetables and fish. Cook franks in a beer sauce. Boil all hearty meals in beer to re-create a Black Sea area flavor in soups, stews, chowders, and braised foods. Use beer to simmer your stockpot faire.

Bear in mind that a standard size beer can or bottle holds 12 ounces. A bottle of lager beer, used to add depth and dimension to soybean dishes, stews, meats and in baking your own breads, contains about 110 calories. This is almost twice the calories in 1 ounce of Scotch added to the same dish, baked bread, meat, etc.

Weight-watchers are better off cooking with light lagers and ales rather than dark, Bock beers, a favorite of Scandinavians vacationing in the Mediterranean, or drinkers of heavy ales. One of the best ways to control your calories in cooking with liquor is to do away with mixes and garnishes when you cook.

Start from scratch and add only low-calorie ingredients. Add taste but almost no calories to your food by flavoring the dish with Angostura bitters, orange peels, lemon and limejuice, and slices of fruit. Below is a list of the highest and lowest calorie liquor that you can add, according to your taste, to that favorite recipe.

WHEN COOKING WITH BEER, WHAT YOU MEASURE IS WHAT YOU TASTE

CALORIES

Ale, Light (12 oz.7 147

Ale, Heavy (12 oz.) 228

Beer, Bock (12 oz.) 202

Beer,- Lager (12 oz.) 170

Porter, Stout (12 oz.) 217

WHEN COOKING WITH WINES CALORIES

Champagne, Sauterne (3* oz.) 90

Chianti, Claret, Burgundy

(3 1/2 oz.) 65 to 75

Chablis, Moselle, Rhine

(3 1/2 oz.) 60 to 70

Muscatel, Port, Malaga

(3 1/2 oz.) 155 to 165

Vermouth, Sweet (3 1/2 oz.) 175

Vermouth, Dry (3 1/2 oz.) 110

Sherry (3 1/2 oz.) 140

Dubonnet (3 oz.) 155

Madeira (31 oz.) 110

Highest calories: Eggnog, 335 per cup, brandy Alexander, 225, hot buttered rum, 250 per cup, Irish coffee, 225 per glass. Count those calories when you add the leftover martinis, grasshoppers, mint juleps and rum colas into your cooking. Not that any of these drinks are ancient, but you could brew raspberry-taste-alike flavored ancient Egyptian beer, and a number of these recipes is on the Internet at a variety of sites. Search for updates.

All of these contain over 200 calories per drink. But the leftover drinks in that cocktail shaker can be added to your favorite dish to transform the tidbit into that "broth" whose time has come.

A. Hart's

AVOCADO THEMED-EVENT RECIPES

THESE ARE THE SAME RECIPES AS ABOVE WITH THE ADDITION OF AVOCADOS TO THE CUISINE.

AVOCADO AND BEER STEW

It's an avocado and fish stew or casserole, whose flavor is vastly

improved by the use of beer.

1 1/2 pounds of boned fish chunks, or for vegetarians, chucks of braised tofu or wheat meat.

(Seitan) or tofu (soy bean curd), cut in 1 inch cubes 3 cups beer

or ale 3 cups beef bouillon 1 teas. salt or salt substitute to

taste, if desired, or use a quarter cup of lemon juice for

salt-free diets.

4 ripe avocados, peeled

12 peppercorns

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 bay leaves

6 medium-sized potatoes, peeled & cut into i inch cubes

6 teaspoons Extra Virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons chopped scallion tops or chives

Place the oil, up to 4 tablespoons, or less to taste, in Dutch oven

or large deep skillet-pot. Add avocados sliced in small chunks or slivers ,fish, or meat substitutes, and onions. Cook, stirring, until onions are transparent. Add beer

bouillon, salt, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Add more beer to make

sufficient liquid to cover meat. Simmer covered over low heat for

20 minutes. Add potatoes.

Continue simmering, covered, until meat is tender and potatoes have

fallen apart and thickened the beer and bouillon broth, about 2

hours. (Optional)Cut the 6 teaspoons of oil to 6 dollups. Ladle the

oil in each serving of the stew and sprinkle with chopped green

scallions. Use modern beer, or *ancient-Egyptian style beer which

tastes sweet, and somewhat like raspberry-flavored beer.

NEW WORLD AVOCADO AND SHRIMP WITH BLACK SEA BEER & HADDOCK DINNER CHOWDER POT

2 ripe peeled avocados cut in slices

1 lb. shrimps shelled or unshelled to your taste

1 cup light beer, lager beer

1 clove

1 bay leaf

2 cups peeled, sliced potatoes

3 tbs. chopped celery

3 teaspoons. extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup water

3 cups evaporated milk

1 tsp. salt if desired, or for salt-free diets, use garlic,

onion, or lemon juice, extra parsley, or salt substitute, or

leave out salt if you're salt-senstive.

1 teaspoon. extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp. pepper

2 tbs. chopped Italian-style parsley

Simmer shrimp (haddock may be used in place of or together with the shellfish), with bay

leaf and clove in beer for 10 minutes. Remove shrimp or fish and

set it aside. Strain broth into a soup kettle. Cook potatoes and

celery in 3 tbs. olive oil for 5 minutes. Add water and cook 5

minutes longer. Combine shrimp (or fish), potatoes and celery with

beer-seafood broth and simmer 5 minutes, or until vegetables are

tender. Add milk and bring to boil. Remove from heat, add

avocados, salt and pepper, stir and serve garnished with parsley.

Serves 4.

AVOCADO, BEER & CRABMEAT A LA KING

4 sliced, peeled avocados cut in 1/2 inch cubes

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

bottle dark beer, heated to boiling

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 tbs. flour

salt to taste or substitute herbs

2 cups milk

1 cup canned crabmeat, boned & flaked (or flaked chicken, may be

used)

3 hardcooked eggs, chopped with or without yolks.

1/2 cup cooked mushrooms

1 pimiento, chopped

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Cover green pepper with beer and avocado chunks and cook until tender. Add beer broth

to extra virgin olive oil. Stir in flour, salt and mix until

smooth. Slowly add milk, stirring until sauce thickens. A rich

sauce can be made by using evaporated milk and regular milk of 1

cup of each. Add'pepper and remaining ingredients. Serve hot for 6

to 8.

NEW WORLD COLD AVOCADO SOUP WITH VERMOUTH AND SHERRY

1 cup dry, light sherry

1/2 cup vermouth, dry

2 cans madrilene

1 avocado

1 cup non fat sour cream or nonfat plain yoghurt

1 teasp. grated onion

chopped dill

dash of salt or salt-free herbs, and pepper or turmeric to taste.

Put madrilene into a bowl. Put avocado through a sieve into

madrilene, blend in sour cream, add sherry, add vermouth, add salt

and pepper and onion. Blend well and chill about 4 hours.' Pour

over sliced natural, meunster or Monterrey jack cheese cut into

tiny cubes or strips at bottom of soup bowl. Garnish with dill and

savory. Serves 4.

AVOCADO AND SCALLOPS IN MULLED WINE

4 peeled and diced avocados

1 lb. scallops

3 oz. red wine

4 oz. water

1 cinnamon stick, broken

Dash Angostura bitters

2 whole cloves

1 tsp. allspice

juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup olive or canola oil

bread crumbs, seasoned.

Lightly brown scallops dipped in bread crumbs in the safflower oil

in a skillet. When scallops are tender, place on paper towel to

drain oil. Combine red wine mixture to boiling point. Strain in

large service dish, add lightly browned tender scallops and serve

with a ring of diced or sliced avocados and lemon on top.

AVOCADO AND CHICKEN IN MULLED CIDER WITH WHITE WINE AND GRAPES

4 peeled, diced avocados

1 baked chicken with skin and bones removed,(or soy chicken

substitute) cut in chunks or boneless breasts of chicken, skin

removed, baked, roasted or boiled in water until tender.

2 quarts hard or non-alcoholic cider

1 cup white wine

3 oz. applejack

Dash Angostura bitters

1/2 teaspoon allspice cinnamon stick 6 whole cloves 2 oz. gold

label rum 2 cups seedless grapes white sauce

Heat all ingredients in a pot until the mixture reaches the boiling

point. Strain into a warmed earthenware or silver serving platter.

Prepare the white sauce or use canned. Add diced avocados to the sauce.

White sauce is prepared by

adding a tablespoon of flour and a teaspoon of cornstarch to

chicken stock or drippings from the roasting pan, salt, pepper,

until thickened, or thicken canned cream of chicken soup with

flour, cream, and cornstarch, while cool so no lumps form. It is

recommended to use a can of white sauce to cut preparation time and

prevent lumpy white sauce from appearing.

Add this white sauce to the mulled cider and white wine and add the

cooked chicken, boned and skinned. Place the grapes on top, serve

buffet-style.

"VIKINGS IN THE NEW WORLD" AVOCADO DINNER FOR 24 WITH COGNAC, WINE

2 peeled, diced avocados

(A glass of Scandinavian Glogg. Use leftover servings as punch.)

Dash Angosture bitters

1/2 cup sugar

1 pt. red wine

1 pt. sherry

1/2 pt. brandy

large raisins

unsalted almonds

Heat bitters, sugar, wines, and brandy in large casserole. Ladle

mixture in warmed mugs or glasses in which raisins and almonds have

been placed. Makes about 11 quarts or 10 servings. Save 4 servings

to add to recipe below:

DINNER:

2 diced, peeled avocados

6 oz. ham or fowl, cut into strips 1/4 inch thick

6 oz. raw breast of chicken, cut into strips 1/4 inch thick

1/4 cup Cognac

1 onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs (2 slices firm white bread)

cup dry white wine

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/4 pound lean fresh pork, goat, or lamb

1/4 pound beef, chicken, pork or calf liver

pound raw chicken meat (light or

dark or mixed)

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 egg or two egg whites, well beaten

salt to taste, if desired, and/or teaspoon each of nutmeg, thyme,

allspice, tarrogon teaspoon freshly ground black pepper I cup of

Glogg, or more to suit taste Thin slices of blanched salt pork

(about 6 oz.)

1 bay leaf

Put ham or fowl, chicken breast strips and Glogg and Cognac in a

small bowl to marinate with the diced avocados. Cook onion in oil until very soft but not

brown. Combine bread crumbs and wine and mix to a paste. Add more

Glogg. Put garlic, pork or fowl liver, chicken meat, olive oil,

onion and crumbs through meat grinder twice, using finest blade.

Stir in egg or egg whites and seasonings and beat with a wooden

spoon until all are well blended in. Fry a small patty of the

mixture, taste it and adjust seasonings if necessary. Line a

112-quart loaf pan or terrine with thin slices (1/8 inch thick) of

fresh salt pork, or for your health--tofu or wheat meat (Seitan),

(simmer salt pork or meat substitute in water to cover for 10

minutes, drain, rinse and dry).

Pack about 1/3 of the forcemeat in the bottom of the dish on fat

layer and press down evenly. Lay half of the ham and chicken breast

strips on top lengthwise in alternate strips. Cover with another

1/3 of forcemeat, the strips and the last of the forcemeat. Press

it down evenly all around, then cover with pork slices and a bay

leaf.

Cover tightly with foil and set in a roasting pan containing hot

water to the 1/2 depth of the meat. Bake at 350 degrees F. for

about 2 hours, or until the paste has shrunk slightly from sides of

the dish. The bubbling juices around it should look clear and

yellow, no longer pink and cloudy. Remove dish from roasting pan

and pour out excess water. Set dish back in pan and put a smaller

loaf pan on top of the foil to fit snugly inside the top of dish.

Fill it with a heavy can or two to compress the paste and give it a

firm texture when cooled. Cool totally, then refrigerate it, still

weighted down. Flavor imp-roves if it is allowed to ripen in

refrigerator 2 or 3 days.

Unmold onto a board or platter. Provide a

knife so guests may cut Danish paste into slices about 1/3 inch

thick. Serve with crisp thin toast soaked in hot mulled wine or

with crisp bread of any type. Provide cocktail plates and forks.

This makes 24 servings. It will keep for 10 days in the

refrigerator. Flavor and texture will lessen if frozen.

AVOCADOS AND SPARE RIBS WITH SCOTCH AND VERMOUTH

4 peeled, diced avocados

2 oz. Scotch

1 oz. sweet vermouth or dry vermouth, as preferred

cup lemon juice

4 lbs. lean spare ribs in one piece

4 small tart apples, peeled, cored, chopped, preferably greenings

1 cup prunes, plumped, pitted, and chopped

1 teaspoon salt or salt substitute herbs

1/4 teaspoon pepper dash angostura bitters

Have the butcher crack the spare rib bones in half lengthwise. Trim

free of excess fat. Combine chopped apples and prunes. Spread spare

ribs with a layer of fruit. In a bowl pour scotch and vermouth and

lemon juice with bitters together and stir till blended. Fold spare

ribs in half as you brush on or pour on the liquor, using 1/4 of

the liquid.

Skewer or toothpick the edges together. Sprinkle with salt and

pepper. Pour the remaining liquor over the top. Place in shallow

baking pan with avocados. Roast in 350 degrees. F. oven for l 1/2 hours. Serve

with red cabbage boiled in water, drained and marinated in hot

vermouth and scotch, pickled beets soaked overnight in scotch, and

gravy made from the drippings. When drippings cool, skim off any

fat and reheat, adding more vermouth, pour hot over top of beef and

serve.

NOT ANCIENT, BUT HISTORICAL: NEW WORLD: FRANKFURTERS IN TEQUILA AND

WHITE WINE SAUCE WITH AVOCADOS

2 peeled, sliced avocados

2 peeled, sliced tomatoes

1 peeled, diced onion or leek

1 lb. small cocktail frankfurters

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup dry white wine

l 1/2 oz. tequila

1 cup heavy cream

Toasted bread

1/3 cup chopped parsley 6 slices bacon, fried

Stick a fork into franks to prevent bursting during cooking. Heat

margarine in skillet and brown franks in it. Sprinkle with flour.

Stir in tequila and white wine and heat franks thoroughly. Stir in

cream. Heat but do not boil. Spoon over toasted bread. Sprinkle

with parsley, and garnish with bacon slices. Serve with avocados, onions, tomatoes.

AVOCADO AND BACON WITH WHISKEY-PARSLEY SAUCE AND RUM

Made with avocados and flavorful bacon, such as canned bacon, smoked, or

pre-cooked bacon, this dish turns out to be aromatic. I also highly

recommend for their delicious flavor, the products of Mahogany

Smoked Meats. They are located at 2345 N. Sierra Hwy, Bishop, CA

93514 (619) 873-5311.

1 1/2 pounds thinly sliced lean bacon or bacon substitute soy or

wheat product such as "mock bacon". If you don't eat pork products,

use bacon substitutes such as soy, beef bacon, or wheat-meat

products. Vegetarians can find soy or other vegetable-based

products that look and taste somewhat like bacon in organic,

health, and natural food stores.

SAUCE:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or Canola oil

2 tablespoons flour

2 peeled, diced avocados

1 cup cream or evaporated milk

1 teaspoon salt or salt substituate herbs

1 teaspoon sugar

1/3 cup minced parsley

2 tblsps. extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup whiskey

1/4 cup rum

Fry bacon until crisp. Drain. Marinate in mixture of whiskey and

Rum with the avocados. To make sauce, heat olive oil, drain bacon from mixture of

whiskey and rum and add liquor to melted butter. Stir in flour, add

more flour to keep thickening sauce. Gradually stir in milk or

cream. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly.

When smooth and thick, stir in salt and sugar. Stir in parsley just

before serving. Pour sauce into gravy boat and top with 2

tablespoons of oil which has been diluted by adding a teaspoon

of rum, blended and re-chilled. Serve sauce hot over bacon. Note:

If your low-cholesterol diet cuts out bacon, serve over any hot

cooked poultry, meat, vegetable burger, noodles, or main dish.

AVOCADOS AND COLD ROAST VEAL WITH BRANDY, RUM AND VERMOUTH SAUCE

4 sliced, peeled avocados marinated overnight in lemon juice and chopped garlic.

Cold Roast veal, turkey, or chicken, sliced or a combination of all

3 leftover meats.

SAUCE:

3 tablespoons olive oil, extra virgin cold pressed.

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup rum

1/2 cup vermouth

1 cup apple brandy

1/2 oz. lemon juice

SOME CHICKEN STOCK, veal stock or beef bouillon cubes dissolved in

hot water to make 2/3 cup of liquid salt, pepper, 1/8 teaspoon

nutmeg 3 tablespoons margarine 3 tablespoons whipped cream or

nondairy whipped cream substitute.

Heat 3 tablespoons oil in heavy saucepan and stir lemon juice

in flour. Gradually stir in avocadoes, lemon juice and garlic, chicken or veal stock and all liquor,

together. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and smooth.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the nutmeg. Simmer longer

if necessary. Taste for seasonings. Add salt and pepper, if

necessary. Fold in whipped cream. Makes about 3 cups of sauce.

BAKED AVOCADO AND SALMON WITH GIN

2 oz. of Gin

1 oz. of lemon juice

1 egg white

2 large avocados

3 tablespoons additional lemon juice

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or Canola oil.

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup evaporated milk or goat milk

1/4 teaspoon salt or herbal substitute

1 teaspoon thyme

1 cup salt-free boned and cooked or canned salmon, drained

& flaked

(Note: Tuna or chicken or any flaked fish,

meat, ( or meat substitute, or poultry can be used.)

1 hard-cooked egg, chopped

4 tablespoons low-fat mayonnaise or mayonnaise substitute

Shake gin, lemon juice and egg white. Set aside. Cut avocados in

half lengthwise. Remove pits, rub inside surfaces with lemon juice

and set aside. Blend olive oil into gin mixture

with flour and gradually add milk, stirring continually over low

heat until sauce is smooth and thickened.

Add seasonings, salmon, egg, and stir until well blended. Heap

salmon mixture in center of avocado halves and bake in 375 degrees. F.

oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven. Top each with mayonnaise

blended with 1/2 oz. of gin.

Bake 5 minutes longer. Serves 4. Vodka, scotch, white wine, rose

wine, vermouth, sherry, rum, or bourbon may be substituted for

varying flavorings for each avocado prepared. Also leftover

martinis may be taken from the cocktail shaker and blended with the

mayonnaise and baked in with the salmon. Never waste that great

liquor! It imparts to meals a delicious aroma that whets the

appetite.

AVOCADO WHISKEY CUSTARD OVER MEATLOAF

4 avocados peeled and diced.

1/2 cup blended whiskey or bourbon

4 eggs

salt, pepper to taste

4 cups milk

2 teaspoons gin

2 teaspoons almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 pound hamburger meat, ground round

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup grated celery

1/2 cup wheat or soy germ

salt or herbal salt substitute and turmeric or pepper to taste

1 can soy, wheat, barley, or beef gravy, or 1 pint homemade gravy

good melting cheese -- mozzarella, Romano, Parmesan, jack cheese,

Swiss, Muenster, or American cheese, sliced--about

3 or 4 slices or use fresh, non-processed cheese of your choice.

Blend meat, 1/2 cup water, wheat germ, avocados, salt and pepper, celery,

gravy, together and pack into a loaf pan deep enough to be less

than 1/2 full. Put in 350 degrees F. oven for 15 to 20 minutes to

bake.

While meat is getting lightly brown and half cooked, prepare

custard separately. Then remove meat. It's done in 45 minutes.

Beat eggs enough to mix yolks and whites well. Stir in milk,

seasonings, gin and whiskey. Pour into l 1/2 quart baking dish. Set

in pan containing 1/2 inch of water. Cook at 350 degrees F. for 30

minutes at least, until a silver knife stuck into the side (not

center) is clean.

Cool. Chill. Remove meatloaf from oven when done. Carefully turn

the whiskey custard on top of the meatloaf in the pan. Melt the

sliced jack, mozzarella or Muenster cheese slices and pour melted

cheese blended with 2 teaspoons of bourbon over top. Serves 6.

Note:

To bake a new world avocado ambiance into delicious ancient Egyptian-style or modern Caucasus Mountains style beer bread, use any dark bread recipe and add dark beer for any amount of liquid called for in the recipe. Brush the top crust with beer slightly beaten into egg whites for a shine and a fragrance. Serve hot.

This is an excellent way of serving beer that has gone flat

overnight in the refrigerator when the cap was left off.

In all your homemade bread and coffee cake recipes, if you

substitute dark beer for water, you can make traditional Icelandic

beer bread, yeast coffee cake, or even cookies and Scandinavian

logs (cookies). (For grown-ups only.) Now how about some coffee avocado mocha?

LIQUEUR ( liquor, and likker) MAKE EXQUISITE DESSERTS

AVOCADO MOCHA APRICOT COGNAC PUDDING

PUTTING A COFFEE FLAVOR ON AVOCADOS.

(a subtle blend of coffee-cacao-apricot-cognac and avocado flavor)

Mash 4 peeled avocados and add to 2 cups of milk. Blend until liquified.

Prepare a box of vanilla or chocolate pudding according to

directions on package. However, instead of adding 3 cups of milk,

add only two cups of milk into which the avocados have been blended and liquified.

Instead of the 3rd cup of milk add 1/3 cup strong coffee or

expresso coffee and 1/3 cup coffee liqueur and 1/3 cup of cognac.

Prepare according to directions, heating, stirring constantly until

pudding thickens. Pour into pudding cups, baked tart shells, a pie

or molds. When chilled top with this exquisite sauce:

Mix 1 oz. apricot brandy and 1 oz. triple sec. (orange) with:

1 tbl. brandy

2 tbl. strong cold coffee

One and 1/2 tbl. gold label rum

6 tbl. cognac

2 tbl. creme de cacao

1 tbl. kirsch

l 1/2 tbl. Irish whiskey 2 cups whipped cream or nondairy whipped

cream substitute. cup honey

Blend all the liquor with the honey and add 3 tablespoons of flour

or cornstarch. Thicken, stirring constantly over low heat, adding

more honey and/or sugar, until sweet to taste. When it thickens to

a sauce texture, let cool and harden, fold in the whipped cream and

top pudding with sauce. Serve beside a bowl of chilled canned

apricot halves.

AVOCADO CAFE CAROB FROZEN DESSERT

4 peeled, mashed avocados

1 quart best-quality (made with honey) ice cream, coffee flavor

1 teaspoon instant powdered coffee

6 tablespoons dark Jamaica rum

2 tablespoons Kahlua

1/2 cup whipping cream or whipped nonfat topping such as nonfat

tofu whipped topping.

Buy the very best hard coffee ice cream, nonfat yogurt, or

tofu-based frozen coffee or mocha-flavored dessert. Dissolve the

instant coffee in the rum and Kahlua. Blend rum into ice cream with

fork. Add the mashed avocados. Return to freezer and re-freeze.

It is served a little soft. Just before serving, whip cream until

thick and nearly stiff. Ripple quickly into ice cream. Spoon into

small coffee cups. Serve with a spoon. Makes 6 servings. You can

top with a dash of nutmeg, cinnamon, or grated chocolate if

desired.

AVOCADO RUM AND WHISKEY IN LEMON SHELLS

4 peeled, mashed avocados

1 cup sugar, orange honey, amazaki, (found in many natural,

organic, or health food stores, a Japanese-style sweetener made

from brown rice koji , another enzyme) or brown rice syrup sweetener

2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin or vegetarian agar-agar

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup white rum

1 tablespoon whiskey, scotch or bourbon

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

2/3 cup fresh lemon juice

dash salt or salt substitute if desired

6 to 8 large lemons or oranges for shells

2 unbeaten egg whites

Turn refrigerator to coldest position. Mix sugar or same amount of orange blossom honey

or other syrup sweetener, avocados, gelatin and milk.

Stir over very low heat until gelatin is melted and milk is

scalding. Do not boil. Add rum, scotch or whiskey and set aside to

cool, or it will curdle when you add lemon. Slowly stir in ,lemon

peel, juice and salt. Pour into 2 small or 1 large tray and freeze

until snowy.

Cut tops off large perfect lemons and oranges. You can use half and

half, lemons, oranges. Each gives a different aroma perfume to the

sherbert. Remove pulp. Cut a thin slice from bottom of lemon so it

will stand upright.

Put mushy glace (sherbert) in bowl with unbeaten egg whites.

Beat until fluffy. Heap into orange or lemon shells. Freeze overnight, with control at normal. Re-move from freezer 15 minutes before eating.

NEW WORLD AVOCADO POACHED FRUITS WITH OLD WORLD VODKA, BRANDY IN VANILLA CREAM SAUCE

4 peeled, diced avocadoes marinated overnight in brandy and sugar or fruit juice concentrate

Fruits poached in a vanilla sauce are served with a Balkan-Black

Sea-Caucasus-style cream sauce of brandy and vodka.

Combine 2 cups water, 1/4 cup sugar, a 1-inch piece of vanilla

bean, split and scraped, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, and avocados. Simmer 5 minutes.

Add 10 peeled fresh fruit or peach halves, whole nectarines, pears,

apricots or a combination of several fruits. Remove fruits to a

glass bowl. Add 1 tablespoon each of brandy and Grand Marnier or

kirsch.

Simmer syrup another 2 minutes to thicken slightly. Pour

over fruits. An hour before serving, add a dozen whole strawberries

or a cup fresh blueberries. Top with 2 tablespoons of vodka. Serve

with Brandy Sauce.

Brandy Sauce: Soften a quart of good vanilla ice cream and quickly

beat in 3 tablespoons apricot or other brandy. Fold in I cup heavy

cream, whipped until thick. Remove to freezer until firm. Serve in

separate bowl with poached fruits.

AVOCADOS and PLUMS IN SHERRY & VERMOUTH

2 PEELED, DICED AVOCADOS

1 can purple plums (1 lb., 13 oz.)

1/4 cup sugar, dates, raisins, orange honey, or brown rice syrup or

fruit juice concentrate to sweeten (purpose is to sweeten. Use the

one that is healthiest for you and has the taste you want.)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

One 2-inch spiral lemon peel

2 tablespoons sherry

1 tablespoon vermouth

1 tablespoon gin

2 tablespoons lime juice

1/3 cup finely chopped almonds 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

or Canola oil.

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Vanilla nonfat frozen yogurt, ice milk, vanilla-flavored fozen

tofu-based dessert, or good old fashioned vanilla-bean studded ice

cream.

Gently heat plums AND AVOCADOS with sugar, cinnamon, and lemon peel in moderate

oven or over low heat. Sprinkle with the sherry, vermouth, and gin.

In a heavy skillet mix the almonds, oil, and brown

sugar. Stir over medium heat 5 minutes, until mixture smells

"sweet" and looks bubbly-brown.

Turn onto a plate and cool. Top each serving of hot plums with a

scoop of ice cream. Crumble almond crunch and sprinkle on top.

Makes 4 servings.

BLAZING HOT AVOCADOS AND PEARS WITH VERY COLD WINE CUSTARD

3 sliced, peeled avocados

3 egg yolks

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1/3 cup sherry

1/4 cup dark red sweet wine

8 large, pear halves, canned

1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, if desired.

2 tablespoons sugar, fruit juice concentrate, or brown rice syrup

8 macaroons

1/4 cup blanched almond halves

dash nutmeg (optional)

3 tablespoons cherry brandy

or use 3 tbl. sherry and 1 tsp. honey, rice syrup, apple or pear

juice concentrate, or sugar

First create the sherry sauce. In the top of your double boiler,

away from heat, beat egg yolks and sugar with a beater till light

and fluffy. Gradually beat in sherry.

Put just enough hot water in the bottom of the double boiler so

that the top pan does not touch it. Put the boiler together and

place over low heat. Stir sauce with a whisk over hot, not boiling

water until smooth and thick, about 7 minutes. Refrigerate,

covered, until ice cold.

Stir till smooth. Place pears and avocados in a shallow baking dish with 3

tablespoons fruit syrup mixed with 3 tablespoons sherry or cherry

heering or cherry brandy. Coat with a tiny amount of olive oil, sprinkle with

sugar, if fresh pears are used.

Keep sugar to taste, if needed. Crumble macaroons into centers.

Toss almonds in a little oil, and sprinkle on top. Bake at

350 degrees F. for 30 minutes. Baste occasionally. Serve hot with

ice cold sherry sauce. Grate fresh nutmeg over top. Serves to 6.

AVOCADO DAIRY MEAL & FRUIT WITH RUM

STUFFED AVOCADO AND CHEESE BALLS IN MELON WITH RUM & COCONUT

2 medium avocados, sliced and marinated with grapes melon balls in apple juice concentrate overnight in the refrigerator 2 medium melons such as honey-dew, Persian melon, or cantaloupes

1 pint low-fat cottage cheese

2 cups fresh pineapple, in bite-size pieces (or canned, drained)

1 cup seedless green grapes

The grated rind and juice of an orange

1/4 cup honey

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, 1 cup flaked coconut, 1/2 cup dark

Jamaica rum 1 cup fresh berries,(strawberries, blueberries,

raspberries, or any berries in season.) Sour cream, yogurt (plain)

or sherbert.

Form cottage cheese balls with melon scoop. Halve cantaloupes.

Remove seeds. Cut one row of melon balls around edge of cavity. Mix

with pineapple, grapes, avocados. Grate orange rind over fruits. Add orange

juice to honey, lemon juice, coconut, and rum. Mix with fruits.

Hold off on berries.

Set cantaloupe halves on plates. Arrange cottage cheese balls

around melons on top. Add berries on top of fruits. Shells should

be filled. Top with yogurt or sour cream blended with rum and honey

in equal parts, about 2 tablespoons each. For dessert, add

sherbert.

For lunch this delight, preceded by a cold avocado soup or served

with melba toast is great. Serves 4.

AVOCADO CHAMPAGNE SOUR CREAM SAUCE

(Delicious served with the baked avocado and salmon recipe on page

31 of this book, or over lean veal and eggplant or on veal

parmigiana.)

2cups champagne

1 pint sour cream

1 ripe mashed avocado, blended well with no lumps

teaspoon onion powder

teaspoon garlic powder

cup lemon juice or lime juice

1 small package of soft cream cheese

1 pimiento chopped

Salt & pepper to taste

Blend the sour cream, mashed avocado and soft cream cheese into the

onion and garlic powder. Add pimiento, lemon juice. Blend together.

Gradually beat in the champagne, using enough to achieve a thick

cream sauce consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste. Blend in

enough champagne so that the sauce is thick and creamy and stands

in peaks when beaten. Serve over any meal to highlight it and bring

out the utmost flavor.

Note: By leaving out the avocado, salt and pepper and pimiento, and

by adding 1/4 to 1/3 cup honey, champagne sour cream sauce may be

used to spread on cake or heap on fresh fruit as a delightful

champagne cream sauce. If you have remaining champagne left over,

use in place of water in baking a cake or blend in with cooked

food.

AVOCADO BEER PANCAKE BATTER

(Excellent for coating fried chicken, fish, cutlets, vegetables and

chops or fried fruit.)

2 peeled, mashed avocados

1 cup dark, whole-grained flour

1 cup lukewarm beer

2 egg whites

Spices of your choice or lemon juice

Spices can be: pepper, thyme, rosemary, basil, oregano, cumin,

curry powder, saffron, parsley flakes, onion powder, garlic powder,

nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger (with ginger beer), dill, etc. depending

on what use you have for batter-fried chicken, pancakes, fried

eggplant, zucchini, fish, chops, etc.

Sift flour, beat lukewarm beer and mashed avocados gradually into the sifted flour and

(optional) spice. Whisk until frothy. Leave until required for use.

The success of a good batter is in mixing cold air into a

smoothly-blended batter. The mixture must be well beaten.

AVOCADO CHAMPAGNE BATTER

Use same recipe above, minus beer, substitute dry, white champagne

or sparkling dry white wine in same proportion. Use batter to fry

into pancakes and serve with strawberries and champagne topping, or

dip fruit such as pineapple, apples (in rings), bananas,

pomegranates, etc. and fry batter-dipped fruit in deep fry pan in

light safflower oil.

Use spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and honey to

sweeten batter and serve with berries or other fruit and whipped

"creme" made from evaporated skim milk.

Also use champagne batter to coat fried foods in deep fry cooker.

Use beer batter to try poultry and fish, champagne batter to fry

fruits, or use as a pancake in making pan shortcake. Decorate

pan-baked or fried shortcakes with berries and non-fat whipped

creme-style toppings.