Dinner With Rose Notes · 2:18am Feb 3rd, 2015
Dinner With Rose notes
First of all, a huge thanks to my pre-readers: AShadowOfCygnus, MSPiper, and metallusionismagic.
Not only has it been used in the show, but most people believe that psychiatrists generally have a couch in their office for the patient to lay down on when talking. I have no idea if that is universally true; I've never been to a psychiatrist . . . but neither has Sam.
I did find an article discussing the practice, though.
One side was for flour to be sold locally, and the other wall was flour to be exported to Canterlot.
(alternate image)
Flour sack are canon, and so are barrels. While I don't know of any canon evidence to suggest flour is put into barrels, it most likely is, if it's meant to be shipped any distance, or stored for a while. The barrel will protect it from vermin and moisture.
We know Ponyville has a windmill, which historically was used to grind grains into flour. The miller could grind flour as finely as a customer wanted, or make any custom mix desired. Presumably, some of the stores would have their own 'house' blend, which they'd want to be different than what was available for public purchase, and it stands to reason that some mares would have their own 'secret' recipes and flour mixes.
Since we haven't seen any evidence of fields around Canterlot, it's reasonable to assume that grain is exported there, with the railroad being the logical choice to facilitate it. It's also plausible that Canterlot only started getting big once trains got reliable—that was a major factor in Chicago's development, after all.
Breadbox
Obviously, the purpose of a breadbox is to keep mice or other vermin from eating your bread before you get a chance to. These days, I would wager very few homes have them.
In one episode of Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe made barrels for a winery.
It's also worth mentioning that a wooden tub, shaped basically like the bottom half of a barrel, would be one of the cheapest, most affordable bathtubs. If it were outdoors, it could even be heated by an iron pipe linking it to a fire. That was an old-fashioned way to heat water for pig slaughtering, or whatever else might require a goodly supply of hot water on a farm.
Apple Flora
Apple Cider
Technically, Applejack and Apple Cobbler aren't her aunts. While it's hard to determine the ages of ponies in the show, since the adult ponies largely use the same template, from what canon evidence we have, I'd guess that Apple Cobbler and Apple Cider are the daughters of AJ's parents' siblings. However, in interviewing both a co-worker, and my own personal experience, children are likely to refer to 'aunts' and 'uncles' in the same way their parents do. Thus, my grandfather's brother was 'Uncle Bill' to me.
Berry Black, or Grand Noir de Berry Donkey, is a breed of donkey from the Berry region of France.
Ginger Gold
Mastitis is an infection of the breast tissue. It can occur in both humans and animals; in horses it most often occurs after weaning.
Udder Issues for The Mare
I cannot think of a single animal or sapient we have seen in the show that doesn't have some sort of tail. I also cannot think of any non-primate mammal IRL which doesn't, although I'm probably missing something obvious. Although many HiE fics make a big deal about hands or bipedalism, we've seen both in the show, Spike being the prime example.
EDIT: Rinnaul pointed out several tailless mammals, including bats, which are certainly canon. I think in the case of bats, though, it's likely that most ponies would classify a bat as a bird.
Until then, I hadn't known that I could run off a roof and down a ladder faster than bees could fly.
Many years ago, I worked through the summer painting a farm. That is, I helped paint three pole barns, a garage, and a two-story house. There were bees and wasps everywhere. We sprayed some of the nests, but it wasn't practical to hit them all.
This house had a kind of stepped roof: there was a two-story section, then a one-and-a-half story section, and then the garage. I was up on the middle roof, painting the end wall, when I hit a beehive that was behind an attic vent.
The furious buzzing was enough of a clue that I needed to get out of there, and much to the amazement of my fellow painter, I came off that roof at a dead run, crossed the whole garage roof at the peak, and then went full-tilt down the extension ladder. I didn't get stung once.
As seen on TV!
Wild Aster
Wild aster is edible. So are Chrysanthemums; when researching Celestia Sleeps In, I ate several on a sandwich.
Thus far, I have not been able to find a scholarly article about the effects of alcohol on a horse. I suspect since their digestive system relies, in part, on fermenting their food, that they have a high alcohol tolerance. In a real horse, body mass would also be a factor, but my experiment has demonstrated that ponies at fanon height weight about the same as a human.
However, before you go out drinking with your horse, you should know that real life horses cannot belch or vomit, so sharing beers with a horse could result in a serious digestive problem. This is not an issue in the MLP world; we've seen ponies do both.
Guinea pigs; some bats; seals and sea lions (the flippers are hind legs); tailless tenrecs (okay, they technically have an extremely short one); and the Manx cat.
And I thought baking just to review a fic was going to extremes.
I'd say "challenge accepted", but I'll be waiting for a review or story to give me an excuse.
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I probably should have researched that. Of all the animals on the list, the only one a Ponyvillian is likely to have seen is a bat, and their taxonomic classification might differ from ours (most of them might assume bats are birds). However, taillessness does appear an oddity among mammals (and taillessness apparently isn't a word).
I actually considered getting tased or hit with a stun gun, so I could more accurately describe the sensation, and even fleetingly considered taking morphine. However, in both of those cases, common sense won out--I interviewed someone who'd been given morphine in a hospital in the 60s (when they were more generous with the dosages), and assumed getting hit with a taser was much like getting hit with 50kV from an ignition coil (which I have done, unintentionally).
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And talking about stun guns on a ponysite just makes me remember this video:
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Well, that tells me I got Lyra's actions after being tased about right. Good to know!
There is only one place where people think of bread boxes nowadays: as a standard question in 20 Questions.
"Is it bigger than a bread box?"
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And the funny thing is, I bet half of them couldn't tell you how big a bread box is.
I find it odd in HiE fics that ponies don't know about fingers but Iron Will does have them so I'm sureponies know what they are right?
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Yeah, I think that's a tired trope in HiE fics. Never mind Iron Will; Spike's got hands (more or less), and he's been in Ponyville since the first episode.
Tails are just so darned useful. They can provide balance, locomotion, an additional limb, a flyswatter, you name it! It is a shame humans lost their tails so long ago (outside of the vestigial ones that it), but it isn't like we really need one.
It is amazing what people can do when they are properly motivated. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. Also bees are scary.
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I know--it would be so handy for so many things.
My personal best is being 20' up on an extension ladder, when it started to tip. One of the cool things your brain can do for you is just take over, do what needs to be done, and not bother to tell you about it. I don't know how I got down off that ladder, but I was on the ground before it fell, and I was still holding a paintbrush in one hand, and a can of paint in the other.
2765527 I'll admit to baking after being inspired by a fic. Not extreme at all. (It was one of Admiral Biscuit's fics too)
We need more trixie emotes.
Yeah, you know... for what is probably at least a 200 year old city, they didn't seem to think it through all the way, did they? It seems they have a good supply of fresh water up there (that waterfall off the edge, probably a lake), the rest is a mystery. Imagine carting an entire city's food UP A GODDAMN MOUNTAIN. Not to mention other stuff, like building supplies and general merchandise.
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/09/29/article-1064208-02D70A2100000578-219_468x368.jpg
Bartender: "Why the long face?"
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The Great and Powerful Trixie Bakes a Cake perchance?
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If we use the comics to flesh out the timeline, we know that Starswirl had chambers under the castle in Canterlot, and he was there not long after Luna was banished, so unless Celestia moved the whole thing, or the mountain appeared later, Canterlot's a thousand years old.
We don't know what the side facing away from Ponyville looks like, though. It might be flatter.
I'd guess that the castle was built with no plans for a city to spring up around it, but over the centuries that just happened, and now it's too late to change things, so they just make due.
I am unsure if its applicable to all psychiatrists, but some do have couches. Or weird chairs you sink into.
2765861 yes, and I have this to say: use wax paper instead of grease for the pan. My poor cake didn't survive the removal lol.
You know, we only recently got rid of our own bread box. Used for bread too (who'd of thunk it?)!
2765580 I was halfway through captioning that, but then the bull just cussed something awful we didn't want to post it.
2765875 But... castles always kind of were cities. As far as I know, anyway. The whole idea was the landlord was protecting his peasants from invading armies by building walls. Right?
I've got a bread box. It's surprisingly useful.
Trains are good freight haulers, for sure, but what about using unicorn or dragonfire magic for delivery of goods? Couldn't they simply... teleport bread?
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From the inimitable Terry Pratchett in his book Night Watch on the city.
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I've read some anecdotes about horses being given alcohol, but like you wrote--nothing really informative.
The part about fermentation is probably a "red herring" since a horse's digestive system isn't much different from ours, other than being bigger and starting out with much more effective chewing molars. We have fermentation going on in our guts too. That's where farts come from...
But in both cases, the fermentation is by bacteria, not yeast. Yeast produces alcohol, bacteria don't.
A horse is a big animal, so it would take a lot of alcohol to get it drunk, but African elephants are bigger yet and have been known to get intoxicated drinking from pools of water where fruit has fallen and fermented... Just a guess, but I think it would be possible, and dangerous, to get a horse drunk on alcohol.
2766881 Pretty much.
Not one that I've ever visited had one, that much I can say. Probably for the better, I'd have slept through every appointment if they did.
2766116 The walls of a castle are primarily to protect the central keep, ie where the lord lives. A city may spring up around such a castle, and the citizens of the city may temporarily cower within the bailey walls, but if there's a wall around an entire community, its not a castle, its a fortified city, like Quebec
2769758 Well then, insofar as terminology goes, we don't really know what Canterlot was intended to be then. We've only ever heard 'Canterlot', 'city', or 'the castle.' The latter of which is always used to describe the royal residence (for lack of a better word) in the city.
So... it might've been meant to be a fortified city. If you think about it, the fact that it's on top of a mountain alone offers a superb geographical advantage, in terms of defense.
2770968 one could assume that Canterlot requires no walls; the innate paths the mountain forces land-based forces to attack from means setting up checkpoints and kill zones would be foal's play.
Of course, when militant pegasi and carnivorous griffons are canon, walls themselves aren't that useful. Towers and keeps themselves, with thick exterior walls and narrow windows that force fliers to enter from entrances/roofs only, would be more useful than trivially surmounted walls.
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Walls became useless with the advent of artillery more than that of flight, but I would say unicorns fill that niche adequately.
Oh, by the way, horses have been known to actively seek out and consume fallen fruit that has been left to ferment on the ground long enough to become alcoholic, much like many other animals also will. So you can probably safely assume that alcohol works like usual and that they enjoy it, too.
2771084 Seems legit. And despite what mythology says, I don't think griffons would ever do that. Warmonger, maybe.
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Besides the obvious risk of bread monsters (hey, maybe that's why the Everfree is so wild), I think there's some reason why they can't. The only object we've seen that might have been teleported (to the best of my knowledge) is Rarity's fainting couch.
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I think there is alcohol produced during the process in horses, and I think I remember reading that horses produce more of the liver enzyme which breaks down alcohol. However, I haven't found enough information to settle the matter. Given my research into pony weights, a MLP pony probably weighs as much as a human, so that wouldn't give them an advantage. Also, FWIW, some bacteria does produce alcohol--both naturally occurring and engineered.
EDIT: and yes, IRL horses also get drunk sometimes from partially fermented feed (often, apples), and it's not a good thing.
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I think it would more properly be considered a palace, rather than a castle--although it does have some fortifications, I don't see the function of the castle as being a defensive fortification. My own headcanon is that the palace was built after unification, when the ponies believed that there were no credible threats to them any more.
And it's worth remembering that in a world with dragons, pegasi, griffons, diamond dogs, and so forth, walls aren't going to be all that helpful (nor will the location at the top of a mountain). The whole medieval European model of fortifications is basically useless. My guess is the giant shield bubbles are about the only practical defense, and we know that they can fail.
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Sounds like horn-head bullshit to me. Tryin' to keep us earth ponies down.
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twentypercentcooler.net/data/04/b2/04b2007c43ac53225bca1f09a3c38620.png
2775002 LOL
"Obviously, the purpose of a breadbox is to keep mice or other vermin from eating your bread before you get a chance to. These days, I would wager very few homes have them."
So that's what breadbox's are for. We used to have one but the bread kept going moldy. Now we keep it in the fridge, or in the case of chiabatta, which usually doesn't last longer than a few days (we eat it), just sits in a bowl on the counter in some bakery paper.
--Sollace
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In most of my stories, they're about 4 feet tall at the ears, or 2 1/2 feet at the withers.
Weight-wise, I did a density experiment with a scale model and a brushable pony. The experiment and discussion are on my userpage, but the short version is that an earth pony that size should weigh between 90 and 140 pounds.
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memrise.com/s3_proxy/?f=uploads/mems/6485638000150119185238.jpg
But how do asters taste? :O
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Remind me when they're in season, and I'll let you know.
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GO EAT SOME FUCKIN FLOWERS FOR SCIENCE
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I've already eaten chrysanthemums for research, and made spinach and cheese pancakes. I've got no problem eating wild asters. Finding them might be a challenge, though.
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Indeed. :O I love the idea of eating flowers, though.
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Alas, we just missed fall as winter already started.
I marked a reminder on my calendar to revisit this blog in six months!
You ever derived beverages from dandelions, or no?
Confederate Army's DANDELION-COFFEE | Civil War Era Recipe:
How to Make Dandelion Wine:
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We did. And what a winter it’s been so far, warm and not snowy until this weekend, when we got a nice mix of snow and sleet and rain.
Nope! I did collect a ton of dandelions from my yard for a friend who was making dandelion wine, but she either wound up not doing it or she did do it but didn’t let me have a sample. I have had dandelion greens in salads before, although I didn’t particularly enjoy them. I thought they were too bitter. Maybe I should try again; I’m older now and might prefer the flavor.
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With spring around the corner, you could replace one of your 12 daily cups of caffeine with dandelion coffee.
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I could, although I expect that dandelion coffee wouldn’t have the caffeine I require to function.