Spun out of recent "Trader Joe's" thread (some of which actually concerned
Trader Joe's).

1. "Doug Freyburger" in
roups.com>:
>
> The oldest posting for RFC in the Google archive is
> from Nov 1986. It is a crosspost that replies to a
> net.cooks posting.

If anyone is unaware of it, in late 1986 the existing newsgroups, such as
net.cooks, net.wines, net.misc, and (very useful) net.flame, were renamed
_en masse,_ and net.cooks became rec.food.cooking. (This was The Great
Renaming.) RFC's real history therefore predates its current name. (I have
not researched for net.cooks specifically, but sometimes the original
charter message of a net.* group is in archives. For example net.wines, Sat
Feb 27 15:37:47 1982, by Charles Wetherell. Net.wines has gone through two
de-facto renamings, by the way.)

In those earlier days of newsgroups, the traffic was moderate enough that
various sites kept, and offered, complete archives. Then in a middle period
of the late 1980s and early 1990s, volume grew to where archives became
fewer and more selective, omitting, for example, rec.* and soc.* groups.
Later still with wide public interest in the "HTTP" Internet, commercial
sites began archiving more completely again.

Soon after the Great Renaming, by the way, in 1987, the "alt" newsgroups
were created (by Brian Reid and others), partly from a dispute over recipes.
I assisted with a graham-cracker to digestive-biscuit conversion:

http://tinyurl.com/5ejqg

A larger summary of the alt-net origin, posted recently (2004) on a wines
newsgroup:

http://tinyurl.com/2rf29

(More info is available in various online Net histories but you have to be
selective with those, many of them were cobbled together way after the fact,
by people who saw none of it.)

A famous synopsis of newsgroup history as of 1989, by Brad Templeton:

http://tinyurl.com/4gmrc

That last was still more than two years before the 1991 introduction of
HTTP/HTML and the "Web" language, announced he

http://tinyurl.com/3aduo


2. Garlic presses. My 1983 posting on that subject

http://tinyurl.com/5zbd2

(cited in the Trader Joe's thread) answered a question about the
self-cleaning type of press, where the lever action can reverse to expel the
garlic bits neatly from the holes. That is the kind I have used most in
recent decades. Steve Upstill had argued instead for whacking garlic
cloves with the back of a knife and then chopping (and my 1983 posting was
partly aimed at him and it worked, as described on the Trader Joe's thread).
However, I use the knife technique also. (Don't tell Steve. :-) They
have different effects. The press tends of course to crush the garlic
finely which is useful sometimes, but not if you want discrete pieces. The
self-cleaning press (or alternatively, the type with a removable thin insert
with the holes) wastes very little garlic and is easily cleaned by rinsing
in warm water, right after use. Fresh ginger can also be crushed in a
garlic press, but it must be strong (metallic) to withstand the cataclysmic
forces unleashed thereby.

By the way, I believe that Steve Upstill was one of the founders of Pixar.
I read recently that he immigrated to New Zealand.

Cheers -- Max