Laura Jackson
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jalalajackson.bsky.social
Laura Jackson
@jalalajackson.bsky.social
140 followers 190 following 39 posts
part-time bookseller//full-time good-for-nothing

Out-of-print specialist @kalnyc
Generalist/owner @firsthousebooks
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jalalajackson.bsky.social
The most unhinged pack-job I’ve ever seen. Thank you. I love it.
A small box filled with what looks like wall insulation (asbestos?) with, at center, a red and blue striped, clown-adorned carnival popcorn bag, which was filled with packing peanuts. Not shown: the neatly wrapped book found underneath.
November 15, 2025 at 9:39 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
omg
Another page, reading: Many Jewish "housewives" often run into "difficulty" cooking for discriminating Protestant in-laws. In this day of "intermarriage," I "often" counsel kosher hausfraus on the ins and outs of the sensitive WASP palate. My handy rule of thumb: When you talk goyisch, you're talking mayo. Mayonnaise is the magic key to so many of those tantalizing front-porch "dishes." Properly prepared with all the fixin's, a mayonnaise dinner can hit with all the impact of the financial pages of the Christian Science Monitor. I like to surprise my Kansas clan with a Mayo-Bone Souffé. First, whip a half jar of Hellmann's VSOP in Osterizer. Then, pare beef bones of meat and polish until bare and gleaming. Then simply affix "colored" tassels to the bones and insert into deep dish filled with the whipped mayonnaise. For that exciting "picket fence" effect bones may be bleached under sunlamp for 12 hours.
October 31, 2025 at 5:43 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
The “shut up and give me the recipe” contingent is really missing out.
Page from the True Light Beavers’ cookbook, reading: In May 1970, I decided to take mescaline for the first time in about a year; the reason mainly being that I just wasn't feeling well, that is to say mentally, and only somewhat physically. I've always looked upon mescaline and peyote much in the same way as the American Indians do as a sacrament being good medicine for the body and soul. It would take a volume of writing in itself to explain and describe what previous experiences had brought me to this way of seeing, but at this point, let it suffice to say that I believe with all my heart and soul that what I've gleaned from all this has been beneficial. In the midst of the aforementioned mescaline experience while my attention was focused internally, I saw very plainly that I was "clogged" up inside my body. My mental sphere was black and murky. I detected a very subtle stenchy odor emanating from the pit of my stomach. Only on rare occasion during normal consciousness did I have but a subtle sense of this feeling, only now it became more and more intense, and I became more and more nauseated. I began to realize what I had suspected for quite some time during the "normal" state, but never to such a great extent. I saw that I was unable to recover a once very beautiful and pure feeling that I had about eight years ago, during which time I ate only fruits and vegetables. I say dark heavy layers of consciousness that were the manifestations of different foods that I was eating since I stayed away from a vegetarian diet. Mind you, I didn't see this as a vague or flimsy idea, but felt it in great intensity. I began to vomit up a brown stenchy liquid, sort of a bile color. I felt a tremendous sense of relief and clarity returning with each upheaval…But I can safely say that as I became cognizant of my inner being, I saw that this childlike purity that I was attempting to recover was lost to me…
October 31, 2025 at 4:46 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
@merriam-webster.com, beloved, I think it’s time to update the definition of “show out” to include the usage in your recent examples. 🙏
Merriam-Webster examples of “show out,” as in show (someone) out, using recent examples automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. The examples both demonstrate an alternative usage, undefined here, in which the phrase meaning is more like “show up,” “perform well,” etc.—or whatever. I don’t know; I’m not the dictionary.
October 24, 2025 at 10:21 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
Found in books: What are the chances anyone on here can identify these folks?
Black and white photo circa WWII. Two men at center wearing apparent USAAF uniforms, holding cigarettes. Flanked by apparent civilian women. All are smiling and seated around a table strewn with empty glasses, an ashtray, a cigarette pack, and possibly matches or a lighter.
July 12, 2025 at 11:03 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
This break in doomscrolling brought to you by my favorite author photo.
A bleached blonde Barbara Cartland on the back of her cookbook The Romance of Food, wearing a rhinestone-studded pink evening gown with matching pink feather boa and pink feather duster. Gold accoutrements and flowers in the background.
June 22, 2025 at 5:58 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
Solid cookbook photography from Stuart Silverstein’s Bread in Time (1990). 10/10, no notes.
Black and white full page photo from a spiral bound cookbook showing a rounded loaf of bread sticking out of a tree as the two giant mushrooms below.
April 18, 2025 at 5:01 PM
jalalajackson.bsky.social
A bean recipe for these trying times.
Author Edward Abbey’s “Hardcase survival pinto bean sludge” recipe found in the book John Keats’s Porridge. It involves a 50 pound sack of beans (from which you must “remove stones, cockleburs, horseshit, etc.”), which should then be simmered for 24 hours over live fire. Fuel type is specified. Add a gallon of green chilis and other flavorings like bacon rinds, corncobs, saddle blankets, and worn out tennis shoes. Second page of the recipe, which instructs you to keep the sludge simmering for hours, days, or weeks until thoroughly consumed. Serve the sludge on flat stones and garnish with parsley flakes and raw ketchup. “One potful Pinto Bean Sludge” will feed a poet for two full weeks. Annual cost less than $300. Buen provecho!
March 2, 2025 at 3:44 PM