I cooked lamb chops for a friend this week. They were a bit underdone and one had to go back in the pan for a minute, but I think I did an OK job.
This year, for the first time in 16 years, I have cooked meat, including bacon, grilling at a party, and now lamb. How about that?
After getting my nails done on one occasion, the manicurist sprayed mink oil all over them and I was pretty bummed about it.
I had tuna salad and chocolate milk out of one of those little cartons you used to get at school for lunch.
Some people listen to Supreme Court oral arguments on Saturday night; others look up "cock" in the O.E.D.
I don't know where you went to school, Di, but mine sure didn't stock any cartons like that.
I took my profile down from OKCupid today because I remembered that I *hate* meeting people.
Oral arguments; the definition of "cock": it's like we're almost getting it right.
I listened to some nice bluegrass music. I may not have much else in common with the old-timey music demographic, but I really like the mandolin.
Then, while going home on the metro, I discovered that reading a crime thriller while I am drunk puts me in a really bad mood.
I hung a picture on the wall, and now my head hurts.
This is fun.
It may be fun, but it's confusing.
I catalogued a book signed by a bunch of possibly sort of famous opera people; this took me a freakin' hour, as I don't know a thing about opera. I might could ask Smearcase about it, but I understood he's out of town. Somebody had better buy that thing.
Also people's handwriting can be really atrocious.
Smearcase was at my house until a few hours ago. He's on a train back to NYC but probably has us up on his phone *right now*.
Thanks - it's a little bit of a detailed question, so I'll spare him for the moment. I was tapped out after squinting as best I could at signatures and handwriting, and flipping back and forth between google results for an hour. Fun kind of research, though.
I went fishing -- in North Essex, in October -- in shorts and a T shirt, and caught a very large brown trout, which I put back. For the moment, I have no cares.
Nworb, you're omitting the most important part, which is that you put the trout back in exchange for a gift of supernatural wisdom, and that that's why you have no cares.
re: 15
The weather is absurd, this weekend. The turtle that lives in 'our' communal pond must wonder what's hit him. Basking away.
To judge from the rest of the evening, I exchanged it for a 10% discount on generic black ink for my printer. But that's good, too. the discovery that a standard HP black ink cartridge now holds 6, count'em, millilitres of the precious fluid is gobsmacking. I foresee a future in which printer ink and LSD are measured with the same units.
Refillable ink cartridges are the way to go.
Fill them with LSD and print on blotter paper.
Ha! I just figured out how to get LaTeX to put spaces around the ~ like it is a unary connective and not a binary relation!
Little victories like this keep me going.
Parsi, email me if you like. I'm always happy to lend out my narrow expertise. See below for coördinates.
I stopped by my parents for lunch and found my dad merrily refilling ink cartridges with an array of syringes.
Four trains later I am home.
In the U.S., train trips are usually better anticipated than experienced. Mumble crumbling infrastructure mumble.
We're also getting in Belgium the ludicrously pleasant weather described in 15, 17. Before you get grateful, my fellow denizens of northwestern Europe, remember we paid for it this year fair and square with the most unpleasant summer weather since the asteroid which killed the dinosaurs. My poor, basil plants, stubby and pitiful from a season bereft of sunshine and warmth, would have flourished in this light and heat, but it's too late: they're flowering now and no longer growing vegetatively.
Thanks, Mister Smearcase. I'm making lentil soup this evening (and would invite you for dinner were it close to ready), but will send along some probably clueless questions in a bit.
I'm unclear on which concept I'm unclear on.
Vegans could probably use vintage leather or leather from cows that died of natural causes.
33: It can be translucent. They used to make half-assed windows out of it.
I really wish I had a bicycle right now.
37: you need a biccyle! Do you need us to help you get a biccyle? We'll do that!
No, I mean right now. I'm on the other coast. Walking down S/nd H/ll Road in search of food.
So you need a bicycle or a sandwich?
Fine, refuse my help. Good luck walking for your sandwich, traitor.
You might walk a long time. Chipotle on El Camino?
I will be certain to keep my eeys open for a biccyle.
Also: oddly enough, I am very nearby and have bicycles to lend. Possibly.
Wait, fuck, I'm a complete idiot and forgot that S/nd H/ll and P/ge M/ll are different fucking roads. Um, don't listen to me, although I really do have unused bicycles near P/ge M/ll. Christ, I should never delurk.
Never mind that, LB, Sifu can help people get biccyles.
The rest of the internet SUCKS.
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I'm feeling vindicated in recommending the Lions for Halford's temporary affection. Stafford's arm looks like he got a bionic replacement. The throws he's making are preposterous. Johnson can't be covered by mere mortals. Consecutive comebacks from 20-point deficits. It's going to be a football circus in Detroit this season.
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I know!!! Thank you. That rec has been the best thing about the fall, and shouting "Megatron" is totally satisfying. I've even found the Detroit expat bar in LA to go to (this place) although unfortunately I've been stuck working in the office all weekend and didn't watch today's game.
You might walk a long time.
Yeah, I was considering walking for an hour either to get to El Camino (and possibly onward to downtown Palo Alto) or to find somewhere on campus to eat, but opted for picking up sketchy microwaveable food from Safeway instead. You would think if St/nf/rd wants to operate a hotel, they would keep a M/rguer/te line running there on weekends. Of course, I could also have called a cab. Eating microwaved grocery-store food in my hotel room is more consistent with my state of laziness/tiredness now, anyway. Twelve hours ago I had already been on a plane for three hours. (And this tomato bisque isn't half bad.)
I didn't mean to kill the blog. Sorry, blog.
51 posts and nobody has thought to point out that mink oil is terrible for most leather care?
I once bought a decently-priced half-bottle of Veuve Clicquot from that Safeway. In future, if you can make it to Alameda de las P/lgas, there are famous and good places to eat at various price points.
email included in case, i dunno, you actually do need bike or rides. i assume it gets easier after sundays.
51 posts and nobody has thought to point out that mink oil is terrible for most leather care?
Do tell? I have used it for years on my heavy leather boots, and would like to know how I'm ruining them.
I mean, anyone else here is welcome to borrow my bike and go drink champagne in solitude, as long as they don't wreck the former too badly on the way back. This is hardly a targeted offer.
Could the bike be sold in a very quick sale for enough to buy champagne?
Biking and drinking is a dangerous combination, in my experience. Indeed. Your best scenario for doing that is wobbling your way along the paths on, say, Fire Island. Or some other similarly bike-friendly place. Don't try to do this in a long skirt, so much, unless you're paying good attention.
51: "Come, Boy come and post about books and unclear concepts and physics and be happy."
"I am too hungry to post about unclear concepts," said the boy. "I want food", he said. "and I am walking along S/nd H/ll Road, and it is a long way so I need a bike. Can you give me a bicycle?"
"I can get you a bicycle", said the blog. "I can get you bicycle near S/nd H/ll and then you can ride to get food," said the blog. "Then you will be happy".
"Wait a minute, I am an idiot," said the blog. "S/nd H/ll isn't P/ge M/ll. Never mind!"
But the boy found some microwavable tomato bisque in a Safeway and it wasn't half bad. And the blog was happy.
And those times that the boy thought he killed the blog was really God carrying the blog while the boy didn't bike anywhere.
Is 58 reminding me of The Little Prince? I can't quite tell why it is, but it is.
60: Because you're fortunate enough never to have read The Giving Tree.
61: Oh, but I have. As well as The Missing Piece, and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O.
I'd encountered those along with The Little Prince around the same time.
Went for a hike up one of the lesser Bitterroot canyons. Got absolutely thrashed by vegetation after the trail petered out. Wish I'd gone trout fishing.
Food-related-wise, I was talking to a chef last night (of a new swanky restaurant/skybar that just opened in town), and I realized I not only have lamb meat and goat meat more or less filed as the same thing but also have sheep and goats filed together. As in, I do realize they're different, but I hadn't realized how very dissimilar they are.
Mr. Google says you weren't making a joke. Huh.
65: I don't actually know what goat meat tastes like, but while alive a goat looks very different from a sheep.
But, chickens and Cornish game hens are exactly the same thing.
I had mutton several times in India, and partway through discovered that there that (more often, at least) means goat meat.
66: I was not.
Food-related-wise, why is it that we call the cow flesh we eat "beef" (not "cow"), and the pig flesh "pork" (not "pig"), the sheep flesh "lamb", and so on ... but chicken is just "chicken"?
Hm. I guess goat is goat. Rabbit, rabbit. Well, never mind then.
They use to have goat at the Rio Grande in Bethesda. Not on the menu, just as a special now and again.
Chicken is poultry. Also, sheep flesh is called mutton and lamb flesh called lamb.
I think it has to do with the Norman conquest. Names for food on the hoof comes from Anglo-Saxon as they were the peasants raising the food. The names for the animals on the plate are from the French because they were the upper class and got to eat more.
71 -- German word for animal in field, French for animal on plate. Calf/veal. There's a bunch of them. Catch a fish and you might eat trout or salmon.
OK, not a hard and fast rule, obviously. Sheep flesh is mutton, though.
I don't know the French for pwned, because I'm not an elitist when it comes to repeating shit.
but also have sheep and goats filed together.
If you studied your bible* you would understand the importance of keeping these things straight.
*Yes, Wikipedia is my bible.
76: Oh, that's embarrassing. Matthew 25 is one of my favorites every time I read it. It's a good example of the "Jesus is Radically Nice to Poor People" thing that so many Christians seem to miss.
Also, it was interesting that the chef I talked to was able to source goat meat only through the halal butcher in town, yet he didn't advertise it as halal goat meat. I would have thought it a selling point.
Sorry about the mutton/lamb confusion. And yeah, 73 and 74 are right -- I heard this on the radio this morning and thought it interesting.
The Missing Piece Meets the Big O is rather charming in its way. As I recall, the missing piece, who is basically a skinny pie wedge looking for some place to fit, eventually begins to flop itself over again and again, in order to move along, and comes to round off its sharp corners until it becomes a circle and may roll along on its own. Nice, and pretty funnily done.
No Silverstein haters, please.
74: I didn't know it extended to fish.
78: If he serves pork or booze, I think maybe the goat might cease to be halal once he carried it in to his place. Full disclosure: I have no formal knowledge about halal rules and am talking out of my ass, but it seems reasonable.
A plato vegetariano in Chile quite often contains ham. Or it did in 2003. Which was unexpected.
The Little Prince is where my mind went with 58, too. Shel Silverstein occupies very little of my headspace. Although one of my awesome high school English teachers gleefully read "The Missing Piece Meets the Big O" to us in children's-storytime fashion (holding up the book so we could see the pictures, reading in that sort of overly-animated talking-to-kids fashion).
I never get to cook for people, but on friday I had someone over for dinner and made american carbonara and it turned out loverly. I prefer american carbonara (ie with cream) to Italian. Me and Alex had an argument about it a thousand years ago; it's not necessarily true that the Italian version is more "genuine", not that I care.
54: saddle soap to clean, beeswax (e.g. Sno Seal) or nikwax to waterproof. Mink oil isn't terrible, but it does break down the internal structure. So good if your boots are a bit fit & too stiff, otherwise it is wearing them out faster and you lose support...
it's not necessarily true that the Italian version is more "genuine"
They do it over there but we don't do it here.
("Beep beep".)
(Sorry. I guess the Bowie thread is belatedly getting to me.)
Loverly started out as a typo but I kept it.
53: Thanks. I think I'll be having dinner with my hosts the next couple days, but if I do find myself stranded and foodless, I'll be in touch.
What's the non-American alternative to cream?
The Little Prince is where my mind went with 58, too.
Something about the "I am too hungry" and the "Can you give me a bicycle?"
I'm off to bed. Maybe I should reread The Little Prince".
Who was that invisible, infallible leather care tipster?
74: I didn't know it extended to fish.
Certainly not in the same way, as names of the varieties are just as applicable on the hoof, but it would be interesting if the higher-status fish types (if such existed in post-Norman England) ended up with French names (like salmon vs. cod).
my family used to run a failed hippie store/drug-dealing venue (more successful as the latter needless to say) and we employed mink oil (along with saddle soap, and beeswax, at a variety of relevant moments) frequently. don't you go telling me my momma is wrong, oh ye who is too cowardly to sign his comments. I'll assume you're a dude, because I am feeling uncharitable.
Flounder is French.
Fish doesn't get higher status than trout.
My dog jumped out the car window to chase a flock of wild turkeys this afternoon.
Speaking of saddles, my lady partner wants to get me up on a horse again and has floated the idea of me being her groom at events. I think I've waded way deep into Horse World at this point. I shall continue to report back on my findings. (So far, observations include: "Horse racing is wildly fascinating and rule-governed.")
Maybe you should make Muleskinner Blues a part of your repertoire.
Flounder is French.
Hm - Wiktionary says it's from Old Norse, and that the modern French translation is flet; but etymonline.com implies that the Old Norse word was brought over via French.
A version from Scaring the Children.
I'd like to hear Anonymous Leather Care Commenter's opinion of mink-oil-having but not mink-oil-identical Montana Pitch Blend.
That's the American version, with the milk oil?
107: The Normans were Vikings who conquered Normandy (go figure) and then England. They brought most of the French-root words into English but they were kind of shitty at speaking French.
100: What kind of groom?
I think I would just get the horses out of the trailer, guide them to the barn, and generally be nice to them, pre-race. I'm not sure if it's dressage, jumping, or the full eventing thing. I would probably be shoveling some shit at some point, but that's every support role.
102, 112: It's fun to see Stanley, of all people, studiously pretending to be unaware that a word can have more than one meaning.
If it's clear that it's a studious pretense, then it's just the alternate manifestation of the same proclivity for puns we've seen before.
I came up with a good band name today. That name is The Alter Eagles.
Don't deny it, Stanley. Your girlfriend is going to marry you off to the horse. The things we do for love.
Doesn't Spanish distinguish pez from pescado? (Google searching suggests it does.)
Yes, pez = creature; pescado = food.
re: 111
There were a couple of waves of French influence on English, and the Norman influence was only the first. Lots of words came in twice. Once from Norman French and once from standard/Parisian French.
e.g. warden/guardian; wardrobe/garderobe, warranty/guarantee, etc
I seem to recall some lecturer telling me that the post-Norman French vocabulary was as large as the Norman French vocabulary but wiki seems to disagree.
I'm curious about this 'American' carbonara, too. Every recipe for carbonara I've ever seen has cream in it. Although looking at wiki, it seems the cream is standard in the US, France, and the UK. So that might explain it.
I was taught it (by an English woman living in Portugal) as just pasta, bacon, egg. And parmesan. That's how I make it.
I've always made it with a couple of tablespoons of cream added to the egg mixture. It's not particularly creamy, or heavily sauced, I suppose, compared to some I've seen. Just a coating on the pasta.
Wish I'd gone trout fishing.
Hell yeah you should have. Spectacular weather here and locally the trout have been keen on brown caddis.
I learned to cook it from an Italian (although so-northern-she's-practically-German), who uses just eggs, parmesan, and bacon. This is the version I argued with David about. The trick is to mix the grated cheese into the eggs (usually with a bit of sage and black pepper), and then fry the bacon as the very last task in the process after you've drained the pasta. Then you toss the mixture into the pasta and chuck the sizzling bacon on top and stir it up. If you get it exactly right the bacon cooks the sauce.
Weather: it's been that hot that the neighbours' cat is shedding the winter coat that she started putting on in the last few weeks.
Yeah, I was considering walking for an hour either to get to El Camino (and possibly onward to downtown Palo Alto)
This reminds me of a failed attempt at a night out in that town - I spent a good hour looking for a cab outside the Sheraton to catch up with colleagues who'd found a bar somewhere on University Avenue. I considered just wandering around in the hope the Highway Patrol would stop me so I could tell them I was "seeking the Troll of Sorrow. I dreamed he was around here somewhere".
If you want a tip, don't go to that Thai restaurant that backs onto a bowling alley on El Camino, it'll make you throw up.
re: 124
That's basically how I do it, except I add cream. Eggs, grated cheese, a couple of scant tablespoons of cream, loads of black pepper, mixed in a bowl. Cook pasta. Fry bacon or pancetta until crispy, and then mix the whole lot together right at the end, and stir. The hot bacon and pasta cook the sauce. To be honest, though, I prefer other sauces. It's a bit too rich for my taste.
I think maybe the goat might cease to be halal once he carried it in to his place.
From various remarks by the lady next door there are two issues, I think. Firstly, it's his kitchen that matters; if the Muslim eating the goat is strict, he'll need to have cooked it in a separate pot/oven with separate utensils for it to remain halal. Secondly, there's no standard definition - it can vary from imam to imam. Many Muslims would probably be quite happy eating the guy's goat, but a few might not. So it's inadvisable to advertise it as halal.
I've gone through the various fish names looking for etymological patterns. Excluding the ones that entered the language too late to be of interest ("shark" is 16C, for example), I find:
* 7 definitely Germanic: whiting, herring, shad, halibut, smelt, eel, sprat.
* 5 definitely Latinate: salmon, plaice, sole, mullet, dory.
* A staggering 4 with Germanic (often Scandinavian) roots but entering English via French - i.e., of Norman origin: mackerel, turbot, sturgeon, and flounder.
* 2 with extremely similar Old French and Old English words, such that it's hard to say what came from what: carp and trout.
* 1 Celtic: pollock.
Does this look consistent with the Norman/Saxon hypothesis?
I learned everything I know about Norman/Saxon relations from watching the old Robin Hood movie with Errol Flynn. They didn't discuss fish.
Are you sure Pollock is Celtic? I always thought it was cognate with Swedish "bleka" -- but then my pollack/saithe/coalfish discrimination is very poor. So they might be two similar words for different species.
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Someone just sent in an article referring to the Scots working class as "the battering classes". There will be trouble when I print it, but it's very funny.
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Spent the first part of yesterday evening recording a Radio 3 essay on confession, and the second part repairing the traumatised producer with gin and sushi. I think I have just got a new commission, this time to make five radio programmes about different trout/salmon flies. Ideally, these will require me to catch a fish on each. I already killed a trout on radio once. Perhaps this is my contribution to journalism.
Someone just sent in an article referring to the Scots working class as "the battering classes".
Fried fish, or each other? Works either way...
Battering classes is good.
Just fish? Haggis, sausages, the 'king rib',* the mighty Mars bar. Even pizza. No end of things to be battered. Deep fried haggis in batter is nice. Am ambivalent about most of the rest.
* some sort of boggin' reformed pork
I'm with you on the deep fried haggis. Assuming it still tastes OK if you're sober. Has anyone made this experiment? Ever?
128. How did they refer to shark in the middle ages then? They can't have been unaware of them.
Not many about in the North Sea, unless you count dogfish, which are only sharks in a taxonomical sense. Obviously not an issue before Linnean taxonomy.
Basking sharks quite a bit off the west coast, I think.
Actually, googling, there seem to be quite a bit. It seems like other species are regular seasonal visitors, or found in deeper coastal waters.
http://www.sharktrust.org/v.asp?level2=6196&depth=2&level3=6196&level2id=6196&rootid=6160&nextlevel=6196
132: It's grotesquely unfair that the Scots get mocked for deep-frying everything in sight, but when the Japanese do it it's OK because it's "tempura". I mean, yes, we deepfry pizza, but the Japanese deep-fry carrots. Enjoy your haggis tempura, ttaM.
Actually, funnily enough, twice, in Italy, I've had massive Proustian flashbacks, as Italian pizza often tastes _exactly_ like deep fried Scottish pizza. Authenticity be damned. Something about the tomato and cheese flavour which I expect is something to do with the high temperature. Very different bases [one greasy and fat saturated, one not] but the basic taste is near identical.
I already killed a trout on radio once
...just to hear him die.
Now every time I hear that Radio 3 continuity announcer
I hang my head and cry.
There's rich folks fishing
With a fancy reel and rod
They're probably drinking coffee
And trolling deep for cod
I know I had it coming
I know I can't be free
But those people keep on fishing
And that's what tortures me.
Oh, Lord, we're not going to do another Johnny Cash number, are we?
128 -- Izaak Walton says that the carp is not native to England. It is said, they were brought hither by one Mr. Mascal a Gentleman that then lived at Plumsted in Sussex, a County that abounds more with this fish than any in this Nation.
You may remember that I told you, Gesner says, there are no Pikes of Spain; and doubtless, there was a time, about a hundred or a few more years ago, when there were no Carps in England, as may seem to be affirmed by S. Richard Baker, in whose Chronicle you may find these Verses.
Hops and Turkies, Carps and Beer
Came into England all in a year.
Emerson should help us out here.
I think Izaak is wrong about this, as much else. Carp are certainly not native to England, but they are a big feature of mediaeval monastic stew ponds.
139!
Hops and Turkies, Carps and Beer
1524 by most accounts. There are many versions of that rhyme and some mention other stuff, most notably "Reformation". Kipling quotes a version in Puck of Pooks Hill that goes "Turkeys, heresy, hops and beer". Others name check Bays, which is apparently a type of cloth developed in Flanders (Don't know if it's the same as modern Baize).
What reformation, bays, beer and hops have in common is that they were imported by protestant immigrants from the Netherlands. Whether turkeys and carp came from the same source I don't know.
Interesting, looking at wiki I've actually drunk some of the revived unhopped beers. Fraoch, for example. Hadn't really occured to me that they were unhopped.
On the French/Germanic fishnames issue, where does the Chavender or Chub fit in?
Werdna, I don't know if you've heard of this, but you should put it on your list.
143. This paper (pdf) suggests carp were introduced in the late c14 and that previously fishponds had held other species. He argues that carp were introduced (probably from the Dutch) as part of the process of commercialisation of fisheries, because they're hardy and easy to keep. And that they became much more widespread at the beginning of the c16. May be bs for all I know, but plausibly written.
I was never able to drink beers just by reading wikipedia.
The tiny pond in front of our flat is full of carp. Massive things, too. It seems too small to support the population. If you throw some bread in it looks almost like you could walk from side to side without getting your feet wet. Hardy and easy to keep, definitely.
151: Pymatuning: Where ducks walk on fish. (Reservoir about an hour or so north of here.)
The Normans brought rabbits to Ireland (hares are native, though). Same principle as fish ponds.
153. Did they bring the rabbits from Normandy (where I believe they're native) or from Britain, where they were introduced by the Romans?
re: 152
Our pond gets like that. Only in a couple of meters round the epicentre of where you are dropping the food, though. The pond itself is maybe 20 metres long by 5 wide, so there's probably only a few dozen carp, give or take a few. But the boiling water and sheer number of them when you feed is impressive.
134: according to wikipedia, "Until the 16th century,[4] sharks were known to mariners as "sea dogs"."
Those are from Madingley Hall, a couple of miles west of Cambridge, close to a wonderful gastropub
Thanks for the tip, CharleyCarp, but the notion of a place called "Essex, Montana" disturbs me profoundly. It's like "Texas, Switzerland". Still, if ever I make it back to Montana, I have it on the list now. Does it serve Bongwater Ale, I wonder?
Werdna, we'll make sure you get your fill of bongwater.
(I'm quite sure they don't have it up at the Izaak, although I think they do have Moose Drool, another Missoula concoction.)
Read an interview with a cattle rancher who had switched to aquaculture. He said the daily rounds are pretty much the same. The cattle used to crowd the gate when they heard his truck (carrying feed). Now the carp crowd the end of the pond when they hear his truck (carrying feed).
The rodeo events are a little different.
The last word on this rhyme, I hope: it looks as if the original was "hops and heresie,turkey and beer", referring to Reformation doctrines. And this of cours,e Walton could not quote accurately, since it expresses a Papist sentiment. He was a strong royalist -- and suffered for it -- in the civil war; and the royalists were regarded by their opponents as crypto-Catholics. So naturally they weren't going to quote any Catholic jingles, except bwodlerised.
I suppose this is a very early example of biology being mangled for theological reasons.
134: ME for "shark" is "haye," cognate with German Haifisch.
So this is something that has really puzzled me for a long time-- what did it actually mean to be a secret Catholic in England in the 1600s?
The doctrinal differences just don't seem like enough to fight over. Was there an association with other like-minded people, sort of like Freemasonry at the time? Was the Anglican church corrupt and this was an expression of decency, like not joining the party in the old Ostblock? Is there a good social history? I've tried two of CV Wedgwood's books, but I missed it if she goes into social aspects.