Gawsh, still happy. The approaching holiday must be doing its thing. Today I am gladdened by:
- Rain! It's raining! gentle, soft, completely unseasonal summer rain which is making things misty and slightly cool, but not cold. Of course, this is further evidence of climate change and what have you, and we're all screwed, but I'm happily damp.
- Improv Everywhere. They're kind of the Non-Evil Twin of candid camera: do weird, wacky stuff that makes people unexpectedly and laterally happy.
- Chicken pot pie. I pretty much forgot to eat yesterday, besides the brownies, so wandered home and made chicken pot pie for supper. It's comfort food. Also, a really nice recipe with leeks and gammon in a creamy sauce flavoured with lemon and mustard. Happily unhealthy.
- Supernatural motel décor. I swear, those boys scour America for the most trippy, psychedelic, catastrophically ugly motel rooms imaginable by man or demon. The set designers must have a blast creating them. I'd do a list, but the mad fansites beat me to it. Some of them have truly awful themes - the orange/bullfighter one and the black and silver disco one crack me up. Happily.
- Last day at work! Despite the fact that I'm going to have to spend part of the next two weeks working on Orientation material, Holiday! holidayholidayholiday! Happy!
- Currently feeling:
determinedly upbeat
OK, upfront, I don't do kitsch. Or chintz, or pretty-pretty, or pastel, or girly, or practically anything to which can be applied the adjective "bridal" 1. All and any of the above are productive of aversion and departure or, if forced on me in an enclosed space with no exits, flinching, sneers and, in extreme cases, simulated retching. I also can't claim to possess much in the way of manual dexterity or artistic ability which, coupled with the patience of a hyperactive stoat, means I have no interest whatsoever in cake-decorating, marzipan sculpture, needlepoint, papercraft or macrame. (The knitting thing is a complete aberration and I still stoutly maintain that I only do it because I'm occasionally abducted by aliens).
Given this, it's a bit odd that I have an addiction to cake blogs. There is no student melt-down so torrid that it cannot be soothed by the application of a cup of Earl Grey and twenty minutes with Cakelava, or the CakeWrecks Sunday Sweets. This is, frankly, weird. I don't go for these elaborate occasions, I got all that out of my system with the SCA. I don't want to get married. I don't even eat a lot of cake. But I love looking at them. Mature analytic reflection suggests this might be about the following:
Given this, it's a bit odd that I have an addiction to cake blogs. There is no student melt-down so torrid that it cannot be soothed by the application of a cup of Earl Grey and twenty minutes with Cakelava, or the CakeWrecks Sunday Sweets. This is, frankly, weird. I don't go for these elaborate occasions, I got all that out of my system with the SCA. I don't want to get married. I don't even eat a lot of cake. But I love looking at them. Mature analytic reflection suggests this might be about the following:
- Sheer craft. Ye gods, these people do some beautiful work: not only the meticulous detailed production of these sculptures, but the frequent artistry of their conception. I have a particular addiction to the kind of modernist, minimalist cake that seems to be currently fashionable, all square angles and solid colours with understated detail, not fussy or chintzy at all. Also, the crazy non-Euclidian angles ones amuse me no end.
- Sheer illusion. This is food pretending to be something else. I love that. I wouldn't wear ruffles if you paid me, but a cake can wear them in sugar and make me simply happy. It's photo-real leaves or flowers or beetles or baseballs, aping the real in the medium of food. Basically they're modern-day subtleties, the equivalent of a medieval cockatrice or gingerbread castle: a trickery, a happy game of let's-pretend. (This one's from JustCake).
- Sheer profligate impermanence. I think this is the deal-clincher, the thing which for me differentiates cake sculpture from twee porcelain knick-knacks, about which I will set with a baseball bat given half a chance. After all these days and hours of loving, painstaking, polished craftsmanship, someone will dig a knife into these creations and demolish them utterly, and that's the whole point. They're all the more attractive because they're transient, because their beauty and craft are real, concrete and fleeting, lovingly crafted for a moment of splendid, celebratory recognition and then inevitable destruction. Tasty destruction.
1 I might, for example, have a sneaking attraction to the phrase "bridal massacre", or possibly "bridal zombies".
- Currently feeling:
contemplative
Gawsh. In the Department of the Inexorable Advance of Time, it's November. Hate it when that happens. It's a particularly blustery one, too. I thought that was supposed to be a Northern Hemisphere thing. Not that I mind, because strong winds make me almost as happy as rain, but damned global warming.
In other news, I have sand everywhere. We went out to the Strandloper yesterday for lunch - up the west coast in Langebaan, the mad outdoor "fish boma" where you eat ten courses of fish, no trimmings except bread and lemon, off paper plates using mussel shells as cutlery. It's all sandy and open-air under shade-cloth decorated with suitably piratical bits of fishing float, net and the largest, fattest, glossiest, best-fed gulls on the continent.
Mussels and mackerel and angelfish and stumpnose and snoek and paella and lamb stew and crayfish, oh my. And, of course, a cooler box filled with white wine and gin (and sand). Also, a rather jolly proprietor who gave us taunt-ammunition for EVAH! by warning us not to let "peaches-and-cream there" (pointing at stv) go out in the sun too much. I confidently predict that getting stv's goat by calling him "Peaches" will get old approximately never. It's righteous retribution for all the punning.
However, on the downside it was very windy and thus very sandy, leaving me with small deposits of sand in my shoes, handbag, hair, camera case, ears, teeth, and stuck to the UV blocker on my arms. I was consequently more than somewhat wind-blown, sun-crazed and totally dead last night, I stuck it out as long as I possibly could and then crawled off to bed, only realising as I switched the light off that it was actually 8pm rather than 9. Basically I'm feeble and not used to the Great Outdoors. Also, the West Coast is aggressively beautiful given that it's mostly composed of vast tracts of more-or-less flat and scrubby nothingness.
In other news, I have sand everywhere. We went out to the Strandloper yesterday for lunch - up the west coast in Langebaan, the mad outdoor "fish boma" where you eat ten courses of fish, no trimmings except bread and lemon, off paper plates using mussel shells as cutlery. It's all sandy and open-air under shade-cloth decorated with suitably piratical bits of fishing float, net and the largest, fattest, glossiest, best-fed gulls on the continent.
Mussels and mackerel and angelfish and stumpnose and snoek and paella and lamb stew and crayfish, oh my. And, of course, a cooler box filled with white wine and gin (and sand). Also, a rather jolly proprietor who gave us taunt-ammunition for EVAH! by warning us not to let "peaches-and-cream there" (pointing at stv) go out in the sun too much. I confidently predict that getting stv's goat by calling him "Peaches" will get old approximately never. It's righteous retribution for all the punning.
However, on the downside it was very windy and thus very sandy, leaving me with small deposits of sand in my shoes, handbag, hair, camera case, ears, teeth, and stuck to the UV blocker on my arms. I was consequently more than somewhat wind-blown, sun-crazed and totally dead last night, I stuck it out as long as I possibly could and then crawled off to bed, only realising as I switched the light off that it was actually 8pm rather than 9. Basically I'm feeble and not used to the Great Outdoors. Also, the West Coast is aggressively beautiful given that it's mostly composed of vast tracts of more-or-less flat and scrubby nothingness.
- Currently feeling:
Mondayish - Currently listening to:David Bowie covering Jacques Brel
I don't go out to Kalk Bay often enough. Admittedly it's a bit torridly prone to roadworks at the moment, but it's a lovely drive that on Friday evening was through a beautiful dusk, with that sort of luminous quality of bronze light on a silver-gray sea. The occasion was dinner and theatre at the Kalk Bay Theatre, which is currently putting on a production called Rump Steak, which jo&stv saw and loved in Grahamstown. This is a witty, fantastic, hilarious one-man drama which should be seen, without question, by all cooks, fans of high-class dining, lovers of physical theatre, people of any imagination whatsoever, and anyone who hasn't actually had their sense of humour surgically removed.
As an added bonus, the Kalk Bay Theatre is a completely wonderful space, both in vibe and in the actual theatre situation. It's in a converted church; the theatre itself is tiny, seating perhaps 40 people, and the restaurant is above it in a sort of gallery which looks down onto the stage. You wander in and confirm your booking, which you haven't paid for, and the nice lady behind the desk gives you slips of paper which you then put on your choice of seat. Then you go upstairs and are fed good food by cheerful staff while the ticket price and your after-show coffee all go on the bill. Good wine, not too expensive. Interesting food. Generous portion sizes, which is just as well because this isn't a show you want to see on an empty stomach.
Rump Steak is a one-man show which lasts only about an hour, and probably flattens the actor nightly even so. He's a cheerful, likeable Frenchy dude called Gaëtan Schmid, who it transpires is actually Belgian; he has manic energy, enormously quick and witty reactions and an extremely communicative physical presence. He's dressed like a French chef, he stands on a little tiled platform about a metre square, and he uses no props at all. He and a soundtrack between them construct the kitchen at an upscale French restaurant, its seven staff members, and at least three from front-of-house. He doesn't have dialogue, strictly: while he speaks almost continuously, it's almost entirely the rapid-fire names of French dishes, used marvellously evocatively as the hinge-pin indicators of event. (The soundtrack is by James Webb, of Thelema and mad pagan days - James, if you still read this blog occasionally, bloody marvellous job).
Between the incredibly evocative sound effects (chopping, frying, grating, mixing, tossing lobsters into boiling water, a possessed cocktail shaker), intensely clever use of music, a few minor lighting cues and the exertions of the actor, the characters, space and events are embodied for you, tangible and endearing, in thin air. With the precision of the actor's movements in synch with the sound-track, I swear there were moments when I could momentarily see the utensils and food. (Jo went one better: she says the first time she saw the production, she wandered out at the end vaguely thinking "Why is the guy so exhausted and sweating, there are several people in that kitchen doing all the work?" I did something similar when I found myself thinking, hmmm, the actor who plays the pâtissier isn't quite as good, it's a slightly one-dimensional role...) This transcends mime. It's a precise, clever, absorbing piece of fantastic creation which yanks the audience's imagination out, possibly via the nose with foreceps, and puts it mercilessly to work.
It's all the more appealing, particularly to someone of my known proclivities, because the production builds on that intrinsic act of imaginative participation by running with it, not just into the realistic creation of a kitchen scene, but into far freer fantastic space. The chef de cuisine, pâtissier, sauciere, slinky French waitress ("Jacqueline!") and the rest are beautifully-delineated, instantly recognisable individuals, and the mad rush of the orders and client demands are likewise real and concrete (and, I have to say, it's beautifully paced). But so are the odd fantastic bits: the grill chef's misanthropic character, giant butcher knife and dodgy relationship with the live cow he apparently keeps in the freezer; or whatever the hell it is that infests the cocktail shaker, bounces around splashing, shouts tiny, incomprehensible French abuse, and finally drives off in a car. (The actor came and chatted to us for ten minutes while we were having coffee: he says he personally thinks it's a Smurf in the cocktail shaker, but the audience is invited to make up their own minds). Above all I loved this: if you're going to embody imaginative space, why stop at actual reality? damned straight.
If you're in Cape Town, go and see this show - it's on for another week or so. No, honestly, do. Don't take my word for it: there's a preview here. And give my love to the Smurf.
As an added bonus, the Kalk Bay Theatre is a completely wonderful space, both in vibe and in the actual theatre situation. It's in a converted church; the theatre itself is tiny, seating perhaps 40 people, and the restaurant is above it in a sort of gallery which looks down onto the stage. You wander in and confirm your booking, which you haven't paid for, and the nice lady behind the desk gives you slips of paper which you then put on your choice of seat. Then you go upstairs and are fed good food by cheerful staff while the ticket price and your after-show coffee all go on the bill. Good wine, not too expensive. Interesting food. Generous portion sizes, which is just as well because this isn't a show you want to see on an empty stomach.
Rump Steak is a one-man show which lasts only about an hour, and probably flattens the actor nightly even so. He's a cheerful, likeable Frenchy dude called Gaëtan Schmid, who it transpires is actually Belgian; he has manic energy, enormously quick and witty reactions and an extremely communicative physical presence. He's dressed like a French chef, he stands on a little tiled platform about a metre square, and he uses no props at all. He and a soundtrack between them construct the kitchen at an upscale French restaurant, its seven staff members, and at least three from front-of-house. He doesn't have dialogue, strictly: while he speaks almost continuously, it's almost entirely the rapid-fire names of French dishes, used marvellously evocatively as the hinge-pin indicators of event. (The soundtrack is by James Webb, of Thelema and mad pagan days - James, if you still read this blog occasionally, bloody marvellous job).
Between the incredibly evocative sound effects (chopping, frying, grating, mixing, tossing lobsters into boiling water, a possessed cocktail shaker), intensely clever use of music, a few minor lighting cues and the exertions of the actor, the characters, space and events are embodied for you, tangible and endearing, in thin air. With the precision of the actor's movements in synch with the sound-track, I swear there were moments when I could momentarily see the utensils and food. (Jo went one better: she says the first time she saw the production, she wandered out at the end vaguely thinking "Why is the guy so exhausted and sweating, there are several people in that kitchen doing all the work?" I did something similar when I found myself thinking, hmmm, the actor who plays the pâtissier isn't quite as good, it's a slightly one-dimensional role...) This transcends mime. It's a precise, clever, absorbing piece of fantastic creation which yanks the audience's imagination out, possibly via the nose with foreceps, and puts it mercilessly to work.
It's all the more appealing, particularly to someone of my known proclivities, because the production builds on that intrinsic act of imaginative participation by running with it, not just into the realistic creation of a kitchen scene, but into far freer fantastic space. The chef de cuisine, pâtissier, sauciere, slinky French waitress ("Jacqueline!") and the rest are beautifully-delineated, instantly recognisable individuals, and the mad rush of the orders and client demands are likewise real and concrete (and, I have to say, it's beautifully paced). But so are the odd fantastic bits: the grill chef's misanthropic character, giant butcher knife and dodgy relationship with the live cow he apparently keeps in the freezer; or whatever the hell it is that infests the cocktail shaker, bounces around splashing, shouts tiny, incomprehensible French abuse, and finally drives off in a car. (The actor came and chatted to us for ten minutes while we were having coffee: he says he personally thinks it's a Smurf in the cocktail shaker, but the audience is invited to make up their own minds). Above all I loved this: if you're going to embody imaginative space, why stop at actual reality? damned straight.
If you're in Cape Town, go and see this show - it's on for another week or so. No, honestly, do. Don't take my word for it: there's a preview here. And give my love to the Smurf.
- Currently feeling: impressed
Bother. My Capacious Handbag o'Doom defaults to a sort of Shub-Niggurath configuration when my MP3 player headphones snarl up with my cellphone charger cable, my camera cable, my tape measure and the random bit of broken-off AV lead that's there because I accidentally snapped it while lugging my dad's TV around. This necessitates the drawing of Elder Signs before I can even start disentangling the tentacles sufficiently to realise that in fact the camera cable, which is the point of the whole exercise, isn't even part of the snarl, because I've packed it neatly into its case. Never be tidy, it's only ever counter-productive. (Also, on a not unrelated note and because various people keep recommending it, The Unspeakable Vault. Both creepy and cute).
I have, however, finally triumphed sufficiently to connect the camera bone to the USB bone, now hear de word of de lord, and thus upload not only some of this weekend's photos, but some of last weekend's as well. We had a Salty Cracker expedition out in the approximate Franschoek direction for lunch yesterday, Bread and Wine at the Môreson wine estate. Lovely place, slightly informal, spacious, and assiduous in moving the whole party out into the shady courtyard the instant it was warm enough to do so. Excellent wine, very good food - not up in the delirious taste experience category of Ginja or Overture, but pretty darned good. The cook makes his own somewhat marvellous charcuterie, which we had for a starter. The dessert menu includes coffee with chocolate truffles, which is simply civilised when one has already overeaten. Also, it's beautiful, and was presenting seriously lovely cloud action, thusly:
Then we came home and watched The Middleman. The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation is gratifyingly rude about sorority sisters, frequently in wicked imitation, and in the Goofy Middlemisms department gives us "Ghosts of the living!", "by the eyeglasses of T. J. Eckleburg", "Great Caesar's ghost!" and "Holy Wachowski brothers!" Bonus points for ongoing Ghostbusters references, the Second Werewolf Administration, and the obligatory Star Wars quote: "Omega Theta Nu. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Deliriously happy acronym-fu in the Bio-harmonic Universal Multi-Modular Emotional Rerouter. Love this show.
I have, however, finally triumphed sufficiently to connect the camera bone to the USB bone, now hear de word of de lord, and thus upload not only some of this weekend's photos, but some of last weekend's as well. We had a Salty Cracker expedition out in the approximate Franschoek direction for lunch yesterday, Bread and Wine at the Môreson wine estate. Lovely place, slightly informal, spacious, and assiduous in moving the whole party out into the shady courtyard the instant it was warm enough to do so. Excellent wine, very good food - not up in the delirious taste experience category of Ginja or Overture, but pretty darned good. The cook makes his own somewhat marvellous charcuterie, which we had for a starter. The dessert menu includes coffee with chocolate truffles, which is simply civilised when one has already overeaten. Also, it's beautiful, and was presenting seriously lovely cloud action, thusly:
Then we came home and watched The Middleman. The Ectoplasmic Panhellenic Investigation is gratifyingly rude about sorority sisters, frequently in wicked imitation, and in the Goofy Middlemisms department gives us "Ghosts of the living!", "by the eyeglasses of T. J. Eckleburg", "Great Caesar's ghost!" and "Holy Wachowski brothers!" Bonus points for ongoing Ghostbusters references, the Second Werewolf Administration, and the obligatory Star Wars quote: "Omega Theta Nu. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Deliriously happy acronym-fu in the Bio-harmonic Universal Multi-Modular Emotional Rerouter. Love this show.
- Currently feeling:
Mondayish - Currently listening to:David Bowie, Outside
We invented a new game on Friday night, possibly because we were delirious on Up, chenin blanc and the Jewel Tavern's crispy duck with pancakes and three-cup pork spare rib. The diversion grew out of our so far extremely successful (on one outing thus far) DVD club, with two movies chosen by theme, for a given value of "theme". Jo's point was that with only two data points, it's actually possible to find a thematic link between any two films. Any at all. Mostly because Hollywood's repertoire tends to the limited and cliché-ridden. This, of course, fired us with insane enthusiasm, resulting in a rapid-fire series of increasingly unlikely pairs, most of which we subsequently reduced to common theme with no trouble at all. ("Untouchables and Incredibles!" "Heroism. Duh." Dirty Dancing and Terminator gave us a bit of trouble, though. Still not happy with any drunkenly mangled thematics we came up with).
Stv is, of course, particularly good at this. Viz:
Jo (drunkenly): ..."OK, Ghost and... Star Wars!"
Stv (immediately): "If you kill me, I shall become stronger than you can possibly imagine!"
Table: *collapses*
I recommend this innocent pastime to you film buffs out there. It's extremely entertaining, even without the alcohol.
In other news, I am very full of food, and have been since Friday night. The week only gets worse. I have taken to adopting Jo's mad regimen of hot water, although my impulse is to put lemon in it. I suspect it's the bit where I don't allow any actual food to pass my lips until the next dinner party that will actually make a difference. Since I'm committed for Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday I doubt I'll starve. However, I have also been unable to continue with the Middlemania on the grounds of my pressing social obligations. Pshaw.
Stv is, of course, particularly good at this. Viz:
Jo (drunkenly): ..."OK, Ghost and... Star Wars!"
Stv (immediately): "If you kill me, I shall become stronger than you can possibly imagine!"
Table: *collapses*
I recommend this innocent pastime to you film buffs out there. It's extremely entertaining, even without the alcohol.
In other news, I am very full of food, and have been since Friday night. The week only gets worse. I have taken to adopting Jo's mad regimen of hot water, although my impulse is to put lemon in it. I suspect it's the bit where I don't allow any actual food to pass my lips until the next dinner party that will actually make a difference. Since I'm committed for Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday I doubt I'll starve. However, I have also been unable to continue with the Middlemania on the grounds of my pressing social obligations. Pshaw.
- Currently feeling: amused
- Currently listening to:shuffle whiplash: Radiohead, then Spandau Ballet. Why do I even have any SB?
When I was eight years old I gave up biting my nails. I remember the occasion quite vividly: one day I looked down at my nibbled-at hands, thought "that's ugly, I should stop that", and did so. I haven't bitten them since. This suggests that, while in later life my willpower seems to be a small, mad, fluffy thing crouched on a rock in the depths of my subconscious, refusing to stir when prodded with sticks, technically it does exist and should be in there somewhere. Consequently, in a spirit of enquiry, a few days ago I randomly decided to give up saying "fuck", just to see if I could - while I have a just appreciation for its Anglo-Saxon bluntness, I lard my conversation with it far too heavily, and occasionally can't help using it in a professional context, upon which people look at me sideways. So far so good - I've involuntarily uttered it once in the last three days, and that while slightly sloshed. I shall watch my own progress with interest.
The weekend seems to have been a bit of a mad social whirl. We (jo&stv and Evil Landlord and I) took my mother out for lunch to Overture on Saturday, as a thank-you for her entirely saintly energies in looking after my dad. She is an Amazing Person, TM, and richly deserved Overture's view, good-humoured and attentive staff (the manager was hilarious), flowly-freeing wine, kick-butt pumpkin risotto, hake with mussels, and pork belly with pork rillette beignet, the latter pretentious-sounding concoction being a sort of pork stuffing in a thin deep-fried pastry baggie, and frankly delectable. She possibly didn't richly deserve the lunacy levels of the conversation, but hopefully it was at least entertaining.
The EL has also recently had the counter in the dining room flung out and replaced with a fitted version with room for the bar 'fridge, and in the course of unpacking the old cupboards and repacking the new we found no less than four bottles of champagne. This means we lugged two of them plus the Cointreau over to jo&stv's for potjie last night, and made French 75s (Cointreau, gin, champagne, lemon, hold the sugar, I like them dry). These are evil. In a good way. And get you very sloshed very quickly. Then again, it's been a hellish couple of weeks and I think I deserved to get slightly drunk and almost say "fuck" several times. But only almost!
Now, onward! to arrange internet connectivity for my dad at his new frail care institution, into which he moves on Friday.![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
friendly_shrink's nice husband has, bless him, sorted out the Windows install problem on dad's computer by giving me a legal copy, and I am fiendishly scheming to persuade the Evil Landlord to let me install an ADSL line, so I can hijack the Iburst and haul it over there for Dad. Since this entails allowing Telkom over our threshold, I may be making a hell of a lot of creme caramel in the next few weeks. Will the Evil Landlord accept Telkom sweetened with creme caramel? News at 11!
The weekend seems to have been a bit of a mad social whirl. We (jo&stv and Evil Landlord and I) took my mother out for lunch to Overture on Saturday, as a thank-you for her entirely saintly energies in looking after my dad. She is an Amazing Person, TM, and richly deserved Overture's view, good-humoured and attentive staff (the manager was hilarious), flowly-freeing wine, kick-butt pumpkin risotto, hake with mussels, and pork belly with pork rillette beignet, the latter pretentious-sounding concoction being a sort of pork stuffing in a thin deep-fried pastry baggie, and frankly delectable. She possibly didn't richly deserve the lunacy levels of the conversation, but hopefully it was at least entertaining.
The EL has also recently had the counter in the dining room flung out and replaced with a fitted version with room for the bar 'fridge, and in the course of unpacking the old cupboards and repacking the new we found no less than four bottles of champagne. This means we lugged two of them plus the Cointreau over to jo&stv's for potjie last night, and made French 75s (Cointreau, gin, champagne, lemon, hold the sugar, I like them dry). These are evil. In a good way. And get you very sloshed very quickly. Then again, it's been a hellish couple of weeks and I think I deserved to get slightly drunk and almost say "fuck" several times. But only almost!
Now, onward! to arrange internet connectivity for my dad at his new frail care institution, into which he moves on Friday.
friendly_shrink's nice husband has, bless him, sorted out the Windows install problem on dad's computer by giving me a legal copy, and I am fiendishly scheming to persuade the Evil Landlord to let me install an ADSL line, so I can hijack the Iburst and haul it over there for Dad. Since this entails allowing Telkom over our threshold, I may be making a hell of a lot of creme caramel in the next few weeks. Will the Evil Landlord accept Telkom sweetened with creme caramel? News at 11!- Currently feeling:
Mondayish - Currently listening to:still with the David Byrne/Brian Eno
Wheeee! four-day weekend. This is not a job I want in the long-term if I feel so good about a minor break from it. Said four-day break was ideally ushered in by a slightly belated Salty Cracker last night at Cargill's, which is warm and small and intimate and slightly off-beat, and provides truly excellent food. Including duck. Eventually my Seekrit Mission to have ranked the duck in every restaurant in Cape Town will be accomplished. (Cargill's is currently in the top 3).
On the even further upside, my Thursday was utterly made by the Pajiba report on the latest bit of gossip from the Sherlock Holmes movie, featuring the slashy pairing of RDJ with Jude Law, together with an unbelievably oblivious and bigoted response to same. The tone of the Pajiba article is wonderful - that's quality sarcasm, that is. The comments are also enormously entertaining and not a little scurrilous. Also, I'll be in my bunk.
Am I alone, incidentally, in finding a slashy subtext to Sherlock Holmes entirely inevitable from the Conan Doyle originals? Holmes is such a desperately iconoclastic eccentric, I don't think it would surprise me to find that his list of indulgences included Turkish boys and flogging as well as cocaine and the violin.
On the even further upside, my Thursday was utterly made by the Pajiba report on the latest bit of gossip from the Sherlock Holmes movie, featuring the slashy pairing of RDJ with Jude Law, together with an unbelievably oblivious and bigoted response to same. The tone of the Pajiba article is wonderful - that's quality sarcasm, that is. The comments are also enormously entertaining and not a little scurrilous. Also, I'll be in my bunk.
Am I alone, incidentally, in finding a slashy subtext to Sherlock Holmes entirely inevitable from the Conan Doyle originals? Holmes is such a desperately iconoclastic eccentric, I don't think it would surprise me to find that his list of indulgences included Turkish boys and flogging as well as cocaine and the violin.
- Currently feeling:
wheeee! four-day weekend
Two things I realise I love, God wot: (a) hanging around with geeks, and (b) the Oxford English Dictionary. The other day at Jo's game Jean made a beef cobbler for supper: that's the supremely British dish with a sort of stewey thing topped with scone dough. It's all the best kinds of British cold-weather stodgy goodness, with a side order of self-indulgence and arteries-going-clang. Fired with emulatory1 enthusiasm, I constructed one last night and presented it to the Evil Landlord for supper. He did his usual suspicious-German act, prodded it a bit, muttered things about misshapen alien fungi over bubbling lava pits, and then demanded to know why it was called a cobbler. I hazarded a guess that it was something to do with being cobbled together haphazardly out of bits. Then, being fundamentally a geek, I researched it.
The OED is generally a dry, wordy, knowledgeable god, although actually not entirely to be trusted on cooking terms. (Mad SCA cooks are often able to spot mis-attributions, misunderstandings and, quite often, earlier cites than those the OED has dredged up for certain medieval cooking terms). For a start, the OED has no idea where the term originates, and spurns with a slightly inexplicable disdain the notion of a root verb meaning "to join". Apparently a cobbler is also "a drink made of wine, sugar, lemon, and pounded ice, and imbibed through a straw or other tube", which strikes me as being a recipe for sweet, sweet, hiccuping drunkenness. (Dickens refers to "sherry cobbler", which has to be murder through a straw). The OED food definition, however, cites only the fruit version, with an 1859 cite describing "A sort of pie, baked in a pot lined with dough of great thickness, upon which the fruit is placed; according to the fruit, it is an apple or a peach cobbler". Subsequent examples reflect the more modern version, which has inverted it so that the dough (still of great thickness) goes on top. This food history page finds an earlier cite (1839), still American and fruity rather than meaty.
The failure of the OED to reflect the actually very common English usage for a dough-topped stew or casserole is, I have to say, fairly characteristic. So now I am left sort of semi-informed, and with a terrible urge to go and acquire a bunch of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookbooks so I can track the damned thing down definitively. (It's not in Mrs. Beeton. Phooey. And I forgot to dig through Elizabeth David last night, owing to thing.) I have a deep, dark, partisan sort of feeling that the British meat cobbler predates the American fruit cobbler, but I may simply be prejudiced.
Today's entry in Random Ginormous Fantasy Series Month is a sort of semi-diss, mostly because I recently re-read it and it didn't stand up at all well. Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series was one of my huge favourites when I was a young, naive Masters student. It's a terribly post-Tolkienien fantasy realm, complete with Elves, Dwarves and Sauron-analogues, with additional world-hopping by people from our world. It's rather nicely rooted in Celtic and Arthurian mythology, including gods, and Kay is pleasingly able to off main characters satisfyingly and inevitably when the plot calls for it. But, ye gods! the man's writing style! It's an early work of his and I didn't find the same degree of irritation in his most recent one, Ysabel, which I really enjoyed; but Fionavar is all about the Torrid! Portentuous! Adjectival! Overwriting!, mostly in great crumbling flights of sentences all starting with "And". Emotionally overwrought doesn't even begin to cover it. Thank the borrowed Celtic gods he Got Better. And it's a great pity, because the world of the series is beautiful, compelling and mythically rich.
In a nutshell: elves, dwarves, goblins, Big Bad Evil, epic battle, epic romance, loss, love, rape, seduction, politics. Emotionally overwrought. Sexy gods and goddesses, sex with same, resulting conflicted half-gods. Dragons, heroes, seers, kings, princes, monsters, thundering herds of sort of deer. Doomed love triangles across time and space. Emotionally overwrought.
The OED is generally a dry, wordy, knowledgeable god, although actually not entirely to be trusted on cooking terms. (Mad SCA cooks are often able to spot mis-attributions, misunderstandings and, quite often, earlier cites than those the OED has dredged up for certain medieval cooking terms). For a start, the OED has no idea where the term originates, and spurns with a slightly inexplicable disdain the notion of a root verb meaning "to join". Apparently a cobbler is also "a drink made of wine, sugar, lemon, and pounded ice, and imbibed through a straw or other tube", which strikes me as being a recipe for sweet, sweet, hiccuping drunkenness. (Dickens refers to "sherry cobbler", which has to be murder through a straw). The OED food definition, however, cites only the fruit version, with an 1859 cite describing "A sort of pie, baked in a pot lined with dough of great thickness, upon which the fruit is placed; according to the fruit, it is an apple or a peach cobbler". Subsequent examples reflect the more modern version, which has inverted it so that the dough (still of great thickness) goes on top. This food history page finds an earlier cite (1839), still American and fruity rather than meaty.
The failure of the OED to reflect the actually very common English usage for a dough-topped stew or casserole is, I have to say, fairly characteristic. So now I am left sort of semi-informed, and with a terrible urge to go and acquire a bunch of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cookbooks so I can track the damned thing down definitively. (It's not in Mrs. Beeton. Phooey. And I forgot to dig through Elizabeth David last night, owing to thing.) I have a deep, dark, partisan sort of feeling that the British meat cobbler predates the American fruit cobbler, but I may simply be prejudiced.
Today's entry in Random Ginormous Fantasy Series Month is a sort of semi-diss, mostly because I recently re-read it and it didn't stand up at all well. Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series was one of my huge favourites when I was a young, naive Masters student. It's a terribly post-Tolkienien fantasy realm, complete with Elves, Dwarves and Sauron-analogues, with additional world-hopping by people from our world. It's rather nicely rooted in Celtic and Arthurian mythology, including gods, and Kay is pleasingly able to off main characters satisfyingly and inevitably when the plot calls for it. But, ye gods! the man's writing style! It's an early work of his and I didn't find the same degree of irritation in his most recent one, Ysabel, which I really enjoyed; but Fionavar is all about the Torrid! Portentuous! Adjectival! Overwriting!, mostly in great crumbling flights of sentences all starting with "And". Emotionally overwrought doesn't even begin to cover it. Thank the borrowed Celtic gods he Got Better. And it's a great pity, because the world of the series is beautiful, compelling and mythically rich.In a nutshell: elves, dwarves, goblins, Big Bad Evil, epic battle, epic romance, loss, love, rape, seduction, politics. Emotionally overwrought. Sexy gods and goddesses, sex with same, resulting conflicted half-gods. Dragons, heroes, seers, kings, princes, monsters, thundering herds of sort of deer. Doomed love triangles across time and space. Emotionally overwrought.
1 Why does that sound as though it should have something to do with emus?
- Currently feeling:
somewhat grumpy, actually
I do love extended birthdays. Celebrations for mine this year started yesterday, owing to smoczek having the brilliant idea of using my birthday as an excuse to go back to Overture, which the Salty Cracker Club loved. So I was hauled out there for a birthday lunch with smoczek and maxbarners and the Evil Landlord and the friendly_shrink and her Internet Romance, now Internet Husband, and fed royally. Also wined a lot. You can do the Overture meal with wine by the course, and they give you a large glass of wine with each dish, impeccably tuned to the food, and fill it up if you ask. (Jo asked. Naturally). They are also remarkably understanding if you turn down the aforementioned impeccably chosen pairing, as I did, on the grounds that you can't stand muscadel and would rather have port, which they cheerfully supply.
The food was wonderful. The food is always wonderful. The waiter's mastery of the lifted eyebrow when Jo ordered pork belly for dessert was commendable. The company was perfect. Probably the best part of it all, though, was the view.
and:
and Jo, hauntingly backlit:
Memo to self: take mother there while she's visiting. It's the perfect excuse.
smoczek having the brilliant idea of using my birthday as an excuse to go back to Overture, which the Salty Cracker Club loved. So I was hauled out there for a birthday lunch with smoczek and maxbarners and the Evil Landlord and the friendly_shrink and her Internet Romance, now Internet Husband, and fed royally. Also wined a lot. You can do the Overture meal with wine by the course, and they give you a large glass of wine with each dish, impeccably tuned to the food, and fill it up if you ask. (Jo asked. Naturally). They are also remarkably understanding if you turn down the aforementioned impeccably chosen pairing, as I did, on the grounds that you can't stand muscadel and would rather have port, which they cheerfully supply.The food was wonderful. The food is always wonderful. The waiter's mastery of the lifted eyebrow when Jo ordered pork belly for dessert was commendable. The company was perfect. Probably the best part of it all, though, was the view.
and:
and Jo, hauntingly backlit:
Memo to self: take mother there while she's visiting. It's the perfect excuse.
- Currently feeling: replete
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