At the moment there’s not much to take pictures of around here except snow. What happens when it reaches the upstairs level? It would be an ideal time to paint the house, I suppose. No scaffolding required. We can tunnel our way over to the goats.
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A Bad Guide 
We’ve just lost the last of ours. A centimeter or so this morning, but that was gone along with everything else by afternoon.
Only the mountains scooped together in parkinglots left now.
Wee calf weighs 44 kg now. No pictures yet.
The crocuses were unbuttoning themselves in the sun here today.
At long last he turns off the tube and thinks of us, hungry for some word of the goats.
I second Nijma’s words!!
What took you so long?
His folk are away, so while we pine for goats, he has decided to go to seed.
(Shall we speculate on whether he has shaved?)
Now your window pane has become a retaining wall. Has an enginnered checked that it was properly designed, so that it doesn’t burst?
Is your picture a colour one or is it in black and white? I love colour photos that are almost like black and white* photos.
* I know it’s silly, but I can’t stand it when people talk of “white and black photos”. Am I normal? “Manichéen” maybe.
an enginnered
One can wonder if this animal belongs to the caprine family or what.
We’ve had enginnereds come and look at (or, at least, through) all the downstairs windows. It was their idea to use them as retaining walls.
Am I normal?
Define normal, but no, Sig, it’s unusual to name yourself after the rabbitfish.
I shave during the commercials.
I know it’s silly, but I can’t stand it when people talk of “white and black photos”.
Do they? Either I’ve never heard this, or I’ve suppressed the memory.
It’s funny, in Spanish we say “blanco y negro” (white and black), and I would hate “negro y blanco”.
Perhaps it has something to do with the sound “bl” that has to be first.
(¿Se entiende algo mi inglés?)
http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/03/02/crew-rescues-goats-icy-pond-hadley-farm-pets-had-strayed-lake-wa?SESSf793588a8482ac7b45e5aa116b4d4c76=gsearch
Goats rescued right here in Hadley! Read all about it!
Well I’d love to, but they want me to take out a subscription before they’ll allow me to read it.
LH: Do they?
Yes, I remember my mother saying “blanc et noir”.
Julia: and I would hate “negro y blanco”
Ah! somebody who understands me!
But I’m quite surprised, if not shocked, that English does not seem to bother about the acceptation that manichéen can have in French. According to thefreedictionary.com, or to Merriam-Webster, Manichean can only be the followers of Manes, or something related to Manichaeism, while manichéen can also relate to somebody who sees things only in terms of good and evil, light and darkness,
white and blackblack and white, without any grey shade — unlike what is visible on the above picture.“Black and White” is whisky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_&_White_(whisky)
they want me to take out a subscription
Try this; it worked for me.
Manichean is perfectly fine English in that same sense. Applicable to Star Wars or Bush 43.
Oh, thank you, M. Yes, that worked fine.
“Everyone was doing what people do in Hadley,” he said. “It’s a farming community, and we take that just as seriously as if it was a human. I think we’re lucky.”
What fun that there’s a thirty-goat petting zoo in Hadley–well, twenty-nine now, but they did their best. Poor goats. They will be very grateful for being rescued and won’t forget the help they got, I’m quite sure of that.
“Black and White” is whisky.
It is claimed to be most successful in France, Venezuela, and Brazil. At present, the brand is not used within the United Kingdom.
Scotch drinkers to a man (woman). I can’t say I’m dying to try it.
Black and white photos (or films) = des photos (ou des films) en noir et blanc
it is written in black and white = c’est écrit noir sur blanc (= it is plain for everyone to see)
“Black and White” is whisky.
Dearieme, you are Scottish, aren’t you?
But this isn’t a single malt whisky.
“Black and tan” is pale ale and Guinness, a great favorite of Chicago’s Southside Irish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_Tan
If you want a chase, you can chase it with Jameson’s whiskey.
The photo is …evocative. The trees especially. And the contrast between inside where it’ s warm and the crispness of the snowbank ridge. The photo has sound more than anything. The quiet of the woods and maybe a little creaking of branches in the wind. But mostly quietness, the way a snow like that damps all the sound.
When I was little, we had a “Black and White” jug with a picture of the two scotties, I don’t know if it’s still around.
Black and white is schwarzweiß in German, but I’m sure you knew that.
Boisvert has about 20 goats, which are kept as pets. The farm operates a petting zoo in the summer, he said.
Sounds like the parties I used to go to, long time back.
Nij: the way a snow like that damps all the sound.
Yes it does. We recently had a visitor, a Polish guy who lives in New York, and he said he loved the crunching noise here of the snow compacting beneath his feet. It reminded him of Poland, he said. He didn’t hear it in New York, I’m not sure why not.
He didn’t hear it in New York, I’m not sure why not.
Maybe in urban New York it is more what Québécois call “la slosh”, i.e. half-melted snow that looks like apple compote*.
* Is the English compote different from la compote? Une compote de pomme is more or less like mashed pommes de terre (for me at least). All individual fruits have disappeared and it looks like a purée. In this definition it seems that the fruits are still there, being only “stewed or cooked in syrup”. Is it really the case?
It also seems that compote is an exam in Scotland!
It is my understanding that a compote is just fruit cooked in sugar ( / syrup / juice). I believe that modern French recipes tend to run the result through a chinoise or mix it with a hand blender. And American recipes tend to leave more of the original shape (though the cooking will have broken the fruit down pretty well). But I’m not sure that is essential to the meaning.
Apple may be a bad test case, because at some point in English it becomes apple sauce. So take pears. I know that pear compote is pear compote whether you purée it or not. Is it compote de poires only if you do, or is that just what you’re likely to do?
Snow has to be a certain temperature to crunch. I had forgotten about the crunching sound. It doesn’t seem to crunch in the city, maybe it’s already compacted or maybe it’s mixed with too much salt and oil from the streets. Or maybe there’s just too much ambient noise.
I’ve always wondered how (etymologically) compote is related to compost.
We don’t make compote, we make crisp. Apple crisp, rhubarb crisp.
Compositum is something composed. It referred to a variety of things put together according to a recipe, and, in particular, fruit preserves (later stewed fruit generally) and sauerkraut (etc). And a similar sort of organic mixture intended to break down in the garden. Both the culinary and gardening senses entered English as compost. The former sense later became compôte in imitation of the French version of the same Latin word.
Thanks. That’s right, I thought there was a circumflex in there. That’s what had made me think they must be the same.
In the parts of Brussels where I live and work, the snow was satisfactorily crunchy, I think it also depends on whether you are the first person to walk along there.
As to “compote de pommes” (it doesn’t seem to have a circumflex nowadays, we need to ask m-l), here you can buy it in a glass “avec morceaux” or “sans morceaux”, so the word obviously covers both. Not so in German, where “Kompott” only means fruit stewed with sugar, if the result has been blended or mashed up in any way, it’s “Mus”.
So is “apple crisp” like “apple crumble”?
I suspect “crisp” is American and “crumble” English; I’m not certain if they are 100% the same. Eplemos in Norway is stewed apple.
Compote: I say and write “compote” without a circumflex or the pronunciation that goes with it, and I don’t think I have ever seen “compôte” in a French text, or heard it from a French person. But it may still be an older or regional form.
French “compote de pommes” is thick apple sauce, always slightly sweetened. Perhaps in some areas it is as Bruessel describes, but whether homemade or storebought (there are a number of brands available in France) I only know it as smooth. Another compote I like is “compote de rhubarbe”, where generally the rhubarb segments are unrecognizable although the fibers can sometimes be seen. I make that one at home, just rhubarb with a little water and some sugar.
But it is not the same for all fruits: if you buy “compote d’abricots” you get stewed apricot halves.
Crunchy snow: it also might depend on the surrounding noise.
Apple crisp. Recipe(not my handwriting).
Compote de pommes avec morceaux: http://www.domaine-des-arches.com/vmchk/les-compotes/48-compote-de-pomme-avec-morceaux.html
(other brands are available).
Thanks for the recipe. That certainly looks like a variation on apple crumble.
Oh, thank you for all the recipes. I love apple desserts (and rhubarb).
One of the desserts I enjoyed most in Britain was rhubarb crumble. I had never eaten it before and I don’t think I ate it ever after. :-(
French “compote de pommes” is thick apple sauce
That’s how I understand it too, and that’s why I use the compote analogy to describe the consistency of partly-melted snow. (I’m an expert in snow, you see. In Mauritius we have 999 different words to describe it.)
what Québécois call “la slosh”, i.e. half-melted snow that looks like apple compote
It is the English word slush.
Of course, and “perhaps of Scandinavian and akin to Norwegian slask” says thefreedictionary.com, who quotes the AHD. (The Collins Dictionary speaks of Danish slus and Norwegian slusk). What is funny, though, is that people from Québec have derived their own French word from the English one, when for instance they say “dans un mois, tout cette slosh ne sera plus qu’un mauvais souvenir”. (But there is also a variant of slush that is written slosh in English.)
Slask & slusk in Norwegian both mean a lazy person, like a tramp or a bum, it doesn’t mean “slush”, which is sørpe. “Slosh” is a verb only, liquid sloshes around creating small waves, like when the tea in an over-full cup sloshes over when you move the cup. When I was a child there was a very old cockney man called Bill James; he was a very nice man who had fought in WW1, and he had a bicycle shop, W.A. James, next door to my mother’s café in the Portobello Road in London. Mr James called a cup of tea “a cup o’ splosh”–to splosh being the noise a liquid makes when it hits a cup.
I don’t know if there is a real French equivalent to slush (most of the snow falls on the mountains, which are in areas which until recently spoke other languages, such as Occitan varieties and Lorrain), so it is not surprising that the English word was adopted/adapted into Québec French.
This quotation from P. G. Wodehouse indicates a slangy British sense of slosh that I have not found in a dictionary:
“Every impulse urged me to give the little snurge six of the best with a bludgeon. But, you can’t very well slosh a child who has just lost his eyebrows. Besides, I had no bludgeon.”
(“Joy in the Morning” 1947)
It’s in The Cassell Dictionary of Slang as [late 19 C+] “to hit.”
See also here, where New Century’s sense 4 has a quotation that might involve a pun on the “hit” meaning.
A slosh on the head is a noun, then. I’d forgotten it, but I might easily still say it, I think.
“Slosh” is a verb only, liquid sloshes around creating small waves, like when the tea in an over-full cup sloshes over when you move the cup.
In my copy of the Collins English Dictionary:
slosh Noun
1. Watery mud, snow, etc.
2. British slang. A heavy blow.
3. The sound of splashing liquid.
4. A popular dance with a traditional routine of steps, kicks, and turns performed in lines.
Oh well, yes, there’s the dance. Very popular, the slosh dance is. I often take my wife slosh dancing.