Of all the goats Vesla has the finest wool. Usually the younger the goat the finer and softer the wool – the best mohair comes from one-year-olds – but Vesla is an exception: she’s the oldest by a year, the smallest by a good 20 cm, and the finest (where wool is concerned).
Of Holly and Misty, Holly (right) has finer wool.
Misty’s is more greasy which is why it’s darker, and it’s rough to the touch in places – lately it has become matted, almost like dreadlocks.
It’s still lovely wool, much finer than sheep wool.
Of course it varies over the body. This is Holly’s ear where, even when it’s just been sheared, you can still see it’s fineness.
The rest isn’t bad either.
I don’t think Misty cares one way or the other about wool quality.
I’ve always thought Misty was the prettiest. My daughter says Holly’s prettier. Holly has blue eyes, which is quite unusual for a goat.
But Misty has has very kind eyes.
A Bad Guide 
I’ve always said that when the beautiful one of our two cats dies, I’ll have him made into a winter hat for me. My daughter hates the remark, but what better way to enjoy the pleasure of his company?
If you die first, what could he have?
I wouldn’t mind being stuffed, like Jeremy Bentham, but it’s a bit of an imposition to expect people to dust or polish one for eternity. They could just hang my head over the fireplace.
We are trying to choose just the right slab of polished stone for a countertop. At this point my wife is so obsessed with the matter that she sees our cat (who has subtle grey stripy swirls) as made of granite.
Whoops! My laptop gave my real name, because I used it elsewhere yesterday and forgot to change back. No problem. I like both of my names.
(nobody can see me now)
You can always xerox your cat, if you want to show the dealer but don’t feel your cat would want to accompany you there. It’s harder to photocopy a goat, because of their weight on the machine, so I have to take photographs. Then the challenge is getting the picture at exactly full scale all over.
That’s a great idea, dearieme!
I would never want to be transformed into a kind of trophy. This would be my worst nightmare: my despicable figure at everybody’s sight for years to come! What a torment!
Empty would know that to xerox a cat it isn’t neither an easy job.
AJP, we need similar pictures of the girls so we can judge and resolve which one of them will get de golden apple.
“If you die first, what could he have?” He could have my kilt to sleep on.
Misty? Not Sylvia?
(And please change null’s misposts. I don’t like having my illusions burst like that – or filled, I guess, in this case.)
Ok, I’ve changed them, he’s back to being Empty.
AJP, we need similar pictures of the girls
I don’t want them judged (except by me). Let’s just say Vesla is the cutest, Holly is the prettiest and Misty is the smartest.
Dearie, do you often wear a kilt? I think I may get one.
I own a kilt, but I haven’t had occasion to wear it in decades.
It occurs to me that this cat of ours is quite versatile: when we’re not seeing granite in her pelt, we see her spirit in a Christmas tree.
When living on the Newmarket Road, deep in another century, in walking home of an evening, I crossed a patch of Midsummer Common upon which, every temperate day at dusk, a fellow in a kilt played wonderfully, at length, on bagpipes.
It was a pleasure for passers-by, but there was also the unmistakeable impression he was playing there because forbidden to do so at his digs.
In my undergraduate days (this was at Hahvahd) the “master” of the “house” where I lived (this was a maybe sort of semi-retired professor of something, with a Scottish surname) decided to take up the highland pipes. He, too, chose to practice in the open: in his penthouse garden, on the roof of the eight-story building where we lived. I don’t know that he wore his kilt every time, but he had one.
“Misty is the smartest”
That’s cruel. She’s the prettiest too.
Men! They don’t understand anything!
And least of all a girl’s feeling: who would like to be the smartest in a trio where the others are qualified by their beauty?
“Dearie, do you often wear a kilt? ” My daughter’s first full and interesting sentence was “Daddy’s too fat for his kilt.” So sad: I have the calfs for it, you know.
darieme, come to Nova Scotia, where it is not unusual for men to wear kilts on ceremonial occasions, and even more often. At the Halifax Market one of the regular craftspeople, apparently a smith (he does ornamental ironwork), always wears a kilt.
Ø, what clan is your kilt, is it the same as your name? I’m not Scottish, so I think I’ll get the most attractive looking tartan. My great grandmother was a Gordon, so I might just go with that. If I were learning to play the bagpipes I don’t think I’d do it from the rooftops.
Julia, I’m glad you think Misty’s the prettiest. No one else thinks that but you and me. It is between Holly & Misty, though. Vesla is unquestionably the cute one.
What else does the smith in Halifax market wear besides a kilt? I see him in a white tanktop, like the caber tosser on the Scott’s Oats packet.
You were in Cambridge, but mention of Newmarket (home of one of the world’s best sausages) reminds me of this little house I just saw for sale.
Ø, what clan is your kilt, is it the same as your name? I’m not Scottish, so I think I’ll get the most attractive looking tartan. My great grandmother was a Gordon, so I might just go with that.
That’s the way to do it. When I went into a shop in Edinburgh’s “Royal Mile”, where the tourists order their kilts, the people were able to pick a clan for me based on my surname, but this process did not feel very authentic to me. I suspect that my ancestors in Fife did not belong to a clan in any meaningful sense. I am fairly sure that if I hadn’t liked the tartan that the shop people showed me I would have just ignored it and gone with what looked good, as if I would have done in any case if my name had been Olney or Perkins or Kleinspehn.
I honestly don’t remember which clan’s tartan I got, but it might have been MacDonald.
If I were learning to play the bagpipes I don’t think I’d do it from the rooftops.
It is fundamentally an outdoor instrument. Perhaps one advantage of doing it from the rooftops is that you don’t have to look your unwilling listeners in the eye.
My mother was sentimental about kilts – Lord knows why, she was a Lowlander too. So she first dressed us in Hunting Douglas (I think it was) on grounds of locality, and then later MacLaren – taken from a list she consulted. And so as an adult I bought MacL aren too. No man lightly annoys his mother. Do you think my daughter might object less if I bought a new kilt and later had our beautiful cat made into a sporran for it?
What else does the smith in Halifax market wear besides a kilt? I see him in a white tanktop
I have not paid much attention, but I think it is a white T-shirt. He used to wear an obviously home-made kind of pleated skirt in a material that couldn’t stay properly pleated, but I guess his business must have improved as he now wears what looks like a regular kilt (they are quite expensive). He also wears white high socks with tartan tops matching the kilt. I have never talked to him, but some of my friends know him.
About the “right” tartan, I remember reading that if you didn’t have a clan you could always use one of the Royal Stuart versions.
Yes, but I’m very anti-royal, so I wouldn’t want to look like one of them. Perhaps I could make an anti-Stuart tartan, a negative version in complementary colours.
Dearie, that sounds reasonable, I had my doubts that you were a hat wearer. Perhaps you could have a leather sporran with your cat kind of peaking out of it with its front paws. That way there might be enough left over from the back to make a Davy Crocket hat too.
Ø, these days I expect it’s possible to make virtual bagpipes to train on. A chanter (if that’s the right word) and a pair of headphones should do the trick.
While living in Victoria (BC) in the 80’s, I shared a house for a few months with a couple, the male part of which was of Scottish origin and played the bass drum (worn on the belly) in the Victoria Pipe Band. When a performance was coming up, the whole band (perhaps 8 or 10 musicians) would come to the house and rehearse in the living room. I had never seen or heard so many bagpipes together, usually they are one or two. Plenty of sound!
Artur,
A thousand thank-yous for the exceedingly tantalizing real estate tip.
When living on the Newmarket Road (directly across from the Star Brewery, conveniently enough), one was dimly aware that an abundance of sausages and racecourses lay just up the way, but as is the custom of benighted youth, one seems always to have been looking in the wrong direction.
But that property to which you have now generously directed us appears superb, and were it not for the fact that transporting our rapidly-fossilizing bone-assemblages, with all due trepidation, down the crumbling hillside even as far as the noisy speedway in front of our present domicile represents what sometimes seems an overwhelming degree of difficulty… we’d be off sharpish.
The advantages would be almost too numerous to list. Built in 1851, to start with — that would make the place several centuries newer than our present mouldering pile.
The exterior ivy looks to be an infant strain, nothing so comprehensive as the massive ivy-forest which presently clings to all exterior (and perhaps, who knows, as the vision is mercifully fading, some interior) surfaces, here.
Alarm system, mod-cons, built-in storage cupboards, display shelves, fitted ash base eye level kitchen units (no idea what those are, but they do sound rather fine in comparison with our present rock cavern with portable floor bucket and wall-hooks), hardwood worktop with tiled splashbacks (are those for visiting fowl, perhaps, to refresh before being cooked?), fitted dishwasher, Bosch four ring gas hob (not Hieronymus’s invention, one presumes?), Bosch fitted oven with extractor hood, microwave, tiled floor, recessed ceiling downlights, fitted blind and part glazed door to rear garden, bath with fully tiled surround, shower over and glass shower screen, wash basin inset into corian top with cherry vanity unit below and fitted wall mirror and storage cupboards above, wc, heated towel rail, shaver point, recessed ceiling downlights, vinyl floor, access to roof space and utility cupboard with plumbing for a washing machine and space for a tumble dryer… the glories go on and on.
St Ethelred doubtless never had it so good, nor have we. So when you have a moment do send along that astral projection magic carpet (make sure it has a three-cat-port), and we’ll be there quick as a wad of shot from a slightly jammed musket.
(Someone doesn’t yet know of this plan, but it seemed unwise to elevate her hopes unduly.)
m-l, I’m sure there’s an old saw that says you should never share a house with anyone who rehearses bagpipe-and-drum bands in the living room.
Tom, thank you for that. I hadn’t realised that Hieronymus Bosch had gone into kitchen appliances, but it reminds me of the New York removals firm called Van Go that has pictures of sunflowers on the side of the vans in question. These places always seem attractive, but don’t forget that it’s probably always raining in Newmarket – although, come to think of it, never mind. One thing I’ve been enjoying in the British real-estate listings (I’m reading them because my mother’s moving there) is the brokers’ tasteful but transparent persuasion technique. They LOVE the verb “to benefit”: the residence benefits from indoor plumbing – ooh goody, you think – or the property benefits from a garden, and is advantageously situated at the far end of a cul-de-sac (in the latter case, it wasn’t advantageous at all; it just meant you had further to walk to get there).
I always had a question for those who wear kilts. And this seems a good opportunity…
How do you cope with low temperatures? I could never wear a skirt without long stockings during the fall or winter of Buenos Aires (-5 degrees is the colder, I think), so I can’t imagine how you can do it at the temperatures of Scotland, for instance.
“it’s probably always raining in Newmarket”: well, it’s higher than Cambridge so perhaps it’s wetter. But then Cambridge is seriously dry – drier than Barcelona, people like to say.
Cold and kilts – no prob. Just like shorts and cold.
But shorts and cold is the same enigma.
Probably, if you’re British, you get used to that sort of thing at school (shorts, not so much kilts). It may be just a question of what you’re used to: in Italy many houses don’t have proper heating even though it gets jolly cold and damp there in the autumn and winter. I couldn’t tolerate that. As for Barcelona, last year it snowed after Easter.
this little house
Yes, but I’m very anti-royal>
I’m reminded of a column in Dagbladet a decade and half ago by (I think) John-Olav Egeland discussing the future of the British monarchy (after memory, my translation):
(This, of course, has some relevance to the referendum on electoral reform, where British voters are told to vote down the worst possible alternative to status quo.)
Haha. I remember the pipes froze in our house in London in the winter of 1962. It had recently been renovated, but no one had thought to insulate the water pipes in the loft. For anyone lucky enough to have avoided this calamity, the problem occurs after the ice, which expanded and burst the pipes, has melted and flooded the house.
the brokers’ tasteful but transparent persuasion technique
Once, when we were looking at a house to buy, the agent proudly showed us the system for preventing flooding of the basement. She called it a “French drain”. I classed this as an attempt to lend a cachet of Continental sophistication to a humble and ordinary object — I remember exclaiming “Ooh la la!”
Now, 18 years later, I google “French drain” and find that it’s like German chocolate cake: it was invented by a Mr. Henry French.
Those were the days, no worries about hedge funds, it was just “What are you planning to do now you’re retired, Henry?” “Oh, I’ve got an idea for a book about farm drainage, I just can’t think of a title.”
Farm Drainage? On the whole I’d rather farm goats.
Tish boom.
At last we reach the nub of the issue here: does anyone make kilts of goat wool?
where plumbing is still done on the outside of buildings for ease of access when the pipes freeze
This reminds me obscurely of the assertion that the reason the windows in Scottish houses are made so small is to keep the dark out.
Artur, if only you knew the timeliness of that superb Newmarket listing, not to mention the advantageousness, fantasy-relocation-wise…
We’ve benefitted by (or should one say from?) the months and years of monsoons here to the effect of, just latterly, the front steps, of which there are unfortunately many and steep, somewhat disastrously collapsing, terminally dry-rotted; one must somehow, cripple that one is, reconstruct them, though would in fact favour instead simply walling-up the the exterior of the ancient pile for good and all, as was done to the houses of plague victims, according to Defoe, who of course was making all that up — as indeed one would wish in this sentence to be doing, but no.
(Someone’s not thrilled with the situation, either.)
I’m sure no one’s thrilled with the situation. I too live in a neighbourhood (or actually in my case a nation) of wooden construction, and nowadays I find something very comforting in solid stone houses: they aren’t perfect, but at least nothing’s likely to rot.
I’m all for you and someone moving to Newmarket.
does anyone make kilts of goat wool?
I would think not. The hair of ordinary goats is not very woolly (so not elastic like sheep’s wool), and the wool of AJP’s goats is very fine and more suited to very lightweight sweaters or shawls. The cloth for kilts has to be sturdy and resilient enough for the garment to keep its shape and to be long-wearing in spite of the stresses of normal use: sitting, for instance, is hard on most pleats. Not to mention that a kilt is not supposed to fly up in the wind like a lightweight skirt might.
“I’m all for you and someone moving to Newmarket.” I’m still pondering the association between Newmarket’s delicious sausages and its famed horsey culture.
If you want a good stone house that will survive our climate for a decent span, consider Orkney.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knap_of_Howar
That’s very nice, Dearie. They don’t exactly say that’s how the Orkneyfolk lived, but I like the idea of sharing a house with farm animals.
I’m pretty sure they aren’t made from horses, dearie, they’re pig. By the way, I expect there’s a connection between most people’s distaste for eating horse meat and our lack of a word for it – no “pork” or “mutton” or “venison”, in other words. Or perhaps there is a word and I just don’t know it; one of those euphemistically pleasant-sounding words like “sweetbreads”. Can you buy Newmarket sausages where you live? Do you like them, if so?
As for mohair kilts, I know they make mohair suits that are similar to ordinary wool suits (but better, of course), so I’d say it’s possible, but I defer to m-l on the disadvantages. There are fabrics that retain creases or pleats, I don’t know if it works with wool, perhaps only cotton or man-made or synthetic fabrics. Do you have to press a kilt to keep the pleats looking good? That doesn’t sound very practical for lumberjacks and outdoor types – do they have to carry around one of those plastic, travelers’ irons that have plug adapters for foreign electricity?
I’ve never pressed my kilt – perhaps my mother did; she even ironed our underpants and socks, bless her.
“Can you buy Newmarket sausages where you live? Do you like them, if so?” Oh yes: yesterday’s dinner was a casserole of Musk’s sausages with our own borlotti beans from the freezer. Mmmm!
“sweetbreads”: the ones we had last week were from lambs but you can get them from calves too. Dearieshe cooks them with a little Marsala: last week we drank a Spatlese Riesling with them. Mmmm!
The Orkney page led me here: I suppose that’s the sort of list you studied in Architecture school?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_buildings_in_the_United_Kingdom
From the oldest buildings in UK this chapel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter-on-the-Wall_Chapel
“St. Peter-on-the-Wall”?
Does ‘wall’ here means just “wall” “pared, muro”?
It’s a funny name, don’t you think?
Do you have any idea why it has this name?
Well, I went to architecture school in the United States, and they weren’t terribly interested in Britain. They always sought post-classical precedents in Italy. However, ever since Thos. Jefferson, US architects have been tremendous Francophiles, partly because during the 19c so many of them trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. HH Richardson, McKim, Mead & White, Cass Gilbert, Julia Morgan, even Raymond Hood all went there, and the schools that started on the east coast at the end of the century all followed the French model. Even by the time I got there in the mid-seventies it was Carnac over Stonehenge, or Chartres or Sainte-Chapelle for something Gothic, and Le Corbusier über alles. Germany was important for modernism, of course and for examples of northern Baroque like Vierzehnheiligen. People were very interested in Lutyens at that time and Jim Stirling, but that was about it for Britain except for maybe Inigo Jones. Apart from Granada few people knew much about Spain. The rest of the world was only of interest to a couple of history-theory teachers. What they missed by not looking at Britain was the idiosyncrasy of so much of its architecture, the slight asymmetries and so on, odd stuff that you don’t see much elsewhere.
J.: Do you have any idea why it has this name?
It says here:
Ah, thank you!
Not at all.
Kilts:
One of the advantages of good quality wool is that the fibers’ elasticity allow them to get back to their original shape (the one they took on after treatment of the cloth). I read somewhere (and have verified) a test (that you can do in any store) of the quality of a wool jacket: grab a sleeve and squeeze it hard to crumple it. When you release your grip, good wool will show no sign of your action, but poor quality wool, or a different fiber, will still be crumpled. Unelastic fibers (linen is probably the worst) crumple very easily and need to be ironed or steamed, but good wool will get back into shape after normal wearing (eg if you hang the garment overnight). The pleats in a kilt must be set by heat after the garment is made, but afterwards you shouldn’t have to iron it again (any more than a wool jacket) if you hang it up after each wearing.
dearie has planted in the imagination an idea of sausage races at Newmarket which is impossible, as yet, to fully uproot.
About Americans not looking at buildings in England, my impression when living there was that visiting Americans had a way of looking and thinking immediately, “Old”, as though that were a school of architecture.
At the Cambridge college where I spent a few years the gardeners had a joke about the American tourists who enquired, How do you manage to make your lawns look so lovely? What might we do to get our lawns to look like that?
To which a college gardener was legendarily said to have drily replied, “Oh, just plant and water every day, for about five hundred years.”
dearie has planted in the imagination an idea of sausage races
And marie-lucie has planted the idea of a harmless-looking lady going into one clothing store after another and deliberately crumpling the sleeves of all the fine linen jackets.
If we learn anything from Miss Marple, it’s that it’s the harmless-looking ones we have to watch out for. Some sausages will go a lot faster than others. I’d bet on a ketchup-lubricated frankfurter shot out the end of a hotdog bun over (say) a black pudding or a Cajun andouille. Black pudding could roll down a hill pretty fast, though.
The capital of Kentucky is Frankfort. I’m just saying.
I don’t spend that much time in clothing stores, and I only test wool jackets I might actually want to buy. I wouldn’t ruin the appearance of a linen jacket either for myself or for the next customer.
I do believe Empty is on to something here.
The Louisville area of Northern Kentucky, and this includes the towns all along the Ohio River Valley as far as Cincinnati, is significantly populated by German-Americans, and as a result the sales of sausages in that famous horseracing region is well above the national average.
The underlying meaning of this connection beckons from just beyond the obscure penumbra of human ken. Probably only hardened sausage consuming horseplayers could explain it.
The preferred Kentucky delicacy, sausage-racing-wise, is Purnell’s “Old Folks” Sausage, which may be configured into many different forms so as to be incorporated into every imaginable meal, as well as perhaps a few that stubbornly resist the imagination.
(There are times, too, however, when, clutching one’s losing two-dollar ticket, one rests with relief in one’s vegetarianism.)
Sausage isn’t just for breakfast anymore!
Begins Tom’s link …
Ugh! :P This kind of breakfast is something we Argentines could never get accustomed! Just toasts or croissants and coffee /tea/”mate” for us, please! (eggs, bacon, sausage, etc. seems impossible at this hour of the day)
Maybe we get up a lot later than you.
hardened sausage consuming horseplayers
sausage-racing-wise
I’m enjoying the hyphens, invisible and visible.
Wikipedia says of mortadella:
Actually, it has a quite interesting history of this sausage, though I don’t necessarily believe much of it:
Maybe we get up a lot later than you
Yes, that must be the reason. You get up three or four hours earlier (it’s 9,30 am, now in here).
But… what happens with Californians, for instance? They get up four or five hours later than us.
“Mortadela” is considered here one of the cheapest sausage or cold meats (we call this stuff “fiambres” which in our slang also means “dead body”).
But the Italian mortadella is quite different and very good, and it isn’t at all cheap here.
De acuerdo, Julia – huevos, bacon, salchichas, etc parece imposible a esta hora del día – o para el caso, a cualquier hora de cualquier día o de noche!
En mi humilde opinión, las salchichas se someterá a un mejor uso si los jinetes de pequeños fueron colocados encima de ellos, y ellos se hicieron para correr en pistas pequeñas, que presentó al delicado sistema digestivo de un ser humano.
When I stayed at a not very good hotel in New York, my breakfast consisted of sausage and pancakes with maple syrup, all on the same plate.
Empty, I believe it is the hyphens one cannot see against which one must be most on guard, in this hyphen-saturated world. Punctuation-wise, that is.
It is said that Sophocles, long ago, by the Aegean, sausage-averse, preferred a hearty breakfast of pain perdu.
Well, Tom, although I’d like to be a vegetarian for ethical reasons, the fact is that I’m not… So sausage and bacon and eggs etc. seems delicious to me Post Meridianum
Breussel, I remember being at a B&B in York where they couldn’t believe we just wanted toast and marmalade instead of the traditional English Breakfast (which included sausage, tomato and eggs I think).
The toasts the British make are the best of the world (I don’t feel I need to travel the world to assure this)
Bruessel, it’s traditional. You have to grit your teeth at first, but you can grow into eating bacon and sausages with maple syrup. Have you eaten grits for breakfast? There used to be a café on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village that served that sort of thing, The Pink Teacup.
Tom, I love that poem, also the photograph of the White Cliffs. I could eat some French toast; we very rarely have stale bread, but I used to love making it. À la recherche du pain perdu…
If one had some stale bread, wouldn’t one make bread and butter pudding (in winter), or summer pudding? How could any be left over for anything else?
When I’m on holiday in the UK, I can quite happily eat a full English Breakfast (including black pudding), but I draw the line at maple syrup with savoury things. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been back to the States for such a long time (that and the fear of rude airport officials). I’ve never had grits, is it like polenta?
One shouldn’t eat bacon and egg for breakfast every day. A little elegant variation is called for – a kipper, some kedgeree, that sort of thing.
Having said that, I can’t remember what grits is, or is it “grits are”? I expect it’s like polenta, polenta covers a lot. I love black pudding, there’s a kind of black pudding here but it’s not nearly so good.
Kippers are ok for later in the day, but I’m like Julia, I can’t manage more than tea and toast (3 pieces) for breakfast.
I love summer pudding.
I believe that in the best places the customer pours the syrup on the pancakes (or French toast, or waffles). Some will want more, some less. Most of us will not also pour it on any meat that may be present on the plate. On the other hand, if it happens to run over to that side of the plate I am not disturbed.
All right, true confession: I sometimes go so far as to deliberately mix the sweet and the meaty part of the breakfast. I believe that on the recent occasion when my daughter and I, both sleep-deprived because we were required to limit her to 4 hours the night before an EEG, dropped off my car for its 40000 mile service and went to the diner for breakfast, and I ordered bacon with my omelette and she ordered bacon with her two pancakes, and I ended up eating some of the (mammoth!) pancakes, I did in fact deliberately create some combined forkfuls of sweet syrup-drenched pancake and crunchy salty bacon.
I suppose that the next time I feel the urge to combine these foods I will have to fend off the feeling that I am behaving like a gauche American. One of the small prices we pay for global communication :-)
I think it’s funny that in England “cooked breakfast” has a very specific meaning. To an outsider, there are any number of things that one might cook for breakfast.
I remember a breakfast in Scotland with black pudding in it. Possibly the heartiest breakfast I ever had.
In everyday life I usually just get by with a banana, maybe a piece of toast, or maybe some yogurt, to start the day.
Grits is indeed something like polenta. In the northern US it’s one of those things that you ridicule southerners for eating.
My housemate in grad school introduced me to kasha (buckwheat groats) as a breakfast food, but I haven;t used it that way since.
I don’t know what summer pudding is.
I had some summer sausage recently; someone had randomly put some in my Christmas stocking, and I rediscovered it in the cupboard in late winter; it was soft and savory and not at all bad.
I suppose French toast was invented by Henry French, too.
“I don’t know what summer pudding is. ”
It is a wonderful concoction of raspberries, redcurrants and bread. You eat it with cream. The web will be full of recipes; ignore all attempts to get you to incorporate blackcurrants or strawberries.
Tom Clark, your picture of “pain perdu” is much more fancy than the ordinary French preparation: it looks like fruit and cream on some kind of torte base, not bread. I used to make “pain perdu” or French crêpes quite regularly for Sunday breakfast (in Canada) until I became allergic to eggs.
Judging by the level of detail in the Wikipedia article, French toast is a topic that somebody cares a lot about.
Then there’s this. I knew someone once whose family called it “potty chair eggs”, but I’m not allowed to say so.
¡LOL! this discussion page is something funny
Where will this world end up if there are so many adults discussing futile things on the net…!
I loved kasha when my brother brought it to us from St. Petersburg. Now you make me remember I have to ask my parents for some bags of it, thank you.
A few years back, in the curse of exploring the global horrors of french toast, I came across many examples worthy of becoming museum pieces; perhaps the most extravagant was
this specimen of french toast with bacon ice cream and cinnamon tulle.
To be honest, I found the research slightly queasy-making, not unlike a short sea voyage, embarked upon without sufficient forethought, over uncertain waters (after all, I was merely working up a bit of Matthew Arnold spoofery, not attempting to obtain a food critic’s license).
Since then, however, and having just lately, as the result of a bone abscess following a broken leg, endured several rounds of “vintage” digestive-system-destroying Sulfa drugs (evidently overstock from the Bataan Death March), I am finding it more difficult than ever to recall that, long ago, in the misty morning realm of childhood, french toast seemed… something wonderful.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen or eaten French Toast. But when I was young I used to enjoy the fried bread + egg that my father liked to cook – you use a cup to cut a round hole in the centre of the slice of bread and then while it’s frying you break the egg into the hole. You end up with a wonderfully cheerful looking commestible.
As a child I never knew about this egg-in-the-hole-in-the-bread preparation; it wasn’t in my family’s repertoire. When I did hear about it (in my early twenties) I enjoyed the fact that it had many names: bulls-eye and potty chair eggs are the ones that stick in my mind.
French toast is one of those humble use-up-the-leftovers things that has acquired a life of its own — like fried rice or hash, and maybe kugel. I always feel a tiny bit self-conscious about buying a loaf of bread with the idea that it will make good French toast; it’s supposed to be less premeditated than that.
There is something called “bread pudding” over here, but it’s not really something we do in our family. It sounds like summer pudding is a particularly good version of that. Maybe I’ll learn to make it.
When I was a child, we used to fry real German bread with butter and sugar. We never ate the bread that’s used for making French toast (called arme Ritter = poor knights in German for some strange reason I haven’t been able to find). Also, I’ve never seen that egg in a hole thing in real life. And what’s kugel?
Probably I’m wrong and kugel was not originally made with noodles left over from a meal..
Another delish breakfast treat is – Toast bread. Lightly butter one side and then cover it with lengthwise slices of banana. Scatter a little sugar on top and then grill until the banana is deliciously warm. Consume.
Bread pudding: we call it (not surprisingly) “budín de pan”. It’s more of a desert for us, similar to flan (more or less the same ingredients, the only difference is that flan uses just eggs and milk and sugar, and the other adds bread).
As you can see I have nothing very interesting thing to add to the conversation, but I just miss you… Have good day!
Okay, I’ve had the egg-in-the-hole thing, which is amusing and creates a different flavour where it is only the white of the egg that actually interpenetrates the frying bread; but my question is: Is there a relationship between the “arme ritter” and “soldiers”? Why ARE plain sticks of bread for egg-dipping called soldiers? I imagined they’d be like paper-doll-cutouts until I married the Englishman and found out they were unimaginative narrow cuts of toast. Delicious, but not soldierlike. ??? Help, please!
Soldiers always reminds me of this commercial with Tony Hancock, where he says “Where’s me soldiers?”. I see it’s funnyness has diminished during the past 45 years. The woman in the commercial, Kathleen Harrison, was the mother of my English master at school.
Julia, I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting my duties as a blogging host. I’ve been outdoors in the sunshine. Now that the snow has melted there’s a lot to clear up, mostly dead leaves and moss, but also the crocuses are out and it’s nice to be there. And we’re clipping the goats; or shearing the goats, I should say, “clipping” is the Norwegian way to say it.
By the way, a wonderful dish that has disappeared and is unknown to young people is fried bread: toasted white bread fried in bacon grease. Merely looking sideways at one slice will give you a heart attack. Another lovely thing I’ve had in Germany is Gänseschmalz, goosefat, spread instead of butter on bread. I couldn’t eat it now because I feel sorry for the geese, but it’s powerful stuff.
I had two slices at brunch. That’s the advanatge of having had an angiogram lately – I know that my arteries are clean as a whistle.
A good point. “I’ll have two slices of fried bread and an angiogram, please.”
I don’t think fried bread has disappeared: it is a staple of hotel breakfasts in the UK.
Good to know it still exists – I think.
Oh, no, not at all! I wasn’t reclaiming unfulfilled duties.
I was only saying I hadn’t been around lately and that I miss you all.
That inner rumbling of the arteries uttering unrepeatable oaths would be music to the ears of any cardiologist.
Sir, you are very much mistaken if you suppose all cardiologists to be that sort of character!
(those sort of characters, I should have said)
I never heard of such a thing! said the concerned country doctor.
Dancing with open windows in any weather chez Crown!
Two thoughts about this:
(1) I have no doubt that goats dance better than sheep, and I would like to think that at the Crown house the people and the goats dance outdoors (perhaps in all weathers) when so moved.
(2) I heard the other day (at an Alasdair Frasier performance, which by the way happened to be at that Unitarian Universalist church in Harvard Square that our host mentioned a few weeks ago) that among the many verses of the British national anthem there is one that has something to do with fighting the northerners. Maybe that’s what caused those highland sheep to stop dancing.
… the moment it heard the National Anthem, it would hang down its head, appear to be very sullen, annoyed, and much displeased until the music ceased.”
Well, it may simply have been a sensible creature.
Empty, I think this lovely thought almost amounts to a photo assignment by popular demand. :
“…at the Crown house the people and the goats dance outdoors (perhaps in all weathers) when so moved.”
(Can a thought held by at least if no more than two people at once be said to be popular?)
“In all weathers”, that’s easy for you to say.
Goats dance when they go outside for the first time in a long time. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to get a picture of it, it’s quite a distinctive set of moves that begins with a sideways shuffle and then rotates away in an arc, with two feet on the ground at any one time.
Coincidentally, I was just reading the second verse of the German national anthem, which seems very quaint nowadays:
Of course it’s hard to beat Haydn’s music if you’re looking for a national anthem, but I hadn’t realised the history of the Deutschland über alles in der Welt lyric. Apparently it was taken up by the 1848ers as a sort of revolutionary exhortation towards German unification – making Germany a priority over the small principalities and duchies.
Well, talking of all weathers, there’s a pleasant bit of springy dancing by two white kids following this somewhat sweaty yet thankfully brief demonstration of German women, German men, German loyalty, German wine and German country and western song.
AJP, some time ago you did have pictures of the goats dancing!
Quite right, m-l, and they were particularly engaging.
Absolutely engaging, of course we remember!
(I come late with this comment about empty’s remembrance of Emma but I wanted to say that I read it last month and I was all the time thinking of this Crown state when they mention their Crown house. In fact it was very funny how many now famous surnames appeared in this novel, don’t you think?)
Indeed, who among those who inhabit the realm of the Crown shall ever forget a dancing goat?
That’s right, Tom. Only ungrateful souls, that happily never dwelled these lands.
Hi there, English speakers! I have a question for you all:
Would you say that “Fox” it’s a more or less common male name?
Your experience (and wisdom) shall be very appreciated.
Thank you.
I’ve never heard of a human, male or female, whose first name was Fox.
I went to school with twins called Andy and Martin Fox, who were magnificent rugby players; Martin was scrum-half for England U.16s. I heard he moved to Scotland and became a grave-digger, but that may have been only a summer job.
I’ll try to locate the picture of the dancing goats on the reservoir roof. It’s in here somewhere…
It’s not that sort of dancing I’m thinking of though really. That’s more “butting”, whereas occasionally they do really, really dance for joy, but I’ve never been able to photograph it.
I’m not sure of Tom’s reference. Is it Kipling?
Ah, how fleeting is fame, and how soon we terrestrials have forgotten Fox Mulder, the most famous of all the fox boys.
The quote is probably a loose piece of floating gray matter partially trimmed for effect and disguised as an unattached bit of the Wit and Wisdom of Sir Edmund Gosse.
Shall we agree that any dancing goat whatsoever might be described as “kicky”?
All through this rarefied line of nostalgic discussion, by the by, I have not been able to rid my mind of the possibilities of a re-write of an old classic…AJP Crown and His Dancing Goats?
Exchange between two anxious goats:
Goat #1:
They’ll love us, won’t they?
Goat #2:
They feed us, don’t they?
Thanks, Tom, yes Fox Moulder was the only one I knew…
Something called fanpop! poses the question, In what episode did Scully call Mulder by his first name, Fox, wherein he preceded to laugh and tell her that no one calls him that?
I vaguely recall that Mulder turned out to be not human after all, but a projection from deep space, alerted to the existence of Earth by listening to bad Eighties pop songs beamed into his neighbourhood by the Arecibo radio telescope. Little wonder he had a laugh.
(The other children on his planet had always called him “Mouldy”.)
In that case, I’m glad I wrote “human”. I never saw X Files.
Talking of grey matter, I’ve always liked Randy Newman.
Very Norwegian anecdote: I spent most of the eighties being a teenager in Bergen. I remember a persistent joke about a local radio station på strilelandet that had presented Randy Crawford as ho Randi Kraftfôr.
I’ve always admired Randy Newman, too. I particularly like his song “Guilty”.
Incidentally, that song contains the rhyme “self/else”. I like to think of this as the 70’s counterpart of the “moon/June” of the 40s-50s and the “scheme/dream” of the 30’s. Not that I have many examples of any of these pairs. And of course, “love/of” has never gone out of fashion.