My favourite pictures are the final two. I like the others, of course, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. If you’re one of those who thinks it’s nutty to take pictures of trees in the fog, all I can say is you work with what you’ve got.
These are some of the trees that had winter quarters for bats attached to them last year by someone at Oslo University. I’ve never seen a bat getting in or out but I daren’t check to see in case I disturb them.
Does anyone know anything about ant hibernation? The anthills around here go quiet in the autumn and you don’t see another ant until the following April. This seems to be what happens in the United States. However, my mother says that the ants in Britain don’t hibernate; they’re always on the go, doing whatever it is ants do. Is it simply a question of how cold it gets in winter? How would an ant in, say, Singapore know when to hibernate?
Fog doesn’t only obscure things. I mentioned once before how sometimes the hazel twigs next to our garden look like a Jackson Pollock. One thing that’s not like a Pollock is the depth. It must be the fog that enables it. Some branches are fainter than others and a shallow space appears in between the foreground twigs and the background twigs.
Here is an interesting article about tracking birds in a hurricane, though I must say that I found the end of it to be rather depressing (the tagged birds that survived were shot by ‘hunters’ in Guadeloupe).
A Bad Guide 
A viewer experience (mine): I always look at the pictures before I read, and this time I thought “Pollock” at the end. Just after that I found that this was your intention. Perfectly achieved, if you ask me.
I think my favourite is the one with Topsy. Colour and framing are wonderful, very melancholic and evocative.
You’re too kind! You’re right, that’s why the Topsy one is appealing. I like the place where it’s taken too, with the mossy rocks.
I was going to cleverly assert that the proverbial provident ants in the Bible must not be the kind that sleep through the winter, but now I’m not so sure of myself: maybe they just lay in stores in the summer to eat in the fall and then go to sleep after one last big feast. (I must have seasonal feasts on my mind for some reason.)
There is a kind of marmot that has almost unbelievably elaborate food storage techniques. Is it a marmot? No, I think it’s a pica. I have to ask Asa.
The pictures are wonderful.
Thanks very much, Ø.
I have to admit that I might not be able to tell a marmot from a pica.
It says in that link that ants have a restless hibernation. I’m not sure what they mean by that: do they go to sleep or not? For short periods of, what? Five minutes? A week?
Is Asa enjoying Amherst?
I believe that the woodchucks, a.k.a. groundhogs, familiar to USians, are a kind of marmot. A big fat ground squirrel.
I don’t really know what a pica, or pika, is. I always associate them with hyraxes, though I know I shouldn’t. I think they live in Central Asia. Asa did a school report on them many years ago, and blew my mind with his tales of how they store dried grasses in their underground homes. I forget the details, which were impressive.
Yes, he’s enjoying Amherst. Every new student there is required to enroll in a First-Year Seminar. The one he ended up in is called Strange Russian Writers. Most of the writers in question are people I never heard of, and some of them are extremely strange. Hat probably knows all about them. He’s also taking a math course, a computer science course, and a music course called Sacred Sound. We get to see him fairly frequently, but it’s never quite enough for us. They got a whole week off around Thanksgiving, so we’ve had a good fix lately. He’s singing a lot, and making friends that way: in the Concert Choir and the student-directed Madrigals group (each of which rehearses twice a week), not to mention one or two instances of music students in their final year who have recruited him to sing in their own final performance projects.
I like the way they give courses names like ‘Strange Russian Writers’ nowadays. There weren’t all these singing opportunities when I was an art student, it was punk bands or nothing. That’s the disadvantage of a specialist institution and the good thing about Amherst, probably.
According to my research, the hyrax & pika are closely-related members of the rabbit family, and both are sometimes called cony or rock rabbit. Was Coney Island originally inhabited by rabbits?
It was the Normans who introduced rabbits to Britain. In just a few centuries they evolved from Balearic decadents into tough little Atlantic-edge pests. Why they didn’t introduce marmots to Britain I don’t know – maybe they don’t taste as good, or would have been harder to domesticate.
This doesn’t have anything to do with Spiny Norman, does it?
Spiny Norman didn’t come over at the time of the Conquest, wasn’t he of Italian extraction? Maybe not.
Were there hares in Britain before the Normans introduced rabbits? Britain could have been called Coney Island.
Any news of the Cambridgeshire wallaby?
Hares are native. There’s a wallaby news deficit. The most amusing local news I’ve seen lately is the tale of a houseboat on the river being torn free of its mooring in the gales. Said the owner “My friends came and rescued it. I was in Russia teaching aqua yoga and baby swimming.”
There is an adjective, glum, that is equivalent to gloomy — but it rhymes with bum, not with doom. Voilà…
I don’t know anything about ant hibernation, but I know what I like, and I like those pictures. Amazingly evocative.
Ø: Please tell me who the Strange Russian Writers are! I can think of candidates (Rozanov, Remizov, Grin, Kharms, Krzhizhanovsky…), but I’m sure I’ll be surprised by some of the names. I would have loved to take (or teach) such a class!
Thanks. You ought to at least check it out, Language. Amherst is just down the road from you. I’d go myself but it’s too far.
Glum is a more downmarket word than gloom (don’t ask me why I have these prejudices). Gloom rhymes with doom and glum with dumb (& bum). In the 1950s there was a fictional family called the Glums, on the BBC.
the glums = the blues
the gloom = … ?
You ought to at least check it out, Language.
Which reminded me I could doubtless find out online, which I did; here‘s the site. It’s not as interesting as I imagined, and only one of my names is on the list. I mean, I’m sure it’s a great class to take; I’m speaking only for my jaded Russian-drenched self.
Amherst is just down the road from you.
And if Asa ever wants to chat about Russian literature and maybe borrow some books, I’m just down the road.
the gloom = … ?
I think of gloom as late-Victorian gothic. Foggy evenings, Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe.
Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy
Language, I know you say you’re not a teacher, but it seems such a waste to have you and all those colleges in such proximity. Couldn’t you teach a summer class in Even Stranger Russian Writers?
I like the way they give courses names like ‘Strange Russian Writers’ nowadays.
He might take a course called ‘God’ next semester.
only one of my names is on the list.
Kharms was the name that stuck in my head. From what I heard about his writing, it would be hard to imagine anything much stranger.
I don’t really know what a pica, or pika, is. I always associate them with hyraxes, though I know I shouldn’t. I think they live in Central Asia. Asa did a school report on them many years ago, and blew my mind with his tales of how they store dried grasses in their underground homes. I forget the details, which were impressive.
My memory (and this is from a report I did when I was about ten years old, so this may be a little off) is that they spend whole summer days clipping grasses and other small plants with their teeth and laying them in the sun to dry into hay, which they store on shelves in their burrows for winter munching. I think they’re the only animals which engage in this kind of hay-making. I seem to remember that they actually pluck a particular kind of poisonous plant which they save for the very end of the winter, when it’s lost its poisonous potency, and which in the meantime somehow keeps the other grasses and such from going off.
Which reminded me I could doubtless find out online, which I did; here‘s the site. It’s not as interesting as I imagined, and only one of my names is on the list. I mean, I’m sure it’s a great class to take; I’m speaking only for my jaded Russian-drenched self.
That’s the site for an old version of the course; the current one is here. The list of authors is not terribly different — but then I don’t think the list of authors on the current course’s page bears all that much resemblance to what we’ve actually read. That is, we’ve read most of the authors mentioned there, but we’ve read a bunch of others, too. A more complete list, from quickly scanning through the syllabus: Kharms, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Leskov, Odoevsky, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bitov, Nabokov, Gippius, Shchedrin, Petrushevskaya, Tolstaya, Kuraev, Platonov, Tsvetaeva, Babel, Shalamov, Mandelstam, and Pelevin, as well as one film (“Andrei Rublev”, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky) and some essays on Russian literature and art by Woolf, Berdyaev, Shlovsky, and Brodsky. I don’t know that that list will live up to your expectations any better than the one on the course site, but as someone utterly unfamiliar with the world of Russian literature I’ve enjoyed the class and these readings very much. Also, while it’s perhaps not a particularly obscure list — Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. — the works we’ve been reading by those well-known authors have certainly seemed strange as advertised. Perhaps “Strange Russian Writings” rather than “Strange Russian Writers”?
only one of my names is on the list
I wrote a little paper on Kharms just a few days ago. We only had to read a few of the very many very short stories in Today I Wrote Nothing, the Kharms collection we were told to buy at the beginning of the semester, but I’m hoping to find time to read more of them at some point.
From the names mentioned, it appears that “writers” means writers of novels and short stories. I had at first expected that Strange Russian Writers would at least include Nikolai Fyodorov. Hat has devoted a few posts to him.
But, you say, he’s a philosopher, not a novelist. Well, it’s common practice to bring out the Big Ideas in novels, by treating the plot as a mere support structure for them. A pity that not more people are accustomed to finding the human interest in works of philosophy, by treating the Big Ideas as mere support structures.
“Glum is a more downmarket word than gloom”: you’ve been away too long. Any terse Anglo-Saxon-Danish-Norse word accurately applied is upmarket. The alternative to “glum” is “She’s like so down, innit?”
Well, it’s not surprising, Stu. Novels are a lot more accessible for most of us than philosophy is. For every Nietzsche, say, there are a couple of dozen Heideggers.
Asa, thanks. I’m very interested in hearing how you’re getting on, partly because my daughter Alma is going away to college next year. I hadn’t even heard about pikas until now. Inevitably the more animals seem to be like me the more I like them but haymaking makes me think that if there were enough pikas they could take care of our goats during the winter and I wouldn’t have to go and buy hay at Oslo racecourse. Why don’t other non-hibernating creatures do this too? Squirrels, I suppose, store nuts.
I do vicariously hope you take Steve up on his offer. I’d be over there in a second.
dearie, you’re right, I’m a dinosaur. I kind of like “Innit”. For one thing it’s home-grown rather than being an import from the US and there are few enough of those. But I can’t explain why I would never use ‘glum’ any more than I can give convincing reasons not to say ‘panties’. “He looked glum in his panties” – no, I couldn’t do it. I don’t have any problem with other people saying ‘glum’, please feel free. ‘Panties’ I’d like to get rid of completely, though.
Crown: yes, it’s not surprising that so little philosophy has been made accessible. This is primarily the fault of commentators, including those of the Cliff Notes kind. But I still think it’s a pity.
I think that joking around about philosophical works is not the worst way to begin. That’s one of my approaches. Unfortunately, it is rather hard to make headway against the serious-stuff expectations most people have about philosophy (as well as about The Important Novels).
Heidegger made waves in Sein und Zeit about the important role of Befindlichkeit in dealing with the world – and that just means “state of mind plus how you’re feeling at the moment”. I think more go-with-the-flow is in order when it comes to “philosophy”: sometimes you feel like reading Being and Nothingness, sometimes one of Sartre’s novels, or one of Compton-Burnett’s, or maybe just watching existential shenanigans on reality TV.
Don’t really make that much difference, so long as you get something out of it and can converse about it in an amusing way. In that spirit we get a course in Strange Russian Writers.
Number 3 for thee, Crown.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/9705510/Pictures-of-the-day-27-November-2012.html?frame=2410780
A more complete list, from quickly scanning through the syllabus: Kharms, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Leskov, Odoevsky, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bitov, Nabokov, Gippius, Shchedrin, Petrushevskaya, Tolstaya, Kuraev, Platonov, Tsvetaeva, Babel, Shalamov, Mandelstam, and Pelevin, as well as one film (“Andrei Rublev”, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky) and some essays on Russian literature and art by Woolf, Berdyaev, Shlovsky, and Brodsky.
That’s a terrific list, and I wish I’d had the opportunity to take such a course. Now that I read the description in your link I see better what they’re driving at, but really, what they mean is that Russian literature itself is strange, which it is — that’s why I like it so much!
That was it, the best bit! The bit about using a poisonous plant. Including what your mother would call “off-gassing”.
it is rather hard to make headway against the serious-stuff expectations most people have about philosophy
It would’ve helped a lot if Sartre and Heidegger had put little ;-) signs next to their jokes. Until then my favourite funny philosopher is what’s-his-name from Columbia, but I do like this old Beyond the Fringe sketch by Jonathan Miller.
Orphaned baboons are sometimes used to protect livestock from predators on farms.
This only works for those who have access to orphaned baboons, and it depends on your definition of predator, but I’d like to try it. I think the goats would like baboons.
All you have to do to recall his name is google “Who do you think you are, Kant?”, and Sidney Morgenbesser is first on the list.
It would’ve helped a lot if Sartre and Heidegger had put little ;-) signs next to their jokes.
The subtle philosophers are dead-pan comics. I like them for their suggestiveness – they keep me guessing, and free to find my own interpretation. There may be folks who prefer to laugh on cue, but I’m not one of them.
In Buster Keaton’s films there were no visually intruding “(Laughter)” signboards. An edition of Sartre with smilies would spoil the effect, and put a lot of pundits out of work.
Well obviously it would be a little offputting if they really did use smiley faces. One doesn’t like to be told when to laugh, as you say. I’ll take all the laughs I can get, though I’ve never enjoyed the silent comedy era as much as what came before (Oscar Wilde, say) and after (Marx Bros).
I just found a description of a Philosophical Films course at Frostberg State University, Maryland. Here is an essay on Wittgenstein and Keaton from the site. The objectives of the course:
. I’m not too happy with that “important” qualifier – I would have preferred “amusing and instructive”, and a lighter touch in the essay. But the professor’s name is Jorn K. Bramann, from which (along with the fact that he has published several translation from the German) I’m guessing he’s a born-and-bred German.
I wonder, now: when Wilde cracked his aphorisms in company, did he raise his eyebrows and leer like Groucho ?
“Leer” is not the right word – “feigned astonishment” would be more accurate.
In other words, did Wilde cue his customers ?
For a long time now in films, “funny music” (say a kazoo slide when someone slips on a banana peel) has been used instead of signboards to cue laughter..
An edition of Sartre accompanied by a kazoo CD ?
I imagine that the style of some Strange Russian Writers resembles that of Keaton or Monty Python, the style of others being more Wildean. If there are any post-modernists (avant la lettre) among them, their style would have to resemble itself – something that is not easy to accomplish.
But I can’t explain why I would never use ‘glum’ any more than I can give convincing reasons not to say ‘panties’.
My feeling is that you use the word quite often nowadays — the road to perdition.
I only use it in the privacy of my own blog. Still, it’s a step in the right direction, I expect.
I’ll have to remember this bit, Stu. It’s a good argument:
I enjoyed reading that article. The bit about The General is, I think, slightly wrong. Keaton does indeed show that there’s no cause and effect in his actions, but it’s only funny because he is the exception. Everyone else’s life proceeds normally, facts are linked: someone presses a button and what you & they expect to happen, happens.
An edition of Sartre accompanied by a kazoo CD ?
Yes. There you have it, the kazoo there is only used ironically (in the po-mo sense of irony, meaning “I’m not serious, this is a quotation of something we laugh at nowadays”). It’s a po-mo kazoo.
“po-mo kazoo”, I like that. One should be issued to every citizen. It could be funded by a head tax on philosopy faculty members.
But what about my Wilde question ? Do you suppose he delivered his aphorisms archly ?
And I like the idea of a head tax on philosophy faculty members.
I didn’t answer because I couldn’t decide. But now I think he’d have been much safer delivering them as straight as possible, especially anything that could be construed negatively. I’ve noticed in meetings that that’s the only way to get the boss of a company to laugh. When employees try to set him or her up using raised eyebrows and a chuckle and a smiley face it’s like they’re asking to be shot at dawn and it’s hard not to flinch. On the other hand, he was speaking from a fairly secure position. He may have raised his voice for emphasis.
I also wonder whether Wilde was “melodramatic”, like the old queens who dished out fabulous, killing witticisms in the El Paso bars I frequented at a suspiciously young age. I suspect he was – or resembled Dame Everage – but I’ve never seen the question considered. In the olden days (30 years ago, say), I think not that many people were familiar with El Paso bars or Everage.
Those old raunchy queens could be described as “unmuted, glorious Miltons” – or rather “Wildes”.
I suppose Wilde’s manner would have been described at the time as “plummy” or “eccentric”.
It’s so hard to tell, isn’t it? He got married and had kids and all that, so I suppose it’s hard to see him in an El Paso bar, but then again he was a big guy in a fur coat and with long hair, so maybe not…
They might have put his manner down to his Irish background. I was sort of under the impression that half the population (not just women, either) didn’t even know about homosexuality back in them days. Those who believed it was spread by contact would have censored any reference, which they could do when it was illegal.
Anent baboons for Crown: I know they’re not baboons, but apparently there’s a plan to round up and expel a fair fraction of the “barbary apes” on Gibraltar. So if you write to the Gibraltarian P.M., maybe he’ll send you one.
Thing is, aphorisms like Wilde’s are usually uttered nowadays to the accompaniment of arch looks and limp-wristed, dismissive gestures. I like to think of Wilde as not having been like that. Firbank, yes. But Beau Brummel, or Verlaine walking his pet lobster ? Did they screech and carry on ?
How could one reconstruct a history of histrionics, whether literary or social ? In the past, people don’t seem to have thought that such things were worth describing or commenting on, and we have no footage of flamboyancy.
Surely he was at least capable of cocking an inquisitive eyebrow.
Or inquisitively eyebrowing a cock.
Things I didn’t know, besides this Gibraltar shocker: i) the word ‘anent’, quite a useful word, and ii) Verlaine’s pet lobster: did he have to live beside the seaside to keep his lobster happy?
Grumbly, we do have some footage of flamboyancy, if not specifically gay, just check out one or two Hogarths.
I have never heard of “Verlaine’s pet lobster”. Where does this come from?
A brief search reveals that it was not Verlaine but Nerval.
Thanks for clarifying that, empty. I couldn’t remember whether it was Verlaine with the pet lobster, so I allowed myself to be misled by the internet. At once place we have a twitterer saying: “Imagine seeing Paul Verlaine walking his pet lobster”. Then there is a post on Luxemburg with a sentence beginning: “A garden where Theophile Gautier walked his pet lobster, Baudelaire and de Nerval strolled …”.
Here we are told about Sartre: “… for a few years thereafter he was plagued by the fear he was being pursued by a lobster.” A commenter there writes: “Some French poet or another–Verlaine? de Nerval? Prevert?–supposedly had a pet lobster he took for walks, which is something I rather doubt a lobster would really care for. But perhaps they did it just to persecute Sartre.”
Crown, that Hogarth shows Satan wearing rhinestone pasties. It’s rather surprising that Satan likes his titties to twinkle in the gloom.
Maybe you don’t need an ape – you could train Topsy.
I find the passive behavior of that cat rather alarming, dearie. Of course it may have just dined on the marijuana plants the nice Eastern European lady grows to supplement her pension. But even that would not be amusing – might as well laugh at a drunk kid trying to find his way back home.
Sorry if that comes over harsh, but that video makes me think of “waltzing mice”. That have vestibular and cochlear abnormalities of the ear, and are essentially in a permanent state of vertigo. Many people find their behavior cute.
Yes, that does look like an exceptionally passive cat. I think she was speaking Russian, that woman. Where’s Language, he’ll know.
Hogarth is full of surprises, Stu, except that he’s nearly always depicting the swirling flush of the toilet bowl of eighteenth-century England just as it’s about to stop up. They are vivid images and they make me wonder who, if anyone, is doing an equivalent job today. It certainly isn’t the cartoonists who invoke him.
I still find it hard to believe that you can take a lobster for a walk. I had a quick look earlier and if you google, there a quite a lot of references to Sartre & lobsters – names of production companies and that sort of thing – it’s a popular image.
It’s as with horses, I guess – you can take a lobster on a lead, but you can’t make it walk.
I think she was speaking Russian, that woman.
Yup. The two words she keeps repeating are неси [nesi, sounds like nee-SEE] ‘bring, carry, fetch’ and домой [domoi] ‘(towards) home.’
Wow, thanks. I didn’t expect you to show up so soon. I had a feeling it was Russian.
We’re closing the door after the lobster has bolted, Stu.
(Russian rather than some other Slavonic language, I mean.)
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=391156
And they’re not even in the Common Market yet.
Big horns.
yet we cannot buy a product that comes straight from nature
Tuberculosis, brucellosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and Q-fever come straight from nature. The WiPe on pasteurization says further:
It’s an odd superstition, that “nature” is good. I saw someone ranting ignorantly about fructose the other day – apparently it’s the non-natural fructose made from corn that’s eeeevil; “natural” fructose in honey or fruits seemed fine to her. How the fructose molecule knows whether it’s natural or not wasn’t revealed.
I agree it’s silly, but probably people are more suspicious of manmade products because there are few motives besides money for humans to manufacture goods. We only do it for money, whereas mother nature is inscrutable, enigmatic etc. God bless her. I agree that fructose is, if not exactly evil, at least amoral. But I’m against nearly all forms of carbohydrate. I’m a fats & protein lover.
I hadn’t heard of Q fever, though I do get very impatient in lines. Two deaths in 300 million over ten years doesn’t sound to me like a reason to give up eating unpasteurised cheeses.
We can still get unpasteurised cheese here: about milk I don’t know – I know no reason to prefer unpasteurised milk, so I’ve never enquired.
We get it too. You’d have thought someone would have banned it by now. I like it but I must admit I feel I’m living dangerously, like I’m eating one of those Japanese fish that may or may not kill you, depending on something or other.
Two deaths in 300 million over ten years doesn’t sound to me like a reason to give up eating unpasteurised cheeses
Dob’t forget the “1,676 illnesses, 191 hospitalizations” figures. I’ve been hospitalized (briefly) three times in the last 10 years for mild food poisoning – once from a French cheese made of non-pasteurized milk, the other times from fish at restaurants.
One of the reasons for regulations requiring, say, pasteurization of milk and milk products sold in retail outlets (instead of down on the farm) is surely that they protect Joe Consumer – those people like me who are not experts in judging the condition of a milk product they want to buy, nor know how long it can be stored, at what temperature etc.
It seems that “progress” in the form of refrigerators has helped create this situation. When there were no refrigerators, milk products must have been consumed fairly soon after being bought – thus giving harmful bacteria less time to flourish. Also, the products were delivered and bought in smaller quantities from nearby locations, instead of being held in (how well ?) refrigerated warehouses, for who knows how long, between supplier and consumer.
As dearie says, the idea that “nature” is good is an odd superstition. But I’m not sure that “odd” is quite the right word here, since this idea has familiar historical precedents. The belief that everything comes from nature, and that nature is good, strongly resembles the belief that everything comes from God, and that God is good. In both cases you are confronted with the difficult question of unde malum ? (“where then does evil come from ?”). Tuberculosis comes straight from nature and God.
All things good and bad for you come to you straight from supermarkets nowadays, not from nature or God. The latter no longer deliver to your doorstep, and tended to overcharge anyway.
The expression deus sive natura so central to Spinoza, when reformulated in more familiar economic terms, expresses the idea that nature and God are a cartel. There was effectively no competition before the advent of supermarkets. That’s why nature and God could overcharge with impunity, and why you could never return items that were not to you liking.
A local man has opened a chain of four greengrocers, in competition with the supermarkets. Very brave, I call it. His stuff is good, I must say, not least because he labels it properly so you know what you’re getting. No “baking potato” rubbish: “Maris Piper, good for baking” is more like it. The counsel of perfection, of course, is not to say just “Cox’s Orange Pippin” but to say which clone it is. No doubt wisely he has not gone that far.
the idea that “nature” is good is an odd superstition.
I wonder who’s written about this. I’m surprised you don’t know, Stu. I bet it’s in that Gaia book by James Lovelock, which I haven’t got.
The belief that everything comes from nature, and that nature is good, strongly resembles the belief that everything comes from God, and that God is good.
That sounds like William Blake’s Jeruselem.
In both cases you are confronted with the difficult question of unde malum ? (“where then does evil come from ?”).
Isn’t that original sin? I blame the snake.
What potato properties make them “good for baking” ? That they remain firm, or not firm ? I’ve forgotten, probably because I have grown accustomed to the German classification system, which addresses only boiling, not baking.
Bags of supermarket potatoes are labelled either as festkochend [firm when boiled] or vorwiegend festkochend [predominantly firm when boiled]. The latter kinds are good for mashing, “Predominantly” appears here to mean “not”.
Baked potatoes get a look-in pretty much only as something that lies next to a roast in the pan.
I wonder who’s written about this. I’m surprised you don’t know, Stu.
Oh but I do – Sloterdijk and Luhmann often, to name but two Germans.
A local man has opened a chain of four greengrocers, in competition with the supermarkets. Very brave, I call it. His stuff is good,
It’s a niche. It’s like the Turkish place in our local town. We spend a fortune there buying stuff that isn’t available at the supermarket, not just better-quality fruit & veg but Chinese frozen dumplings, Turkish yoghurt, English biscuits and unfamiliar brands of Indian tea. Everything is very fresh.
“Predominantly” appears here to mean “not”
Haha. I know the Germans are very particular about their potatoes (as are the Norwegians). It’s funny they don’t eat them baked. Roast potatoes are my favourites, but I have now renounced potatoes and I eat only (non-meat) protein & fat. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Well, all right, yes it is.
It’s funny they don’t eat them baked
They do, but not as individual potatoes, each baked in its own personality, but rather munged together with cheese and other stuff in the form of a Kartoffelauflauf.
I have now renounced potatoes
You now spurn the spud, and clasp the soja bean to your bosom ?? Potatoes themselves are not unhealthy, what is at fault is the amount of butter and oil ofent used in cooking them. A television documentary told me so recently.
“what is at fault is the amount of butter and oil ofen used in cooking them”: yup, an insufficiency of butter is a dreadful health risk.
I’ve been reading that it’s all a dreadful mistake about fats being bad for you. Now it turns out it’s the carbohydrates – sugar, cereals, fruit and even, yes, potatoes – that are the evil food group. I wouldn’t care, we’ve all got to die of something and it might as well be bread, but I’m trying to avoid complications of diabetes, so I’m giving it a try. The bad news is I can’t eat bread, but the good news is I can put as much butter on it as I want.
“it’s all a dreadful mistake about fats”: more a lie than a mistake – a shameful episode in medical “science”.
About fats, you can read this file where it is stated polyphenolic compounds are a protection from heart attack. Also monounsaturated fat is beneficial. Incidentally, Iberian ham comes from pig that ate acorns has 50-58% oleic acid
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401200447.htm
Thanks, Jesús!
Prices of these “medicines” without requirements of prescription are, pretty much:
– 1 L extra-virgin olive oil: 2.5-3 €
– 1 kg Iberian ham (buying a whole piece): 28.80-39.50 €
However:
-1L sunflower oil: 0.85 €
– 1 kg white ham (whole piece): 6.40 €
Anyway, these other products aren’t unhealthy either, but the butter…
Jesús, what is “white ham” ? Is that a baked ham ? I’m guessing that the expensive “Iberian ham” is the kind that is not (only) baked/boiled, but also smoked and air-dried to preserve it.
>Grumbly Stu
I meant ham of white pig (normally fed with fodder) to distinguish from our black pig (iberian breed although can have 25% of Duroc-Jersey). Both hams are only air-dried during some months or even years after being salted. And both hams are delicious although the yummiest is the black.
Stu, over here we would never confuse a roast potato with a baked potato. They are both good, but they have very little to do with each other.
My wife was at an Italian food exhibition a couple of years ago. She asked one of the experts to recommend a ham. He looked around, lowered his voice and advised “The best ham comes from the Spanish black pigs”.
empty, nor would Germans ever confuse a roast potato with a baked potato, 20 or so years ago, the reason for that was that they were not familiar with baked potatoes. These were not available in most supermarkets or restaurants
Nowadays, the reason why Germans don’t confuse the two kinds of prepared potato is that they are familiar with both. Nevertheless, baked potatoes are as a rule found only in restaurants that have them smuggled into the country. Mealy Idaho potatoes are turned back at customs.
What I meant by “Baked potatoes get a look-in pretty much only as something that lies next to a roast in the pan” is that in the category of German non-boiled but edible potatoes, the roasted and baked kinds are interchangeable. .
I mean that, in practice, one kind does service for both.
Baked potatoes get a look-in pretty much only as something that lies next to a roast in the pan…the roasted and baked kinds are interchangeable… in practice, one kind does service for both
What are you on about, Grumbly? Are you working at the UN? Do they or do they not have roast potatoes in Germany?
Well, since you insist on clarity – they do have roast potatoes.
“Roast potatoes” only in the sense of “potatoes that lie next to a roast when baking.”. Free-standing baked potatoes are rare. What is a “roast potato” anyway ??
These cooking verbs are tricky. Why do I speak of baking a flounder filet rather than roasting it, and of roasting a pan of root vegetables rather than baking it? A German once complained to me about Americans’ talk of “brewing” coffee. It’s nothing like how beer is produced; one should speak of “cooking” coffee. Germans cook everything, even laundry. When you prepare scrambled eggs, is the scrambling the thing you do in a bowl before cooking in a frying pan? Or is it the whole process?
I just inquired, showing pictures of “roast potatoes” found in the internet: Germans call them Ofenkartoffeln.
“Cooking”, to a Norwegian, means “boiling”, because the verb å koke means to boil, so they usually think it must be the same in English (it sounds very similar even though the spelling is different).
Stu, for me roast potatoes are usually peeled and then cut in half and cooked, as you say, next to a roast in the fat in the pan. They taste like home fries. Baked potatoes are simply whacked in the oven at 200c. for an hour and opened up for a dollop of sour cream-slash-butter.
I thought I remembered having complained about the bad job dictionaries do with cooking vocabulary, and I finally found the post (from 2004). There’s an interesting discussion in the comments, in the course of which Ray Girvan provides a useful comparison of English and German terms.
…They haven’t been married for more than five minutes. That family breeds like bloody rabbits and we’re the ones who have to support them all in their various palaces, one each. Why can’t they at least all live in one palace? That’s what real rabbits would do.
Language, thanks for that. I’m going to paste it up here, if you don’t mind. I have a lousy internet connection today, though. I also want to google images of ofenkartoffeln.
Of course I don’t mind, anything to take your mind off that progenitive lot of spendthrifts.
Spendthrifts, exactly. I knew you’d understand.
Some people get all excited about baked potatoes. I never could. Some people insist on wrapping them in foil, or insist on not wrapping them in foil, or insist on pricking them to let the steam out, or insist on not pricking them to not let the steam out. Some people use them as a vehicle for not just butter or sour cream but you name it: cheese, beans, bacon, I don’t even know what. That sounds a little better.
There was or is a British fast-food chain called Spud-U-Like that specialized in baked potatoes with toppings. I once saw a newspaper cartoon showing a Spud-U-Like and, next to it, a dumpster (a.k.a tip) labeled Spud-U-Didn’t-Like.
I remember Spud-U-Like: they did a wonderful variety of fillings.
After lashing on the butter, we usually heap on coleslaw and a relish of some sort – green tomato chutney, damson pickle, or whatever.
>Grumbly Stu
As it happens I’ve just read this article in “El País” published today about future changes of classifications of our black pig according to its diet:
http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2012/12/02/actualidad/1354484237_657112.html
Some people use them as a vehicle
Probably the ones wrapped in tinfoil. That reminds me of “Go to work on an egg”, a slogan that was invented by Fay Weldon – or perhaps that’s just a myth.
Is that suggesting women should climb through a fertile window to get to work ?
Jesús: it’s understandable that Andalucía and Extremadura want to retain a distinctive designation for their products. The mere word ibérico is not worth fighting over, however. The amended proposal with three categories makes better sense: ibérico de bellota, ibérico extensivo, ibérico de cebo intensivo.
>Grumbly Stu
Besides the question of number of categories, the most important problem is the fraud. There are in the market an amount of Iberian hams that doesn’t match the number of legs or ha of “dehesas”. There is even fodder that can give false analysis at firs glance making think pigs have eaten acorns.