Charoset Sphinx, via If you’ve been to a Passover seder, you’re familiar with charoset. Usually it resembles the mortar that it’s supposed to represent (for reasons that aren’t all that clear, and with the reality anyway being more complicated — and possibly more sexy), but incongruously it’s the best-tasting thing on the plate. The typical [...]
Science has spoken! And the world’s best charoset is … Yemeni chocolate-dipped spicy charoset. Which, when you put it that way, is not too surprising. Anyway, I’ll have a full report here sometime after my blood sugar level stabilizes.
It’s all Telugu to me: You’re familiar with the expression “It’s all Greek to me” for something that you can’t make heads or tails of (unless you’re British, apparently, in which case you may say “It’s Double Dutch to me” instead). If you’re conversant in other languages, you probably also know that there each language [...]
Damn, post number 1000? Really? I have been doing this for way too long. Particularly when you remember that before this journal there was livejournal, and before that there was the trusty ol’ hand-coded HTML online journal… well, hooray for six uninterrupted years of narcissism! This might be an apropos time for reflection on why [...]
While I continue to organize my thoughts on Tibet, here is a wonderful piece of history to take a look at: That’s a martial-arts instruction booklet from 1968, showing you how to perform the “Wishing Chairman Mao 10,000 Years Long Life” tai chi style. In unrelated news, the following recipe is easy and cheap and [...]
Now that the Lakota Freedom declaration has been around for a few days, there’s some reaction and more information that’s also worth noting. There’s a clear answer to one question: this movement is definitely not supported by (or supportive of) the existing tribal leadership: “‘I want to emphasize, we do not represent the collaborators, the [...]
A few months ago I wrote about a book of excellent Nuu-chah-nulth stories that I stumbled across. I was looking through that book again this week, and this time I was struck by the equally-excellent personal names that the Nuu-chah-nulth have (had? I’m not sure if they use ‘Christian’ names now). Of course Europeans have [...]
Can it be that nothing blogworthy has happened since Saturday? Perish the thought! Yet here we are on Tuesday night and there has been nor hide nor hair of me ’round here. Actually I am working on a little something something, but it’s not going to be ready for another few days. So instead of [...]
I don’t remember if I mentioned this, but one of the coolest books I got in Mexico was a special issue of Arqueologia Mexicana with prehispanic recipes from all over Mexico. I’ve made a few of them so far (results: mixed), but really the best part is just flipping through the book to look at [...]
Wednesday — My first sourdough bread! I decided way back around September that I wanted to try making sourdough, but it turns out you need to be tending to the incipient starter every few days for almost two full weeks at the beginning. Since I didn’t hardly have a two-week stretch in California during the [...]
