Old men have their uses

We spent the Christmas week in Seattle, Washington State, joining the many other Canadians lured south by the remarkable strength of the Canadian dollar. We duly deposited some of our money in an ‘outlet’ along the way. The word ‘outlet’ really does no justice at all to the scale of what’s available. It’s more like a small well-maintained village but with all the inhabitants being shop-keepers. The clothes on sale are supposedly cheaper than in regular ‘stores’ but it seems hard to tell. Anyway, Marcel and I had a good time, jumping into a puddle to see who could raise the greatest splash. This activity was not regarded with amusement by some of the other shoppers. But their tight little 'tolerant' smiles made us jump all the more. Just for the heck of it!

We visited all the attractions in Seattle that a five-year old could possibly imagine, with the Children’s Museum getting the best reviews (ie the subject could hardly be dragged away, despite bribes and other lures). In fact, it's not really a museum at all but a great set of interactive exhibits. Best of all, there are thoughtfully placed benches so that the adult supposedly in charge (aka ‘care-giver’) can rest for a few precious minutes while the child ‘engages’ in the ‘activity’. Gosh, I love all these new words!

For me, the best part of the trip was a visit to the Museum of Flight, about half an hour out of Seattle, and near the Boeing Company’s site. First, I managed to get there without either crashing or getting lost. Second, it was enormous, spacious and beautifully designed. Third, it was staffed almost entirely be men of my own advanced age. All these men are retirees from the aerospace industry, who simply can’t tear themselves away and donate their time and amassed considerable knowledge. We took advantage of this when Marcel was working on a paper model aeroplane at one of the kid’s ‘activity centers’. Somehow, despite best efforts, the thing just kept nose-diving. A small nutty-brown gentleman stepped in and said ‘May I?’. He twiddled with a wing for three seconds and then asked Marcel to throw the plane. It flew beautifully around and around before coming to a graceful landing. It turned out that our helper had been a chief engineer at Boeing for stress in wing design, had worked on the Space Shuttle, etc. Marcel was enthralled and we still have the plane.

Mustn't grumble!

I know I've done not too well in the exam, but perhaps not badly enough. I think I may be able to stay! The person in charge gave the Delphic verdict: "Don't worry". Could be read both ways.

In these (slightly) trying times, one thinks of people who had much more trying times. In the trenches in the First World War, for example. A while ago, I heard about and then managed to purchase a little book called "The Spirit of Man". It is an anthology compiled in 1915 by the then Poet Laureate of poetry (mostly) and some prose. The book was intended for the spiritual needs of the troops, but I'd guess it was mostly read by the officer-class. One imagines a copy of it arriving in the parcel of cocoa, biscuits and pipe-tobacco, sent up by the family from the sad shires. My own copy was printed in 1940, so never saw action in the First War, although the Second is a possibility. The cover is a bit grubby and worn. I like to think that it was in the pocket of some captain leading tanks into action in the desert. During pauses, his crew would get the tea going, and he'd smoke a pipe (Player's Medium Navy Cut) and read a poem or two. The book had a long review in 1915 in the NY Times, which you can read here.

Beleagured alone?

Feeling a little beleaguered today---haven’t done well in an important exam and so my academic career may well come crashing down, just when, at aged 56, it was beginning to take a rather late start. Shame really, because I’ve done some good work with academic papers and the like. I’ve enjoyed the research, especially using techniques from one discipline (medical statistics) in another (economic history). Anyway, I think of life as being just a series of gigs, a bit like some second-rate rock band constantly trying to get a booking for next week so that they can pay the garage for repairs to the old van they use to get them around. And, as Keynes so memorably said, “In the long run we’re all dead”. And, dead or not, all we are is an arrangement of electrical charges. Death is only the switching off of some of those little circuits.

But is it? If we knew that there were other life-forms somewhere else in the universe would that alter our conception of who we are, is there some sort of Creator, what happens when we die? There’s an interesting article on calculating the probability of other life-forms on the www.damninteresting.com site. You can play around with the different parameters in the famous Drake Equation and see how the probability changes. I'm not sure. I think that there have been other life-forms and that there may well be future life-forms, but that doesn't mean that there are currently other life-forms somewhere out in the universe. And would they be friendly?

My life as a souffle

The souffle has been part of my life ever since a memorable day in Hong Kong in 1991. I went to see Henry and June, the film version loosely based on the book by Anais Nin. The scene that caught my imagination was the one where at a lunch chez the soon to be cuckolded Hugo, the female French cook refuses to place a soufflé on the table until Miller removes his hat. You can see some stills from the film here. In the top left still, Miller still has his hat on. After the film I went out for lunch to Gaddi’s, in the Peninsula Hotel. I’d just ordered when a beautiful cheese soufflé was carried past me to the next table. The smell was indescribable. I tried to change my order but I was too late.

After that, the soufflé became almost an obsession and I taught myself to cook them in all their wonderful variety. The soufflé became a metaphor for life itself: a few puffs of hot air, the ingredients all rise, and then as quickly fall. Unless eaten. It interested me that even quite experienced cooks, those much more experienced than me, were frightened to tackle the soufflé.

Elizabeth David’s recipes include some interesting and quite simple soufflés, such as the one which I first tried. It hasn’t got any flour which makes it very light. It cooks easily and quickly. It’s a lemon soufflé. Try it tonight. This is what you do: beat the yolks of four eggs with 3 tablespoons of caster sugar, the grated rind of a lemon and the juice of the lemon. You need to do this for several minutes. Whip the whites until you get ‘soft peaks’ and then fold the whites into the egg mixture. Pour into a buttered soufflé dish and put into an oven at 200C/400F. I find it’s a good idea to have a metal plate on the shelf in the oven, so that the heat is transmitted into the soufflé more evenly. About 12 minutes is right. Resist the temptation to open the oven door too early. You’ll lose the soufflé.

Raw cheese

Some of the tastiest things to eat were created by our ancestors to get them through the winter, like cheese and air-dried ham (not of course that I eat the ham, what with being a veggie and all). We eat them now because we've grown accustomed to the taste, and not because we need to store huge quantities of milk or whatever in some non-rotting form, which we can pick at during the long winter nights while wolves prowl around our caves. But think about what is going on here: we take the milk of another mammal, intended for its young, and then ferment it with all sorts of bacteria. Then that whole fermentation is plunged down the throat, into the innermost parts of our bodies. Taras Grescoe, in a book that deserves more attention, The Devil's Picnic, is good on how the process of eating is the closest and riskiest regular interaction our bodies have with the rest of the world.

I was thinking Grescoe's book today while I bought some Comte cheese in Benton Brothers in Kerrisdale, Vancouver. It's hard to find Comte here, although cave-aged Gruyere can sometimes stand in. While I was standing in line, an elderly lady asked what unpasteurised cheeses were available. That made my day---someone who still cares enough and who still, after all the scares, decides to pick unpasteurised. I have to admit to feeling a bit of a weakling asking just for Comte. But it was for a souffle, recipe from France The Beautiful, recipes written by The Scotto Sisters...whose name is too good to be true, but there they are, all three of them, smiling out of the back cover. Here's the recipe: melt 40g of butter in a saucepan, then add 40g plain flour. Stir for a minute over low heat. Slowly pour in 250ml of boiling milk, stirring all the time. Cook for 5 minutes, and it will turn the consistency of heavy cream. Take off the heat. Whisk in three egg yolks, one at a time. Blend in 1 tablespoon of double cream, and salt pepper and a little grated nutmeg. Next, whisk four egg whites, then fold in the egg mixture. Pour into a buttered souffle dish. Bake for 30 mins at 215C (425F). Of course, serve right away!

Sunday 16 Dec, 2007

A favourite columnist is Harry Eyres in the Financial Times Weekend edition. He calls his column the Slow Lane, and that is perhaps where more of us should be. In a recent column, Our Greatest Invention, Harry wrote something that resonated with me. He said that he’d been reading a lot of philosophy because he thought he didn’t have the time to waste on fiction. Now he’s realised that the best fiction is actually philosophy, in perhaps a more accessible form. I’ve been going through the same cycle myself, especially after re-reading Bryan Magee’s superb Philosophy of Schopenhauer. Magee has a chapter on Schopenhauer’s influence on creative writers, such as Thomas Hardy and of course Proust. All this is good, but perhaps Harry and I should take the next step and actually write some fiction!

On a gloomy chilly rainy Sunday in Vancouver, thoughts of spring bubble up. A plan: three of us will grow the hard-to-find vegetables that Charlie Trotter lists in his book Charlie Trotter’s Vegetables. Then take it in turns to prepare the dishes.