Such HORROR! -braised squirrel with watercress

I see why the colonists revolted. Such barbarity!,
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Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking' by Kate Colquhoun (Bloomsbury) is available for £18 + £1.25 p&p. To order, call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4112 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk

I began to salivate at the sight of a happy couple of squirrels cavorting in my tiny inner-city garden, and was transfixed by squirrel traps

First, catch your squirrel...

Kate Colquhoun

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 28/05/2008

Kate Colquhoun goes nuts for the latest culinary trend

This summer, there's only one dish to serve at dinner parties: squirrel.

	Culinary delight: grey squirrel is becoming a vastly popular dish

Low in fat, the grey "tree rats" are seasonally available (between winter hibernations), sustainable (there are an estimated two million running around Britain) and easy on food miles, so they tick all the right green boxes. They're also a patriotic meat to have on your plate - eat a grey squirrel and you're improving the odds of the vastly outnumbered native reds.

I wanted to try squirrel for myself - but bringing Tufty to the table can be a time-consuming mission. The meat is selling faster than butchers can get it, not least because it is currently nesting season. Ever since Kingsley Village Butchers in Fraddon, Cornwall, began offering grey squirrel two months ago, it has shifted up to a dozen a day.

Normally, we Brits are almost uniquely squeamish about unfamiliar meat. Even during the food shortages of the Second World War, Ministry of Food recipes for squirrel soup and rook pie were broadly ignored, and horse meat only intermittently filtered on to the black market.

Mrs Tiggywinkle is safe for a while longer, if for no other reason than that coating a hedgehog in clay and burying it in the embers of an open fire is not the most convenient of urban culinary techniques.

Surely squirrels would be easy in comparison? My calls to some of the finest game butchers in London were countered by a sharp intake of breath (Mayfair), laddish mirth (Chiswick) and a promise to call me back from Holland Park (they didn't). The redoubtable Oxford butcher Fellers offered to send out a huntsman especially, but that seemed rather excessive - and my budget certainly wasn't up to it.

I began to salivate at the sight of a happy couple of squirrels cavorting in my tiny inner-city garden, and was transfixed by squirrel traps on the web. Never had the old cookery book directive "First, catch your hare" carried quite such force. Leaping to the rescue came Kingsley Village Butchers, the butchers who had started the trend.

After just a couple of calls, they dispatched three West Country squirrels, packed in ice and sent by special courier to the capital - instantly transforming them into the most expensive rodents in Britain.

As for recipes, the internet is stuffed with instructions: braised squirrel with watercress, squirrel pasty, fricassée, tandoori… One particularly recherché suggestion was for nettle ravioli with squirrel and wild mushroom filling.

My 1961 copy of the Thirties American classic The Joy of Cooking suggested stuffing and roasting them - recipes that hung optimistically between those for opossum and bear.

There were also diagrams for skinning squirrel - one foot braced down on the tail while the fur is peeled away with both hands, rather like pulling the water-logged wellies off a toddler. This gave me pause; even dedicated foodie as I am, I began to falter. So I enlisted the assistance of Simon Cherry - all-round good game cook and owner of the Carpenter's Arms in west London, which has just been named best gastropub in the new Good Food Guide for London.

Despite spotting an intriguing recipe for Peking duck-style squirrel pancakes, we decided to try out a more straightforward squirrel and bacon casserole, courtesy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's A Cook on the Wild Side. I also saved a few slivers for Thomasina Myers's recipe for squirrel popcorn.

Squirrel flesh is mostly on the back legs, and the saddle is so lean as to be almost fleshless, so you'll need a fair few to feed a family. At £3 to £4 for one, the shop-bought variety is hardly an obvious answer to keeping the lid on an escalating grocery bill.

But it's easy to joint, and Hugh's casserole, with onion, garlic, parsley, stock and white wine, seemed to possess an appropriate rural simplicity. Once done, it was sweet, aromatic, hardly "gamey" in the slightest, and the meat was pleasingly un-rubbery.

As for squirrel popcorn - slivers of meat dipped in soy, then arrowroot, fried in vegetable oil and lightly scattered with crushed fennel seed, allspice, salt and fresh sage - let's just say the results did not look good. But they proved unexpectedly delicious: softly puffed, lightly crunchy, tender and aromatic.

If it weren't so fiddly to get so little flesh off the carcass, it could rival any drinks party nibble.

• 'Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking' by Kate Colquhoun (Bloomsbury) is available for £18 + £1.25 p&p. To order, call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4112 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk

On the Web - where videos go to die; & get cosmopolitan

the YOUTUBE missing, an obit page:

Everyone has something from youtube, even without the internet the clips make their way to the evening news. I saw it, now its gone!

but things vanish from youtube (like CNN segments have vanished into an Orwellian memory hole now and then). Things from CNN that pop up vanish, pirated bits of movies vanish, segments of SNL appear for a few days then are pulled. A student puts up something about school and after a few days it goes..... by the student's own choice or the youtube thought police.

Now you can track your lost faves! http://youtomb.mit.edu/ yes, you tomb, the tracker and explainer of yanked videos. Be it for copyright violation, terms of use violation, or the posters own choice.

AND make friends, the web has a thousand ways to meet people, some meetings may last longer than with meetmyplanet:

http://www.meetmyplanet.com/

MeetmyPlanet is a website that links travelers abroad to the locals in the area.
The goal is to connect travelers who wish to meet people from the area with
locals who want to get to know foreigners in their country. To get started, site
users search for the country or specific city where they wish to meet people.
From there, they are provided a list of profiles of people in that area, along
with their gender, age, spoken languages, and various other bits of interesting
personal information. Users also may specify on their profiles whether they can
host travelers in their homes. Users then are free to add other users as
friends, or send them messages to set up meetings. (from http://www.killerstartups.com/Social-Networking/MeetmyPlanetcom---Connecting-Locals-with-Travlers/ )

http://www.meetmyplanet.com/

I've read of house swaps with tourists (arranged by companies that do background checks) to cut costs and GIVE A REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE and thought that was interesting. (Paul would never stay with anyone he knows, yet someone he does not know -- so this is not for everyone).

Of course if a Count from the Carpathian Mountains emails you, or a guy name Mengele from Brazil you might want to meet in a well lit mall food court!

so let's go surfing!

if you rely on youtube as a source for your blog videos they can vanish (pulled by user, pulled by the legit owner, pulled by youtube for 'terms violation)

so this may be there a day, a year, forever (youtube 'forever')




+++++
but this, that I 'liberated' from youtube is 'mine' on my hard drive, and on this blog (until google removes it - but do they know I am even here?)

Beach Boys - Surf in USA 1969

Alan Moore on V for Vendetta

Alan Moore talks - 01 - V For Vendetta

the mind behind it, the motives for it....






watch more with Moore: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CD8A370BD4702DB9

for more:

www.alanmooreinterview.co.uk/
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Tim McGraw - Live Like You Were Dying

As a rule I don't care for Country Music. No, not a rule, in general I don't care for country.

But today, driving home, in the little Audi, with its 6 BOSE speakers 'cranked up' as juvenile delinquents would have said 30 years, ago I heard a song, and the lyrics hit me: "I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me," played. Ah, to be in my early 40s. Hell, mid 40s! That directional, 'before me,' before would be the first 40 years, a lot of life after me doesn't sound good tho. [ I also blasted 'she's real fine my

(earlier this evening paul was reading a job description and declared me too old, too dumb, and too something else -- I have forgotten the 3rd blow, so 'old' might be on the dot)

LIVE LIKE YOU WERE DYING is ...
Like that list of things before you die or turn 92 (which ever comes last). Read Don Quixote maybe (Cervantes wrote it in his late 50s -- there is hope).



Tim McGraw - Live Like You Were Dying

Verse 1
He said I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me
And one moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days, looking at the x-rays
Talking bout' the options and talking bout' sweet times.
I asked him when it sank in, that this might really be the real end
How's it hit 'cha when you get that kind of news?
Man what did ya do?
He said

Chorus
I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'

Verse 2
He said I was finally the husband, that most the time I wasn't
And I became a friend, a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden goin' fishin, wasn't such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad
Well I finally read the good book, and I took a good long hard look
At what I'd do if I could do it all again
And then

Chorus
I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Shu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'

Bridge
Like tomorrow was the end
And ya got eternity to think about what to do with it
What should you do with it
What can I do with it
What would I do with it

Skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And man I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I watched an eagle as it was flyin'
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'

To live like you were dyin' (4x)




+++

over a million and half people have watched this video . . . but the live one is funner, more real...





LIVE, the REAL THING:

Get Around (my 409) by the Beachboys, well let's contemporize it, by the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS:

time to find SEIZE THE DAY, by Saul B. (but I am in such a ROTH MOOD).

-be well
jb

Connect with the Planet

I took a brief look,

http://www.livenewscameras.com/

it looks kind of fun.
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Winter to Spring (still spring): MIDWEST CONTRASTS . . . . there is HOPE

December 2007
fast forward to:

May 2008 (less than 6 months)

I planted bulbs from Home depot 3 weeks ago:

The azelias look like fires:!

A closeup of the Lillies of the Valley (a song, Lilly of the Valley?)

I have yet to see lightning bugs (fireflies, luciernagas) but am eager anticipation. It still gets to the 40s at night so I am waiting to hang my humminb bird feeder (I hear they make excellent pie fillings!).

How is spring there? We have planted seeds in little cups; and have a few more bulbs to stick in the ground (Iris's, Lilly of the Valley, Lillies (large), ferns..... have have been stuck in the ground already).

ITS SO GREEN:

This is what I thought nature was last May; Flowers in the median of MICHIGAN AVENUE.

Amazing, and the colors.

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Akron v. Chicago a bit of difference

A woman on a Chicago sidewalk in 2003. In front of Nieman Marcus.

Here, in AKRON, on our street, no sidewalks. I did not get a picture sadly, OF A woman racewalking this morning.

A light drizzle, she was wearing a SHOWER CAP. a SHOWER CAP!!

and here, the Chicago grand dame:


where is Elsa Klensch? remember her? http://www.elsaklensch.com/ she used to be on CNN. AKRON could kill her!
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keep dry....
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Just For Laughs

click the play icon:

"The Golden Girls: The Way We Met (#1.25)" (1986)

Rose Nylund: This is exactly what happened during the Great Herring War.
Blanche Devereaux: The Great Herring War?

Rose Nylund: Yes, between the Lindstroms and the Johanssons.
Dorothy Petrillo-Zbornak: Oh, THAT Great Herring War.

Rose Nylund: The two families controlled the most fertile herring waters off the coast of Norway, so naturally, it seemed like it would be in their best interest to band together. Oh, boy, was that a mistake. You see, they couldn't agree on what to do with the herring.

Dorothy Petrillo-Zbornak: Oh, well that's understandable. I mean, the possibilities are overwhelming.

Rose Nylund: Exactly. The Johanssons wanted to pickle the herring, and the Lindstroms wanted to train them for the circus.

Blanche Devereaux: Weren't they kind of hard to see riding on the elephants?

Rose Nylund: Oh, not that kind of circus. A herring circus. Sort of like Sea World, only smaller. Much, much smaller. But bigger than a flea circus.

Dorothy Petrillo-Zbornak: Uh, tell me, Rose, um... Ah-ha ha ha!... Did they ever shoot a herring out of a cannon?
Rose Nylund: Only once. But they shot him into a tree. After that no other herring would do it..

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FROM INSIDE AND OUT: Aazaleas, rhododendrons, mushrooms?, lillies of the valley

after the rain, a bit of thunder, not lightning, everything looked so bright:

The snow is long gone, the tulips have faded, the summer is coming on too fast..... lots of bright colors (the Cardinal was our winter red friend).

From the dining room:
Shells on the mantel:
Books . . . .

NOW THE OUTSIDE!!

azeleas

new growth, just saw the Christmas Tree stand in the basement!:

rhododendrons
very earthy:
lillies of the valley (what valley?)

Winter, Spring, moving towards the summer. Like some kind of mortality count-down.

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THE OTHER SIDE, a wonderful (fabulous?) read?

A serendipitous find in the library.....


or how I found Alfred Kubin's THE OTHER SIDE





I was in Bierce, the Libary at the University of Akron. I was wandering around the Meyerink/ CALVINO area in the Ps.



There was a book that caught my eye, THE OTHER SIDE. One of those truely generic sounding titles, but with a publisher NOT TO MATCH: DEDALUS. a temptation to read the blurbs . . . further curiosity..... reading.......



A bit of research indicated it was the Kubin's (a full time artist) only novel. He wrote it while depressed (how could I go wrong?), too depressed to draw. The year was 1908, he was a friend of Kafka. Kubin illustrated it as well.



I am not yet finished, but its a wonderful piece of creative fiction. ATMOSPHERIC, it is the definition of an atmospheric novel. BLEAK then BLEAKER...... the 'universal' for Bleak . . .



Its a dark brooding tale, mythical places, grotesques ( a swordsman with scars on each cheek that gave him the appearance of having 3 mouths....), ideas ('In death the subject becomes a diagonal between time and space.') . . .





from an erudite surrogate:


http://www.babelguides.com/view/work/9070


or: http://www.alfred-kubin.com/Kubin-Werke1.html for some art.... or a video:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3lkl3_expo-alfred-kubin-18771959_news



+++++++++++

The book is both out of print, and costly to buy (I am severly tempted to own a copy). And I may put it in my librarything.com list, as read, but in comments 'procurement pending.'




an excerpt, and the art to go with it:





From: THE OTHER SIDE by Akfred Kubin, 2000 Dedalus European Classics, 2000. pp 137-139.

III: The Confusion of the Dream

That night I went to sleep with
momentous thoughts in my mind. Rather less momentous was the dream I had, but it
was so strange I feel I must recount it here. I saw myself standing by the great
river, looking across longingly at the Outer Settlement, which appeared more
extensive and picturesque than it was in reality. As far as the eye could see
was a confu­sion of bridges, towers, windmills, jagged peaks, all
inter­spersed and interconnected, as in a mirage. Large and small, fat and
thin figures were moving around in the chaos. As I looked across, I could sense
the miller standing behind my back. 'I killed him', he whispered and tried to
push me into the water. To my astonishment my left leg lengthened until I could
step into the seething throng on the other side with no trouble at all. Now I
heard ticking all round me and saw a large number of flat clocks of all sizes,
from a clock for a tower, to a kitchen­ clock and right down to the tiniest
pocket-watch. They had short, stumpy legs and were crawling all over each other
in the meadow like tortoises, ticking excitedly. A man dressed in soft green
leather and wearing a cap like a white sausage was sitting in a tree bare of
leaves, catching fish in the air. Those he caught he hung on the branches and
they dried in an instant. An old fellow with an abnormally large trunk and short
legs approached; apart from a pair of grubby drill workman's trou­sers, he
was naked. He had two long vertical rows of nipples; I counted eighteen. With a
great deal of huffing and puffing he filled his lungs full of air, now the left
side of his breast swelling up, now the right, and then, with his fingers
running up and down the eighteen nipples, he played the most delightful
accordion pieces. At the same time he moved in time with the rhythm like a
dancing bear as he let the air out. Finally he stopped, blew his nose on his
hands and threw them away. Then he grew an enormous beard and disappeared in the
tangle of hair. In a thicket nearby I disturbed some fat pigs. They ran away
from me in single file, getting smaller and tinier until, with loud squeals,
they disappeared in a mouse-hole by the road.

Behind me - it made
me feel uncomfortable - the miller was sitting by the river studying a huge
sheet of newspaper. After he had read it and eaten it up, smoke came pouring out
of his ears. He turned the colour of copper, stood up and clutched his sagging
paunch with both hands, all the time tearing up and down the bank, sending
fierce looks in all directions and emitting shrill whistles. Finally he fell in
a heap on the ground, turned pale, his body growing light and trans­parent
so that one could clearly see two little railway trains whizzing round his
entrails. Each seemed to be trying to catch the other as they shot like
lightning round one loop of his gut after another. With a shake of the head and
somewhat taken aback, I was about to offer to help the miller when my words were
cut off by a chimpanzee planting out a circular garden round me at top speed
from which thick clusters of fat, apple­ green stems like giant asparagus
shot up out of the damp ground. I was afraid I was going to be trapped within
this living fence, but before I really knew what was happening, I was liberated.
In his convulsions, the dead miller, now no longer transparent, had laid a ring
of hundreds of thousands of little milky white eggs, from which legions of slugs
emerged and at once devoured their procreator. A pungent smell of smoked meat
spread, causing the fleshy stalks to decay and collapse. In the distance the
Outer Settlement disappeared in a web of shimmering violet
threads.

I noticed a huge shell lying conveniently by the bank of
the river, like a rocky reef, and jumped onto it. Another disaster! Straining
with the motion, the shell opened and the business became precarious. Inside I
could see quivering heaps of gelatinous matter and. . . I woke up.

139

a most enjoyable book, and finding proves the observation below:

+++++++++++++++++++++++

que me figuraba el Paraíso bajo la especie de una biblioteca


http://www.palabravirtual.com/index.php?ir=ver_poema1.php&pid=314


Jorge Luis Borges, 1960

POEMA DE LOS DONES in EL HACEDOR

Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche
esta declaración de la maestría
de Dios, que con magnífica ironía
me dio a la vez los libros y la noche.

De esta ciudad de libros hizo dueños
a unos ojos sin luz, que sólo pueden
leer en las bibliotecas de los sueños
los insensatos párrafos que ceden

las albas a su afán. En vano el día
les prodiga sus libros infinitos,
arduos como los arduos manuscritos
que perecieron en Alejandría.

De hambre y de sed (narra una historia griega)
muere un rey entre fuentes y jardines;
yo fatigo sin rumbo los confines
de esta alta y honda biblioteca ciega.

Enciclopedias, atlas, el Oriente
y el Occidente, siglos, dinastías,
símbolos, cosmos y cosmogonías
brindan los muros, pero inútilmente.

Lento en mi sombra, la penumbra hueca
exploro con el báculo indeciso,
yo, que me figuraba el Paraíso
bajo la especie de una biblioteca.

Algo, que ciertamente no se nombra
con la palabra azar, rige estas cosas;
otro ya recibió en otras borrosas
tardes los muchos libros y la sombra.

Al errar por las lentas galerías
suelo sentir con vago horror sagrado
que soy el otro, el muerto, que habrá dado
los mismos pasos en los mismos días.

¿Cuál de los dos escribe este poema
de un yo plural y de una sola sombra?
¿Qué importa la palabra que me nombra
si es indiviso y uno el anatema?

Groussac o Borges, miro este querido
mundo que se deforma y que se apaga
en una pálida ceniza vaga
que se parece al sueño y al olvido.

it happens at night in the library,

"One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries." THE LIBRARY AT NIGHT, by Alberto Manguel, p. 14.

I did read a short book, a one act - one actor - play yesterday, UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL. About a somewhat anal librarian. His job was to check books in from the night return box. One day he found one that was overdue . . . . 113 years overdue. He took it upon himself to collect the fine, lost his job in the process as he circled the world hoping to re-coup some of the fine from whom is never clear. But it turned out that that the borrower was an immortal, like a Zebra plant. Itas a fun read..... like any good librarian he documents his hunt . . . its almost Biblical.

a few pictures (clicking them could make them jumbo!)


A crab apple tree in the yard:

a little closer, promies a boutiful harvest for the squirrels:

Up close, rather pretty, attractive to bees...

Holly blooming, a premonition of Christmas and snow? already a reminder?

be well,
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