More poetry...I feel I'm getting off lightly here while Lestrade comes up with actual posts, but I am enjoying it. I'll answer the question he did today as well, which was what he'd like to learn that he hasn't yet.
I'd like to learn to cook, like he does, by just looking at food and knowing how it goes together and what cooking method suits it. I can just about get by these days if I follow a recipe, but it's not the same.
I remember making something that called for six sage leaves and having ten or so left in the package. Lestrade said to just put them all in and use them up, and I said, 'But it only calls for six! Six is not ten!' I still get slightly irrational when I try to cook.
I think I'd like to be able to write fiction some day too.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
I admit, I've never quite grasped the second to last two lines entirely.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
If anyone has thoughts on them, I'd be happy to hear them.
32 comments:
But if you start out with recipes then you soon learn what goes with what. And it helps having had a long time to only need to feed myself, therefore no one but me suffered when it all went horribly wrong.
You do get slightly scary when I mess with your cooking, it must be said.. .
I've always thought that people who could actually cook and make things that are always nice whatever happens must have some kind of magical power therefore I don't need to feel bad for not being able to do it I just wasn't given the gift ;-)
I'm loving the poetry and if you're going to answer the questions as well then that's just a bonus :-)
I hope you had a nice day and are getting some relaxation time this evening.
Anonybob - sorcery! That explains it.
L - who knows what might've happened if I'd added those extra four sage leaves! I know you think it would merely taste slightly more of sage, but it could easily have exploded, you don't know.
How do you know I didn't sneak them in behind your back when I grabbed you for a kiss?
Can you buy me some rubbing alcohol?
AnonyBob - he's relaxed enough that a degu is falling asleep on his belly.
L - as long as I didn't know about it, the sauce wouldn't have known to explode. Logic. Yes, I can buy you rubbing alcohol...why?
Ah, so your thought patterns cause explosive sauces... that stuff you made the other night was on the verge of exploding I think.
Would you believe that I wish to rub something with alcohol? (promise I won't drink it.)
All right...
I think that stuff just causes the unwary to explode if they consume it.
The real reason is callous building. I don't play my acoustic enough to get proper callouses, and then when I do my fingers are agony. Alcohol is a bit of a cheat to better callouses.
Aha, I see. Are you planning to play it more often then?
Yeah, going to try. I'll serenade you as you cook...
Music to soothe the savage food... I'm glad, I like listening to you.
Yeah? Normally I use the electric so I don't annoy you all, or disrupt everyone's concentration.
It doesn't annoy me, it's nice.
Can't speak for Sherlock, who earlier today told me to stop breathing so loudly...
Oh, was that you making all that noise? Thought it was the monster under the stairs.
He moaned at me for writing too loudly when I did my paperwork the other day. Nevermind that he is the loudest think in this borough, let alone this flat.
His talent for noise is sometimes impressive, yeah. Even without the violin - not that he doesn't play very nicely when he wants to.
But playing nicely is so boring when instead you can try to make people's ears bleed for an experiment.
Maybe he's on the right track. Plenty of professional experimental music makes my ears bleed too...
oh, you both answered my question, lovely.
As for the cooking, as stupid as it sounds, I pick a lot of stuff up through watching cooking shows on television. Also just taking things that I really like and throwing them together never fails. And the golden rule in my kitchen (and I think Sherlock might agree) cheese makes everything better ;)
Re: the poem
Isn't it about Margaret, who's mourning for the death of the things that grow in spring during the fall?
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Death causes all sorrow, whether the death of flowers or the death of people, and is unavoidable.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Death is the blight man was born for, and when Margaret is mourning for the dying trees/flowers/grass, she's really mourning for herself. Because her heart knows she's going to die, even if neither her mouth nor her mind can put it into words. And so does every ghost, who's presumably had an "ah ha!" moment after they die.
Or, I could be totally off base...
cheese does make (almost) everything better!
Except for the ghost bit, I think you are exactly on the right track, DW. Because Margaret is still a child, she doesn't yet comprehend sin and death (and death the consequence of sin -- remember Hopkins was a priest. The blight is the corruption of all creation due to human sin, thereby tying the fate of nature that he is talking about to the fate of people), so she doesn't really know why she is morning.
Also, ghost is a synonym for soul or spirit. So her heart and soul know that death is inevitable, but she isn't old enough to have realized it with her mind.
Cylendelmar
*mourning.
And I mean, ghost, At the time, was used as a synonym...
Cylendelmar
I used to be terrified of messing up on a recipe. One of my friends tried to get me to just throw stuff together, and I would beg for a recipe.
Now I've had practice with cooking, I've found I can usually follow a recipe to a point, and then add or omit as I feel like it. One of my friends who's mother is a baker told me her rule of thumb is to follow the recipe exactly the first time, then make modifications after. Maybe try that with a few dishes?
I still mostly cook as though I'm running a lab experiment--everything exactly measured out exactly before I start putting anything together, precise step by precise step. My mother and sisters are more the handful of this, just enough of that cooks, and I wish I could do that, but I just can't bring myself to do that--as you said, John, what if it explodes?!
My most popular cookie is the result of a recipe mistake. When I realized I'd forgotten the molasses (what idiot forgets the molasses in molasses cookies???) I baked it up anyway.
Brown Sugar Spice Crinkles, AKA Mommies Mistake Cookies, were born.
Zeph - we do end up watching a fair bit of Nigella (Sherlock likes her desserts). Maybe I'll pick something up...
DW and Cylendelmar - I...think that helps? I'll have to consider it for a while. I'm a bit slow with these things.
Pip - it sounds reasonable enough... Maybe one modification at a time so I know what I did when it all goes horribly wrong.
Can you get the Food Network over there? Because the early episodes of "Good Eats" with Alton Brown are very good about explaining why you want certain ingredients in a recipe. And knowing that makes it easy for me to decide if a substitute will be okay.
There are books out there about cooking without recipes and some of them are worth a try. And you can rook Sherlock into helping with the experiments, too, which will be Educational for him, especially if you have him take notes.
rsf
DW and Cylendelmar - also I realised I forgot to say thank you there, sorry. And thank you!
rsf - I think I've seen Alton Brown on youtube, possibly deep frying a turkey? I'll look into it. Experimental cooking does sound like something Sherlock would enjoy.
He might also like this episode of Nova ScienceNow (if it will play in the UK), called "Can I Eat That", especially the last segment, where they talk to Nathan Myhrvold. He's written a massive, 6-volume cookbook about the science of contemporary cooking, and it's quite amazing. (There are a whole bunch of videos with him on YouTube.)
Not available here.
I'm too scared to introduce him to much Heston Blumenthal. The kitchen is not a science lab in this flat. he can do that in his own kitchen, when he's older.
Boo.
But there still are a lot of YouTube vids to see Nathan get his science geek/chef on. :)
(And that nearly 2500-page cookbook!)
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