from the NYT’s: Isaac Newton in the Kitchen:
Harold McGee, who first bonded rigorous science to popular cookery in his 1984 book, “On Food and Cooking,” was doing a run-through for Thanksgiving dinner. His culinary investigations did not end with the book’s publication. He has spent the last 10 years working on a revision, just published by Scribner.
I want this book for christmas. Definitely.
Monthly Archive for November, 2004
Remember when your world was small, not reaching much beyond the population of your high school. Remember how rumors could ruin a person. Every co-ed high school had “the guy who got caught masturbating”. What a stigma! I didn’t know the guy, but I still remember his name, and I’d laugh behind his back even though I was probably pulling on myself at least as often as he was. But that’s the world today, one big damn high school. Everybody’s whispering by the lockers, entire populations spreading rumors and condemning behind each other’s backs. People who define their morals are barfing out crocks of shit. In today’s world fifteen minutes of fame is something to dread, because the world is a big dry field of grass and rumours spread like wild fire. (This tirade was born of nothing more than three newspaper pages, one about Dan Rather reporting from falsified documents, one about an American soldier shooting an unarmed insurgent, and one about Princess Diana having a secret abortion… all invokers of ravenous rumorous opinionation.)
Kids love adventure, and kick-the-can is great adventure. We used to play all the time behind “Jetro” Haendler’s house, the middle of a long stretch of fence-less backyards. A tennisball can was stood by the backyard’s big tree, also the sight of the “jail”, and whoever was “it” would try to spot players and capture them by tapping the can three times saying, “One, Two, Three I see so-and-so,” before so-and-so could run up and kick the can first (setting everybody in jail free). There was a favorite hiding place in our game, at the far corner of Jetro’s house, where you could crawl around and spy like an assassin, watching for “it” to focus his search for sneaking players in the opposite direction, then jumping into a mad-dash attack of the can. One game, I was crawling around the side of Jetro’s house and made an unfortunate discovery as my hand squashed horribly in an unfairly placed pile of dog crap. I jumped up in disgust, and was immediately jailed by whoever was “it”. Grossed out, repulsed, ready to barf, I watched other players make the same discovery as me, and giggled uncontrollably, though I suffered the same. That game, we shit-handed victims couldn’t wait for the last player to be captured. We couldn’t wait to finish our jail sentence and run home to scrub the crap out of our hands… but scrub fast, for adventure was waiting.
I’ve reached a temporary impasse in my Great American NAVel, a point in the action at which I am stuck. Work brain, work. Delve that imagination. I am nearing the end, completion rising on the hazy horizon, and every piece of action matters greatly. Fear not! I’ve reached these impasses before, and have popped through like a cork shooting out of champagne. When you (my friends, and those who have never met me) finally hold the bound pages in your hands, oh ho ho, great laughter will ensue, and nail-biting, action-filled anticipation. The time has come to Whet the Whistle of any who feel curious. So here is a clip from deep into Underground Adventure… Continue reading ‘A Clip from the Underground’
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