Failing to Get Its Liver

Duck, Mortified and Bruised, Leaves Area with Dignity

This came from failblog, but I can repost because I grew up there, right?  It's oddly believable--I mean, someone there interpreting the duck waddling off as a refusal of medical treatment.

ham tea

1 tablespoon spoiled milk
1 tablespoon sugar
2 cups water
1 tea bag

boil water
pour water into cup with tea bag
cover for a minute
take out tea bag
add sugar and spoiled milk
stir

"why does this tea smell like ham?"

from "The Golden Treasury of Natural History," published 1961 (with italic titles to ruin the humour)

--Dinosaurs--

Making Way for The Chosen People

"About 60 million years ago the dinosaurs disappeared.  When they went out of the picture, the Age of Reptiles came to an end."

"The habit of some dinosaurs of eating the eggs of others probably played a part in bringing an end to the dinosaurs.  The rise of a great new group of animals, the mammals, doubtless played a part, too."

"These big reptiles were truly huge.  But they were not the biggest animals that have ever lived.  No dinosaur was as big as a blue whale."


Thank God for Sense

"Doubtless the reason many of the dinosaurs died is that their bodies were too big for their brains.  With smaller bodies and bigger brains they might have lived on.  They were successful for a very long time because conditions on the earth remains almost the same for millions of years.  When conditions changed, they did not have sense enough to help themselves in any way."


Resorting to Slurs

"Stegosaurus has so tiny a brain that it could not control the muscles of its legs."

"The head of Brontosaurus was small.  There was not much room in it for brains.  The brain of the thunder lizard weighed only about a pound--not much of a brain for a 35-ton body.  The big animal must have been stupid."

"Like Brontosaurus, Diplodocus was clumsy and stupid."



--Insects--

When Only the Unequivocal Will Do

"Only people and the social insects are really social."


Us & The Commies

"In some ways an insect society is far ahead of a community of people.  Every individual that is old enough to work has work to do; there is no unemployment.  Every insect knows exactly how to carry on its work in the community; it does not have to be taught.  There are practically no quarrels between members of the group.  But neither is there any freedom.  We like our own societies, in spite of their faults, much better."



--Birds (Friends & Enemies)--

Am I Using My Eyes Properly?

"A bird inherits its way of nest-building.  It does not have to be taught how to build a nest, just as we do not have to be taught how to use our eyes."


Just In Case You Wondered...


"All birds have two legs."

"All birds have wings."


The Good, The Bad, And The Cannibals

"Some birds are our friends and others are our enemies."

"On the other side of the ledger is the harm which birds do us by eating fruit, grain, and helpful insects.  Some birds harm us, moreover, by eating the eggs of other birds and even small birds themselves."

"Of course, no bird is ever consciously helping us or harming us.  They are simply eating the food they are fitted for eating."



--Snakes--

"Many people are so afraid of poisonous snakes that they kill every snake they can.  These people are being unfair to snakes in general."

aspiring to be rectangular almond cookies

What I did was...
Whisked together melted butter, quite a bit of both brown and white sugar, and an egg.  Added about a cup and a half of chopped almonds, and half a cup of "currant" raisins.  Added a little splash of almond extract, few large pinches of cinnamon, a quarter (grated off) of a nutmeg, and a large pinch of baking powder.  Mixed in handfuls of white flour until it became a very soft dough.  Baked tablespoon sized dollops at 350 F until a little browned.

What should be done is to make just enough dough to hold together the almonds and currants.  This dough should be sweeter and less starchy (mostly butter, egg, and sugar).  The dough should be formed into large shallow rectangles that are cut into strips like biscotti when just out of the oven.

Fancy Ramen (actually Udon)

The bouillon I used isn't much of an improvement over the powdered broth in packets of ramen: still chock full of MSG.  You could use less nasty broth obviously--I'm planning on it next time.

~4 cups water

1/2 cube chicken bouillon

2 teaspoons tamari

1 small garlic clove

1 small (~2cm cube) piece fresh ginger

1/4 fresh jalapeno

1 mushroom

1 heaping tablespoon green onions

3oz udon

1 egg

Begin heating the water in a medium pot on high heat.  Chop the garlic, the quarter of a jalapeno, and the mushroom.  Cut off the skin of the piece of ginger.  Drop these into the pot, along with the bouillon and tamari.  When the water boils, add the dry udon.  Chop the green onions into pieces with larger diameter than depth.  Try a noodle every few minutes.  When they're almost done, crack the egg into the pot.  Crack two, if you like.  Scrape the bottom with a spoon or spatula to keep the egg from sticking.  Boil it for a little more than a minute, then turn off the heat, add the green onions, and serve.

Chop sentences well. Pour 3 qts. superfluous detail into lightly greased shorthand.

The economy of recipe grammar that I've been working within is really baffling. Articles must be dropped, but the most obvious steps must be pinned down with the utmost exactitude. And the continuity of labels is sacred, as if I'm writing in a programming language.

Also, what was all the fuss about numbers as words instead of numerals? The idea at first was to make these recipes as transparent as possible, though I sabotaged that supposed goal at every turn, writing "one" instead of "1" was just one way to do that. The first recipe, for lentil soup, appears to be making itself as opaque as possible by making a spectacle of its potential transparency. Really that's what I love doing anyway. The point, apparently, is not to write accessible recipes, but to make a show of it, to be dramatic, to reveal myself hiding.