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Friday, July 15th, 2005
Tonight was phase 1 of our candy-making weekend; we made chocolate fudge. Here is a recipe, from Woodstock Candy, a fine place to get fudge if you're in Ulster County: Ingredients: - 2 cups granulated white sugar
- 1 cup cream
- 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
- 1 tablespoon butter
Combine sugar and cream and cook over moderate heat. When this becomes very hot, add the chocolate. Stir constantly. Cook until mixture reaches soft-ball stage (238 degrees). Remove from heat and add butter. Cool slightly, then mix until fudge starts to thicken. Transfer to a buttered tin. Cut into diamond-shaped pieces before fudge hardens completely. Right now it is in its buttered tin hardening; soon I will go down and cut it into small diamond pieces. (And some larger diamond pieces also, which will not get dipped in chocolate but might get sprinkled with confectioner's suger instead.) Sylvia helped with the measuring and mixing but got bored and wandered off during the boiling which I did not want to let her help with because of the high temperatures involved. (Boiling fudge is a grueling procedure in the hot weather.) I am perennially too shy about boiling candy though, in that I shut off the heat the moment my candy thermometer touched the 238-degree "soft ball" line, indeed it may still have been a degree shy of the line, when I think it would actually have been better to err on the high side of the line. I have done the same thing with caramel and had it not harden as fully as I wanted. But we'll see. After we made the fudge (and Sylvia's interest in the process returned, when there was suddenly the prospect of fudgey spatulas to lick), it was time to get ready for bed, so we came upstairs. Tonight's section of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (chapters 16 and 17) coincidentally included some talk about fudge-making, which was exciting. Update: Well the tentatitive upshot is, I probably did not heat it up enough (as reckoned above), and I definitely poured it into too large a pan. The pan I used is 6" square, and the fudge is not tall enough in it. I should probably have used a loaf pan. As far as not having heated it up enough, at this point after 3 hours sitting on the counter, it is...soft. No way around it, it's soft. And I sampled a bit of it, it was quite grainy. Which I think if the sugar had gotten hot enough, it would not be. So I am putting it in the fridge now, maybe it will get hard enough in there; but I think it will be grainy regardless. And too short.
posted evening of July 15th, 2005: Respond
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While reading Calvino's Under the Jaguar Sun on the train to work this morning, I ran across the following passage: It was his way of speaking -- or rather, one of his ways; the copious information Salustiano supplied (about the history and customs and nature of his counrty his erudition was inexhaustible) was either stated emphatically like a war proclamation or slyly insinuated as if it were charged with all sorts of implied meanings. The word "insinuated" is hyphenated after "in" and spans a page break -- for some reason when I was reading I was expecting the word to be something starting with "inter", maybe "interposed" or something -- so I unconsciously supplied the "ter" as I turned the page. With the result that the word I read, was "intersinuated". What a lovely word that would be! I have always heard "insinuate" as connoting a sort of snaky presence, a way of causing hidden concepts to slither into the meaning of your words. (I think but am not sure that an etymological basis for this impression exists.)* And changing the prefix to "inter" reinforces that I think -- not "slithering into" but "slithering among"... Oh, and: the story is great. Quite applicable to my own consciousness.
* Ah yes, it comes from "sinus", which means "curve" like in "sine wave" -- that's where I'm getting "snake" from, it is a curvy animal.
posted morning of July 15th, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, July 14th, 2005
The candy-making date is to be this Saturday afternoon. We will make chocolate fudge and marshmallows, and dip them in chocolate; also brazil nuts and peanut clusters, and a couple of molded chocolate shapes. Meanwhile in the read, last night we had Chapter 13, "The Big Day Arrives". Sylvia was participating in the book as much as I have seen her do, pointing out the different characters in the picture, describing who they were and what their roles in the story were. Update: Also Connie and Julia are going to come over and help, and bring strawberries for dipping.
posted morning of July 14th, 2005: Respond
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Monday, July 11th, 2005
Our reread of The Phantom Tollbooth stalled around Chapter 17, because of the presence of Demons -- ever since about when Milo was in the Forest of Sight, Sylvia has been asking with trepidation, "Are there Demons in this chapter?" most every night, and I would reassure her that there were not any yet. But once we got to Chapter 17, where there are Demons, Sylvia did not want any more. I tried encouraging her a bit to stick it out through the scary part in expectation of a happy ending -- one indeed which she is already acquainted with and had talked about in earlier parts of the book -- but I did not want to lean on her about it. So, we have moved on to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Yes, we are reading this partially in expectation of the new movie that's coming out -- we watched and enjoyed the Gene Wilder film and are looking forward to the new one.) I'm a little surprised because Sylvia didn't think too much of James and the Giant Peach, which I always thought was pretty similar; I guess the addition of Chocolate makes all the difference. She is crazy about this book. We have decided to try making chocolate candies as a cooking project while we read this book. I have not made candy for several years, but last time I did they came out pretty well. I think the addition of Sylvia's enthusiasm will be helpful. Also tonight she said she wants to bake Challah bread with me, another thing I have not done for a long time. (Maybe ever? I've made egg breads but I don't know if any of them were specifically challah.) So -- looking forward to the kitchen stuff, I'll let you know how it goes.
posted evening of July 11th, 2005: Respond
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A status update on my still-outstanding home improvement tasks for the summer. Woodworking - Ellen painted Sylvia's playhouse to match the garage which it is next to, and it looks very nice. It's gotten a good deal of use from Sylvia and various friends this summer, as I was hoping it would.
- The garbage-can enclosure is up. I finished installing it last weekend, and had the inspiration (born of laziness) to make a raised garden with the dirt I had excavated, instead of carting it away. I finished that this weekend, using some rocks from Eva's property (where we visited Saturday) to complete the retaining wall. Under the dirt where I excavated is an old slate patio in very bad condition; Ellen had the inspired idea to use the fragments of slate to create a walkway leading to the front garden.
- However, I still have to build the gates for the enclosure. Once I build and hang these, Ellen will be able to paint the structure.
- We cleaned up the garage and actually have a decent work area there now. Janis had given me some old trestles for a work table, which I nailed together with maple planks, and built a shelf above it.
- I have an idea that I may actually get to building the small tool shed sometime in August.
Patio - The slate walkway along the driveway is level and drains well, which has made me realize that the driveway itself is not level, and drains poorly. Aargh...
- I ended up underlaying the garbage can enclosure with limestone instead of bluestone, because it was available in a more convenient shape. Damned expensive though!
- I'm planning to do the extension of the back patio next Friday, when i am taking the day off. If this goes according to plan, then I will start drawing up plans for the tool shed next weekend.
posted afternoon of July 11th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, July 8th, 2005
I've been reading Chris Pye's Woodcarving: Tools, Materials & Equipment and getting a fair bit out of it -- a lot of the content is stuff I had heard before in various places but his way of phrasing it seems quite apt and like it might stay with me longer -- like it get the meaning of it better than when it is batted around at WoodCentral. So today I went to his web site to see what is going on over there. Turns out he is making available for free (at least for now) download, a series of woodcarving manuals. I downloaded and started reading Learning to Carve and was struck by this observation on the third page: Many beginners have a head fantasy of learning to carve but really have no idea of hard work it might take to realise this simple wish. This is just about exactly the criticism I was making the other day of my own approach to making plans in life...So yeah, I like this guy and he speaks to me. I am going to continue reading his stuff and hopefully pick up some carving skills.
posted evening of July 8th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, July first, 2005
So tonight I finally got to see the Townsend retrospective after thinking about it for a month or more. Can't recommend it highly enough -- obviously the furniture is breathtaking in design and execution, and the wood -- but the great thing is the selection of pieces, and the way they're arranged to let you compare them. They have at a rough guess 30 or 40 pieces, mostly tables, chests of drawers, desks, and cabinets, and a few chairs, and some miscellany -- so you can go from one (say) desk to the next, to the next, seeing how they are basically the same and what differences are introduced from piece to piece. Also there is some comparison of pieces by John Townsend with cheaper copies done by other Newport shops, which I found interesting. In one of the rooms, pieces are displayed upside-down -- so you can examine a lot of the joinery pretty closely. (And even in the other rooms, the way the furniture is layed out it is fairly easy to look behind and under stuff without attracting much adverse attention from the guards.) I went in to this show knowing that Newport furniture is not really my bag -- and came out pretty well confirmed in that opinion. I mean, a cabriole leg with a talon on the end of it is really beautiful and admirable; but I don't feel any real impetus to duplicate it. What surprised me about the show was how interesting I found the drop-leaf tables -- a piece of furniture that has never really been high on my list of things to make -- some of the ones I saw there had me thinking Yeah, I could build something like that and have it come out pretty nice! So, I'm going to keep that in mind as a possible project for later on.
posted evening of July first, 2005: Respond
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Wednesday, June 29th, 2005
I have started creating a web site for Ellen's business, Pageturners, Ink. (Temporarily housed on READIN.) Check it out!
posted afternoon of June 29th, 2005: Respond
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Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
If anyone is around midtown next Tuesday evening (the 5th) and feels like meeting up for a drink, I'm going to be listening to the Ed Russell Group at Kavehaz. The club is at 37 W. 26th, music at 8. I'll be the guy looking unsure of himself. (No really, drop me a line if you're going to swing by.) Ed was my guitar teacher for several years when I was living in Queens, a genuinely nice guy and a very accomplished jazz guitarist. His combo is groovy too.
posted afternoon of June 28th, 2005: Respond
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Monday, June 13th, 2005
I was googling around today and thought I would look for the sentence "I got a girl long and tall, sweet as she could be", which I believe is the first line of a Big Bill Broonzy song I was listening to last night and enjoying. No results... but!!! "long and tall" + "sweet as she could be" brings up only one result, and it is Michael Taft's Pre-War Blues Lyrics Concordance!!! This is huge! I haven't even begun looking at it yet but I'm completely psyched that such a thing should exist and be online. Update: And here is a link to the front page of the concordance.
posted morning of June 13th, 2005: Respond
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