Angela Lansbury

Like most people my age I first encountered Angela Lansbury visa via Murder She Wrote and only later found out that she was in fact a Broadway Goddess on daytime TV. I think she must have enjoyed it. Grandma and I used to watch the show when I visited in the summer.



Flopper and I have talked about how a voice like hers would be passed over in todays theater ( not to mention Ethel)


But she makes me smile and I do love her voice.

~Eikon

A Scahat for Earl

I didn't really like how the Swell hat turned out , the gauge is too loose, and so when Earl said it was on its way to becoming a "scahat" (scarf hat combo) I remembered I hadn't made him anything yet this winter and finished it up tonight.

It comes with distressingly long ear flaps/scarves?
Gay ninja powers.
The ability to really confuse Elias.
Or really torment him.

The red is Tweed Aran ad the silver is a cashmere blend from Louisa Harding.

Earl seemed rather excited to be getting it.

~Eikon

Moving right along in teaching experiences

Today was my last day at the high school in Saint Closet so my students in AP government wrote me a good bye note when I wasn't looking on.

It made me smile; the torn out from a note book origin made it all the more adorable.

~Eikon

Poppyseed rolls

Or in the native parlance "Kolachi" and not those Czech abominations that go by the same name. It is a production to make these holiday treats. I started at ten this morning and finished at 5 in the afternoon. I've tried to make poppy seed rolls for the last three years now with varying degrees of success. This year I'm using my friend David's recipe.

The dough runs as follows.

~~~~~~
1/2 stick of butter, 3/4 c. milk. 2 eggs (reserve part for egg wash on top), 1/2 c. sugar, 1 pkg. yeast, pinch of salt, flour until it makes a good dough


i think i usually melt the butter in the milk, add the yeast and sugar once the butter-milk mixture is cooled enough, then add the eggs and the rest...
~~~~~~~
So melt the butter in the milk.
add sugar (I multiplied the recipes by six and used a cup of honey and a cup and a half of sugar)

Toss the mixture into a wide bowl to cool more swiftly.

Add the eggs and the yeast which you ought to have proofed by now but only when the milk/butter has cooled to luke warm. Cooking the eggs or the yeast is a bad idea.
Then keep adding flour (using a sifter) until the dough is workable.
Let the whole thing rise for three hours kneading at an hour and a half.

The rising time will give you plenty of time to make the filling.
First grind a cup of poppy seeds per roll. I used my little mortar and pestle. The idea is to break up the outer shell not to make dust. The seeds won't cook properly if they are not roughed up a bit.

~~~~~~
1 cup of poppyseeds, before grinding
1 tbs butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 mushy banana
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You squish the banana and milk together. I used honey instead of sugar and reduced the whole mixture in a pot for about an hour on medium.


Now after the filling is ready and the dough has risen roll out the dough very thinly. It's a tough dough to work with so work those arms : ) .
Spread about a cup and a half of filling on the dough and roll it up putting the "Seam" underneath and tucking in both ends. Finally cut four or 5ive slits equitably across the top of each roll to let the pastry breath and not explode. If you want the nice golden brown crust brush the outside of the roll with some egg white.
It gets tossed in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
My first three had one disaster (which we will happily eat) making it a five out of six success rate. Maybe next year I'll avert all disasters. These five will be frozen for the holidays as gifts for select wonderful people in my life.
~Eikon

Kraut Stomper

My latest kitchen toy courtesy of Lehman's (aka the House of Satan).

Because everyone needs a poplar sauerkraut Stomper.

It's so big and stompy. We can also use it to fend off the Tartar invasion.

Seriously compared to using a wine bottle this will be a miracle.

~Eikon

AP Goverment

My Advanced Placement Government Students did an exercise today in forming "political parties".

The class of twenty split 17 to three into two parties, a mammoth vaguely liberal socialist entity I titled "The Pan Liberal Union and the minority conservative party which jokingly titled themselves "Backwards".

When I asked the Backwards party how they would compete in the election with such an overwhelming majority lined up against them.

They responded of their classmates "Oh they're educated ; they're not our political base."

I nearly choked laughing.

~Eikon

Hunting For Honey

I am in the truest sense of the word a bibliophile. Out of everything I own my greatest love is reserved for my books. Today when I was in the local book store in Saint Closet I saw "Hunting for honey" by Eric Valli on the shelf.
Apparently in Nepal there was once a lowland forest in the foothills of the Himalayas where in several groups of nomadic people lived. With advent of DDT and the subsequent removal of malaria from the swampy forests people have cleared these jungles and built farms. The last vestiges of the traditional Rajji culture hang on with there being roughly 3000 Raji left.

The Raji were semi nomadic and scheduled their year between harvesting honey and fishing when the bees migrated.
They shimmy up these very large trees carrying smoking torches to collect honey.
This is a glorious book with some amazing photography of people in trees festooned with bee hives; ten or twenty hives to a tree. It seems they just sort of hang there. The largest tree in the book had 500 hives. My Apologies for the flash pictures.
Like all indigenous communities they are coping with extremely high levels of mortality, alcoholism, and being dispossessed of their ancestral homelands. Giving nomads farmland is not compensation or as one of the elders in the book put it "The earth used to give us what we needed now we are told we need to fight with the earth to get what we need to feed our children when before one days work fed us for four days time". Its a culture that will probably go extinct inside a generation or two.

I'm terribly excited by this book.


~Eikon