Valentina Harris

The recipe I always use to sell people on the cookbooks of the incomparable Valentina Harris is this one, from Southern Italian Cooking;

Zucca Gialla alla Calabrese
Yellow Pumpkin with Mint and Capers

750g orange or yellow pumpkin [actually, what other colours of pumpkin are there?]
4 tablespoons coarse sea salt
500 ml (2 cups) sunflower oil [I generally use olive]
10 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons salted capers, well rinsed, dried, and finely chopped [but capers from a jar also work]
5 cloves garlic, chopped into slivers
5 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
8 tablespoons fine dry breadcrumbs

Arrange the pumpkin in a colander, sprinkled with salt. Put a weight on top and leave it to drain for an hour. [You can skip this bit, at a pinch]

Rinse and pat dry the pumpkin slices. Heat the oil till a small piece of bread dropped into it sizzles instantly. Fry the pumpkin for about four minutes on both sides, working with batches if necessary, then drain well on kitchen paper (paper towels).

Mix the olive oil and the vinegar with the capers, garlic, mint, and half the breadcrumbs. Arrange half the pumpkin in a dish and cover with half the dressing. Cover with another layer of pumpkin then cover with the remaining dressing. Press down firmly with your hands and cover with the remaining breadcrumbs. Leave to stand for a hour before serving.

This is classic Valentina because
1) it's reasonably easy;
2) it's very forgiving;
3) it's not something you would have thought off yourself, in a fit;
4) people are impressed by the improbability factor;
5) everybody likes it.

The strong flavours merge and blend till you can hardly pick them individually.

Zombie demography

Come to think of it, Zombie movies are surely inaccurate in their portrayal of flesh-eating mobs. When the graveyards gape and give forth their dead there must, actuarialy, be a higher proportion of the very old than is usually rendered. At least in the early days of the epidemic, there must be a near-majority of octogenarians, which you would think would be easier to deal with.

Other unanswered questions are
* what is the signal that inhibits zombies from eating other zombies?
* Could we synthesize it, thus enabling us to walk unhindered through the mob?
* Why doesn't the zombie effect affect animals? Except police dogs?
* given that what zombies actually want is brains, how do they get them without tools? I couldn't bite a skull open, and I'm not sure anybody could. It would be like trying to bite your way into a coconut (and have you ever tried to put two canine teeth marks on a person's neck? You have to practically dislocate your jaw).

Ideas for Movies that Need to be Recorded at the Exact Time You Think of them For Copyright Reasons

Zombie movie in which the dead are rising to attack the living. Set in an abortion clinic.

All Palin All the time

One comment has chiacked me for being obsessed with Sarah Palin, and having gone as far as looking at the teasers on Hustler's "Nailin' Palin" site I suppose I have to plead guilty. But in my defense (though this doesn't actually cover Hustler, to be sure) she is a character, in the Dickensian sense (or at least the Ricky Gervais sense) and those are rare, in politics or elsewhere. It's a combination of perkiness, verbal core dumps, and complete lack of consciousness of any limits.

Beckett on Palin

According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, Ms Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show So You Think You Can Dance? was paid $US22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone - more than the foreign affairs adviser, Randy Scheunmann.

Well, that brings up one of Samuel Beckett’s better jokes;

An Englishman, needing a pair of striped trousers in a hurry for the New Year festivities, goes to his tailor who takes his measurements. "That's the lot, come back in four days, I'll have it ready." Good.

Four days later. "So sorry, come back in a week, I've made a mess of the seat." Good, that's all right, a neat seat can be very ticklish.

A week later. "Frightfully sorry, come back in ten days, I've made a hash of the crotch." Good, can't be helped, a snug crotch is always a teaser.

Ten days later. "Dreadfully sorry, come back in a fortnight, I've made a balls of the fly." Good, at a pinch, a smart fly is a stiff proposition.

(I never told it worse. . . I tell this story worse and worse.)

Well, to make it short, the bluebells are blowing and he ballockses the buttonholes. "God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!"

"But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look—

—at the world—

—and look—

—at my TROUSERS!"

Yes, the beautician gets more than the foreign affairs adviser, but then Sarah Palin’s looks are getting a lot more favourable press than John McCain’s foreign policy.

That's what Sarah Palin's comments remind me of:

they "leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork."

Senator McAdoo on President Warren Galamiel Harding. I could have sworn it was Menken.

Childhood

Some of the mistakes that you make as a child do stick. I was a fast and voracious reader, bleeping over any word (and any subtlety) that got in the way; and today I had a very hard time working out the spellchecker wouldn't give me the right spelling for indefagitable. I had to go to the thesaurus to find that the word was (logically enough) indefatigable and that I'd been spelling (and probably saying) it wrong for some sixty years.
And I'm still not sure how many dids to put in Thuycidididides.