Date: 04 Oct 2008 08:48 Subject: What I *meant* to say was... Security: Public Mood: highly amused

Sarah Palin: "Mrs Palin said that she balked at the question about her newspaper readership because she believed that CBS's Ms Couric was accusing her and fellow Alaskans of not being "in tune with the rest of the world." She revealed that she "reads the same things that other people across the country read" including the "New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist"."


Yes, your ordinary American reads the $116-a-year Economist and the $89-a-year Wall Street Journal. That's Joe Six-Pack's favorite.

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Date: 04 Oct 2008 09:03 Subject: Happy birthday, Oursin! Security: Public

Who sends off ideas like sparks from a bonfire. May there be splendid food, wine, and company.

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Date: 04 Oct 2008 09:43 Subject: The ravelled sleave Security: Public Mood: contemplative

Things are unpleasant globally and don't look like getting any less so. Many people on my flist are coping with local unpleasantness as well.

What do you do to soothe yourself, to make the weeks easier to get through? My anodynes are pretty obvious: cooking, gardening, sewing. In all cases, activities that are creative, but within constraints -- no agonizing about "is this paragraph really the right one?". (That's the way I sew/garden/cook. Other people are more perfectionist about it.)

What's your sedative of choice?

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Date: 04 Oct 2008 15:03 Subject: Oursin's gingerbread, Americanized Security: Public Mood: tentative

Note: All clear!

oursin suggested that we bake gingerbread to celebrate her birthday; I obey.

Original recipe here.
I weighed out the ingredients in grams, then converted into American measurements. If you have a kitchen scale, you're ahead of the game.

Preheat oven to 275.

Mix together:
(100G) Generous 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
(~2g) 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice (see Note)
(~2g) 1/2 t baking soda
(4g) Heaping teaspoon powdered ginger
(50 g) ~1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger and/or golden raisins

Melt together:
(50g) 8t molasses or treacle
(50g) 8t honey or golden syrup
(50g) 10 packed teaspoons dark-brown sugar
(50g) scant 1/4 cup butter

After above ingredients are combined, stir in
(70ml) 1/4 cup milk
1 egg

Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients until combined. Pour into a greased 9"x4" loaf pan. Bake until a skewer comes clean out of the middle, 1 hour 10 min. in my oven. Cool in the pan; if practical, wrap in waxed paper and wait a few days before consuming.

Note: I bought mixed spice. It's not at all the same as American apple-pie spice or pumpkin-pie spice. My bottle, Millstone brand, is a mixture of coriander, caraway, fennel, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and turmeric. The recipes I get when Googling are more like an American pie spice mixture; none of them had caraway, or fennel.

Elizabeth David suggests two parts nutmeg, two parts peppercorn or allspice, one part cinnamon, one part cloves, one part ginger, and optional cumin. Her "useful variation" is 1 t each peppercorns and cloves, 2 t coriander, half a nutmeg, 1/2 inch cinnamon bark, and a piece of dry ginger root about the size of a finger nail.


I've assumed throughout that British teaspoons are close to American teaspoons, as my sources suggested.

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Date: 04 Oct 2008 19:33 Subject: P.S. Security: Public

The gingerbread is lovely.

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