Terror in the Sun
Jun. 30th, 2013 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyA clothes shop sent me an email today. Alicia, it said, here are the 10 things you need right now.
One of them was this.
No. No-one needs those. Not now, not ever.
June books read
* Cake: A Global History - Nicola Humble
* The Prisoner of Love - Barbara Cartland
* Playing the Piano for Pleasure - Charles Cooke
It has not been a big reading month. Partly because I have been reading a thing for work (the Mason report into Australia's medical training funding, and let me recommend that if you're suffering from insomnia) and partly because I have been doing some emergency knitting. Grrr to people who lose all their beanies just as winter hits.
Cake is one of a series of mini-books about different foodstuffs. Despite being 'a global history', the study of cake is limited to the European flour/egg model rather than the Asian idea of sticky rice cakes. Even so, I honestly think 'cake' as a concept is just too big for a mini-book, because I found Cake superficial. It started off with a bang, with a page asking questions about the fundamental cakeness of cake:
...how do we know a cake when we see one? Is a cake a cake because it is round, or because it is flat? Is it because it is soft, or because it is compressed? Is it a cake if it is made light and spongy with eggs or baking agents? Can it still be a cake if the raising agent is yeast? Or does cake-ness instead depend on the structural role the food plays? If it is the sweet centrepiece of a celebration, is it cake? If it is served with tea in the morning, or coffee in the afternoon, does it qualify?
So there's something to ponder.
It makes a few stabs at being a global history. There's the story of the Sachertorte, so that's Europe covered. Australia's national cake, the lamington, gets a mention. It is named after Lord Lamington (that's the Right Honourable Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, to riffraff like us), who was Governor of Queensland. Allegedly lamingtons resembled his favourite hat. Given that lamingtons look like this, you have to wonder what sort of freaky hat that was. (Lord Lam was not a fan of his namesake cakes, apparently once referring to them as 'those bloody poofy woolly biscuits'.)
Then it gets just plain irritating. It says that Europeans make specific cakes (e.g. Sachertorte, Eccles cake), while Americans, being proud individualists, make personal cakes, hence generations of recipe books filled with Elsie Palmer's Aunt's Biscuits and Mary Woolley Pudding. Only that's not just a US thing, is it? I offer exhibits A and B, those two recipes I just mentioned, which are examples from my grandmother's recipe book. Off the top of my head, I could suggest it's Old World recipe versus all the New World recipe thing, or a professional cake maker versus home cook thing? So let's not make unfounded generalisations, Cake.
Then there's a chapter on different types of cakes, featuring a lengthy discussion of a cake that doesn't exist any more, the Twelfth Cake. (Incidentally, the idea that a cake doesn't exist any more intrigues me. The recipe exists, so there's no reason a person couldn't make one. It's just that no-one does. And even if one person did make one, just out of curiosity, would that cause the cake to re-exist? Or does there have to be a sort of general recognition of the cake by society first? Hmmm.)
Anyway, Twelfth Cake was a type of fruit cake with specific decorations on it, eaten on Twelfth Night. Here's one. So the book discusses that, then says, obviously, it has transmogrified into what we now call Christmas cake, then it goes to on discuss how Americans hate fruit cake. And that annoyed me. Not that Americans hate fruit cake (I'm with you, America; I'm not a fan of it either), just that there was no acknowledgement how seriously Christmas fruit cake is taken elsewhere.
Barbara Cartland will be discussed at a later date. By which I mean 'tomorrow'. So there's something to look forward to.
Playing the Piano for Pleasure was all right. He wasn't joking about playing the piano for pleasure. At a couple of points I had a childish reaction of, if you love the piano so much, why don't you just marry the piano? Having said that, it was an interesting read (especially the useful chapter on polyrhythms), even if I don't plan to memorise every piece, as he suggests I should.
One of them was this.
No. No-one needs those. Not now, not ever.
June books read
* Cake: A Global History - Nicola Humble
* The Prisoner of Love - Barbara Cartland
* Playing the Piano for Pleasure - Charles Cooke
It has not been a big reading month. Partly because I have been reading a thing for work (the Mason report into Australia's medical training funding, and let me recommend that if you're suffering from insomnia) and partly because I have been doing some emergency knitting. Grrr to people who lose all their beanies just as winter hits.
Cake is one of a series of mini-books about different foodstuffs. Despite being 'a global history', the study of cake is limited to the European flour/egg model rather than the Asian idea of sticky rice cakes. Even so, I honestly think 'cake' as a concept is just too big for a mini-book, because I found Cake superficial. It started off with a bang, with a page asking questions about the fundamental cakeness of cake:
...how do we know a cake when we see one? Is a cake a cake because it is round, or because it is flat? Is it because it is soft, or because it is compressed? Is it a cake if it is made light and spongy with eggs or baking agents? Can it still be a cake if the raising agent is yeast? Or does cake-ness instead depend on the structural role the food plays? If it is the sweet centrepiece of a celebration, is it cake? If it is served with tea in the morning, or coffee in the afternoon, does it qualify?
So there's something to ponder.
It makes a few stabs at being a global history. There's the story of the Sachertorte, so that's Europe covered. Australia's national cake, the lamington, gets a mention. It is named after Lord Lamington (that's the Right Honourable Charles Wallace Alexander Napier Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, to riffraff like us), who was Governor of Queensland. Allegedly lamingtons resembled his favourite hat. Given that lamingtons look like this, you have to wonder what sort of freaky hat that was. (Lord Lam was not a fan of his namesake cakes, apparently once referring to them as 'those bloody poofy woolly biscuits'.)
Then it gets just plain irritating. It says that Europeans make specific cakes (e.g. Sachertorte, Eccles cake), while Americans, being proud individualists, make personal cakes, hence generations of recipe books filled with Elsie Palmer's Aunt's Biscuits and Mary Woolley Pudding. Only that's not just a US thing, is it? I offer exhibits A and B, those two recipes I just mentioned, which are examples from my grandmother's recipe book. Off the top of my head, I could suggest it's Old World recipe versus all the New World recipe thing, or a professional cake maker versus home cook thing? So let's not make unfounded generalisations, Cake.
Then there's a chapter on different types of cakes, featuring a lengthy discussion of a cake that doesn't exist any more, the Twelfth Cake. (Incidentally, the idea that a cake doesn't exist any more intrigues me. The recipe exists, so there's no reason a person couldn't make one. It's just that no-one does. And even if one person did make one, just out of curiosity, would that cause the cake to re-exist? Or does there have to be a sort of general recognition of the cake by society first? Hmmm.)
Anyway, Twelfth Cake was a type of fruit cake with specific decorations on it, eaten on Twelfth Night. Here's one. So the book discusses that, then says, obviously, it has transmogrified into what we now call Christmas cake, then it goes to on discuss how Americans hate fruit cake. And that annoyed me. Not that Americans hate fruit cake (I'm with you, America; I'm not a fan of it either), just that there was no acknowledgement how seriously Christmas fruit cake is taken elsewhere.
Barbara Cartland will be discussed at a later date. By which I mean 'tomorrow'. So there's something to look forward to.
Playing the Piano for Pleasure was all right. He wasn't joking about playing the piano for pleasure. At a couple of points I had a childish reaction of, if you love the piano so much, why don't you just marry the piano? Having said that, it was an interesting read (especially the useful chapter on polyrhythms), even if I don't plan to memorise every piece, as he suggests I should.