…with the Toronto Star, no less: Estonian cuisine via grandma.

Mine on the other hand, is deeply reluctant to share.

I have her recipe for apple cake: “It’s a sweet dough, with yeast and cardamom. Then apples and some sugar and flour on top.” Okay then! I did attempt this “recipe” once. What I made was yummy, but resembled her applecake not at all. I’ve clipped the recipe from the Star article, but it doesn’t sound right either. Ah well, at least experimenting is a tasty process.

Or I could try her buttermilk pancake recipe, which is something like: “Some buttermilk, flour, and sugar. Then cook it.” Right.

It took my mother — who is not Estonian — something like fifteen years and two tries to extract a usable version of the Christmas cookie recipe (which makes 200 dozen tiny cookies, all brushed carefully with egg white, all with a tiny piece of citrus peel on top, if you do it whole hog. Estonians don’t mess around with the desserts.). Even then Grandma didn’t mention that she usually doubles a bunch of the seasonings; this pearl of information took another ten years.

I’m not sure whether she thinks we’re just asking to be polite, or whether she’d really rather we not even attempt to make them since in her mind we’re probably incompetent in the kitchen, or what. I have a suspicion she amuses herself to tears thinking about us struggling with the vague little clues she drops. Which in turn amuses me. The whole thing is just funny — frustrating, but inherently farcical, and I can’t help but laugh as I play my part.

Recently Grandma gave my mom the recipe for pasha, an Easter dessert. Well, sort of. Grandma wrote it down in Estonian. She actually wrote it down! A first! But there were no instructions, just a list of ingredients. Mom’s trying to make it, now, and (as was revealed in a series of progress-note emails) apparently it needs to be wrapped in cheesecloth, pressed and drained at a certain point, which Grandma didn’t mention.

The whole thing makes me giggle helplessly. I’m sure I’ll be hooting loudly and wiping my eyes when I turn my first pasha attempt out of the cheesecloth. The stuff can’t help but be good, given the ingredients in it. But I’m sure it won’t resemble Grandma’s — not a bit.

Crocus – March 27

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

I have a nasty migraine, but when I saw crocuses blooming as the mailman dropped off a package I was compelled to head out into the sunshine to take pictures. Two minutes of bright light would be worth it, I thought.

There I was outside in my oh-so-attractive John Deere flannel pants commandeered from D, a very unsupportive tank top and bright pink Crocs. Just for a minute! Who would see? Of course M’s daycare chose that exact moment to walk by on their way to the park, and I had to be sociable despite the absurd outfit and splitting headache.

At least the pictures turned out well!

There’s been a lot of coverage of the Bristol University study on rating various drugs’ potential for harm (BugMeNot will get you in). The intent of the piece was to develop a more objective rating scale — NOT to compare various drugs directly. A comparison of fourteen drugs was done by two different groups as part of the study, however, in order to see if the scale was sufficiently objective. Since both groups came back with similar ratings for the drugs, the conclusion was that yes, the scale was probably pretty good.

They included tobacco and alcohol to provide a sort of baseline, because the various dimensions of the harms they cause have been well-studied.

The authors took care to point out the obvious:

However, direct comparison of the scores for tobacco and alcohol with those of the other drugs is not possible since the fact that they are legal could affect their harms in various ways, especially through easier availability.

This is key. You can’t go comparing the harms of illegal things with legal things. How much of the harm from illegal drugs stems from their illegality? How would that change if they were made legal? On the other hand, how would the level of societal harm caused by tobacco and alcohol change if they were made illegal? We don’t know. Which means direct comparison of illegal and legal drugs is entirely meaningless both scientifically and practically.

And how have the media covered this study? By drawing little bar graphs directly comparing the scores, of course (view the attached PDF). Or by hopping on the little “alcohol and tobacco are dangerous” soundbite without putting it in context, and by doing pretty much anything but including that critical caveat in their coverage. For shame.

Yes, the line between legal and illegal drugs is drawn arbitrarily. But drawing scientifically meaningless bar graphs is not going to help solve that problem.

My birthday is coming up soonish, so M has been making me n-billion little cards with cheering birthday messages to distract me from my impending dotage. I am compelled to provide n-billion small envelopes for these missives; the envelopes come from a stock I inherited from my grandfather. I’m sure it would please him to know to what use they’re being put.

The adorable part is that I’m not allowed to look at the cards as they’re being made. M makes them at the kitchen table, though, and is not yet good at writing things without sounding the words out verbally. So while I’m not allowed to actually LOOK, as she writes I get to hear “Huh … Ah .. Puh … Eee.. Buh… R.. th… Duh… ay… Muh….mm….eeee”.

DON’T LOOK. IT’S A SECRET MESSAGE.

1. It’s raining
2. Really hard
3. Yay!
• Perhaps it’ll remove some of the disgusting scum left behind by the melting snow
4. Temperature is well above zero.
• Rainboots instead of snowboots this morning.
• Also, splash pants instead of snowpants
• It’s definitely good for the poor crocuses, who stuck their heads above ground last week and were instantly hit with a 20C temp drop
5. Thunder!
6. A perfect day to:
• Be working at home
• Contemplate making some soup stock
• Enjoy the feeling that it might actually be spring soonish

It seems that Young Galaxy is streaming their entire album (which will be released next month) on their website. It’s pretty stuff, if a little bleak in spots.

If they don’t happen to please you, go ahead and pick another Arts & Crafts band. What an excellent label.

M: Who was the first person on the moon?

Me: A guy called Neil Armstrong. And he said something like, “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

M: Well that doesn’t make sense. (brief discussion ensues, in which it becomes clear that the “mankind” part is the source of the confusion) What if he was a girl? Then what would he say?

Me: I don’t know. What do you think a girl would say?

M: “One small step for a girl, one big hop for girlkind!” That’s what I’ll say when I go to the moon.

Me: Sounds pretty good to me!

From User Friendly:

Reminds me of this:

which is spoofing this ad:

Why should we pay to watch ads in already-expensive products? Or be forced to sit through nasty warnings about piracy on DVDs that, since we’re seeing the warning, clearly aren’t pirated? Unskippable ads in children’s DVDs drive me crazy too. Why go to such trouble to make your customers hate you? Phhtthththththhtbt.

Aha!

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

Now that the great piles of snow have pretty much melted off our lawn, I spotted the beginnings of a crocus.

QOTD for March 12:

“When he was younger Mr Phillips had hated meetings. Or at least he had once he had got over the grown-up feeling, the warm glow of inclusion, of being invited to his first meeting with his first employers, Grimshaw’s. Children and students didn’t have meetings; only adults, serious employed people had them. So at the start there was the sense of being a big boy now. But Mr Phillips soon came to dread the whole business of sitting around a table with colleagues pretending to decide things. He hated the rooms in which meetings took place, with their horrible large tables and nasty chairs, with arms for the important people at the ends of the room, and the dank smell of the company coffee on the hotplate, and people’s briefcases, calculators, pencils, notebooks, agendas, personal organizers, beepers, copies of last meeting’s minutes, all of it. Most of all he hated the feeling that they were all impostors or impersonators, and with it the feeling that they were conspiring together to kill time, so that every second in the meeting was being wilfully murdered, bludgeoned to death.”

- John Lanchester, from his novel Mr Phillips.

(I don’t hate meetings all that much, so long as I can scribble. Love the notion of meetings murdering time, though.)

Ballet recital

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

Another hilarious ballet recital. They all had a great time and actually did some dancing, in between tugging on their clothes, picking their noses, playing with their faces, chewing on stuff, staring out the window and running to Mom & Dad for smooches.

Next session M is trying soccer, just for fun. She wonders if there are soccer recitals. We think not, and wonder if now is a good time to break the news that one typically dispenses with the tutu while playing soccer.

Lately I’ve noticed a bunch of spam has come in with delete-receipt requests attached. Since most people’s email programs auto-process such requests, it’s an efficient and invisible way of marking live addresses for further spamming and/or sale. Sneaky!

An old friend’s “death by spoon” concept could be applied to spammers with great public support, I think.

Smile

Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease.

I’m trying to do the 26 Things list for March (a sort of photographic scavenger hunt), and wow, it’s hard to take interesting photos right now that aren’t all white snow and dead sticks.

I think I’d be doing better with a less perky list. It’s oddly upbeat this time.

2 down, 24 to go…