Science and Cooking

This wonderful survey of the physics of cooking was a Christmas gift (thanks nice sister!) that I've been slowly working my way through for a couple of years now.  The lento tempo, however, wasn't due to the difficulty of the text.  Sure, there's plenty of physics here, with plenty of charts and graphs, and even the odd equation.  But all of the concepts they discuss -- diffusion, pH, viscosity, protein folding and unfolding, emulsions, microbes, etc ... -- are very clearly explained and presume no prior knowledge.  They also do a great job of illustrating general principles through specific examples that you can try right in your kitchen; in fact, the book began as a Harvard class that included a lab work component.  Given the excellent overview here, it would now be a much easier endeavor to tackle Harold McGee's classic, to which the current authors are much indebted.  Maybe if I'd read that as well, I wouldn't have screwed up the complicated candy cooking stage of this Cook's Illustrated Banoffee Pie recipe!

A Trackless Path

I've listened to a few inspiring interviews with Ken McLeod on Michael Taft's Deconstructing Yourself podcast.  In one of them he mentioned this translation of and commentary on a poem written by the the 18th century Tibetan monk Jigmé Lingpa. The poem itself is a very condensed set of Dzogchen practice instructions, including descriptions of possible pitfalls and remedies.  Like most of these types of works it would be almost indecipherable without McLeod's commentary.  However, given the slipperiness and, well, I guess, emptiness of the Dzogchen approach, this commentary can only remain very light and suggestive.  Fortunately, this doesn't mean it has to be abstract.  On the contrary, McLeod writes in clear simple language about his direct experience with something that's ultimately ineffable.  As a result, there's not much point in attempting to summarize the thesis of a book like this.  The main theme is clearly rest.  Resting in awareness.  Looking and resting.  But the only way to read the text is to use it, to drop these seemingly vague instructions into a meditation and see what happens.  This is also the only method that befits McLeod's experimental conception of a path which ultimately dissolves, as the title suggests, into a wide open landscape.

Like an oak peg in hard ground

Stand firm in awareness that knows

And go deep into the mystery

 

#reread

Nabakov's Quartet

While I'm not sure exactly how it ended up on the shelf, I imagine this collection of four short stories was in the bargain bin at the local used bookstore.  While I adored Lolita and loved Pale Fire with a burning passion, these stories struck me as rather forgettable by comparison.  Interestingly, three of the four were originally written in Russian, and these earlier works have a completely different voice from the one I have come to associate with Nabokov in English.  However, it's a much less distinctive one, that could nearly be confused with Dostoevsky (in the case of the first two stories) or Kafka (in the case of the final one).  Only The Vane Sisters, written much later and requiring no translation, speaks with the author's characteristic parodic erudition.  Though none of the stories especially struck me, they did make for a nice plane ride to Tuscon.

Galápagos

I guess you would expect Kurt Vonnegut's novel about the end of the world to be wry, funny, and above all anti-climactic.  So it's no surprise when it turns out that, from the perspective of a million years into the future, "humanity" didn't end at all.  As a species, we simply thought better of possessing these big brains that have caused us no end of trouble, and which, to top it off, have mostly not composed Beethoven's Ninth.  Just like the other Vonnegut novels I've read, this one makes you wonder how we manage to collectively sleepwalk our way through the absurdity of life without appreciating the full joy and sorrow of the cosmic satyr play staged at our expense.  Which makes me think it should be required reading in every high school, despite the fact that it appears some of us just can't take a joke.  

When confronted with the question of how the desire to improve the world fits with the notion of time presented in Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut responded "you understand, of course, that everything I say is horseshit."