Piano and Cookery

Today was a lovely sunny day. I went outside twice, but for the utilitarian aim of grocery-shopping. For dinner we had lentil soup, cooked by Papa. It turned out spicy, because I had bought a bundle of what I knew to be either parsley or cilantro, and knowing that both herbs would work in the dish, I decided to let myself be surprised. Also, the soup was identical in green colour and flavour to the one that we used to have back in Canada, on Wednesdays when we visited our grandfather, so it was a nice Proustian experience. For dessert there were blue grapes from South Africa.

Between the shopping and the eating I played for hours on the piano. I took a look at Schubert's sonatas D. 558 (c minor) and D. 559 (A major), because (on YouTube, of course) I had come across a video of Alfred Brendel performing them in 1988. The last movement of the A major sonata was stuck in my head, because it is so nice and also because Papa often plays the beginning of it. Besides this piece of sightreading, I also played the parts of Chopin's waltzes that I usually don't play because I've already given up, tried out new ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin (I played "The Entertainer" about six years ago, and still can't manage the chords now), and sightread another Spanish dance by Enrique Granados. Then I played a few bars of the piano part of Schubert's Forellenquintet, because on YouTube I had also come across the documentary where that quintet is performed by Itzhak Perlman, Daniel Barenboim, Jacqueline du Pré, Zubin Mehta, and Pinchas Zukerman. Today the bits of Beethoven sonatas went unusually well (for once, I played all of Opus 31 No. 2 and 3 through, instead of giving up part-way through), as did Schumann 's Kinderszenen.

On the internet I still read many news articles, but now they're mostly restaurant reviews and other food articles. I take that as an indication that I am a terrible glutton, and that my mental horizon is in some respects narrowing. My lazy assessment of proper news articles is that the news is always the same. There are usually explosions of some sort in Iraq, more violence in Darfur, sabre-rattling toward or by Iran, something about Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama, political agreements or dissensions among the Palestinians, a case of the bird flu, a flood or a boat capsizing, another boatload of refugees off Australia or Italy or the Canary Islands, and a Bush scandal. It's not that I'd rather read lots of "good news," or that I don't think this news is important, but I have the feeling that a great deal of important news is being ignored just because the preceding topics are the ones that touch on the West's self-interest. Besides, in the case of Iraq, the news all appears to be filtered through the Iraq government or the US army, because the reporters cannot go out much, and it is hard to tell what is really going on.

As far as my online reading goes, I have finished with the novels of Mary Jane Holmes, continued with the historical novels of Mary Johnston (To Have and to Hold, set in early colonial Virginia, and Sir Mortimer, set in England and overseas in the time of Elizabeth I), and am now browsing merrily along the authors whose last names begin with K. This time I am reading more non-fiction, so I peeked into a grammar book, and am currently in the middle of Science in the Kitchen (which was published in 1893).

The cookbook has a reference to Louis Pasteur in it, which reminded me of a reference to Louis Pasteur in another book (fiction, though), where the unlucky scientist was mentioned as an evil being who injects poison into patients for his own gratification. It was funny to read in the cookbook -- which is also amusingly quaint as far as kitchen appurtenances and scientific terminology go -- how flour was adulterated by unprincipled sellers, with alum or lime or some other white powder (the prudent housewife would, for example, test for lime by dripping lemon juice on the flour and seeing if it fizzles). Also, I was introduced to the idea that mustard, pepper and other condiments are bad for you. They apparently inflame the lining of the intestinal organs, besides stimulating an unnatural appetite. And throughout the book the author interwove a strong temperance message, lamenting, for instance, that the lovely grape should be "perverted" by fermentation.