The Apple Dumpling, etc.

Yesterday (or, as I'll still call it, today) I woke up when the sky had brightened to the point that I thought was not too grim to awaken to, which was still not superlatively cheerful since it was cloudy and rainy and true autumn weather.

In the U-Bahn — this morning, I think, although the memories of different U-Bahn trips melt together — I read more about the Structure and Evolution of the Stars, which is becoming easier to read again and is addressing radioactive processes. There were laconic paragraphs about the phase of a star in which hydrogen transforms into helium and then one by one into the heavier elements, as neutrinos and gamma rays flit out, which were fascinating. This is, of course, the reason why Earth is populated with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and so many other elements.

I arrived early enough and researched what work to assign to colleagues. But the workload was mildly overwhelming and in the afternoon I had also scheduled a meeting, and altogether I was inwardly grumpy. In the afternoon I announced that I would be cooking historical food, from Revolutionary-era America and Britain, on Saturday, and instead of one or two polite comments there was a deluge of interest. I felt guilty for distracting my colleagues... But I have the feeling that Saturday will turn out to be an entertaining and worthwhile day.

In the train on the way back home, I finished reading the introductory essay of a Voltaire novel, since I've finished Montesquieu and am now returning to another Enlightenment thinker. It turns out that I may have to read a few entries in the Encyclopedias of his time, because the articles seem much more relevant to public debates than Wikipedia articles of the present day, and Diderot's Encyclopedia has information about daily life in the early 18th century, too. Finally, I went to the organic food store near home and bought pears.

After hewing the lid off of a pumpkin and after pushing in chopped, salted pear spiced with cinnamon where the seeds used to be, I baked that in the oven until it was softened. And I also roasted the seeds with salt and olive oil.

Lastly, I put a camping recipe for an 'apple pudding' to use. I set a pot of water to boil, made a paste with flour and water, cut the core out of a halved red apple, then when the water was boiling, J. helped me by soaking a kitchen towel in the boiling water, lifting it out again, spreading flour over the inside of the towel, and folding the red apple covered with the sticky paste into the cotton cloth. Then I tied it into a bundle with a 'little room to grow.' Then he dropped it into the boiling water with our tongs. This recipe is taken from the YouTube channel Townsends, which I've been watching regularly from the earliest episodes to the newest ever since I read a New Yorker article about it.

Townsends itself is a harbour of tranquillity; the apple dumpling was more chaotic, however. J. and I were both doubled over with giggles as we lifted the pudding out of the cloth at the end of an hour. It was a glutinous spectacle that had a medicinal smell and a bland beige colour, and its texture was like an alien birth or brains; it was bathed in a thin gruel of flour mixed with water, and of course cradled in the wet cloth. With sugar and cinnamon it tasted nicer, but I wouldn't recommend making the dumpling with the expectation of an extremely wonderful flavour. (But I imagine that the medicinal smell and taste came from the cloth that we used; and I should have tied the cloth a little more tightly so that we could have a spheric dumpling instead of a flattened ovoid; and then it might have been more pulchritudinous and appealing in every sense.)

Aside from that, I tried to plan how to construct the 18th-century meal on Saturday, and I lined up the recipes and ingredients for a shopping list already.

In between all of that, I read news on Twitter and the Guardian and Jezebel as usual, and tried one ballet stretching video, since Monday's ballet class didn't take place.