It's been a quiet Saturday. Fortunately, after abundant sleep and adding meat back into the week's diet, I'm feeling a lot steadier again, and yesterday I'd cycled to and from university without incident.
After our usual Saturday breakfast of croissants and baguette from the French shop, I began boiling pear quince from the local allotment gardens for quince-and-almond confectionery. Then I went to the grocery store. In the 1900 recipe book I am reading, the menu for dinner on November 8 is
Cod Cutlets. Stuffed Mushrooms.
Boiled Rabbits. Apple Tart.
Onion Sauce. Devonshire Cream.
Fried Potatoes.
But for practicality's and the environment's sake, I whittled down the menu to roast rabbit with celery root, carrot, leek and parsley in my mind, served with boiled potatoes, fried mushrooms and bacon. I entirely forgot about the apple pie while shopping. Fortunately, we still have the ingredients.
As most shops are closed Sundays, the organic grocery chain store was relatively crowded. I bought apples, milk, bacon, and Christmas delicacies. There was no rabbit at hand, so I picked up a leg of duck instead. There was a long line-up at a single cash register. The school-age cashier handled the stream of customers serenely. The customers were also remarkably patient. Fortunately, from the grocery store's point of view, during our meditative sojourn alongside the shop's shelves, a few of us thought of other things we wanted to buy. For example, staring at Christmas paper serviettes and gift sets, candles, cosmetics, and yoga trousers, I noticed incense cones (these cones have felt rare and hard to find these past few years, and sticks aren't the same) and greedily added them to my basket.
The Christmas delicacies being sold were marzipan potatoes, chocolate-covered gingerbread with cherry filling, St. Nicholas figurines in chocolate and foil, glazed stars with candied lemon peel, Spekulatius, Dominosteine, pepper nuts (Pfeffernüsse) plain or drizzled with chocolate, Nuremberg gingerbread on wafers... Not to mention Advent calendars with different flavours of tea. But I only got two types of specialties, since I am tired of the plastic packaging that comes with store-bought Christmas baking, and sometimes the cookies are dried out and not as pleasant to eat.
On Friday my application for a mini-job on Saturday, moving boxes up to a third-floor apartment,was (somewhat to my relief) declined. So I had no other commitments.
Therefore I've been reading The History of Western Philosophy as background for the Molière-and-Moratín essay that I want to write for university. I don't think it would count as an academic source, but surely I can quote a passage or two to improve the literary value of the essay. Bertrand Russell is describing the beginnings of 17th-century scientific development, summarizing also the work of Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Now I've reached the mini-biography of René Descartes.
Likely I read this with Papa already, as this stove passage felt familiar:
It was in Bavaria, during the winter in 1619-20, that he had the experience he describes in the Discours de la Méthode. The weather being cold, he got into a stove in the morning, and stayed there all day editing; by his won account, his philosophy was half finished when he came out, but this need not be accepted too literally.
It reminded me of Otfried Preußler's children's book Die Abenteuer des starken Wanja:
Dieser zweite [Backofen], er füllte die ganze hintere Ecke des Raumes aus [...] außen sauber mit Lehm verstrichen und weiß getüncht. Geheizt wurde er vom Flur her, und das in den Wintermonaten Tag und Nacht. Es pflegte daher auf dem Backofen in der Wohnstube sommers kühl zu sein; und im Winter, wenn draußen der Frost klirrte und die Wölfe ums Dorf heulten, war es dort oben behaglich warm.
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