Pudding, puddles, playwrights, and non-pilsners.
I.
To use up an open can of pumpkin I tossed the rest of the puree in with some almond milk, sugar, cornstarch, spices, and vanilla. It makes 4 half-cup servings.
I had it al made up as expected, but considered that the cornstarch might have been a bit slight, but sprinkling even a little onto and into a warm liquid is a messy affair; it tends to clump, and so I had to lower the temperature and whisk quite a while. But I’d already decided to put the pudding through a mesh strainer, which removes the lumps. It also makes for a very smooth, almost silky pudding. Usually I reserve that treatment for baked custards (pre-baking) and panna cotta … or for soups I want to be especially smooth.
Two strained, two not strained. All delicious. But the straining did improve the texture.
II.
Yesterday I spoke with the apartment management but they did not manage to send anybody out before the end of the workday. This morning around 10:30 one (Larry) showed up, and he fixed the porch light.
He came in, looked at the water heater and the dishwasher, and decided that the supervisor (Dudley) needed to make a decision about repairing or replacing it. The guy who installed the water heater (Kenny) would need to come by to fix it. Then Larry disappeared. Ms. S. got ready to go out.
The knock came at the door, I opened it, and I let in Larry, Dudley, and Archie, who is taller than I am but easily twice as big around. “Coffee,” he announced, smelling the maple-walnut decaf I’d made for Ms. S. “Bourbon?” he inquired, and I had to admit that I was out of bourbon, having only some scotch and rum left on the dark side. But it was too early for spiked coffee.
Kenny made an appearance as Archie prostrated himself on the floor and fiddled with the dishwasher, eventually removing all the obnoxious noises it had been making. The other three cheerfully taunted Kenny as he worked on the water heater, though Larry turned the circuit breaker on and off upon demand.
All was fixed, everyone departed, and the day continued.
This evening after a shower a drip came from the water heater.
III.
Sliced bread is a pretty great thing.
I haven’t baked any for quite a while; it’s a delicious but calorie-dense food, and Ms. S. and I do not go through fresh bread that quickly.
One of the best things since sliced bread is Google Books. Years and years ago my advisor warned — correctly — against relying too much on online resources; libraries and blood-sweat-and-tears were a necessary part of the workload … and it helps that I love libraries. But that was a long time ago, and while his warning still resonates, there are new resources online that are pretty awesome.
archive.org? Still one of the best.
But a couple years ago I became enamored of Google Books. It was the only place I could get a copy of Blumenbach’s “Über den Bildungstrieb” (“On the Form-Impulse/Drive,” 1791), as my university library did not have a copy. Most do not. I found Breitinger’s “Critische Abhandlung von der Natur, den Absichten, und dem Gebrauche der Gleichnisse” (“Critical Treatise on the Nature, Intentions, and Uses of Similes,” 1740) as well, whereas before there were just a few facsimile reprints in university libraries here and there. But a PDF of the 1740 edition? Nice to have.
Combine Google Books and Calibre and you can pretty easily put together your own, well-organized library with decent — although not perfect — metadata of public domain texts, and not just the transcribed and proofed texts you’ll find through Project Gutenberg. Relatively ‘obscure’ texts that would only interest a scholar can regularly be found.
Nearly twenty years ago I made acquaintance with the works of Hermann Bahr (1863-1934), a turn-of-the-century (1900) Austrian critic and playwright, whose impressionistic dramatic works have been more or less forsaken by history. His contemporaries Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Arthur Schnitzler are, rightly, better remembered. Bahr has been dead long enough, and now his works are in the public domain — as are some early translations of his texts –: so I thought to myself, even though I currently focus more on the 18th rather than 19th century, wouldn’t it be nice to have a collection of Bahr’s plays and criticism? And so I sat on the porch downloading from Google Books; I’m import the couple dozen PDFs into Calibre later. There are a couple English translations of a few of his plays available, but whether they’ll be of interest to Ms. S. I cannot yet say.
IV.
When I move to a state with better homebrewing laws I’ll undertake a couple parti-gyle batches, preferably some 3-beers-in-one-mash endeavors. In short: you mash once with a single grain bill. You draw off a portion of the first running, which will have the most sugars dissolved, resulting in the highest gravity wort. From this you make a small batch of, say, a Belgian tripel, an imperial stout, a barleywine, etc. Something that could be 8-10% ABV. Take the rest of the first running along with most of the results from the sparging and you get a normal-gravity wort (good for 5-6% ABV), good for regular ales or the like, such as a Belgian ale, a porter or stout, or pale ale. Then from the remainder of the second running (from sparging) you have a relatively weak wort, perhaps one you’ll fortify with some DME (dry malt extract), allowing you to make a “small beer” or such, maybe only 3% ABV, or 4% after adding some DME.
What would I like to do? If I did 5-gallon batches, it would be nice to draw off a gallon for an imperial stout (hell, that’s about 10 bottles). From the middle three gallons make either a regular stout, or split the wort into coffee, chocolate, and oatmeal stouts. From the last gallon — perhaps slightly fortified — make an Irish stout, a bit dryer and weaker than normal.
But I’m doing no such thing these days. This is still one of two states that has no legalized homebrewing (which does not stop a lot of people, mind you, especially near Auburn and Huntsville).
Tonight I did crack open a bottle of homebrew I was lucky enough to have in my possession. It’s nice having friends and acquaintances who brew. And in this case a beer made from left-over, aging grains back in June yet only bottled not long ago was opened. The carbonation was good although the head retention was weak. The grain bill and hop profile promised something along the lines of a pale ale, but the result is considerably more amber in color, hoppy but not weedy, and just malty enough. It has a slight Belgian character. It is amazingly clear and quite clean, resembling more a lager than the ale it was brewed as.
