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Monthly Archives: January 2022

Munich — The Edge of War ★ ★ ★ ★

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Was there ever a bad movie about the political turbulence that preceded World War II? I can’t think of one. Munich — The Edge of War is partly a political drama and partly a spy drama. In this version, Neville Chamberlain is still Prime Minister, and the story is divided between London, Berlin, and Munich. […]

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Support the Scottish economy!

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

I got that little glass while touring the Oban distillery in 2018. Tonight is Burns Night in Scotland. For those of you not familiar with Burns Night, I’ll leave you to Google for Scottish sources that can describe it much better than I can. But you’d be safe to assume that Burns Night involves food, […]

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My guess is they’ll flee the country

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Source: Wikimedia Commons I have never bought into the belief that Trump always skates, no matter what the crime. Yes, for many years in his New York City days he was able to stay a step ahead of the law (and his creditors). And yes, once he was installed in the White House with a […]

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Pub food

Monday, January 17, 2022

Scallop pot pie In this publess part of the world, if you want pub food, you have to make it yourself. One of the few compensations of January is the pleasure of running the oven. There’s snow outside. That was my excuse for making comfort food. This is a sea scallop pot pie with potatoes, […]

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Don’t forget to feed the birds

Monday, January 17, 2022

Cat prints and dove prints on my porch It’s alarming how hard the snow is on the creatures who live outside. While the snow was falling hard yesterday and the temperature was 20F, some doves were sheltering on my porch. Unfortunately they saw me and flew away. After dark, I heard Lily downstairs meowing in […]

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Cherry pie

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Maybe pie cherries aren’t as hard to find as I had thought. I usually rush through Whole Foods as quickly as possible, but last week I took my time and did some browsing. I was greatly surprised to see that they have canned cherries. I bought two cans, enough for a nine-inch pie. It’s inevitable […]

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Falling apart at the seams??

Friday, January 14, 2022

David Brooks has an important — but very misleading — column this morning at the New York Times, “America is falling apart at the seams.” The column tries to pull off the same old deception that so-called centrists always try to pull off. That’s the idea that bad things are always symmetrical, that “both sides” […]

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Pecan pie

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Click here for high-resolution version. This was the first pecan pie I’ve ever made. It also was the most challenging pie I’ve ever made. The problem was in figuring out when the pie was done. Erma Rombauer, in the 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking, calls for 375 degrees for 30 minutes. That was […]

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Don’t Look Up

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Don’t Look Up can be streamed on Netflix. First, a hat tip to Ken, who alerted me that this movie is a must-watch. Ken also wrote about it on his blog. I’m not as critical as Ken on the quality of Don’t Look Up. If there are flaws, I didn’t mind, other than that the […]

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Some progress with the old calculator

Sunday, January 2, 2022

There are a number of YouTube videos about the restoration of machines like this (a Monroe 8N-213) and comparable machines (such as the Friden STW10). The challenge to getting them fully operational is getting them to multiply and divide, operations that are much more mechanically complicated than addition and subtraction. So far, though, I have […]

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