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Monthly Archives: April 2023

Vegan sausage muffin

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Whoever invented sausage was a genius. If we saw it made, we’d never eat it again. And yet, as long as we don’t think about what’s in it, it’s delicious. The real thing is also extremely unhealthy. I never touch the stuff. The key to vegan burgers is gluten. The other essential ingredient is soybeans. […]

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Buttery chardonnay, and air fryers

Thursday, April 27, 2023

Suddenly the wine shelves at the grocery store have multiple varieties of “buttery chardonnay.” It’s as though some California winemaker did a market survey and asked all the people who live on chardonnay what they look for in chardonnay. They all said, “buttery!” I would add one more adjective: fruity — as opposed to heavy […]

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A half Norfolk jacket

Thursday, April 27, 2023

I have mentioned here in the past that, on a visit to the Isle of Harris in Scotland in 2019, I got bitten by a bug for collecting Harris tweed jackets (and also some Irish tweed). I stopped collecting jackets (by buying them secondhand on eBay) quite some time ago, not least because I have […]

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Some recent eats

Saturday, April 22, 2023

Asparagus quiche with Bigonda cheese and olive oil crust It’s asparagus season. Asparagus and eggs were made for each other. Bigonda cheese with herbs (from Italy), is, I believe, a new item at Trader Joe’s. I’ve never had Bigonda cheese before, but, upon tasting it, it seemed to me to be more suitable as a […]

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The Bulletin of the Tolkien Society

Thursday, April 20, 2023

A few weeks ago I mentioned having joined the Tolkien Society. Today I received in the mail a welcome letter and a copy of the April 2023 Amon Hen, the Bulletin of the Tolkien Society. The packet was hand addressed, with nice U.K. postage stamps. International mail always looks so exotic! Amon Hen is very […]

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A strange book about fairies

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Source: eBay The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. W.Y. Evans Wentz, Oxford University Press, 1911. Gutenberg.org edition The English historian Ronald Hutton has persuasively argued that there is no continuous history of paganism in the British Isles. Rather, during the 19th Century there was a revival of, and a romanticization of, interest in Celtic paganism. This […]

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Only for the woke

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

I was greatly amused a few weeks ago to read that right-wingers were having fits because Chick-fil-A, a company that struts its “Christian” right-wingery, was market-testing a cauliflower sandwich. I had never been to a Chick-fil-A for two good reasons: I don’t want to patronize a company that struts its right-wingery, and I haven’t eaten […]

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The Tolkien Society

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to an American fan. The letter was posted recently to the Reddit group /r/typewriters. After I saw this letter in the Reddit /r/typewriters group, I Googled for Tolkien’s address to have a look at the house. In that search there was a link to the Tolkien Society. A Tolkien Society! Now […]

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The media are blowing it again

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

It was of course a given that yesterday’s indictment of Donald Trump would be a media circus. The media are addicted to Trump, not because Trump matters anymore (he doesn’t; he’s ruined) but because of the spectacle that Trump has always created as a way of seducing and using the media. Truth is, the media […]

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