Gramarye

I don’t recall offhand whether I’ve previously discussed my family’s proclivity for “Heart Attack” foods — foods cooked with large quantities of butter and cream. Tonight’s post is my contribution of the moment, which is not exactly a new discovery, but which is nonetheless both delicious and unhealthy while at the same time feeling quite wholesome:

I’ve been very bad about cooking for myself these last few weeks. So, tonight I defrosted a package of frozen spinach, and put some rice on. Then I took almost a full stick of butter, and melted it in a saucepan with several cloves of coarsely chopped garlic and the juice of two limes. I added some fresh-ground pepper and a little maple syrup. I then proceeded to simmer the spinach for a considerable length of time, until it had become delicious and totally awful for me, spooned it over the rice, and consumed it quite happily.

People seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Chris was hear last week; someone else may be visiting soon, and Andrew speaks of a possible visit in “late winter,” and a friend from TASP just contacted me via Facebook, of all things (which, for the record, I use not at all). It’s all quite delightful.

Anybody else? Long lost switched-at-birth siblings? Grade-school friends? Now’s the time, apparently.

By the way, if at some point over the next few weeks I begin to speak a totally archaic English, we can blame it on ??Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.??

Partiallyclips is back on its game. For a while there, it was blowing conch shells.

partiallyclips: Sheep Farmer · 2006-08-28

Apparently Kitchener stitch may be related to a historical British person, a “Lord Kitchener of Khartoum,” a British officer who supposedly promoted Red Cross knitting (i.e., knitting socks and sweaters for soldiers) in WWII, including promoting a sock pattern with a seamless grafted toe named after him.

Of course, this sort of thing is so quaint as to invite suspicion. While googling, I came across the blog of someone who appears to be investigating this, and has written to Bishop Rutt, who wrote a ??History of Hand Knitting??, and what I assume to be the present Lord Kitchener, and had no luck. She also checked the OED on CD. She also appears to have collected some impressive primary documents (i.e., 1940’s Red Cross pamphlets), the upshot of which all is that there may be some relationship between Kitchener the person and the knitting of socks, but probably not to the technique of grafting.

Ah, well.

In any case, the blogger in question is clearly to be saluted for her efforts in investigating.

Jean’s Knitting: August 2006

Quick to stress the independence of the study, indeed. Thanks, Tea Council.

BBC NEWS | Health | Tea ‘healthier’ drink than water

I’ve been advocating this idea (for the iPod) for years, mostly because I like the idea of having a large dance party in which everyone’s doing their little iPod shadow dance to the same beat but those without earphones can’t hear anything at all.

Lost Remote TV Blog

I have not always had a good relationship with Fox — consider their mishandling of ??Firefly??, ??Fastlane??, and other fine programming that fell victim to Nick’s Law. However, they know how to start a season early, and it looks like ??Prison Break?? may well survive the transition from being about a prison break to being about the aftermath of a prison break.

William Fichtner is joining the cast, much to our delight (we were very sad to hear about ??Invasion?? being cancelled), and providing a much needed second brain. It looks like another character is leaving (I won’t specify, in case anyone is at risk of being spoiled), which is unfortunate (i.e., it’s not the character _I_ would have ditched), but it’s not a bad time to do it; characters are hardly ever killed off at premiers.

I also watched the premiere of ??Vanished??; I had been considering avoiding new shows this season in order to avoid creating new instances of Nick’s law; however, Rosie decided she didn’t want to pay me not to. However, I’m not too worried about it, since I didn’t actually enjoy the premier that much, so even if the law is still in effect (which I don’t really think, anyway), it’s unlikely to effect this particular program.

Of course, this decision will get tougher as shows I do care about start to hit the airwaves.