Intro # My cooking recipe collection has been with the Paprika Recipe Manager for quite some time. I’m a card-carrying member of the digital hoarder club, so the recipe collection has grown tremendously. The honest truth though is that I only cook a tiny subset of this collection on a regular basis and only seldom venture beyond that comfort zone. I’m definitely not a good cook.
The current tutoring activity I’m doing is a redemption tour for me. My first attempt at tutoring was a mess. The victim was my daughter and I managed to alienate math material for her so much that she hates it to this day Sorry, baby, if you’re reading this. I’m very, very sorry 😊. . That’s heartbreaking because I achieved the opposite of what I wanted. She is in college now and cautiously and apprehensively approaching the material again (she did statistics last semester).
I recently needed a distraction for a ten-hour flight. I cannot sleep on flights and I’m also too uncomfortable to do any real work or read. So it has to be binging a show. I chose Deadloch, a murder mystery show with eight one hour episodes, making it the ideal length for a ten hour flight assuming it is compelling enough to stick around.
A Spy Among Friends # I cannot really explain why I like the John Le Carre type of content so much. If I let myself indulge in armchair psychology, maybe what appeals to me is the heightened awareness of the facade of ourselves that spies must have. These fictional I have no idea how real spies function or if there is any resemblance between fictional and real. spies are forced to distrust every aspect of their interactions and relationships, have to build intricate webs of lies and dole out information and withhold information at crucial times. There’s always this cat and mouse game, who is hunting whom. Moles have to be discovered and turned. This all makes for great fiction. There’s also the witty dialog, the posh manners, the higher moral calling, the self doubt. John Le Carre was a master chef of all this spy brew, mixing it all together into an elegant story. I consumed all of it and haven’t found a worthy successor of him yet. Well, I’m here to say, if we’re allowed to change the medium from novel to TV series, “A spy among friends” comes really close. Combine the terrific writing with fantastic performances, a strong female lead, patience to let the story unfold in six one-hour episodes and trust in the viewer to follow along and you have a very satisfying spy show. I have only one, slight complaint: does everybody in the show really have to smoke so much ?
Today I’m making Apfelstrudel again. It is one of the few desserts I know how to make and my family likes it. I’m not making my own dough. That is way beyond my capabilities. For a sense of how skilled you have to be to pull off authentic strudel dough, watch this delightful documentary:
I’m instead using puff pastry from Whole Foods:
Dough by Richard Bertinet Like many others I picked up bread making during the pandemic lockdown. It turned out to be a fun activity. I eventually landed on Richard Bertinet’s youtube video explaining dough handling.
With a little practice I got it going the way he suggests and I use his method ever since.