today I have been dragged kicking and screaming into maybe reading some Descartes

[kaberett]

Specifically I have tracked down a copy of Treatise on Man, which is probably the source of the claim I've seen phrased several ways, most eyebrow-raisingly and also most readily to hand by Steve Haines, attributing to Descartes the idea that pain is

something similar to hearing, it is a fixed signal and measurable response

and it turns out I've got access to a whole entire PDF which turns out to be only 71 pages, including quite a lot of fairly large images, so I suppose I'm going to read Descartes now as a break from working my way through the BBC's Higher revision guides on neurobiology, which is itself a detour from reading the introductory text on nerves aimed at undergraduates...

(The things I've actually been reading today consist of two chapters of Hyperbole and a Half, a partial chapter of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, both as Shared Activities with A, and about half of A Handful of Flour, a recipe book I have owned for quite a while now and am rapidly concluding I might no longer wish to dedicate shelf space to...)

Comments

okay I should explain about <i>A Handful of Flour</i> though

[kaberett]

EXHIBIT A:

Although these bread bowls take around 30 minuets to bake, they are incredibly quick to prepare, so after you've constructed them you can go and get ready for the day while they are baking in the oven.

Steps involved in prepping the bread bowls prior to putting them in the oven: slice and hollow out bread rolls. grill bacon. grate cheese. MAKE BÉCHAMEL SAUCE. assemble, "carefully". "wrap them in foil, [taking] care that the foil does not touch or pierce the egg".

And then she claims "there's minimal washing up to be done afterwards!"

EXHIBIT B:

Of course, flour is just one of several ingredients to go into the finished product, and this is not to say that the quality of all the ingredients are not equally important. They are. The right (or wrong) choice of flour, however, can alter your entire creation.

(Some Ingredients Are More Equal Than Others)

EXHIBIT C:

I've read multiple recipes where brilliant chefs have reiterated that there is no need to make your own puff pastry when you can buy good-quality stuff ready to bake. This is perfectly true, and if you are pushed for time but still want to make a tart or pie then it's a fantastic option, which I'm not averse to taking advantage of. Whether or not you're in the ready-made pastry camp however, I do think it's important to be able to make your whole dish from scratch. That way you can ensure only the best and purest ingredients go into making it, plus you get the satisfaction of knowing you made it all yourself.

(As for the actual recipes, I consider the instructions on pastry wrangling Incomplete and Inadequate; I have yet to hit an "ooh yes definitely" and will be cross-referencing the "hmm maybe" recipes against the ones in the Leiths Baking Bible, I think, and almost certainly concluding that I prefer the Leiths.)

(... bonus shout-out to the anecdote about the time the author's brother and his mates got very indignant about her not taking sufficiently seriously their concerns about being castrated by the invasive American crawfish they were alarmed to discover they were sharing the millrace with...)

[vass]

I look forward to your opinions on it!