Amo, Amas, Amat…. and what?
My well-thumbed copy of Eugene Ehrlich’s book, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, is dated 1985. It’s amusingly subtitled “How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment…
books
Raisin and sourdough this week
While I haven’t tried to make a sourdough raisin bread yet, that idea occurred to me while I was making my latest breads, this week. I’m sure it would be…
Corn and other breads
The last loaf of January, 2014 was a machine-made corn bread, made using a recipe from Washburn’s & Butt’s 300 Best Canadian Bread Machine Recipes book that I’ve mentioned previously.…
Dear Nathan – IMPORTANT INFORMATION
I got a phone message from Nathan! (The ‘consultant’ Ex Libris has assigned to my book.) It was the same voice mail that he’s left the past three or four…
Reading Thucydides at last
Somewhere on one of my bookshelves, is an old Penguin paperback copy of History of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. It’s a bit worn, pages lightly yellowed, glue a little…
Dear Nathan – Editors
Dear Nathan, I was thinking about who you should get to edit my manifesto. I mean manuscript. My eleventh grade English teacher came to mind, but after she was accused…
Dear Nathan
A few years ago, I decided to engage in some corporate espionage. I work in the field of book publishing, and I had been hearing rather a lot about vanity…
Water, water, everywhere
Hydration matters. Not just to athletes and long distance runners. It matters to bakers. How much water is in your dough is crucial to how the crumb develops. It’s amazing…
For want of a nail…
Bought a book at Loblaws (of all places) this week, one by Harry Turtledove: The Big Switch. It’s one of his many alternative history novels, about what might have happened…
The Short and the Tall of It
This past week saw several new experiments in my bread laboratory. Okay, it’s a kitchen, but sometimes it feels like a lab, what with all the tinkering and testing I…
The 2013 Great Gatsby
Watched the 2013 film of The Great Gatsby last night. The first half was spectacular, grandiose and captivating, if somewhat over the top. Like Busby Berkeley meets The Fifth Element.…
Saving Fubsy from Lexicographical Caliginosity
Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red…
Brands, Buzz & Going Viral
My third book for Municipal World, Brands, Buzz & Going Viral, has just been published as part of the Municipal Information Series. I received my author’s copies yesterday. I am…
The Music of the Templars
For the past 25 years, I have had a mysterious page in Latin, held in a cheap picture frame, and stored in a closet for many years. It’s a two-sided…
Two more loaves, new lessons learned
Following up on my desire to make homemade raisin-cinnamon bread for Susan, I spent several hours collecting recipes online and entering their ingredients into a spreadsheet so i could compare…
Thoughts about the kid’s book The Stamp Collector
I borrowed the book The Stamp Collector from the library because I thought it might be another cute book about collections, and in a way it is but its also…
To err is human. And bureaucratic.
Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum, et tertium non datur. To err is human; to persevere in error is diabolical; there is no third option. Bit of a tough love phrase,…
Infinite Scrolling
And neither have any form of navigation! Alltop loves a good scroll.
Archiving past posts
I spent a busy weekend copying posts from my previous blog (hundreds of posts, currently archived on another server awaiting my resolution) onto my hard drive. I plan to resurrect…
What, no raisin bread?
I have a large – and growing – stack of books about bread. So many that I’m running out of shelf space for them all. Some are for artisan bread,…