Etc

My Favorite Osama Bin Laden Rumor

…IS THAT HIS COMPOUND WAS built in the shape of what some would call “Greater Palestine,” with his house corresponding to the location of Jerusalem. (This comes to me from to the French website JSSNews, by way of YNet, by way of The Tablet, which latter is recommended daily fare.)

Fig. 1.

I stress that this is a rumor only (like the time in high school that I convinced someone that Ronald McDonald was portrayed by an African-American actor — which was repeated to me later in the day), and doesn’t really seem to fit with what we seem to know thus far about Mr. Bin Laden’s motivations. But as rumors go, it’s worth passing along. (AS A RUMOR.)

Living

Today’s Most Tweeted Non-Mark Twain Quote

“I’VE NEVER WISHED A MAN dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

Whether or not Mr. Twain actually Why Clarence Darrow said these words I do not know. But for those having difficulty cheering one more death, yet no compulsion to weep for the decedent, it seems to capture the moment nicely. (Although Ann‘s “Osama Been Gotten” is nice too.)

— Neal, whose Facebook page today reads “…Having a surreal experience. Fortunately, so is everyone else.”

Aside

WANTED TO BE THE FIRST to claim “thinkon” as “a discrete unit of thought,” and so I have. Pbbbt.

Living

Pithyism #6

NO MATTER HOW ABSORBING OR rewarding the discussion concerning Jedi philosophy, training and practice, someone’s always going to say, “Dude, it’s only a movie.”

Food, Torah

Knubel Borscht: Adapting Memory

TUCKED INTO MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S BIBLE is a yellowed sheet of paper containing the flavor of living tradition.

In short, it’s my mom’s recipe for knubel borscht (pronounced “k’nubble”): beef simmered in beet soup and garlic. That’s it: three ingredients, plus heat and time. Perhaps in part due to its simplicity, or that I’ve been eating it for most of my childhood Pesachs, knubel borscht is satisfying on a soul level. It fills the house with a scent at once sweet and savory, fruity and meaty, and which may in fact prove to be the smell of Gan Eden should the requisite air-sampling technology be designed and utilized.

The recipe originally comes from “the old country” (in our case, my Polish g’g’father or his Romanian wife); the original calls for a large pot, 5 quarts of borscht, 7-1/2 pounds of bone-in chuck roast with a packet of soup bones, and a large head of peeled garlic. Add everything together, simmer three hours or more, skimming off the foam; serve on plate and in bowl.

For our Seder Monday night, I created a lower-portion variant which is just as pleasing in all the essentials and doesn’t really suffer for the lack of soup bones. Four ingredients counting the pan:

9″ Pyrex baking pan
1 pound brisket
Quart of borscht
Head of garlic

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Peel and chop garlic. Put brisket in pan fat side up (trim excess fat first). Sprinkle garlic on top, pour over borscht, seal with aluminum foil. Three hours later, you’ll need a knife to cut through the aroma and open the oven. Put the meat on a plate, the soup in a bowl, and revel in the small blessings by which G?d or the quantum membranes thereof sustain and nurture the world.

Writing

Prosatio Silban and the Best Dish In The World

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE Emerald Incessance, that great sprawling grassland east of epicurean Pormaris, Prosatio Silban was searching for the Exilic Lands’ tastiest meal.

The Incessance was hundreds of square miles of hummock, tussock, occasional trees and overtowering reeds, only inhabited by roving beasts, societal castoffs and furtive oal-hunters — not a likely group among whom to find something described with bliss as every man’s favorite dish, all in one skillet-fried bundle.

“Like my mother’s potato-and-pea fritters, only more so,” sighed one of three wizened indigines of the Cook For Any Price’s hasty acquaintance.

“The Soup Demons take you!” objected his friend. “Roasted oal pancakes, like I hadn’t tasted since my first hunt.”

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