On The Ning Nang Nong

OK, the goose fat served with ginger ale.

Why is red-haired called ginger-haired? The commonly found ginger is not red but brown. I suspected of a feisty innuendo to that ginger head.

That's interesting! In Indian, ginger or adrak ki chai is presumed to be an invigorating drink. Perhaps, the tea is gingered up not so much for therapeutic reasons but for idiomatic uplift.

I like Ginger Rogers but then Rita Hayworth proved that hay is perkier than ginger.

 

Blake Shelton ...

There's a moment in this journey that I gave up
My boots just couldn't walk another mile
And that cloud above me had no silver lining
I couldn't buy a break with my last dime
Oh but when I saw you standing in the corner
I'd never thought that you would have my back
But then we rolled in like the thunder and the lightning
Threw some punches then we had a laugh
Just some roughed up desperados
Hanging tough through thick and thin
Kicking up dust wherever we go
I can see that you and me are gonna be friends

 

Gustav would create torn characters with painstaking vocabulary and load them up with metaphors and allusions to plunge further in the pathos of unrelenting life. If the man was offered fidgety life in a hairy soup or a hairy life in a fresh soup, he would recount:

What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface.
You have to eat it nevertheless.​

He might appropriate both ginger and goose to condemn Bovary's falling.

I don't know your whereabouts or your early upbringing but if you had grown up in a doordarshan generation then you would remember Oshin from the 90s. The serial was drama that captivated and inspired the upbeat Indian crowd to persist amidst their challenging circumstances. For me, Oshin was sensuous food! I loved the exotic food as it was my foray into Far East delicacies. There was no pause and review button in remote back then to drool at those stringy and flat noodles. Now I wonder, if pickled gari featured in one of those episodes.

Japanese Gari (ginger) and African Gari (grain) and Indian Gari (fritter) may have proto linguistic origin or are false cognates, notwithstanding, the diversity in food taken after 'gari' is interesting.



Incidentally, I have just started reading Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher by Lewis Thomas. In that book's introduction Lewis proposes that words should be coined for the feelings they arouse in humans rather than convey their description. Say, the pickle stings on our tongues which elicits a "gaa-ri' utterance then it is the legit claimant over than spuriously shaped garis. Do you agree?

I thought Bovary is no longer challenging and subversive.

In that same token, I do recommend Lolita.

"Written in Nabokov’s characteristic immaculate style, this violent and brutal novel poses fascinating questions about the role of fiction. Is it possible for us to find beauty, pleasure, and comedy in a narrative that is ethically repugnant? Can we suspend moral judgment in favor of aesthetic appreciation of a finely tuned sentence or a perfectly balanced phrase? The answers to these questions remain unclear, but in pitting substance against style, in balancing the ethical so delicately against the aesthetic, Nabokov invents a new kind of literary fiction." from "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: You Must Read Before You Die" by Peter Boxall​

Lolita still challenges the reader to suspend their moral judgement swept away by the aesthetic prose. I find Lolita a real brain-scratcher at the ability of Nabokov to draw compassion even at a vile disposition.

To fold up my extra-long post, let me peg the topic back on the stimulating goose. In chapter#3, 'Pessimism and Feet' in aforesaid Et cetera, Et cetera book, Lewis writes:

Ped comes to Latin as the root of pes, pedis, producing words all feet in one form or another, from which we have taken pedestrian, pedal, pedigree (goose's foot).
​

Isn't pedigree crane's foot? Why did he say 'goose'? Well, he wanted to goose up his writing.

​

 

Brekkie Plan

I logged in to post about my tribulations with Cantor's diagonalisation when I happened to notice the trending breakfast thread. I am in dire need of fanciful and healthy breakfast ideas. Then I saw a post on overnight oats: click here.

I enjoy overnight-soaked oats. But I never prepare that oat pot at home as breakfast is always eaten out in my hurried commute in the mornings. Therefore, I grab that softly crunchy oat pot on my way to work when I could resist my usual sausage bap (irresistible!).

After sighting shravs's mention, I have decided to try it out at home.

Soaked every healthy and crunchy item I could find in my kitchen: oats, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, dates, almonds, cocoa powder. Stashed in the fridge. I have a feeling that I would wake up midnight and munch away. Tomorrow is too tempting!

 

Dosa looks shapely and crispy. I prefer crispy dosas to the thick and spongy ones.

My home made dosas never turn out elegantly crispy. They are either snap brittle or stretchy ruin.

I like the browned texture, and the daal blend has lent a delicious shade from the bland white of the rice flour.

 

De Sica's Arrangement

These days, I am into Vittorio De Sica's films. But then I realized that I hardly know the director's private life.

"Although divorced, De Sica never parted from his first family. He led a double family life, with double celebrations on holidays. It is said that, at Christmas and on New Year's Eve, he used to put back the clocks by two hours in Mercader's house so that he could make a toast at midnight with both families. His first wife agreed to keep up the facade of a marriage so as not to leave her daughter without a father."​

Wayward husbands are nevertheless watchful fathers. I liked his thoughtfulness in celebrating Christmas with both the families by winding the clock back. To toast the good things in life, all you have to do is to manipulate the time rather than seize the time. If you have missed out a birthday or an anniversary of your loved one, it is still not too late, just wind the clock and rejoice the lost moment.