Researching my play, The Last Wolf in Scotland, I met conservationists who didn't just want the wolf back but also bears, beavers, the lynx—even the walrus. There was talk of backbreeding the mighty auroch—and now the heck cattle are here. I'm loving the headlines:
In An English Field The Cattle Created By Hitler (Daily Mail)
A Shaggy Cow Story: How A Nazi Experiment Brought Extinct Aurochs to Devon (the Times)
Nazi-Bred Super Cows Roam Farm in Devon (the Guardian)
Hitler Has Only Got One Bull (And It's Alive And Well In The West Country) (the Independent)
Nazi Supercows At Devon Farm (This Is Plymouth)
Heil Heifer: The Aryan Cows Brought Back From Extinction By Nazis (the Mail again; classy)
Giant Nazi Cows On The Loose In Britain (Metro)
Friday, 24 April 2009
Monday, 20 April 2009
Iraqi marzipan
I should have posted this for Pesach because masafan, Iraqi marzipan, is basically a macaroon. But chewy—which is a whole nother kind of macaroon.
Preheat the oven to 200C. Mix 200g ground almonds, 200g caster sugar, two egg whites, some bashed-up cardamom seeds and a bit of orange flower water. (I use orange flower in everything; cakes, stews, porridge, to scent my bath, and in Lebanese "white coffee" which isn't coffee at all but hot water with a splash of the stuff). Fill a bowl with water and more orange flower water and roll the mixture into little balls, dampening your hands as you go. Pinch each one to shape it into a star. Sink half a pistachio into each centre. Bake for eight minutes, till they're golden.
Preheat the oven to 200C. Mix 200g ground almonds, 200g caster sugar, two egg whites, some bashed-up cardamom seeds and a bit of orange flower water. (I use orange flower in everything; cakes, stews, porridge, to scent my bath, and in Lebanese "white coffee" which isn't coffee at all but hot water with a splash of the stuff). Fill a bowl with water and more orange flower water and roll the mixture into little balls, dampening your hands as you go. Pinch each one to shape it into a star. Sink half a pistachio into each centre. Bake for eight minutes, till they're golden.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Magical thinking
I tried to be rational once, when I was twelve. I refused to ward off the evil eye by sewing salt into the hem of my dress. And my hair caught fire. So can you blame me for thinking magically?
It's over a week since my last seizure so I'm in high heels. Because if I believe I'll never fall again, maybe the universe will give me back my equilibrium. But just in case the universe sees the heels less as an act of faith and more as a stupid risk, I'm getting lots of sleep and eating my greens. And I'm counting magpies, avoiding ladders and carrying salt. I'm really on top of this not-falling thing. I'm in control.
Seizures are so random, so chaotic that I can completely see why, if I was medieval, I'd believe I was possessed; I feel so out-of-control that it’s almost like I'm being controlled. And I hate that so, to create the illusion of control, well I've got heels, I've got greens, I've got magpies.
Only schizophrenics see cause in every coincidence. But a bit of thinking magically can make you more creative and more confident—and non-magical thinking is linked to anhedonia. So maybe it's not so bad.
Usually when I'm not falling I don't tell anyone, in case that jinxes it...
It's over a week since my last seizure so I'm in high heels. Because if I believe I'll never fall again, maybe the universe will give me back my equilibrium. But just in case the universe sees the heels less as an act of faith and more as a stupid risk, I'm getting lots of sleep and eating my greens. And I'm counting magpies, avoiding ladders and carrying salt. I'm really on top of this not-falling thing. I'm in control.
Seizures are so random, so chaotic that I can completely see why, if I was medieval, I'd believe I was possessed; I feel so out-of-control that it’s almost like I'm being controlled. And I hate that so, to create the illusion of control, well I've got heels, I've got greens, I've got magpies.
Only schizophrenics see cause in every coincidence. But a bit of thinking magically can make you more creative and more confident—and non-magical thinking is linked to anhedonia. So maybe it's not so bad.
Usually when I'm not falling I don't tell anyone, in case that jinxes it...
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Happy birthday Tel Aviv
It's my birthday—and Tel Aviv is 100. I’m younger and I don’t have any boulevards.
A lot of my family went there from Iraq. Mostly to Ramat Gan, nicknamed Pajama Town, because the men who would sit out on their balconies of an evening, in their pajamas. (For every joke about this there's one about the Ashkenazis keeping carp in their baths to make gefilte fish; such is the melting pot.)
So, 100 years ago today, 60 families met on the sand dunes and drew lots, with black and white pebbles, for the land. From there the city grew messily north, until Patrick Geddes gave it shape.
When I was little I wondered why the buildings in Tel Aviv were so pale and boxy—I didn’t know I was looking at the White City, built by Jewish refugees who'd studied at the Bauhaus and named by poet Nathan Alterman who imagined clothing the city in a concrete dress. Those dreamers making that experiment in modern(ist) living now feel impossibly romantic. A play I saw matched nostalgia (the dastardly poet Alexander Penn carries his lover, actress Hanna Rovina, in his arms along Rothschild to the hospital to have their child) with irony (the white curves of the buildings were projected on the laundry line of Penn’s outraged wife). You can still get chicken soup with kneidlach at Penn and Rovina's old haunt, Keton on Dizengoff...or you can eat soup and hilbe at a Yemenite café where an old couple cook on primus stoves and call everyone ayouni ("my eyes" in Arabic).
Last words to Arthur Koestler who called Tel Aviv "an old dream unexpectedly come true; and like all dreams it was disorderly, irrational, difficult to define."
A lot of my family went there from Iraq. Mostly to Ramat Gan, nicknamed Pajama Town, because the men who would sit out on their balconies of an evening, in their pajamas. (For every joke about this there's one about the Ashkenazis keeping carp in their baths to make gefilte fish; such is the melting pot.)
So, 100 years ago today, 60 families met on the sand dunes and drew lots, with black and white pebbles, for the land. From there the city grew messily north, until Patrick Geddes gave it shape.
When I was little I wondered why the buildings in Tel Aviv were so pale and boxy—I didn’t know I was looking at the White City, built by Jewish refugees who'd studied at the Bauhaus and named by poet Nathan Alterman who imagined clothing the city in a concrete dress. Those dreamers making that experiment in modern(ist) living now feel impossibly romantic. A play I saw matched nostalgia (the dastardly poet Alexander Penn carries his lover, actress Hanna Rovina, in his arms along Rothschild to the hospital to have their child) with irony (the white curves of the buildings were projected on the laundry line of Penn’s outraged wife). You can still get chicken soup with kneidlach at Penn and Rovina's old haunt, Keton on Dizengoff...or you can eat soup and hilbe at a Yemenite café where an old couple cook on primus stoves and call everyone ayouni ("my eyes" in Arabic).
Last words to Arthur Koestler who called Tel Aviv "an old dream unexpectedly come true; and like all dreams it was disorderly, irrational, difficult to define."
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Kate Moss, this one's for you
Can it be true that Kate Moss is writing not just a cookbook but a kosher-themed cookbook? She's apparently been cooking for her boyfriend "using kosher techniques" (whatever they are) and she's already a dab hand at chicken soup and latkes. Well, it's Pesach tomorrow, so maybe she'll have a go at haroset. The Ashkenazis make it with apples but the Iraqi-Jewish version has the edge because actually looks like cement. Chop some walnuts (not too fine) and add silan (date syrup) bit by bit until it looks like you could make a brick out of it.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Chaos theories
In Ouch!, the BBC's brilliantly unpious disability magazine, I'm doodling around the idea that seizures are chaos.
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