A rosé is a rosé is a rosé

Or at least it is by this stage of the festive season!

Not all snow is static

or pride (and a cold bottom in an unheated loo) comes before a fall!

Snow falling on Vélibs

and on secret Parisian gardens...

and on other vegetation...

...but remember folks: keep off the grass!

Anarchy in the Helvetian Confederation

Well, the humans have been doing their best to butter me up with chocolate and appenzeller cheese, though as usual they've been busily talking about the deer sausage they enjoyed for a post-concert bed-picnic rather than actually saving me any. The ukulele concert -- as they never seem to tire of reminding me -- was excellent fun, with old favourites and a couple of new numbers washed down with quite respectable Italian champagne. I'm told the sight of an eminently respectable Swiss audience being warmed up to sing the chorus to a Simon and Garfunkel arrangement of a Sid Vicious classic is really quite something!
Meanwhile the city's other marvels included mulled wine aplenty, hospitable and moderately-priced model-train-themed hostelries, and a ferryboat powered by nothing other than the current of the Rhine. The boat is attached to a pulley running on a cable running across the river, much in the manner of an aqueous flying fox, and crosses sideways facing into the current, its movement regulated by the position of its rudder. Culture, other than that offered by ukuleles, was not forgotten: the humans had much to say about the excellent Kunstmuseum and were even kind enough to bring me a photograph of a friendly-looking creature overlooking the courtyard ice rink.
Perhaps we can become penpals.

Mulled whine

The humans have once more seen fit go go away for the weekend without me. I'm not impressed -- especially since they returned boasting of a high-speed train trip complete wirth gluhwein service and (so I'm informed by one of the party) a very civilised thigh-level blow heater in the lavatory.

More to come just as soon as I stop sulking!

Of hippo-solidarity and human hypocrisy

(brought to you by market forces and mass transit in the 16th arrondissement)
I find it pays to be sceptical when it comes to humans -- you know where you are when they're deliberately screwing the place over, but things get rather murkier when they claim to be doing universal good.
I'm all for saving the planet -- not to mention the non-potamical hippos, perfectly fine creatures -- but surely putting up posters to denounce the fact that horses who spend their lives in suburban equestrian centres sometimes get eaten is beyond silly. How about altering the supply end of the equation? Or is it just that humans out there are squeamish about serving to guests something their little brats have sat on?
Can't say I really blame them...

Of extraordinary derailleurs, and seals caught drinking champagne from sheepskin slippers...

I'm sure there's a link somewhere!

'Pataphysics

'Pataphysics is to metaphysics what metaphysics is to physics. A physical statement would be along the lines of "I have a brother and he likes cheese." A metaphysical statement would be "If I had a brother he would like cheese." A 'pataphysical statement would be "I don't have a brother and he likes cheese." And so forth. As you can see, 'pataphysics makes far more sense than most human behaviour.
Observe the following image, taken during a 'pataphysical demonstration of the precautions to be taken against zombification -- instead of making bad films about the whole sorry business, it would suffice to tie one's jaw shut when unattended to prevent one's soul from escaping.
A strip consisting of nine sheets of toilet paper -- what the French artfully term "P.Q.," managing to be both polite and vulgar and to deploy a bad pun in the course of two letters -- should suffice when tied correctly. Tourists, small children, the elderly and the infirm are allowed up to twelve to make for easier knots without the attendant danger of rupturing delicate perforations.
Yours in Faustroll!

Of velocipedes and boopotamy

I have been much neglecting my writings lately, sadly, as there has been much to do keeping the human on the straight and narrow. This became urgent three weeks ago when he decided to embark with an intrepid colleague on an autumn jaunt along the Canal du Nivernais, braving rain and pinot noir in pursuit of the Burgundinian sublime.

Sweet showers rightly belong in April -- it must have been the humans' decision to put up for the night in a pilgrims' residence that led both rain and gravitation to make the experience as authentic as possible. Complain they might, but Romanesque basilicae are designed to be built on top of hills that are intended to be walked up, in the dark and if possible on one's knees.

Sunday lunch of wild boar stew and complimentary pâté sounds tempting -- sorry Fidel! -- but it was quite a relief to have a weekend to myself in a nice warm kitchen. Greetings from canalside cows notwithstanding, I think I got the better end of the deal.

Mushrooms!

The secret to successful risotto while entertaining people, the human assures me, is cutting everything up before they arrive so the rice is only cooked at the last minute."Trompettes de mort" -- my favourite -- at right!

All creatures great and small

The human is unquestionably a dog person at heart, although good manners -- or is it simply laziness? -- prevents him actively from encouraging the chasing of cats. (His position on split infinitives is unorthodox to say the least, though we do find common ground on the spiny topic of gerunds -- medium-rare please.) But I digress.
I, on the other hand, am a far more reasonable creature -- I put up with humans, I enjoy the company (if not always the over-inquisitive molars) of distinguished hounds, and some of my best friends are fugitive porcine socialists. I can provide documentary evidence of my correspondence with fluffy cats:

While I'm all for inter-species cooperation, I can't help noticing who's doing most of the work in this picture, and who's simply sitting there looking smug. I certainly hope these three faithful hounds haven't been tricked into strikebreaking.

In defence of the stack

or things that make 8am classes bearable!

Non licet ombinus Londinium adire!

I'm trying not to complain too much about being left to guard plum jam in Lutetia while the human conveyed himself to Londinium by stella europae on the slightly dubious pretext of purchasing books and visiting the bibliotheca britannica. All Gaul may be divided into three parts, but the human was able to confirm in person earlier documentary evidence that the British have made progress in the blessed domain of cheesemaking:
Needless to say the human returned immoderately well fed, on everything from bacon (viz.)

with eggs and hollandaise sauce, Szechuan hot-pot ("hot and numbing" read the menu -- and I was most intrigued to note an apartheid-like divider allowing two different broths to be cooked in the one pan), aperitifs aboard what I suppose one would have to call a public houseboat, and finally an excellent Korean barbecue only rendered incongruous by being served in a quiet South-East London local with careworn oak panelling:
Old friends make for great happiness, and there is even news from the illustrious Dr. L that my dear comrade Fidel has emerged from hiding under a bed in Hackney. I can only hope I'll be included in the next visit...

Jam session

1kh overripe figs, 2kg overripe plums, 2kg of the oddly named "confisuc" -- sugar with citric acid and some sort of setting agent mixed in. The figs worked a treat but the plums seemed too liquid -- but after letting them reduce for a while they set to a texture somewhere between quince paste and sticky toffee. Spreading requires strong bread, a strong hand and a strong knife, though it's quite nice hacked into bite-sized bits and consumed on tangy goat's cheese.

The human is a closet glutton for chestnut jam though neither of us knows how it's made. If there aren't any ripe figs left next time we go to the market it will be time to experiment. All suggestions welcome!

Nuit blanche II: on the unexpectedly versatile nature of erstwhile garden installations

The improvised water tank formerly of West-Nor'-West Redfern was always an unpretentious affair, filling itself from a backed up drainpipe and washing machine hose arrangmeent when it rained, and keeping the garden alive for days at a time between summer showers.

Little did I imagine that its kind would go on to dominate both the entrance to the Buttes Chaumont and the Pont St-Louis! The future may well bring us luminous cities of plastic water cubes, but it's nice to know they haven't forgotten their roots -- allotments ahoy!

Nuit blanche I: Dancing at the Centquatre

On a more cheerful note from a slightly earlier era, long live the return of the bal populaire -- dancing 1940s style complete with braces, net veils and accordions! The place may have once been a morgue but it seems no less jolly for the experience, and to top it off there's a late-night bookshop selling postcards of old photos captioned with truly appalling puns -- who but the French could pour half their science budget into la fission de la tomme?

Years of insouciance, or la vie en rose: animal rights, racism and sex kitten nostalgia

"Never with a vacuum cleaner", the subject of this post once said in response to an appliance magnate's request to dance on a yacht in St. Tropez. Needless to say, plenty of white late middle aged vacuum cleaner salesfolk in evidence at the exhibition opening, though the animals seem to have stayed away in solidarity with the immigrants. The human assures me he only braved the sea of pink because there was free champagne on offer, and promises -- promises -- that his lengthy stare at the sight below was one of pure bewilderment. I'll let you be the judge.

Putting things on a pedestal

or explaining the human's reluctance to invest in a basil plant to place on the kitchen window sill as autumn approaches:

C'est en faisant n'importe quoi qu'on devient n'importe qui

Shamefully stolen from elsewhere, but there's a good lesson here -- Les forçats de la route meets Barthesian epic meets "The Passion considered as an uphill bicycle race"...

Fame precedes me!

As do vertical gardens attached to the front façade of menswear chains...

Of unexpected châteaux and the objects to be found on their doorsteps

When he wasn't excalming to all and sundry about how the country really was divided into three parts, the human's last Gallic expedition seemed to revolve largely around the search for a suitable château.

This time around, he seems to have found one -- conveniently linked to public transport, no less -- in the most unexpected of places. The châtelaine is expected.
The setting is most pleasant, the interior is most spacious and the furnishings most commodious. Administrative and financial bureaucrats of various stripes seem unexectedly eager to please. The bibliotheca quadriturricula subterraneana is closed for holidays, but there is a well-catalogued library of several thousand volumes on the premises. The natives who maintain it are more than friendly -- books are not the only object occasionally to be found on the doorstep when returning from an excursion by bisorbiculus liberalis:

I'm not complaining!

Voyeurism on the ukulele!

Petit déjeuner sur l'herbe

Even the human has had his share of haloumi by this point in the week!

The Hosts! The Hosts!

My last batch of science-fictional friends had barely finished their cafeteria antics when news arrived of this most excellent show by the inimitable Wade. Good fun was had by all, and it's a fitting sendoff from a neighborhood that both the human and I -- in agreement for once -- are very sad to leave.

Robots in Ukranian peasant costume, you might say -- or a one-night stand between Daleks and Kulaks!

Death Star Canteen

From the benificent if occasionally nihilistic presence at Fumbling Darkly.
That's what you get for eating in most of the cafetarias I've encountered lately...

Pussycat cubism

Break glass in emergency

Indeed!

This thoughtful and heartwarming public service announcement was one of my highlights for a mid-week break in the mountains, though the humans seemed more impressed with the gallery the café was attached to. Magic Pudding indeed. Two days away and they were deep into hound withdrawal -- nothing for the humans but they couldn't stop themselves from bringing back gifts for him.

More food than I want to think about, a four-poster bed in the Shakespeare room (no less) and a commodiously triangular bath -- albeit served by a patent chrome soap dispenser above the sink requiring either sixty squirts of soap (rounded, for reasons that can only be divulged by the perpetrators, to the nearest twenty squirts) or dismantling with a 3mm allen key in order for the lids to be unscrewed.

Hills there may be in the mountains, but bringing one's bicycle at least ensures one has the appropriate tools!

Return of the killer croissants!

Time passes, time passes -- it's been nearly a year since the last croissant experiment, and the humans made a much improved effort with proper bread flour to hold the butter in, and a cold day to help roll out smoothly. New and seasoned toureurs managed square corners and nicely twirled triangles; increased sobriety meant that there were no vegemite and nutella combinations to distinguish between as rivers of butter flowed out of the oven.

Voilà:

Mammary vegan revisionism

As he prepares to return to hexagonal climes, the human has been getting all wistful about the many fine friends and kitchens he's leaving behind and has been feeling the urge to revisit past accidental triumphs. Small blessings, I suppose -- he may still read books about molecular gastronomy on the loo while nobody's looking, but at last count still had two hands and ten digits.

He always insists on changing something, however, and this time contrived to do it by inviting two of the loveliest vegan acquaintances for a pie based not on beef and guinness but on mushrooms and home-brewed stout.

Some things remain the same, however, as the basic form of the dish:

Puffs into this:

Broader and not quite as pointy as the original, perhaps, but there's always room to jazz things up a bit:

I, on the other hand, would rather pick on creatures my own size -- which the human has been telling anyone who will listen cost him precisely $1.55, patiently measured out by a patient market trader far too young to be viewing the finished product.

As the hound has become accustomed to hearing before being given his pellets to disdain, bon appetit!

I'm not Saussure about that

(with apologies to one of the more hilariously grumpy members of the medical fraternity!)

Strange but true

Proof that there's sometimes more to friendship than chasing each other around the garden -- that's if the photo can be believed!

Culinary rifts in the space-time continuum

The human had been muttering for some time about something called a kitchen clickalong, which I'd been praying would be something reasonably innocuous, like snapping one's fingers in time to the exhaust fan while watching the toast burn. No such luck I'm afraid -- it turns out to be something resembling a parody of/improvement on obnoxious real-time TV recipe shows, with the added interest of being able to receive instructions and ask questions in real time via a blog.

Never one to make life simple when it could be complicated, the human wanted to follow a clickalong based rather a long way away, giving the options of making provençal fish stew for breakfast, or missing the point entirely by following live instructions after the event. Then struck an even better idea: take the list of ingredients distributed beforehand, harass the patient staff of the local pescatory emporium for a sea bass equivalent, and assemble them by elimination to produce something resembling dinner.

Voilà: Not identical to the official version but not too far off it; and we've ended up with a ponus potful of seafood stock fur future projects. So there. The sauce didn't emulsify as well as it could have, but was great fun pounding it!

On somewhat inconvenient aesthetic developments relating to well-intentioned implement substitution

This is not the first time that the jiggler siphon has been mentioned in these chronicles, nor in all likelihood will it be the last. However I must report that the human seems to be both pleased and slightly vexed with his latest escapade, resulting from an attempt to transfer nutrient-rich yeast sediment from a patent glass fermentation vessel onto a garden bed that continues to produce both fruiting and tuberous solanaceae well out of season.
Despite its alleged status as a supercooled liquid, glass is generally known to be brittle. What is less well-known is that over-enthusiastic siphon-priming can cause an almost perfectly circular section of fermentation vessel to detach itself, resulting in somewhat faster than planned egress of said intended fertiliser.
Aside from the obvious application of such an unintended carburation port (obvious, that is, to a being larger than either myself or the human), can anybody suggest either a new use or a means of returning this vessel to its zymurgic destiny?

Dogfatherly advice

As you get older, Steve, it's always best to remember where you came from. Hopefully the following will help.

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Futurist Cooking Lives!

Who's hungry now?

Arr!

Primus inter pares

I'm not sure about the appellation "First Dog," but I'm glad to see the ranks of well-behaved junior hounds swelling by the day! Do you approve, Pudding? Speaking of which, I really must remind the human to get on with the job of handling Steve's correspondence with the White House...

Leporello goes mobile, or seduction on a budget

A house for a hound!

With thanks to the crew from Steve's World, and to the many openings afforded by the back shed!

Quote of the week

From a usually reliable source:

Can anyone recommend a game cookbook that doesn't make me feel like a class traitor for reading it?

It's best to consider things from every angle

...not to mention share the love.

And now for something fully sick...

First the human decided to become a dogfather, now everyone's doing it! There's a fluffy-tailed cat watching me from half way up the stairs as I type, and next thing I know another favourite human is talking of rescuing the following:
Sausage hound, 9 months old, black gloss with front flame job and white highlights, long wheelbase, lowered. Stock exhaust system with oscillating rear spoiler. Custom-made ramp recommended to protect rear end on large bumps. Will run on paprika blend but answers to Pudding.No promises, mind you!