The Birds

Yesterday evening the sky was grey. Twilight was rapidly coming upon me as I walked between two buildings of red brick and mortar. Above me I could here the caw of seagulls and the fluttering of wings. I thought nothing of it and continued walking.

Within a few steps though, my evening changed quicker than I could imagine. The seagull cries were suddenly closer. I looked up, and two seagulls were jousting with each other not 9 feet above me. One seagull admitted inferiority and flew to distant shelter. The other, seemingly standing guard over its nest returned to the concrete eve of one of the red brick buildings.

I glanced in its direction, intrigued. Its eyes were as sharp as mine. Somewhere in its feeble, frightened bird brain it perceived me as a threat. The joust was on again, and it swooped down upon me with all its speed. Whether it meant to simply drive me off, or to really attack I cannot say, but It came in very close indeed. I took off like a bolt around the grounds of one of the brick buildings. I hoped that it would see I was no threat and return to its nest.

However, I was wrong. Drunk on power and victory the gull pursued me. Sweeping in low for pass after pass against my head, it chased me around the entire building. I ran with all me strength steeply downhill, only losing the maddened harpy when I dashed into a dense line of trees. There the gull gave up, and I regained my freedom.

I have never feared birds before, but my head was exposed and I had no tools with which to silence the enraged flyer. With a speeding bird coming at me, my eyes and ears suddenly felt more precious than they had before.

But I will have my revenge. Poisoned bread or sardines should do nicely!

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Bulgar wheat salad and Tiramisu Torte

You may wonder, reading the title above, what Tiramisu and Bulgar wheat have to do with each other. The answer is completely tangential to the essence of either dish. While it is true that they are both dishes, and both contain wheat, what really brings them together is that I served both yesterday when Ahreum and I had some friends over for lunch.

Will, Sunyoung, Eunhan, Heejoo, and Ahreum

On the menu was grilled pork chops with fresh rosemary, cracked black pepper, and sea salt with the bulgar wheat salad.

I received several requests for the preparation of the salad, so here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

Bulgar wheat 400 grams
Tomatoes (maybe twenty to 25 cherry or plum tomatoes)
1 124 gram (I think) package Tesco finest or Sainsbury's Taste the Difference feta cheese (or any other good Greek feta)
1 red onion
2 cloves garlic finely minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Bunch coriander (cilantro for my fellow Americans) roughly chopped. If you don't like coriander add less or alternatively use basil or flat leaf parsley instead.
Olive oil
Honey
Salt and Pepper

Begin by cooking the bulgar wheat. If you buy a 500 gram package, you won't need the full amount. Maybe cook 4/5 of the package and save the rest for later. Put the bulgar wheat in a pot, cover with plenty of water, bring to the boil and then cook for 10 to 15 minutes. Drain the water from the bulgar wheat, rinse the wheat with cold water, drain again, and put the bulgar wheat into a large mixing bowl. Set aside to cool.

Now start chopping. Chop each tomato in half, dice the onion, crumble or chop up the feta cheese, mince the garlic, and chop the coriander. By now the bulgar wheat should be getting cool. But if it is still letting out steam, then let it sit longer.

When the bulgar wheat is cool, add all of your chopped ingredients and stir them together. Add the juice of the two lemons some salt and pepper, some olive oil, and a drizzle of honey. Don't add too much salt pepper or oil at once because once its in you can't take it out. Taste and add more seasoning, oil and(or) honey as required. You don't want it to be too salty or too olive oily in flavor. Let the honey balance the lemon, but don't make the dish too sweet. It should stay a bit piquant and sour.

When you like the taste, its done.

For desert we had Tiramisu. I'm not giving away the recipe for this one because I have to keep a few secrets, but two basic sponge cakes cut in half, enhanced with expresso, frangelico liquor, and sugar. Each layer of cake is topped with sweetened mascarpone cheese, and chocolate mousse, until the top layer, which only has the mascarpone cheese mixture. Tap some cocoa powder through a sieve and arrange expresso beans decoratively on its top.

Mascarpone Torte

After a some tea, Heejoo and Eunhan left, but Will and Sunyoung stayed for the evening. The girls went to watch DaeJangGeum, a beautifully produced drama about a cook in the Korean Royal palace. They were quickly addicted. Will and I had a long chat, read about 6 hours. He did an MA in Literature a few years ago in Exeter, but he is preparing to do and MA in philosophy at Essex. We spent much of the evening discussing philosophy, the mechanisms of social cohesion, post modernism, escape from post-modernism, religion, and neo-Platonism. I had a great time. Its been a while since I just had a good extra-academic, free conversation about such a wide range of topics.

The tiramisu was good, but intellectual discourse is better, especially with a little bulgar wheat thrown in on the side.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Korean World Cup Match

On Friday I finally finished off all of my marking. I did about thirty exams between 6:00 and 11:00 am. I felt like I hungover by the time I was done with it. Its rather amazing what the human mind and body are capable of when immense pressure is plied upon them. The most important thing was the feeling of total relief and calm that came over me when I turned in the exam stack to the office.

I must say that on the whole, I did not find the exam performances to be too stellar. There was some solid work, but, as with the essays, it seemed like they were only aiming for a pass rather than seeing what they were capable of.

But, this year, I have taken up the practice of writing down funny lines from the exams. It helps me stay focused and allows me to get a little enjoyment out of the grinding tedium. Here are the best gut busters:

"Firstly, as already mentioned natural law is consumed by all rational humans."
-I hope it has enough salt.

"As the name suggests eternal law goes on forever and extends well beyond our planet."
-That's totally cosmic, dude!

"The Utopians have a store of gold ... which they obtain by selling their excess gold."
-Something just doesn't add up here.


In the evening, I went with Ahreum and watched Korea take on Switzerland in the World Cup. Unfortunately for the Hanguk cheering section, Switzerland was playing on form and Korea wasn't. Still the Swiss obviously benefited from some highly dubious calls. Perhaps this might be called historical irony.

Irregardless of the defeat, I had a great time cheering for the Korean side. I also got some shots of some Korean friends and other Korean supporters.

Will and Sunyoung

Heejoo and Eunhan

Heejoo

Praying for Victory

Go Red Devils

Booster Club

Ahreum's come down with patriotic fever

Defeat sinking in

Sunyoung and Will

Sooyeon

Defeat hasn't dulled their spirits

When the game was over, and the post game drowning of sorrow had wrapped up, Ahreum and I joined our friend Sunyoung with her boyfriend Will and with Sooyeon and her partner Toby. We had just met the latter two, but they invited us over to their flat. We enjoyed some wine, some Hoegarten beer, and some funny videos on YouTube. Ahreum and I had a really good time meeting them and are looking forward to inviting them over to dinner sometime this summer.

What a great day!

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Guinea Fowl

Yesterday, I was able to take a little rest from marking exam scripts to have over company. Ahreum and I invited one of friends, Heejo, over.


Heejoo

Heejo and Ahreum


She had just returned from Korea the night before and had kindly brought over some things for us, including some traditional Korean snacks. She really enjoys western food and Sainsbury's had a sale on guinea fowl (a kind of relative of the chicken with vastly superior flavour and succulence), so I decided to do a summer style pot roast.

Guinea fowl browned and ready to roast
The process for such a dish is simple but the results are excellent. To begin get a celery bunch, cut off the top, trim the bottom and cut off the outer stalks. Cut these in half. Cut off the top half of the heart, but leave the bottom of the heart intact. Cut an onion into quarters. Peel one bulb worth of garlic cloves. Cut half a lemon into six pieces. In the meantime, heat a casserole or small oven safe stock pot. Turn the oven up to about 200 degrees centigrade. Cover the bottom with olive oil or butter. Rub salt and pepper over the top and bottom of the bird. When the pan is good and hot (medium to just barely high kind of temperature), put the bird in and brown it on all sides. When that is done put it breast side up and add the onions and the garlic with some salt and pepper. When they have been in for a little bit add the celery the lemons and then poor in a glass of dry white wine. After this has simmered for a minute or two add enough hot water to come up about half way on the bird and cover most of the vegetables. Add some time sprigs, four bay leaves, the celery leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and put in the oven for 1 to 1 1/4 hours. If you can't find guinea fowl, pheasant would be a nice alternative, a good fairly small free range chicken would also do the trick.

I served the meat spooned over with some of the cooking liquid together with a mixed green salad with raspberry lemon honey mustard dressing. The vegetables this was cooked with are also nice to eat, but you may want to cook the celery a bit longer. If this is necessary, remove the lemons and add a touch of sugar.

Ahreum and Heejo liked this a lot. Give it a try. This is fire and forget cooking that shouldn't disappoint.

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Meandering thoughts (From Essays to America and Back)

What a busy month and a half. I have left the blog idle, primarily because I have been preoccupied, but also because I of my chronic lackadaisical attitude and because I haven’t found anything to really write about.

Part of the problem revolves around marking essays. Unlike my previous students, the students I have this semester smack of mediocrity. That is not to say that they are poor students, or that they could not excel. In fact a small handful are excellent and studious. My point is more that the vast bulk of the students are unrepentantly average. There is nothing outstanding nor is there anything deploring in their performance. It is simply lukewarm. Essay after essay scored in the mid fifties. If I were grading papers in America, this would be like spread of B and B minus scores. This is not the kind of performance I can be excited about; in fact, it has drained me. I am now marking their second set of essays, and the performance is better on average, but still not where they should be.

This means I am nearly finished marking papers for the year. When I am done it will be a much needed relief, and I can turn to my own research in a far more concerted way.

At the moment, I am back in England I wrote most of this post at Heathrow airport. They are slowly improving the place, but there are still a number of things they could do better. Free wifi would be a great place to start.

I caught a bus at 1:20 in the afternoon. Ahreum was supposed to meet me on the bus, but it didn’t work out. Instead I met her in Exeter. But I was very worried on the bus ride home because I did not know what had happened. She is now completely finished with her work in London, and will be spending the summer with me in Exeter. I’ve been missing her over the last week. Traveling to and from the US was particularly hard without her. I’m so happy that I won’t have to go all the way to Exeter on my own.

In other news, I’ve now acquired a Canon 350d thank to their US rebate offer. It’s essentially a Christmas present from my Mom and Dad, since I will not be coming back to the USA this winter. I guess I’m the spoiled kid with the DSLR now. I can say that I am very grateful of my parents support. One of things I have promised in return is to post plenty of picture so they know what is happening in my life.

So far the operating of the camera has been remarkably transparent. I have experience with the canon system of film slr cameras, and I was able to jump right into the digital experience. These are two of the first shots I had taken before reading the manual properly:

I couldn’t resist that little opportunity to show off. Seriously though, the camera is easy to use. Now a lot of people complain that some major functions are “buried” in menus. While I can’t deny that they are in menus, they hardly require excavation. I imagine changing flash compensation, or iso could be slightly easier, but I don’t use the former and the latter can be accessed with one button press. This doesn’t strike me as being problematic.

Exposure is fairly good out of the box, but not perfect. I suppose it’s about the same as on my last camera, but because I shot film I had wider exposure latitude to work with. The camera is small, but I find it perfectly comfortable. It is made of plastic, but this means it is lighter and won’t get too cold to handle in the wintertime. I’m sure build quality is a step up from the Rebel 2000 I use for film, but it is not a leap forward. At any rate, I am very satisfied and can now focus on collecting lenses until a truly affordable full frame body is introduced.

Meanwhile, over the last week, I have been in the United States. My oldest friend, Chad Lothary, was getting married in St. Louis, and I was one of his groomsmen. I was very happy to be there for him as he begins his new life with Kristina. The ceremony was held in a greenhouse built for the World’s Fair, called the Jewel Box. It was fine wedding, replete with a string quartet playing JS Bach. Chad and Kristina should have fond memories of that day for many years. Here is a picture:

On the photography side of my interests, I was very impressed with the photographer that they hired. He was using a Canon 5d and an assortment of nice Canon L lenses. But many pros would use this kind of gear or better. What impressed me wasn’t his equipment but his disposition. He was friendly, i.e. willing to talk shop with me, clearly knew light exceptionally well, and had a relaxing effect on the wedding party. One of the little touches he did was to show some of the pictures he had been taking to the guests. Of course on a small viewfinder one can’t tell that much about a picture, but he had infused dramatic appeal and depth into his photographs. I have seen other wedding photographs before, and they are often mundane. I’m sure some of his are the same, but most were not. I’m very happy that Chad and Kristina hired this fellow.

Now I have to return to marking

Once more into the breach,

Ben