Fee

Lou Costello always split his fee 60-40 in favour of his partner Bud Abbott, because of how much he valued the straight man in a comedy duo.

Big Cake!

Black Forest Gâteau
(Schwarzwälderkirschtorte)

Ingredients:
a). Cake:
150g butter
150g caster sugar
125g of self-raising flour plus 25g cocoa powder
3 eggs

b). Black Forest-Type Goodies:
375ml double cream (whipping cream)
1 tin of cherries (should be Morello cherries, I used black cherries)
Kirsch (a bit)
25g plain chocolate
0g Black Forests

First you make the cake. Like this. Mix the butter and sugar in a bowl (helps if butter is not cold). Add the eggs and mix. Put in the flour a bit at a time and mix. Next add the chocolate powder. Mix! (You guessed it). Now you have a cake mix. Jolly good. Spoon it into a greased circular cake tin. The kind with the removable bottom is very convenient. Cook in pre-heated oven at 180°C until you can insert a sharp knife into the cake without it coming out with any cake mixture on it, i.e. until it is cooked. Trala, now you have your cake. Get it out of the tin and let it cool on a wire rack (if you can wait!)

Next thing is to whip the cream. Make sure it is cream suitable for whipping, otherwise you will be waiting a long time and your arm may not survive the experience. Use a whisk and get plenty of air in it. When the cream suddenly goes nearly solid, you have arrived! It will now stand up against the force of gravity. Excellent for putting on a cake, more about that later.

De-tin the cherries, draining them and keeping the juice or syrup. Remove the stones by making a small cut in each cherry with a teaspoon and getting the stone out with your finger. You should get the hang of it. Each time you get a particularly firm and impressive cherry, keep it to one side until you have eleven of them - these are for the decoration. The rest you should cut in half. Then fold them gently into half of the whipped cream. This mixture will stick the insides of the cake together. Ja, gut!

Nearly there now. Cut the cake into three, horizontally. You now have three circular cake pieces. On a plate put the bottom bit and prick holes in it with a fork. Sprinkle on the Kirsch mixed with the cherry juice. Use a pastry brush and you will feel quite professional. Give it a good soak, whatever you use. Now spoon on half of your cream/cherry mixture into the middle of the cake base. Squish on the next circular cake piece. Do the same soaking-sprinkling procedure to this part, and then spoon the rest of the creamy cherries onto that. Lastly squish on the top part of cake. Why not take this opportunity to give that part a good soak with the cherry juice?

OK, smooth the remaining whipped cream over the outside of the assembled cake. Decorate with the eleven whole cherries on the top. Grate the plain chocolate over the whole thing. It's done! You are now the proud owner of one prime plot of Black Forest Cake! Move in and enjoy your investment!

Adjustments:
I would like to try it with fresh cherries. I didn't have any Kirsch so I used cherry brandy left over from Christmas 1532. You can grate the chocolate fine or thick. Adjusting the thickness will involve changing your grater for one with bigger holes. Or you could use a fruit/vegetable peeler.

The recipe came from Mrs. Beeton, but was later deranged by Mr. Beeton.

Finally, here is a picture of my first attempt, taken with my 2.1 Megapixel camera that cost so little that they almost paid me to take it off them, hence the quality is not perfect. Ok, look now!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just one of the things that could happen if you happened to have a spare hour and some cream and cherries, etc.

PS Yum!

Mistake

Further to the Carbonara recipe, if you are making an emergency ad hoc experimental edition of it, don't add lemon to milk. It will curdle and you will have made an unusual type of cheese rather than a spaghetti dish traditionally associated with charcoal-burners.

I did!

How else would I know?

Spaghetti Carbonara

We haven't had any recipes here yet, so here is the all-purpose Spaghetti Carbonara.

There are three transitional versions. This means our Carbonara exists in three perceptible discrete states, but you can actually choose to slide between them and make it taste however you like (but probably three is enough). The three versions are: Classic, Improved, Restaurant.

The Classic is quite dry, apart from the egg. Then you can 'Improve' this by adding some cream or milk or even more eggs, whatever you want to have a go with. I called the last one 'Restaurant' because the very creamy interpretation of Spaghetti Carbonara is the one I have always been given in restaurants. The creamy version is, as I see it, a bit old-fashioned, perhaps a bit reminiscent of the very rich food of the 1970s, and you will have to work hard to produce a good taste because the cream will be working hard to mask it and make it taste...of cream! The drier version is more lively and there is more contrast between tastes and colours. Use organic egg(s) and you will have a lovely colour of yellow in there.

The Recipe.
Spaghetti
You can buy dried spaghetti (the usual kind in plastic packets in a supermarket). If you do, the best I have had is made by De Cecco (blue and yellow packets). Fresh spaghetti can also be got, particularly from a specialist Italian food-type shop, but even in supermarkets sometimes. Otherwise you can make your own in your pasta-making machine or have your pasta chef prepare some in your large professional kitchen or country estate. How much you need is up to you. If it is dried, it will grow through cooking so start with less. I mean, just make it. If you don't have enough, you will be hungry. Too much, and you can have a party or eat it the next day (to do this, just put your finished spaghetti in a hot saucepan with a tiny bit of water in the bottom and stir it around until it is all hot - the water helps conduct the heat to the food and stops it being too dry).
Bacon
Most bacon is horrific nowadays. Despicable substances are injected into it to make it weigh more (money-making idea, or 'theft', as it should properly be known), and this is the white stuff that oozes out when you're frying bacon. It is not normal! It is an offence against creation! You've already had the pig killed to get your bacon, now please do not insult him and nature by perverting his bacon like this. If it is all that you can get, then make the most of it. Think good thoughts! The best quality bacon I have had (in my short life) was got in the UK and produced by Duchy Originals. It's expensive, though. I am just presenting the options though, there is no imperative to always buy the best. The cheapest food produced under the worst and most immoral conditions could be the best food of your life...if you were enjoying it right.
Egg
As before, cheap usually means something is being mistreated somewhere along the line. In this case it's the hens. You can research it if you want. I don't want to mention it today. The other thing is that organic, free range eggs look and taste better. In actual real life, 'organic' is not something weird and expensive. It just means "this food was grown the way food grows". Organic means growing. It is the basic way food is made if you don't abuse it. Why not go and live in a nice house somewhere with a garden and grow your own food. That will be organic and you will like it too. Send me some!
Lemon
You need some of the juice and also some of the zest (the peel on the outside). For the least poisonous zest, get an unwaxed lemon. (It will not kill you the other way, but the lemon itself tastes better than whatever they polish it with)

That's it. Instructions:
Cook spaghetti
In boiling water with a bit of salt in it (there are no quantities here, if it tastes wrong you have done it wrong! Too salty? Why not try adding LESS SALT. Etc.) The spaghetti is ready when you like the way it tastes. It is so simple. If it is too hard to bite then let it boil more. Too soft, you can't do anything now - eat it! If there is a bit of resistance when you bite it, it is known as 'al dente' but who cares, you are the one eating it.
Fry bacon from about halfway through spaghetti cooking
Hot pan, put in chopped bacon. When it looks good, it is done. Ths size of slice affects the taste-feeling, so try different sizes if you make this more than once.
Spaghetti cooked?
Then drain it and put it back in its pan. Chuck in the bacon and the egg. And a bit of lemon juice too (A bit! Less than half a lemon's juice. Have it ready! Don't get pips in it!). Stir it around, fast. It is hot so the egg will start to cook. You have eyes, look at it. Take it out before it looks completely right because it will continue to cook on the plate (the food is hot!). Have a go, at least.

Is it on the plate now?
Then grate the lemon zest and put it on top. Just some, the maximum is about half of half a lemon per plateful.

That is the classic version.

You can also make a wetter version by having a bowl ready in which you have beaten the egg with some cream (a little...a lot...too much) and lemon. You can put in more eggs too. Probably not too many though, it is not supposed to be a quiche. Then at the adding-egg stage above you add the creamy mixture instead. It will reduce (get thicker) in the heat, but will get a lot thicker if it is mostly egg, or get thicker more slowly if it is mostly cream (actually you could even have used some milk if you like - it is only thin cream after all).

That is it! You have made it! Amazing!

Now grind some black pepper on it when it is on the plate. You may grate Parmesan cheese on too if you should wish. But if you do, that is your recipe - it is not just something you add anyway (like people who put salt on everything without even tasting it). The lemon zest can go on this version too, if you like.

The End

Bergamasque

I was playing today from the Wiener Urtext edition of Debussy's Suite Bergamasque (with the red cover, UT 50084, Ed. Stegemann/Béroff).

This edition has a horrifying amount of mistakes in it. It must have taken a lot of work to think up the mistakes. They are quite creative sometimes. Unless I was mad the day I bought it, the reason I own this edition is that it was the best one I could find...which leaves me wondering about the others.

I just thought I would flag it up for you - keep your eye out for missing clefs and all sorts! And also I am not crazy about Michel Béroff's fingerings - I'm sure they are his fingerings, but for an edition you have to consider more possibilities, as Godowsky always did. I could well be wrong. It is not for me to criticise other people's work, particularly when it was honestly done, as I believe this edition was. Yes, honestly, but honestly it could have been done better! The performance notes are OK.

Suckers

Unverified (by me) facts about leeches, gleaned from a "Leech Information" web page (the natural place to be looking):

The leech has 32 brains

The nervous system of the leech is very similar to the human nervous system and is of enormous benefit to researchers in their quest for the answers to human problems

Well, well, well.

Nothing

Thirty spokes make a wheel
They meet in the middle: it is the hole that makes the wheel go.

A clay pot has a shape too,
But there is nothing inside. And that's the useful part.

This room has doors and windows.
It's useful because of the holes in it.

Something valuable can be touched.
The useful part is nothing.

[See Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu]

Quest

Once there was a king of Spain, a Moorish king
His woman asked to see the snow in April
Oh woman, did you think to test your man?

In April all the flowers lay round and out in bloom
The earth was black or green for miles around
And nowhere was it cold enough for snow

But the man knew what to do

He took her to a far away and hidden valley
High and deep and buried in the mountains
Where white cherry blossoms fell to earth
And carpeted the ground with their sweet snow

Stories

Do you like stories?

These days most stories are called films and feature many people being killed and exploded constantly. This reflects badly on our collective minds and hearts, I fear. Also it just adds to the anxiety of living for the people who watch them.

But real stories have been around as long as we have had people! And you have heard at least some of them yourself!

There are rhymes that teach you things. There are rhymes like treasure chests that hold secret memories from long ago, for which the key is old and rusty and worn away to something almost like a spider's web. There are stories of kings and queens and brave heroes and fair maidens and fierce monsters and battles and giants and magic spells and they all lived happily ever after.

Do you never ask why? Do you think they are just for children? You are right. They are for children. And when you become like little children again then you can take your place in the old stories once more and fight those monsters.

And WIN.

Bottles

All the bottles went into the bottle bank for recycling!

I had been keeping them to help remember what it was like to drink their contents. From the exotic aroma of F. E. Trimbach's Gewürztraminer Réserve Exceptionelle 1967, to the fairly usual though not at all unpleasant aroma of various non-vintage champagnes, along with a couple of their more distinguished relatives from Bordeaux - in they went! Now they are all the same, green glass.
There's no reason to accumulate possessions, unless they have some use. Even then, it's the use, more than the object, which is valuable.

By the looks of things, I don't drink alcohol anymore, so there's not much point hoarding memories of wine, is there. There's no point hoarding anything - it would only be sort of distractions and diversions designed to give the impression that their owner has some sort of substance or personality. Otherwise we'd have to really look at ourselves and FIND some character there. But the pretend way is quicker. Unfortunately, it is only pretend.

All those bottles together...it sounds like good material for a sermon or a school assembly. Shall I do it? No matter how important each one thought he was, in the eyes of the recycling bin, each one was the same. Well, it's true, we are all the same! Each one has a value, though that value is low in the case of the bodies (bottles), but high in the case of the contents.

So, away they went.

Tree (House)

A tree house is, as you will probably already know, or can guess, a house in a tree. Quite a good idea, I think.

So your next question will probably be, "Philip, I know you are Philip Howard, Composer and Pianist, but you give out all sorts of interesting information on many subjects! Please please please please please can you tell me how I can stay in a tree house?"

Why yes, I can! And there are more options than you might think. And these are just some of them. I'm afraid I couldn't find anywhere in the United Kingdom, but anyway it might be a bit cold there. Nice trees though, so perhaps I will find somewhere.

Our first port of call on this survey of off-ground hotels is the Zentendorf Tree House in Germany, which is in Saxony and offers views of Poland (quite possible!). Looks a bit rickety to me, and you have to share the toilet. Perhaps you share it with a family of birds? I do not know. Very German-style, I think. Practical and efficient. Though it may be swimming with luxuries on the inside for all I know (probably not). Still, I have no grounds for criticising this accomodation, having not seen it in real life, so let's just say, this is tree house hotel number one. That is really all I can say for sure at this moment. It's looking better the more I think about it, though.

Next of all (and not looking too fantastic) is Kadirs Tree House Hotel in Antalya, Turkey (staying roughly within Europe for the moment). I'm sure it is better than it looks! Not everywhere has to be gleaming, shiny, air-conditioned, according to modern western ideals of living. And indeed, this place does not look as though it was built in accordance with modern western ideals of living. I'm sure it is very nice, though. And if we were going to stay there, we'd research it a bit more of course.

Now, moving on to more far-off locations and better-looking tree house hotels, our little survey has reached the Costa Rica Tree House Hotel in Punta Uva. This is looking really good! Now that's what I call a Tree House Hotel! Yes indeed, it's really in a tree, it doesn't look like you're going to find yourself on the ground in a pile of sticks in the middle of the night, and for these reasons at least it gets my seal of approval. Yes, the Costa Rica Tree House Hotel has been awarded a star in my superficial survey of tree house hotels! Of course, to be really able to grade this accommodation I would have to stay there in person. So if you need to know more details, book me the flight and the hotel and I'll get back to you about it.

The last visit on this surprisingly quick tour of the world is the South Point Banyan Tree House in Waiohinu, Big Island, Hawaii.

OK, I'm frightened now. This isn't a tree house, it's a house tree! There were not really any pictures available of this hotel as it sits in its tree, so I don't know exactly what is going on here. All I know is, this tree house appears to have more "house-ly" facilities than my own house (which, by the way, is attached to the ground). So I don't know how many stars it gets from me. Half a star, two stars, or thirty stars, somewhere between those, I think. This last tree house hotel certainly fits in with the western approach to habitability. But do I like the western approach that much? Mind you, this hotel is probably pretty exciting! And, I do admit, all that western business is quite good in its own way. Ah, dear me, the only answer is to VISIT ALL OF THEM.

Lots of love!

Philip

"Alas"

There are a lot of things in the world, and I quite like most of them. Some of the other things are not so good, but I certainly admit that they are part of the world too, so I don't rule out learning something from them - though I would like to make them better. But there is one thing that still rather annoys me. I suppose you could deduce something more general from what I'm about to tell you, but, at any rate, here is the thing that annoys me:

It annoys me when I read a review (I don't read reviews much, maybe because of this...) of some recording of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Sonata (B Flat Minor) and it says "which, alas, he performs here in the mutilated second version", or "unfortunately foregoing the far more interesting first version" (brackets, alas, close brackets) and so on and so on. I have never read a review of this work that didn't say something like that.

I have just decided to learn this piece, and I can tell you, each version has got some things going for it. But there is one person I care about in this matter, only one, and his name is Sergei Vassilievitch Rachmaninov. It was his idea to make the changes, so I am going to work on the assumption that he did have at least some tiny clue about how to do his job. I am prepared to consider the first version too, since I have it. But I don't at all think that I know better than S. V. R. If these people who say the above about this work think differently, they are welcome to produce recordings that match their lofty ideals. If they can...

Colour

A nice bit of colouring-in, that's what I recommend for you.

You enjoyed it once, so have another go!

Maybe now you're old it's not serious enough to use colours. Is it all black and grey now? Try out some colour and see if it makes you feel any different.

Colour works for nature, so why not for us too?

A black or grey person doesn't want to stand out, but if a healthy person is looking at this grey smudge on the beautiful green horizon, then it is rather obvious. And not too nice, either! The sky is blue, so why not you. The trees are seen so often wearing green. I never said I don't like red. Never let me hear you say that yesterday was black or grey.

OK, pick up your pencils now!

Stomatologia

I won...nothing at all! But I will be back. I think I know what to do.

I know I said that no news from here means good news from Kraków. Well, that wasn't true any more, in the way I originally meant it. The only real news apart from the above was that my feet were very busy going all around the town. That is what kept me away from you, dear readers. Actually it is not such a big town after all. I saw everyone at least twice, and some people I saw three times!

And I was lying about the lack of technology too (it's all lies, here). There will be pictures. If they are of any interest, I mean. Otherwise it's a case of "me looking at my shoes by a castle", "really interesting picture, if that lorry hadn't driven past", etc. These I will not bother you with!

There was one thing I wanted to say. STOMATOLOGIA. This word is everywhere. It is not such a nice word, and I objected to seeing it every five seconds as I made my way from tram to tram in Kraków. OK, I will look it up now and tell you what it means. My guess is "surgery".

I can't find it. One place says "dentistry". But it's not in my dictionary. Any ideas?

Don't be disappointed about the competition, folks! It's just one event among many! I was satisfied with my performance, so...I was the winner! Of my own particular event.

I can let you have a listen to my performance. Just give me a minute to get sorted out. I only came through the door recently. Back soon - and I mean soon. I am here, for now at least!