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Sunday, November 27, 2011

Panettone 2011

Panettone - Fato in CasaPanettone - Fato in Casa
Panettone seems to have exploded on the American market in the last few years. One can scarcely step into the local grocery store without being greeted with a floor-to-ceiling stack of panettone. Our beef is that many panettone for sale both have goofy flavors and endorsements that seem wrong. (Bauducco features it is made with Hershey. That's enough to make us go running and screaming in the other direction.) Or, when you buy the panettone and take it home it is dry and disappointing. So we decided this year, snobs that we are, to make panettone ourselves. Fatto in casa… as they say. See all those years of Italian language lessons have paid off.

The origin of panettone is not exactly known and it isn’t just an Italian holiday treat as many other countries have either adopted this sweet bread or have a variation that is very similar. However in our minds, panettone and Italy are forever intertwined terms. We spent the days before Christmas one year in Positano and the site of people hustling and bustling about carrying their panettone was memorable to say the least.

The panettone recipe we followed was out of the December 2011 issue of La Cucina Italiana - a recipe from the Tartine Bakery (recipe here). The recipe played out over three days. Day 1: Refresh our starter (we already had a sourdough starter). Day 2: Make the poolish (pre-ferment). Day 3: Follow the rest of the recipe. We used the Fingered Citron or Buddha’s Hand (Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis) as the lemon zest called for in the recipe. See the post Annashaab Vase with Buddha’s Hand for a picture of this citron.

Panettone with Buddha’s Hand Citron
Panettone - Fato in Casa

Panettone Waiting to go in the Oven
Panettone - Fato in Casa

Panettone with a Slice Missing – Couldn’t Resist
Panettone - Fato in Casa

Weller Claywood and Skimmia foremanii

Weller Claywood and Skimmia
In this pots and plants series entry, we have a two small Weller Claywood pots with Skimmia foremanii looking very festive with its red berries.

Weller Pottery (1872 - 1948) of Zanesville, Ohio was a prolific pottery company that created pieces ranging from high-end art ware to functional commercial ware. 1910 generally marks the beginning of Weller's middle period, and the pottery's chief designer at this time was Austrian native Rudolph Lorber, who created some of Weller's most recognized lines, among them Claywood. Introduced circa 1910, Claywood, along with the related Burntwood line, features naturalistic design motifs primarily of flora and fauna, with the scenes divided into panels on the Claywood line. The Weller Claywood pieces shown here are smaller pieces, less than four inches high. For examples of more Weller Claywood pottery see the images from the 2001 Wisconsin Pottery Association and Show & Sale feature Weller Pottery.

Featured with the Weller pieces is Skimmia foremanii. Skimmia is a genus of a few evergreen shrubs and small trees in the Rutaceae (citrus) family. S. foremanii has been in our yard for about ten or more years. It isn’t watered but by natural sources and is in a shady location. The leaves are smallish and slightly waxy. The bright holly-like berries appear in the late Fall. We find sprigs (with berries) of the Skimmia scattered around our yard. Some animal or bird snips the end off and drags the berries off but occasionally leaves them for us to find. In our notes we recorded that we purchased both a male and female so we get the berries, but currently, the two look like one plant. S. foremanii is a dwarf.

The genus name Skimmia comes from a Latinization of part of the Japanese name for Skimmia japonica. The species name foremanii is named after one Mr. Foreman of Dalkreith, Scotland sometime in the late 1800s. Mr. Foreman exhibited the S. foremanii (a hybrid between S. japonica and S. reevesiana) in 1881 in Edinburgh. More details can be found in Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, Volume III, April, 1922, Number 4. The journal entry is titled:
New Species, Varieties and Combinations from the Herbarium and the Collections of the Arnold Arboretum, by Alfred Rehder. The article is on page 211.
Weller Claywood and Skimmia
Weller Claywood and Skimmia
In the mantle photo,the painting in the center is Padre e figlio (1997) by Alessandro Gambetti, an Italian artist. To the left is a piece by AJ Power, a Seattle artist.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Richard Dawkins and The Magic of Reality

The Magic of Reality - Opening Page

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True
is a book by Richard Dawkins with illustrations by Dave McKean. The book poses and answers twelve common questions about everyday life. First, possible answers to each question are given from myths and then, the real answer in the form of an engaging scientific explanation follows. The idea is that the scientific explanation is not only real but much more magical. You can experience the book as a book, as an audiobook or (magically?) as a digital book / application on an iPad - which is what we review here.

The Message

The message of the book is that science has it’s own magic and that magic is reality. Mythology - of all color and stripe - is not necessary to explain reality when you have science. The book’s message is targeted at an audience from early teens onward who are interested in science and understanding some fundamental questions like What are Things Made Of? (Chapter 4), What is the Sun? (Chapter 6), Are we Alone? (Chapter 9), or What is an Earthquake? (Chapter 10). The book tackles twelve basic questions about reality, answering them in an easy to understand language that uses analogies and illustrations, and audio and video in the iPad application.

Even though the purpose of the book is to dispel of myths in favor of science, the descriptions of myths turns out to be somewhat, shall we say, endearing. Yes, Dawkins dispatches with them as not necessary to explain the phenomena in question, but the presentation of them works both in word and illustration. The illustrations, some of them animated, are engaging and complimentary of the myths. Overall, experiencing the imagery and text woven together is quite effective. Maybe Dawkins and McKean should work on a book of myths. It could be interesting.

The Magic of Reality - Chapter 12 - Hume 
Image from Chapter 12 – Dave Hume

Unfortunately, the mention of Richard Dawkins is enough to raise the hackles of a good number of people and I’m sure he could care less. Richard Dawkins is, among other things, an atheist. To quote a recent study, Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society (AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2006, VOL. 71 (April:211–234)), that a friend sent us: “[u]sing new national survey data, it [the study] shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups.” So Dawkins’ outspokenness in his atheism automatically brings with it condemnation of any work from him, no matter how worthy. It’s a shame, because for readers who don’t invoke a higher power for describing events like rainbows or earthquakes, much of the book is informative and entertaining. Granted, for creationists or believers in miracles, the book will be hard to read. And speaking of miracles, they are covered (really, dispatched with) in the concluding chapter What is a Miracle? In this chapter, Dawkins discusses among other topics, the maxim from the Scottish thinker David Hume (1711 - 1776) regarding testimony and miracles is discussed. The maxim states “[t]hat no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” It’s a handy maxim to keep in mind for many things.

Overall, the content of the the Magic of Reality is going to be of interest to a young science-inclined reader or even an adult reader who might be embarrassed about his grasp of basic questions covered in this book.

The Medium

The Magic of Reality - Chapter 6 - Egyptian Legend
Image from Chapter 6 – Egyptian Legend for the Sun and Moon Cycle

The medium is the message is the famous phrase by Marshall McLuhan and we didn’t want the medium is the distraction to be the case with this book. Assuming that there is some base level of learning to extract from an effort like The Magic of Reality, we don’t know if “experiencing” the application on the iPad was better than if we had read the book or listened to the audiobook. (What is the right consumption verb for a digital book/application? ) Learning in our experience is quite situational and dependent on which combination of senses you get the most lit up on. The Magic of Reality application hits on the visual, aural, and tactile senses (taste and smell we’ll have to wait on) and so as conventional thinking goes it engages more senses, so has a greater opportunity for impact. The challenge is that the iPad is a medium that we typically used for fractured, asynchronous tasks like a little browsing, a little communicating, a little gaming, a little reading. Fractured tasks work against the immersive experience that a good learning experience requires. However, these temptations can be overcome with some discipline. Turn off the push notifications and resist the urge to play the next word in Words with Friends.

The iPad application blurs the boundary of what a book is as it naturally leverages interactive features (touch), audio, and video of the iPad. Images on the iPad can be especially vibrant, and in this respect the digital book/application works well because of the fantastic illustrations by David McKean. Some of the illustrations are static and some are “dynamic” in that they flutter or grow, weaving in and around the text.

Most chapters have some interactive part as well that is either a demonstration or a game to help drive home the chapters main question. Some of the games work, some don’t and we thought a few were not necessary. For example, in Chapter 3 (evolution) you are presented with a game to get some floating iguanas to shore by imitating the wind and blowing into the microphone. It felt a little silly. In Chapter 7 (rainbows), the game initially crashed the application. (It was later fixed with an update.) Can you crash a real book? It’s like every time you turned to a certain page in a real book it flopped out of your hands and on to the floor and you had to reach down and pick it up. Overall, the less successful interactive parts don’t distract from the text and imagery which really is the heart of the book.

The Magic of Reality - Navigation
Example Image from Chapter 7 Showing Navigation

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Annashaab Vase with Buddha’s Hand

Annashaab Vase with Buddha’s Hand
In this installment of the pots and plants series we have an Annashaab vase with a Buddha’s Hand. The Annashaab vase was made in Lervarefabrikken Annashaab and was likely designed by Eiler Løndal (1887 - 1971) who came to Annashaab after the closing of Danico (another pottery maker) in 1929 - as described by Starkeld.com where we purchased the vase. The Annashaab Pottery existed between 1891-1958. This vase is stamped with an L in a A and Denmark and is incised 618.

The Buddha’s Hand is also called a Fingered Citron and has the scientific name Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis. The variety name derives comes from sarco, from the Greek sarx or sarkos meaning flesh, and dactylis, from the Greek daktylos for finger. Sarcodactylis refers to the unusual shape of this member of the citrus family: it looks like many plump fingers. The visual aspect of it caught our eye first in the local grocery store, but it is the subtle and intoxicating smell that sealed the deal. It turns out that scenting rooms is one of the ways people use this citron. And so the Buddha’s Hand sits in an Annashaab vase in an area we pass by frequently so we catch a whiff. So far we’ve only been enjoying the visual and olfactory aspects of the Buddha’s Hand and haven’t tried it in a culinary setting.

When you look at the imagery of Buddha, pay attention to the hand gestures or mudras. Each mudra has a meaning like gesture of warning, greeting, or reassurance. What is our Buddha Hand saying to us?

Annashaab Vase with Buddha’s HandAnnashaab Vase with Buddha’s Hand

Annashaab Vase Bottom Stamp and Incision
Annashaab Vase with Buddha’s Hand