John Rynne's weblog

En las últimas semanas he trabajado en la creación de dos páginas web:

Dúo Starnes-Jiménez
y
Sociedad para las Artes y las Ciencias de Aranjuez

El dúo da su primer concierto el viernes 5 de junio a las 8.30 en el Auditorio del Centro Cultural Isabel de Farnesio en Aranjuez. La entrada es gratis.

La Sociedad es una iniciativa reciente que está empezando a dar los primeros pasos — entre ellos el patrocinio del concierto.

Dearest friends,

Below is the text of a letter I have just received from a fellow translator in Iraq. The poor man needs my help in getting 6.5 million dollars out of Iraq. No comment!

Greeting from Iraq,
I had your contact and would like to share an important case with you.if you are interested, please exuse me for the inconvenience.

I am Mr. Issam Majeed, I am working in Iraq with the American military as a translator.In one of our military operations in Iraq, we found a safe in a large house of a great man in Iraq in the town of TIKRIT. The safe contains a large amount of money, American dollars, that is US $ 20 Million.

We immediately kept this safe in a secure place with two other American soldiers. After a lengthy deliberations among ourselves as to wheather we need to deliver those funds to American authorities in charge of the place or not,we all decieded to share these funds between ourselfs. In sharing, i received the sum of US $ 6.5 Million. For my part i have problems because of security in Iraq,I decieded to mananger with private security officers in Iraq to help me ship my share of these funds outside Iraq precisely to London for the security of the money.

The funds which was placed in a package as family valuables, I coded it, which means nobody knows what the package contains except me.
So I am contacting you to see if you can help me receive the package from London and ship it to your country, so I would invest those funds in area of profitable business in your country. I promise to give you some percentage of these funds for helping me but, we will discuss it when I receive your reply indicating your interest to help.
The citizens of Iraq are against me that they seek to kill me because I do translations for American military. I do not go out without American militries to avoid the worst happening. I can not use telephones or recieve calls here.I Only use Internet and walkie-talkies to communicate with military personnel whom I work with.
If the transaction is concluded, I will resign because for me to work and live here in Iraq is too risky for me.

Thank you as i am waiting for your urgent response
Mr. Issam Majeed.

I haven’t’ said anything about the ongoing train wreck, but here are two links I think very apt:

A Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon at Salon

and

A fascinating article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled The Real Great Depression. It’s about the depression in the 1870s, which was fueled by a real estate boom and precipitated by a flood of cheap grain from the US (as opposed to cheap gewgaws from China).

Here’s the code

This recipe is adapted from “Apple Dumpling Slices” in the King Arthur Baker’s Companion That’s a great book, incidentally, with recipes for practically everything. The original recipe requires you to make your own pastry. This is the “lazy man’s” version (i.e. with “shop-bought” pastry).

This recipe is for apples, but you can use practically any fruit that you can use in a pie, cobbler, etc. (that is to say, peaches, cherries, nectarines, or a mixture).

Total preparation time is 15-20 minutes. Total cooking time is 40 minutes.

This dessert is a winner every time; it is great alone but it goes really well with vanilla ice cream.

What you will need:

4 large apples (or the equivalent of another fruit or fruit mixture)
2 sheets of puff pastry (or plain pastry). It’s handy if they are rectangular, but round is fine. (The rolls I’m using weigh 250 grams each, i.e. half a kilo of pastry – that’s about 1 lb if you’re using Imperial measures).
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
300 grams sugar (that’s 1.5 cups in American parlance)
750 ml water (3 American cups)
Butter or margarine to grease the dish

1. Put the oven on to preheat at 175-180ºC (350º Fahrenheit)
2. Core, peel and dice your apples. (Peaches, nectarines, etc.: don’t bother peeling — just stone and dice).
   
3. Put the diced fruit in a bowl and add one teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Mix well. (NB: no sugar at this point).
4. Put the butter/margarine in the oven dish and put it in the oven for a few minutes to melt (don’t let it burn).
5. Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer until the sugar has fully dissolved and take the pan off the heat.
6. Roll out one sheet of pastry and cut it in half.
7. Spread a row of the fruit cubes along the centre line of a piece of pastry.
8. Fold over to make a filled roll.
   
9. Cut into segments about 3 cm. wide.
   
10. Arrange the slices in the greased oven dish. Repeat steps 7, 8 and 9 until you’re done.
    
11. Pour the sugar syrup over the whole concoction. Yes — ALL the syrup.
12. Put the dish in the oven (CAREFUL: the hot syrup will slosh around).
13. It should be done in 35-40 minutes. The base of the pan will be full of delicious thick syrup with the flavour of the fruit.
14. You can serve hot or cold. Don’t count on there being any leftovers (I’ve never seen any).

A note about the cookbook: it’s BIG (620 pages). There are not many illustrations but the recipes are very easy to follow and have clearly been field-tested. The paper is thick and absorbent, so it will survive the odd splash of batter, syrup, etc. (i.e. it’s made to be used, not just looked at).