Quote quotedy

On appliances and other household technologies

The result is a great disconnect between our domestic fantasies and our domestic reality, between the high-tech façade with its image of home and hearth and the kind of lives we actually live. We have fancier kitchens but fewer family dinners. We have gourmet cooking machines that sit largely unused and oversized freezers filled with microwave dinners. We have high hopes but limited energy for performing domestic labor, and we tend to devalue unpaid labor in the home despite its positive effects on family life. We purchase increasingly specialized, professional-quality domestic appliances at a time when our desire to use them regularly is waning.

- Christine Rosen, in The New Atlantis

(Very interesting article with many quotable bits, actually.)

And in reaction to the article above

The kitchen, no matter the size, -is- the heart of the home. That part the marketers have right–which is why that ploy works so well.

But it isn’t the appliances that make that heart beat.

It is the cook.

- Tigers and Strawberries

On Lundi Gras

When we got to Mr. Victorian’s farm, they threw out some chickens for us to chase. In the old days, we would have killed the chickens and thrown them in the gumbo pot. But today we just did recreational chicken chasing, and the same four hysterical chickens had to get tossed and caught over and over again until we’d all had a chance. Then they went back to playing poker and watching soaps in their coop, or whatever it is these modern chickens do.

- Granny Vibe

On muffins

[another blog], among others, suggests that a muffin is something that you eat for breakfast and a cupcake is something that you eat for dessert. What, then, are those cuppins/muffcakes that you eat for dessert, and then for breakfast, and then again for dessert? Do they exist in a quantum state, flipping back and forth between muffin and cupcake depending on when they are being eaten? That sounds very stressful for a very small baked good.

- Habeas Brulee

(And I'll also note that Habeas Brulee has a recipe for Aztec marshmallows that sound very interesting.)

On raspberries

"It's like you put a small, furry animal in your mouth that dissolves into a cloud of sweetness."

- Tad Friend, in Segways in Paris

(OK, totally a tangent to the main article, but how could I pass this by?)

And a few links on the aftermath of disaster
One story after the tsunami.
And another, life in New Orleans.