The good oil

 

My daughter got in touch with her inner Hungarian this week and cooked lángos (pronounced “lungosh”). It’s pieces of bread dough which you fry, then smother in garlic by rubbing cloves across the surface. Truly delicious!

I’ve spoken before about the two greatest Jewish contributions to the culinary world: chicken soup of course, and latkes, which are ambrosial grated potato and onions fried in oil.

There’s obviously a “fried in oil” trope happening here. There’s also donuts for Chanukah which are again fried in oil and injected with jam. Hamentaschen, the three sided pastries eaten on Purim, rather spoil the narrative because they’re baked in in the oven.

Eaten at any time are blintzes, or rolled-up pancakes. They’re fried on one side (in oil of course), then stuffed with traditional fillings like mushrooms or cheese, rolled up like a parcel and fried on the outside.

Gefilte fish which is usually served on Pesach but also eaten through the year, comes in a boiled version (yuk!) and a fried version, in oil of course.

While my daughter was doing creative cooking, I was, as promised, revelling in ABC Classic’s Top 100 music for the screen. I knitted my way through two consecutive days of John Williams and more John Williams and even more John Williams – Superman, Jaws, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark and, taking out the Number 1 spot, Star Wars. My Number 1 was Schindler’s List , also by John Williams, which came in at Number 5.

Re knitting … I have recently taken up knitting as another craft skill. Of course, I’ve knitted before, including a multicoloured lap rug made up of long strips of different coloured squares sewn together, which I made a few months ago. But I’m now knitting scarves. So far, one for my youngest granddaughter, one for my daughter and one and two halves for me. One of the halves is about a third of a scarf in a stripe-y pattern which I decided I really disliked, having substituted wools from those prescribed in the pattern. I was so cranky with the colours I’d chosen that I ended it at the one third mark point and draped it over the couch back as an antimacassar. I have now started it again in the correct wools and it’s already looking gorgeous. Before I started this one, I began a rather sweet, lacy scarf which used light weight wool. It was also looking gorgeous until I realised I’d made some huge mistake about 10 inches in and try as I might I couldn’t fix it. One day I’ll get some more wool and try this one again.

One of the advantages of knitting is that you can do it while watching your preferred screen. Wherever possible I find television series of many years duration and watch one episode after another, knitting away very comfortably at the same time.

Sometimes I watch British crime series, other times US legal or medical series, but I’ve noticed a bizarre thing. In these shows, it’s always winter. The cast spends a great deal of time rugging up in jackets with scarves, knitted caps and gloves. This appears to be a given, along with the goodies always winning.

Two of my correspondents have told me that the meaning of “it knocked me for six” of which I wrote earlier, comes from the world of cricket. Apparently if the ball is batted so strongly that it goes over the fence, the team is awarded six runs. I have this on the authority of Carolyn who lives in Double Bay when she’s not living in Israel, and Monica, who lives in Bangkok and as an American shouldn’t know anything about cricket, but there we go.

And four sayings for this week.

The first is “dirt poor”, which could possibly come from the situation of a family’s house so poverty stricken that it had beaten earth floors.

The antithesis of this is “stinking rich”. I can’t for the life of me think where this may have come from, unless it’s a commentary on the rich by very angry poor.

The third is saying someone lives “cheek by jowl” to someone else. It makes some sort of sense in that a cheek can become a jowl when a person ages.

Finally, I found myself saying “goody gumdrops” last week. A hangover from childhood? Who knows?

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Poet Dylan Thomas:

“An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.”