Things haven’t changed much:

The Publisher’s Pudding.

This pudding can scarcely be made too rich. First blanch, and then beat to the smoothest possible paste, six ounces of fresh Jordan almonds, and a dozen bitter ones; pour very gradually to them, in the mortar, three quarters of a pint of boiling cream; then turn them into a cloth, and wring it from them again with strong expression. Heat a full half pint of it afresh, and pour it, as soon as it boils, upon four ounces of fine bread-crumbs, set a plate over, and leave them to become nearly cold; then mix thoroughly with them four ounces of macaroons, crushed tolerably small; five of finely minced beef-suet, five of marrow, cleared very carefully from fibre, and from the splinters of bone which are sometimes found in it, and shred not very small, two ounces of flour, six of pounded sugar, four of dried cherries, four of the best Muscatel raisins, weighed after they are stoned, half a pound of candied citron, or of citron and orange-rind mixed, a quarter saltspoonful of salt, half a nutmeg, the yolks only of seven full-sized eggs, the grated rind of a large lemon, and last of all, a glass of the best Cognac brandy, which must be stirred briskly in by slow degrees. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered mould or basin, which contains a full quart, fill it to the brim, lay a sheet of buttered writing-paper over, then a well-floured cloth, tie them securely, and boil the pudding for four hours and a quarter; let it stand for a couple of minutes before it is turned out; dish it carefully, and serve it with the German pudding sauce of page 126.

Jordan almonds, 6 ozs.; bitter almonds, 12; cream, f pint; bread-crumbs, 4 ozs.; cream wrung from almonds, J pint; crushed macaroons, 4 ozs.; flour, 2 ozs.; beef-suet, 5 ozs.; marrow, 5 ozs.; dried cherries, 4 ozs.; stoned Muscatel raisins, 4 ozs.; pounded sugar, 6 ozs.; candied citron (or citron and orange-rind mixed), J lb.; pinch of salt; i nutmeg; grated rind I lemon; yolks of eggs, 7; best cognac, 1 wineglassful; boiled in mould or basin, 4J hours.

Obs.—This pudding, which, if well made, is very light as well as rich, will be sufficiently good for most tastes without the almonds: when they are omitted, the boiling cream must be poured at once to the bread-crumbs.

Poor Author’s Pudding.

Flavour a quart of new milk by boiling in it for a few minutes half a stick of well-bruised cinnamon, or the thin rind of a small lemon ; add a few grains of salt, and three ounces of sugar, and turn the whole into a deep basin; when it is quite cold, stir to it three well-beaten eggs, and strain the mixture into a pie-dish. Cover the top entirely with slices of bread free from crust, and half an inch thick, cut so as to join neatly, and buttered on both sides: bake the pudding in a moderate oven for about half an hour, or in a Dutch oven before the fire.

New milk, 1 quart; cinnamon, or lemon-rind; sugar, 3 os.; little salt; eggs, 3; buttered bread: baked | hour.

At the checkout add a tenner’s worth of scratch cards. Plus one lucky-dip lottery ticket for Becky. She won’t tell Zack about it. If it comes up he’ll only want a share.
Best get back to the car quick or Evie and little Oli and Prince will be taking chunks out of each other.
Credit cards, lovely things.

They have wide wooden shelves against the windows and walls, and high steel-framed stools. Seems like most of their business is take-away sandwiches and drinks for the local office and shop workers, but there were several customers sitting with drinks or food when I arrived. A few more standing, waiting for a baguette or some kind of wrap.

I took a stool on the back wall next to a tall woman with a beard eating baked potato piled with shrimps and pink mayo. She caught a dribble of the sauce on her chin with her little finger and spooned it back over her bottom lip. She glanced at me and made her eyes bigger.

Swinegate Court is a covered passage. People use it as a short-cut from Swinegate to Grape Lane and there are often cars and vans parked head to tail. Maybe the owners leave them to unload stock into their shops.

There’s another restaurant in the passage and a Parisian style boutique called Giselle, which sells posh frocks. There were several on display in the window, on models without heads, lined up ready for a girls night out. Frothy creations reminiscent of a landscape anticipating the approach of spring.

One of the standing customers had been to see Celine Dion. ‘What’s she like now she’s had twins?’ her friend asked.

‘Like a stick. But she didn’t have twins. Just the one. A daughter.’

‘Lovely.’

The woman next to me pushed away the remains of her baked potato and started on her chocolate pudding.

Later she was joined by a tall man with a beard wearing a T-shirt with the slogan: ‘My Peace is Growing’. Being literal I stalled for a moment, believing the guy was a Christian or some other kind of religious.

Then Lopate asked a couple questions solicited on index cards from the audience; the first question, asking the writers to describe their writing methods, got only boos from the audience because of its banality, and I was delighted to see Richard Ford yell out “Next question!” Before they moved on, though, Eco, looking inordinately pleased with himself, explained his writing method — he starts on the left side of the page and works his way over to the right. This got a laugh.

*

Alexis Rowell writes about Sustainable Consumption and Production in Europe:
Food is something that affects us all. We all have to eat. But very few people know the extent to which oil underpins our food system, how much carbon is used in the production of food, how much water is used, and the impact the food system therefore has on climate change.
The current all-time highs in oil prices – $117 a barrel in April 2008 – is sending convulsive shudders down the food chain . . .

*

The Right Brain vs. Left Brain Test.
Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? I’ll tell you what I see . . . later . . .

*

Alex Witchel’s piece in The New York Times starts like this:

The men who ruled the world in the late 1950s, or at least six of the men who ruled publishing, rejected Peg Bracken’s manuscript, “The I Hate to Cook Book.” It would never sell, they told her, because “women regard cooking as sacred.” It took a female editor at Harcourt Brace to look at the hundreds of easy-to-follow recipes wittily pitched at the indentured housewife and say, “Hallelujah!” Since its publication in 1960, Bracken’s iconic book, which celebrated the speedy virtues of canned cream-of-mushroom soup and chicken bouillon cubes, has sold more than three million copies. That helped lift her spirits, her daughter, Jo Bracken, said, about her $338 advance.

*

“If there is a God, he certainly doesn’t need the protection of the British legal system. If there isn’t, he doesn’t need it either. There is therefore no excuse for preserving the offence of blasphemous libel and it should be abolished.”

Salmon Rushdie

They are similar, these places. The Fragrant City is watered by the Barada; while this place is penetrated by the river Ouse. Both cities have a long and chequered history. But while I sit in the window of this cafe with my chips and ketchup and buttered bun and watch the people walk past with their bags of vegetables from the market, I am not reminded of my birthplace. These are not my people. And although in The Fragrant City I’m nothing, here I have no existence at all.

I am here to collect existence. My teacher spells it out to me in verbs and vowels and nouns and capital letters. I make the strange signs on the paper, the letter A like a tent, the I like a man, the S snaking away at the head and tail of words.

And this existence of language which will ensure I can support a family when I return home, comes to me quickly. After two weeks already when I come into this cafe the young woman recognizes me. Although I know the words to order my chips and ketchup and buttered bun, I no longer need them.

Before I say a word she says, ‘Chips, ketchup and a buttered bun. Hold the tea till later. Right?’

And I say, ‘Right,’ and hand over my money and she counts the change back into my hand.

In the market a man has a stall rich with silk and wool materials for covering furniture or cushions. He had one roll of pure, figured silk, which he called Damask. When he had no customers I tried to explain to him that the word was stolen from my own language, and he listened and nodded, pretending interest, but he didn’t understand.

Henri has cooked a goose and we are two of an invited party of eight, seated around a white pine table which Gerd has brought over from her Grandmother’s estate in Finland. A hundred-and-twenty years ago the surface of the table was sealed with cream. Every few years since it has been washed with soap. It glows with warmth.

We don’t know each other, the guests, though I recognise Jane Austen, the author who is sitting opposite me. And the young woman seated next to me points out Michael, giving him three syllables in hushed tones, Míchaël.

He doesn’t speak all evening. He has a gaze which usually encompasses us all. From time to time, though, he focusses on us as individuals. I become aware he has fixed on me when I taste a hint of port in a morsel of Henri’s goose-skin. I don’t chew. I don’t move. The buzz of conversation around the table retreats. I can see their mouths working away, telling their stories, but I am cocooned in silence.

The reader’s report struggles to swim against this current but also has to take it into account. It’s a bit like being an admissions officer at the world’s most selective institution: even the Nobel prize for literature is no guarantee you’ll get in.

*

Mr Eugenides and a whole lot more of us wonder if this spells the end of the ID card fiasco:

Millions of litres of ink have already been expended on this catastrophe by people more expert than your scribe (not to mention funnier websites). Suffice it to say, in this regard, that when 25 million records, including 7 million bank account details, can be downloaded onto a CD by a “junior official” – unencrypted, mind you – and stuck in the internal mail, for fuck’s sake, we are well beyond satire. It was when Darling moved to reassure people by revealing that the discs were “password protected” that I started weeping with laughter. (Let’s hope the password wasn’t 1234, eh?)

*

Anne Fadiman’s essay in Guardian Online examines the seductive delights of coffee.

Having observed the frisky goats, the imam of a nearby monastery – a sort of medieval Carlos Castaneda – roasted the berries in a chafing dish, crushed them in a mortar, mixed them with boiling water, and drank the brew. When he lay down, he couldn’t sleep. His heartbeat quickened, his limbs felt light, his mood became cheerful and alert. “He was not merely thinking,” wrote Jacob. “His thoughts had become concretely visible. He watched them from the right side and from the left, from above and from below. They raced like a team of horses.” The imam found that he could juggle a dozen ideas in the time it normally took to consider a single one. His visual acuity increased; in the glow of his oil lamp, the parchment on his table looked unusually lustrous and the robe that hung on a nearby peg seemed to swell with life. He felt strengthened, as Jacob put it, “by heavenly food brought to him by the angels of Paradise.”