July 10 2023 - Butter Tarts

 

Are butter tarts a summer dessert?  There are recipes that show a fair amount of variation - white vinegar for example.   One debate in butter tarts is about raisins vs no raisins.  And should the filling be runny or not runny. 60% of people in a recent poll preferred a runny centre as opposed to a firmer one.  That's an important topic for a poll, don't you think?   Wikipedia says butter tarts are highly regarded in Canadian cuisine and that Canada is the place of origin. Cultural identify is wrapped up in butter tarts with festivals all over Ontario.  Even National Geographic recognized the significance of the butter tart in an article on Georgian Bay, Ontario. There is a stamp that commemorates the butter tart. Here is an example of the Canadian recipe: 1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar  1/2 cup corn syrup  1/4 cup butter, melted  1 egg  1 tsp vanilla extract  1/4 tsp salt  ½ cup raisins, substituting, pecans, walnuts or chocolate chips also make good variations  I see recipes with vinegar. Here's the example I found: 1/2 cup melted butter 2 large eggs 1 and 1/2 cup brown sugar 2 tbsp white vinegar 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup raisins 1 cup nuts chopped Ontario's butter tart festival is in Midland Ontario. It is June 8th so we've missed it for this year.  The top two places of winners this year were pecan butter tarts.  3rd place was raisin, and fifth place was raisin walnut.   The best in show was this:  butter tart with house-made potato chips. Yum! Here's Gerry coming around the corner on Saturday's Porsche Drive.  I added a little motion blur from one of the Topaz filters. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Mar 12 2022 - The Speedometer's Good Old Days

 

What is the purpose of the speedometer in your car?  Is it to help yo manage your speeds according to the laws, rules and regulations of the road?  Or is it to fulfill your sense of how fast you might go, can go and would go one day? Because I looked at the speedometer on my car and realized that half of it is wasted - I will not be driving that fast unless I was escaping a tsunami, earthquake, etc.  And I certainly won't be looking at the speedometer in that situation. So isn't it time to change the speedometer to something that fulfills the first purpose and not the second?  Yesterday's inventions got me thinking about this.   There were speed limits before motorized vehicles so this isn't about cars.  A normal trotting horse-drawn carriage will go around 8-10 mph, and a speeding/galloping horse-drawn carried goes 18-24 MPH.  The speed limits in the 1600s was 12 mph for horses.   The motorized vehicle speed limit of 10 mph was introduced in the UK in 1861.    And how far have we travelled today? The highest posted speed limit in the world today is 160 km/h (or 99 mph) on two motorways int he UAE.   So there's never been an intention for people to drive over 100 MPH.  (There are places with no speed limits). What if the speedometer had more detail at the lower end and left off that high end.  Knowing your car speed in the 40 to 60 kph range seems critical on urban streets.  You drive them every day.  How often might you check your speed in the 140 - 160 kph range.  Not any day ever for the significant majority of the car drivers on the entire planet.  Such high speeds are present because of the marketing pitch-  inclined towards a sportier seeming car.  Is there a possibility that we have young people vs old people speedometers - the higher speedometer numbers sell to young men - they could pay a premium to get that special "dial".  There must be a cheap technology for this right now.

Here's Gerry's sporty car in 2020 at the Hidden Bench barn.  The manufacturer has a setting for the driver to set a kph where it beeps when the driver reaches that speed.  A "note to self" to not get a catastrophic speeding ticket.    Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 13 2020 - Stealing, Art, Sort of

In 1964 Andy Warhol saw a photograph by Patricia Caulfield of hibiscus blossoms in an issue of Modern Photography.  He acknowledged that he used this image to create his floral project.  He was sued.  He settled the claims out of court, and afterwards started asking for permission before incorporating works by others into his own creations. Warhol was famous for appropriation - Campbell's Soup is the easiest to reference.  Appropriation occurred on Warhol's own floral work.  Sturtevant, "Warhol Flowers", 1964-71 was a series that looked like Warhol's original (which looked like Caulfield's original).  However, he approved of Sturtevant's project and lent her one of his "Flowers" screens.  It was collectors who seemed to not approve of this. "Collectors shied away from purchasing the works (of Sturtevant).  Gradually, however, the art world came around to understanding her conceptual reasons for copying canonical works: to skewer the grand modernist myths of creativity and the artist as lone genius. By focusing on Pop Art, itself a comment on mass production and the suspect nature of authenticity, Sturtevant was taking the genre to its full logical extension. Playful and subversive, somewhere between parody and homage, her efforts also echo the centuries-old tradition of young artists copying old masters." from 25 Works of Art That Define the Contemporary Age HERE. Here is the evolution of the images:     Today we have the picture of Gerry's car on the cover of the provinz magazine.

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March 28 2020 - A Whale of a Time

The oldest person ever was Jeanne Calment who lived from 1875-1997.  That's 122 years and some days. There may be people who lived longer.  The distinction is that Calment's age has been verified. Across mammals, lifespan can vary 100-fold.  Bowhead whales are considered the longest-living animals. They can live for more than 200 years. The whale’s enormous size – 20 metres long and up to 100 tonnes in weight – creates some unique challenges that are of particular interest to biologists. For instance, if its cells burnt energy at the same rate as mice cells, the excess heat would boil the surrounding water, so it has evolved to live with a slower metabolism and lower body temperature.   Isn't it interesting to find out about science facts in such interesting ways.  Perhaps jokes are a similar sort of experience.  The unexpected is fascinating and humorous.  Here are the whale jokes that seemed to fit this experience: I feel like school subjects need to be represented by animals English should be a hawk, they have good eyes, and you need good eyes for reading. History should be bowhead whales since they’ve lived through more than anyone else. And finally, maths should be snakes, I hear they’re great Adders. I was sitting in a bar one day and two really large women came in, talking in an interesting accent. So I said, “Cool accent, are you two ladies from Ireland?” One of them snarled at me, “It’s Wales, dumbo!” So I corrected myself, “Oh, right, so are you two whales from Ireland?” That’s about as far as I remember. What do you call a group of killer whales playing music together? An orca-stra! What do groups of whales listen to together? *pod*-casts What do whales like to draw with? A-krill-ic paint Gerry is writing an article for the Porsche magazine about his car.  I took this picture last Fall - the sun rays happened naturally - no filters applied.

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It Glistens, Glitters and Shines

What is shiny? This is a word that was first recorded in 1580 - 90 -  a smooth surface reflecting light, typically because very clean or polished.  I wonder how many shiny things an ordinary person saw in a day in 1580 - even those who lived in the Royal Palace? this topic came about as Gerry's car was perfectly polished this past week and became exceedingly shiny. Doesn't the star on the front gleam 'shiny'? This word has taken on sizeable proportions in our current usage - movies, music, video games, software development frameworks, Pokemon, and all manner of things.  Fro example, one headline is "How to build R Shiny apps that update themselves". In the wiktionary definition, there is a slang usage of the word that points to its current usage.  It is a contraction of a disparaging term "Shiny arses",  originating during World War Two to describe a desks worker. We might look to Shakespeare as giving us this insight into things that are 'shiny'.   “All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life has sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold Had you been as wise as bold, Your in limbs, in judgment old, Your answer had not been in'scroll'd Fare you well: your suit is cold.' Cold, indeed, and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat and welcome, frost!” ― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare's words have been referenced over time.  All that shines is not gold - has become a well-known phrase.  So we come to how shiny is used today.  It seems similar to Shakespeare - though hundreds of years have passed. "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last. Jeff Bzos "I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly. Alice Walker "I'm not a particularly shiny, happy person. I'm fairly cynical, and that's what draws me to comedy. Elizabeth Banks "Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? Jack Kerouac These come from brainyquote.com So we look at Gerry' shiny car - while that beautiful shine won't last, it's been captured forever.

This Old House

We return to the scene of the sagging barn/shed.  I thought I'd show you the story from all of its angles.  The road view is what you see in the first two pictures. The surprise back is the third picture.  Then we met the second urprise of the old car.  Every old car has a story, so there's an abstract grunge photo to complete our trip around this old house. Today is the last day we can declare  "Until the end of August".  Other than that there doesn't seem to be a lot of significance to the last day of August.  It is tomorrow that has significance!

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