pumpkinstrokemarrow

This one caught my eye in last week's TLS. Hasn't scanned very well - at least not in respect of the colour which is a good part of the point - but for once a bit of modern art that I thought had something. Unfortunately, all the best do Koonings (never before heard of) are in the Museum of Modern Art at New York until January so I don't suppose I will ever get to see a real one. The one's that the Tate has managed to get hold of don't look too hot at all.

We'll have to make do with bone art instead, with the bit of knuckle which came with the recent shin including an impressively sized & shaped cartilage pad which got us wondering from which bit of a cow this shin came from. Only one bone, so unless they are different from us, must be a humerus or a femur. Or at least that is what I thought. My elderly Romer not detailed enough, but inspection of the various online skeletons available - for example that from the model agricultural core curriculum at the University of California - suggests that unlike us cows do not have tibs & fibs, they just have tibs. So the slices of bone that we had look to be from the top half of a tibia - and so they are shins indeed. And I was thinking that shin was just butcher speak for some bit of cow which needed cooking for a long time.

Next up was the cold chicken, from which I had an entire leg, the top of the femur of which looked very like a small version of the top of the cow's tibia. It also appeared to be attached to something which looked rather like a shoulder blade, but I guess that must just have been a chunk of pelvic girdle which got detached. Further poking around suggests that this might indeed be the case; what I had thought looked like a shoulder blade and collar bone was actually a chunk of pubis with the ischium hanging in. Still not sure about the top of the femur though. Have to take a more careful look next time we have a chicken.

And today was a 5lb slab of pork belly, on the bone, 1 nipple, skin scored in both directions. 2 hours at 170C, 0.75 hours at 150C then 0.25 hours on slow. Very good it was too, served with brussels sprouts and mashed potato. The sprouts were a minor swiz, having been sold them at a premium price in the market (2lbs for £1.80) on the grounds that they had been prepared. Just drop them in the pan. But, some days later, this was not true at all: it just meant that instead of stripping off a few outer leaves, I was stripping off from the hard core. Fair amount of damage to be cut out too. But we think we have solved this puzzle, with this slab of belly coming from where the bony breast bone joins it's cartilaginous continuation.

Siesta'd with yesterday's DT, from which I learned that Brother Cameron want us to be the best place for business in the world. Someone else with what I call the bestitis disease. When will we learn that we can't all be best? That eventually it might be a good idea if we organised ourselves in a way which did not give us aspirations of that sort? The competitive spirit might have brought us a long way and brought us lots of consumption and longevity; but it has also, to my mind, bought us to the brink of self destruction. More consumption and more longevity is not going to be the answer: we need to fix society. Sadly, a sort of technology that we are not yet very good at.

Brother Cameron has also decided that, the US sub prime fiasco having brought the free world to its knees, it is time to start stoking a UK sub prime fiasco. I will some some persuading that this is a good idea for anyone other than those in the house building business.

And on a lighter note, I learn that Bulldog Balls has decided that we will all think he is much more cuddly if he owns up to getting damp eyed over 'Antiques Roadshow'. Where does he get his spin doctors from?