Dr. Filomena

Howth, north of Dublin, Ireland (Photo by dr. fil)

Experiencing all the snow and rain here in Luxembourg lately, one wonders if it wouldn’t be more comfortable to be pleasantly immersed in water. In a bathtub, perhaps? 🙂

Still, here’s my theme song for the week:

(source)

It’s been a “look at a Government website” week, I  suppose. Starting with the White House and ending with Slovenian ministries. It seems that on the English part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the former Minister held on to his eternity at least in the URL field (click the image to enlarge). Sloppy webmaster.

source

Thanks to Had’s note, I read an interesting article on the redesign of the whitehouse.gov website. I’m no expert on design and my opinion is irrelevant, but since this post is listed under ‘ramblings’, I might as well saay that I find the design sufficiently clean, but not striking in any way. I’d have preferedan even cleane, simpler design with less variation as to fonts. Two at the most with less or no italics.

What really caught my eye immediately, however, is the display of Sony logotype on the TV set in the first photo on the very first page of the site, carrying an image of a rather tired-looking President. This ad must rival those of the Super Bowl commercials when it comes to audience reach. Could our governments start advertising companies instead of offering them straight out financial assistance? Hey, costs us less. Possibly.

Conspiracy theories are far too compelling to give up as entertainment on Monday mornings, and in view of Sony’s trouble helping the company through arguably subliminal advertising sounds nice enough. Reading up on the company, however, I’m confused as to what country it pays its taxes to and where most of its employees are.

Nice website, though. Really.

Ramblings over.

Photo taken in Paris, France by dr. Fil

Having just watched the Frost/Nixon movie I couldn’t help drawing lines between its subject matter and some actions or omissions in current politics.

The movie’s tagline is “400 million people were waiting for the truth.” Actually, for an apology after Gerald Ford granted a pardon for “for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from July (January) 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.”

Many were surprised by the not only polite but rather kind attitude of Barack Obama towards George W. Bush. In his NYT column entitled “Forgive and Forget?“, Paul Krugman, for example, states that failure to investigate what happened during the Bush years would mean “that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power”.

Ever since coming into power, Slovenian Prime Minister Borut Pahor has been going out on a limb to make a point that his Government was going to act differently than the one defeated in the elections.

There are of course big differences between the action of Gerald Ford and the anticipated inaction of Barack Obama and Borut Pahor, one of them being the fact that Ford was never elected, not even to the position of the Vice President, while both Obama and Pahor won elections in clear opposition to their predecessors.

Just at the end of last week, the party of the former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, which still holds that it should have (or even actually has) won the elections, obstructed the work of the Parliamentary session that was to vote on the ratification of Albania’s and Croatia’s NATO accession protocols. Taking the country’s international relations and repute as hostage, the party stated it would continue to obstruct the ratification process until the Parliament verifies the state budget report drafted by Janša’s cabinet for 2007, which was refused due to irregularities found by the state revision revealing a deficit instead of an alleged surplus.

It will be interesting to watch how this move will affect the Pahor’s benevolence in the future. And how last week’s Republican display of zero support will influence Obama’s.

Belgrade, photo by dr. Fil

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
—
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

More cleaning up of the fridge to do. I found myself faced with three cubes of yeast that would go bad tomorrow and a bunch of spicy olives that would only hold for a few more days. So while waiting for the washing machine to be delivered, I managed to bake three types of bread. Rye bread, buckwheat bread with walnuts and – for the first time – white bread. With an olive twist. The idea for the basic recipe comes ssilva at Kulinarična Slovenija. Thanks!

I prepare my fresh yeast slightly differently, not with sugar etc. I mix it with half a cup of cool water and salt and let it sit for 12 to 24 hours. I find this gives me better results. Let’s call it the “salty yeast mixture”.

Dough:

• 1 lb flour – I deliberately used the cheapest white type to see how far the “frugal” bit of the title can go, so this cost 25 euro cents or 32 US cents
• salty yeast mixture (cost: exactly the same as the flour in this recipe, actually)
• some more salt
• warm water

Extras: 1 cup olives cut in halves, rosemary, 1/4 cup olive oil

Knead the dough well. I mean really well. Keep kneading until the dough is nice, soft and even. I let this rise for 15 minutes and in the meantime cut up 1 cup of spicy olives I’d bought on sale for about 1 euro or about $1.3.

I added the olives and some rosemary as well as 1/4 cup of olive oil and again kneaded well. Then let rise for about 45 minutes.

Place on baking sheet and make a few cuts on top to allow for nice even baking without the crust breaking. Cover up and allow to rise again for 30 minutes, then place in a hot oven. Bake at 200°C for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 180°C and bake for another 50 minutes.

I must say I’m very happy with the result. This bread is truly delicious! Now if I could figure out how much the electric cost for the oven, I could possibly even calculate how much baking the bread cost 🙂 but anyway, the goal was achieved: food not thrown away and enough bread in the freezer for the next couple of weeks, I believe.

Photo by dr. Fil, Paris

The horn of plenty is full no more. Who took from it and forgot to pay his debts?

(photo by dr. fil, in Paris)

Happy New Year!

Here’s one video I never thought I’d post, but Willie Nelson’s lyrics simply did not fit. Can’t wait to see my family and friends again!

Here we go… on the road again, but with a very specific destination 😉

Coming over? 😉