All posts by Thomas Pindelski

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The source of all ills

Photographs

Pandemics all originate in the same place.

H2N2 – 1957 – Singapore and Hong Kong. 116,000 Americans dead.
H3N2 – 1968 – Hong Kong. 100,000 Americans dead.
H1N1 – 2009 – Asian pigs – 12,469 Americans dead.
Covid-19 – 2020 – Wuhan, China. 11,816 Americans dead. Total impossible to project.

CDC data.

I visited Hong Kong in 1995 on business, and our generous hosts saw to it that I took in their open air ‘wet’ markets which are the source of all the above pandemics. Live animals are stored in stacked wire cages where they defecate on one another, prior to being served up on a plate. The fellows showing me around took me to a high-end Chinese restaurant where, amongst the delicacies on the menu, there were three kinds of bird’s nest soup at $10, $100 and $1,000 a bowl. I kid you not. $1,000. The ‘IPO special’, I suppose. When you learn how this guano-infested delicacy is made you too would do what I did. Pass.

Here are some snaps from that visit:




Chinese artefacts awaiting illegal export.


Fans galore.


Last days of British rule which ended in 1997.


High end apartments.


More of the same.


Labor.


The clean end of town.


Goodness, but did I need a burger and coke on return to California.

The fix? Simple. A travel ban to and from these nations until verifiable permanent closure of the ‘wet’ markets is in effect. Otherwise, pandemics from these sources will recur with increasing frequency as travel rises.

All snaps on a Rollei 35, Kodachrome film.

Pete Souza

Photographers

A fine White House photographer.

Pete Souza was the White House photographer before the Gangster and his crew of grifters took over. It should be added that over 60 million American morons voted for Pig, not to mention several million Russkies. (In deference to his Slovenian Slut spouse, I have dropped the preposition). Those morons are unavailable for comment as they are busy praying the virus away.

The link will take you to a video where Souza explains his gear choices, but it’s the pictures he shows which really matter:



Click to go to the article.
You do not need an Instagram account.

As for Pig, it gives me zero pleasure to say “I told you so”.

Luminous Hockneys

Paintings

Britain’s finest contemporary artist.

One of the most memorable exhibitions I attended in recent years with my son was the Hockney show in San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum. The show highlighted the artist’s iPad and iPhone works, and they were a delight to see.



Hockney’s latest.

Now, by way of relief to the horrors the world is experiencing right now, this modern master had released a new series of spring paintings from his home in Normandy. Enjoy.

Kitchenaid Artisan 5-Qt. stand mixer

Cooking

An all time classic.

This is one of an occasional series on cooking devices which make a difference. For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.

The BMW airhead motorcycle first came to market in 1922. The Kitchenaid Artisan stand mixer beats it by 3 years, having first been sold in 1919. Unlike that wonderful bike engine, last made in 1997, the Kitchenaid mixer soldiers on to this day. If you make dough for bread or cakes, it’s the only way to go and, surprise!, it’s made in Ohio. That’s Ohio, USA not Ohio, Wuhan, China.

I do not have that many hours of use on mine but the gorgeous, classic design of this model dates from 1936. Forty years of happy mixing with no failures are routinely reported:



Making bread dough.

The mixer has a sterling reputation for reliability and longevity. Repair parts are easily available and the commutator brushes are simple to replace, located under the black screw plugs visible in the picture. The mixing tool’s motion is planetary, meaning the tool rotates one way and the mixing assembly the other, conferring the folding motion your grandma used to use while kicking the dog across the kitchen. Mine came with a J hook for heavy dough and a mixer paddle for light work. The latter is ineptly designed and you will want to replace it with the scraper design which looks like this:



The scraper paddle tool.

There are all sorts of tools available and the circular chrome port on the top will accept lots of additional gadgets for pasta making and the like. I have never used that power take-off source as my main interests are making bread dough and saving my aging wrists.

That doyenne of America-French cooking, Julia Child, used one for ages and hers, along with her kitchen, appears in the Smithsonian. Only in America is this possible.



The Artisan in Julia Child’s kitchen.

Kitchenaid has other designs, including rising column ones in lieu of the tilt feature. These are for those with no sense of history and even less taste, like owners of post 1997 BMW motorcycles. Stick with the original. And it really must be white, though about five million colors are now available. The machine is exceptionally heavy and if I have one complaint is that it tends to wander over my polished marble countertop at higher speeds with heavy doughs, so I have placed it on a rubber mat. Kitchenaid needs to add a weighted counterbalancer to cancel out the vibes.

Note that it’s really not a tool you want to hump in and out of storage. It’s simply too heavy.



The original 1918 patent drawing.

If Child’s ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking‘ should be in every kitchen, it needs to share shelf space with Carol Fields’s ‘The Italian Baker‘ which does for bread what Child does for everything else.



Italian Pane Bigio, a delightful wheat bread courtesy of the Kitchenaid mixer.