S'mores

Louie's snuggling up on my lap and I don't want to disturb him, so I'm looking for computing to do without disturbing his head from my mouse hand.

So it's time for me to talk about s'mores. The canonical s'more is made with a square of Hershey's chocolate, topped with a toasted marshmallow, between two graham crackers. But my sad experience is that such a s'more usually fails to live up to my vision of what a s'more should be like.

One problem is that toasting a marshmallow is harder than it looks. I used to take the simple route of just igniting the marshmallow and waiting until the flames burnt out. That produces a wonderfully warm, gooey inside, but I've gotten tired of the burnt outside. So now I try to toast them more gently, but that makes it hard to get the insides really warm and melty.

The second problem is the chocolate. My ideal s'more would have the square of chocolate slightly melted from the warmth of the marshmallow--not liquid, but softened like a chocolate bar left in a car on a warm day. But even a flaming marshmallow cools pretty quickly, so I don't end up getting this effect.

I think I have a solution for this second problem, though: instead of a square of Hershey's chocolate, I want to try a generous swirl of Nutella. If this goes according to plan, the chocolate part should start out soft, and therefore have the texture I seek.

It's likely to be a while before I try s'mores again, though. If you are intrigued enough to try this idea, please let me know how it works out.

King Solomon's Mines

(Louie is still on my lap; he's been here for almost an hour. This is rare; usually he's gone within 15 minutes.)

On our Cook Forest trip, I read H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. This is a bit of Victorian adventure fiction that introduced the character of Allan Quatermain (who showed up in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is what sparked me to read this).

It is certainly a ripping yarn, full of adventure and mayhem. (I noted that even though Quatermain is a crack shot, he is not very effective at all in hand-to-hand combat. It's a nice balance.)

It has many elements that I find trite now--I'm not sure whether they were trite at the time. It includes a cave escape that I found reminiscent of the (previously-published) Tom Sawyer, and it includes the old eclipse trick that I first encountered in A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court. (I think it would be amusing to read a story in which an explorer gets captured by an ancient tribe just before a convenient eclipse and claims, "Fear me! I will blot out the sun on cue!" At which point, the Mayans who've captured him reply, "Yeah, we have a detailed and precise scheme of astronomical prediction too. Prepare the heart-cutting knives!")

I found myself noticing the racism in the book; it had a sort of forthright unashamed Victorian racism that I found curiously refreshing. I also noticed that it wasn't the simple anti-black racism that I'm used to--Quatermain distinguished between characteristics of different tribes in a way that I found reminiscent of the anti-Indian racism of the American fiction (particularly Westerns). The reasons for that parallel are obvious enough in retrospect, of course.

All in all, an entertaining book. I would certainly read it again, particularly because it was a very fast read.

(Louie has finally vacated my lap. Now I can put on pants and go to work.)

Crüxshadows

I happened to notice that the Crüxshadows are coming to Pittsburgh this Saturday.

I haven't been to the Upstage in years, but I would really like to go to this concert. I just worry about my leg (which has been acting up again), and I worry about my Monday deadline with work.