Flutterby™! : Und der Haifische, der hat Zähne 2007-03-29 16:00:44.834313+00

Und der Haifische, der hat Zähne

2007-03-29 16:00:44.834313+00 by Dan Lyke 6 comments

Among the projects I'll never finish before the heat death of the universe, I've got a copy of "The Threepenny Opera" in German. I haven't used German since I left Waldorf school in 7^th grade, but I'd like to pick it back up, and reading Bertold Brecht in the original seemed like a good place to start. So right before bed I'm adding a new line or two, with a German-English dictionary, penciling in the words I don't know.

When we get to Europe I'll have all the words necessary to be a Moritatensänger (one who sings ballads about notorious criminals at street fairs), but will scare the hell out of anyone when I try to ask where the restroom is.

It feels weird to be using a paper dictionary, but I happened to go back and notice that Harold McGee is recommending Google Books as a way to search the paper version of On Food & Cooking. The world evolves.

McGee provided me with a lot of understanding of what was happening in cooking, and as well as a good basis for making modifications to recipes and techniques based on general principles of chemistry.

I don't have any real knowledge of the history of cooking, but as far as I can tell he was among the first, if not the first, founder(s) of the "molecular" school of cooking. I am pleased, though not particularly surprised, to find out that McGee has extended his cutting edge attitude to search technology.

I haven't gotten around to any more formal reading in this area besides On Food and Cooking. Anybody have any suggestions?

The second edition is massively expanded from the first, if you've only read the first be sure to get the second, too. And his "Curious Cook" is also quite good.

A bunch of folks swear by Alton Brown, but I've found his TV show a little less information dense than I'd like, so haven't sprung for his books yet. Similarly, Hervé This's "Molecular Gastronomy" is a fairly light read for how much it costs, but could be a great jumping off point, it's extracted from a set of newspaper columns and seems like it'd be good for a "oh, I should go find the original paper that inspired that" sort of read. Probably be better if you could find it in the original French.

The more I think about it, the less I like Heston Blumenthal's "In Search Of Perfection". My reading notes on it hint at some of my complaints with the book.

Part of my PhD program is to demonstrate proficiency in a modern foreign language. My advisor said that passing two semesters of undergrad foreign language would suffice. So I get to take two semester's worth of German this Summer. It was more a matter of convenience than choice. I would have rather taken Spanish (having had several years of Latin in high school and a year in college in addition to a year of Spanish way back in 8th grade - umm... around 1984). But the Spanish department is only offering one semester this Summer and I want to knock out the requirement.

I've owned the german album for Die DriegroshenOper for decades now, and enjoy it immensly. I fell in love with Brecht, at least in English, back in college. I've read a little of his poetry, but as this review points out, you do have to know German to truly get it. It's also interesting that for such a good poet Berthold was such an utter creep.

As to your using Mortitatensanger style for conversational German, try that singing style for this older German hit.

Yeah, one of the things I'm noticing as I go through the German dictionary trying to figure out words is that it seems like there's quite a bit of punnery and word-play that wouldn't translate at all.