Jun 2008
New Website: Cooking in Cast Iron
06/26/2008 09:39 Filed in: Dining
And now for something completely different...
When This Lamp was restored a few days ago, I alluded to the fact that I would soon launch a new website. I noted that this new website has very little to do with the content normally discussed on This Lamp. Well, today, I’m pleased to announce the launch of Cooking in Cast Iron.
Those who know me best won’t find this as a total surprise. I’ve always enjoyed cooking as a creative outlet. This goes all the way back to a family tradition of great home cooks, not the least of whom was my mother (who also gave me my first cast iron skillet). Not too long after I got married, my mother-in-law gave me the books Cajun Men Cook
and Dad's Own Cookbook. I’m neither Cajun, having grown up in North Louisiana; nor am I a dad yet, but both these books were foundational for me early own as I developed my own preferences and style. Over the past decade or so, I’ve become more and more enamored with cooking in cast iron, gradually replacing anything Teflon or chemically created to be non-stick. Right now, I believe that cast iron is experiencing a bit of a renaissance. As I state in the inaugural post at the new site:
We’ve now come full circle. Everywhere I go--whether a neighbor’s kitchen, the gourmet kitchen store, or a campfire in the woods--I’m seeing more and more cast iron. Now, even celebrity chefs have their names on their own lines of cast iron. But it wasn’t always that way. In spite of the fact that cooking in cast iron was the only way for most people to prepare meals for centuries, cast iron began to fall on hard times in the 1940’s with the development of modern artificial nonstick surfaces. And so in recent years, cast iron went into a kind of teflon-inspired exile. If you wanted to find a good cast iron pan, often you had to visit the hardware or sporting goods store (in the camping section, no less) or simply resort to mail order.
But of course, great cooks such as your grandmother who would have never dreamed of giving up her cast iron skillet or Uncle Ted who can’t imagine camping without his dutch ovens have remained true to the black iron. So, they aren’t surprised when recent studies tell us that those artificial non-stick coatings may not be so safe and healthy afterall. And suddenly lots of folks are starting to come back to cast iron.
I believe we’re in a bit of a “cast iron renaissance.” I began to see signs of this two and a half years ago when Mark Bittman published an interesting article in the New York Times, titled “Ever So Humble, Cast Iron Outshines the Fancy Pans.” In the article, Bittman traces his own journey through twenty years in which after using more modern cooking surfaces, he had returned to an old standby: cast iron--in both his own cooking and in regard to what he recommends. And he’s not alone; suddenly there is lots of talk in the food industry about cooking in cast iron.
Don’t worry, This Lamp isn’t going away; nor will it be neglected. I’ve got a wide range of interests and this is merely one of them. And I’m fortunate because I’m not the sole person writing for Cooking in Cast Iron. We have quite the team lined up. And if cooking and cast iron is one of your things, please drop by on a regular basis.
Those who know me best won’t find this as a total surprise. I’ve always enjoyed cooking as a creative outlet. This goes all the way back to a family tradition of great home cooks, not the least of whom was my mother (who also gave me my first cast iron skillet). Not too long after I got married, my mother-in-law gave me the books Cajun Men Cook
and Dad's Own Cookbook. I’m neither Cajun, having grown up in North Louisiana; nor am I a dad yet, but both these books were foundational for me early own as I developed my own preferences and style. Over the past decade or so, I’ve become more and more enamored with cooking in cast iron, gradually replacing anything Teflon or chemically created to be non-stick. Right now, I believe that cast iron is experiencing a bit of a renaissance. As I state in the inaugural post at the new site:We’ve now come full circle. Everywhere I go--whether a neighbor’s kitchen, the gourmet kitchen store, or a campfire in the woods--I’m seeing more and more cast iron. Now, even celebrity chefs have their names on their own lines of cast iron. But it wasn’t always that way. In spite of the fact that cooking in cast iron was the only way for most people to prepare meals for centuries, cast iron began to fall on hard times in the 1940’s with the development of modern artificial nonstick surfaces. And so in recent years, cast iron went into a kind of teflon-inspired exile. If you wanted to find a good cast iron pan, often you had to visit the hardware or sporting goods store (in the camping section, no less) or simply resort to mail order.
But of course, great cooks such as your grandmother who would have never dreamed of giving up her cast iron skillet or Uncle Ted who can’t imagine camping without his dutch ovens have remained true to the black iron. So, they aren’t surprised when recent studies tell us that those artificial non-stick coatings may not be so safe and healthy afterall. And suddenly lots of folks are starting to come back to cast iron.
I believe we’re in a bit of a “cast iron renaissance.” I began to see signs of this two and a half years ago when Mark Bittman published an interesting article in the New York Times, titled “Ever So Humble, Cast Iron Outshines the Fancy Pans.” In the article, Bittman traces his own journey through twenty years in which after using more modern cooking surfaces, he had returned to an old standby: cast iron--in both his own cooking and in regard to what he recommends. And he’s not alone; suddenly there is lots of talk in the food industry about cooking in cast iron.
Don’t worry, This Lamp isn’t going away; nor will it be neglected. I’ve got a wide range of interests and this is merely one of them. And I’m fortunate because I’m not the sole person writing for Cooking in Cast Iron. We have quite the team lined up. And if cooking and cast iron is one of your things, please drop by on a regular basis.
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A Reflection on the 17-Year Cicadas
06/25/2008 10:19 Filed in: Faith & Reason | Personal
Early in June This Lamp was still down, so I wrote this and sent it to a few friends via email. Now that the blog is back up, I’ll share it with all of you.
I walked out back to hear quite the cacophony of sounds as the 17-year cicadas sang their love songs. The trees were filled with the red-eyed bugs conversing and singing to one another. The trunks and ground beneath filled with discarded skins set aside like old changes of clothes.
As I took pictures, I was mesmerized by the beauty of these alien beings. So odd looking, and yet, God created even these--part of a cycle, part of a purpose. When I was a child, we always called cicadas "locusts." But they really aren't locusts. The biblical writers had nothing good to say about locusts because they always came as destroyers; but really, even locusts served God's purposes.
Whereas locusts were harmful, cicadas are the opposite. According to the Wikipedia, "Cicadas do not bite or sting, are benign to humans, and are not considered a pest." In the 4th century AD, the Christian preacher John Chrysostom compared the pleasure of reading the Old Testament prophets to the song of the cicadas.
I've always identified the sound of cicadas with summer. But I believe that looking into the dark red eyes of this 17-year variety, for the first time, I found a new summertime connection to the majesty and glory of God's creative power. I would imagine that in heaven, in addition to the trumpets of angels, cicadas must also sing their praises to God.
Psalm 145:10-11 states
As I took pictures, I was mesmerized by the beauty of these alien beings. So odd looking, and yet, God created even these--part of a cycle, part of a purpose. When I was a child, we always called cicadas "locusts." But they really aren't locusts. The biblical writers had nothing good to say about locusts because they always came as destroyers; but really, even locusts served God's purposes.
Whereas locusts were harmful, cicadas are the opposite. According to the Wikipedia, "Cicadas do not bite or sting, are benign to humans, and are not considered a pest." In the 4th century AD, the Christian preacher John Chrysostom compared the pleasure of reading the Old Testament prophets to the song of the cicadas.
I've always identified the sound of cicadas with summer. But I believe that looking into the dark red eyes of this 17-year variety, for the first time, I found a new summertime connection to the majesty and glory of God's creative power. I would imagine that in heaven, in addition to the trumpets of angels, cicadas must also sing their praises to God.
Psalm 145:10-11 states
“All your creatures praise you, Lord,
and your loyal servants bless you.
They talk of the glory of your kingdom
and tell of your might,” (REB)
Surely, this includes even the cicadas.
Follow-up. After I sent the above out in an email to a selected few, I was sitting on my back patio a few days later. We are on the outermost edge of the Eastern time zone, and during the summer, we have sunlight well past 9PM. I enjoy sitting on my patio swing watching the skies as the gray bats indiginous to this part of Kentucky emerge from their secret sites of slumber for their nightly hunt. As the bats began their patrol, and the sound of the cicadas began to lessen for the evening, I thought to myself, “What a great summer to be a bat--a nice, fat, happy bat.”
See the pictures I took of the cicadas (be sure to click on the thumbnail to see a larger view).
Also, if you’re interested in this particular varitey of cicada, check out the recent Courier Journal article, “17-Year Cicadas Sounding Off in Kentucky.”
One More Thing: I believe this will be the last post with mismatched comments. If I’m correct, comments that were originally part of Theron’s review of the Orthodox Study Bible will be attached to this post. If you leave a new comment, it will be below them. One day I may try copying previous comments to the correct posts and deleting the misplaced comments. But as this will be tedious and time consuming, it won’t take place soon.
Get Smart Could've Been Smarter
06/24/2008 00:00 Filed in: Movies and Television
I’ll cut to the chase: the timing of the dialogue was off. It lacked the quick wit of the original television series. The movie dragged a bit at times, especially at the beginning.
Part of the gag with the original Don Adams version is that he was NEVER self-aware of the fact that he was a bumbling idiot. This Maxwell Smart, played by Steve Carell, was often insecure and way too self-analytical. He was well... your typical Steve Carell character. Don’t get me wrong--I like Steve Carell, especially in The Office, but the character of Maxwell Smart in this version was obviously tweaked for Carell’s trademark style.
I’m certain the movie will be successful enough for sequels, but this just made me long for the original show. And I hear that the 1989 reunion movie, Get Smart, Again!, isn’t too bad (1980’s The Nude Bomb was made without Barbara Feldon, so it never felt complete to me).
There were some funny and even clever parts in this movie, but they seemed too spread out, and the movie could have been better. For instance...
The story explains that Agent 99 (played by Anne Hathaway) had disguised herself through plastic surgery to make herself look younger. Hathaway is 20 years younger than Carrell, so I guess they were concerned about the age difference. She showed him a picture of some blond that was supposed to be her former self. I don’t think it was supposed to be someone familiar, but if it was the joke went past me. But more importantly, I believe they missed a perfect chance to show a picture of the ever-lovely Barbara Feldon (the original Agent 99) and say that this was what Hathaway originally looked like.
Finally, I guess I’m becoming more of a prude as I get older, but it distresses me that someone felt the need to make what had originally been Rated-G type material and add enough sexual inuendo and language to end up with a PG-13 rating. The original was the kind of show that the entire family could watch together. The new Get Smart is not for children, and it distresses me that there were very small children in the theater in which we saw the movie.
This is growing trend that continues to bother me, but I’ll write more about that another day.
Umm...Who Rebuilt the Temple?
06/22/2008 17:12 Filed in: Faith & Reason
You know, I have this problem during worship at church. I try to pay attention to the words I’m singing.
Okay, maybe that isn’t a problem. Maybe the problem is that no one else pays attention. Maybe the problem is that sometimes the songwriters don’t pay close enough attention.
This morning, we sang the song “Days of Elijah” which includes a good bit of Old Testament imagery. It even refers to God as “riding on the clouds” which I understand is a very ancient image of God, perhaps predating the written Scriptures themselves.
Anyway, if you follow the link above to read the words of the song (or perhaps if you are familiar with it), you’ll notice that it refers to the days of Old Testament figures such as Elijah, Moses, Ezekiel and then...David. That’s where I had the problem.
Here are the exact lines:
Okay, maybe that isn’t a problem. Maybe the problem is that no one else pays attention. Maybe the problem is that sometimes the songwriters don’t pay close enough attention.
This morning, we sang the song “Days of Elijah” which includes a good bit of Old Testament imagery. It even refers to God as “riding on the clouds” which I understand is a very ancient image of God, perhaps predating the written Scriptures themselves.
Anyway, if you follow the link above to read the words of the song (or perhaps if you are familiar with it), you’ll notice that it refers to the days of Old Testament figures such as Elijah, Moses, Ezekiel and then...David. That’s where I had the problem.
Here are the exact lines:
And these are the days of Your servant David,
Rebuilding a temple of praise.
Do you see the problem? It’s the reference to David rebuilding the Temple. When exactly did David ever rebuild the Temple? Am I missing something here? Is this supposed to be some kind of Messianic reference that I just don’t get?
While David wanted to build the Temple, God would not allow him to because he was considered a man of war (see 2 Samuel 7). David’s son, Solomon, was the one who built the Temple (1 Kings 5-6). But again, David neither built it, and he certainly didn’t rebuild it.
It’s a pretty basic fact that Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple (completed around 516 BC) as part of the Jewish return from Exile in Babylon (see Ezra 3-6). Pictoral reconstructions of Zerubabbel’s Temple are a staple of any Old Testament resource, such as this one snagged from the NIV Study Bible (via Accordance):
The only other person who had a hand in rebuilding the Temple was Herod the Great in the 1st century BC, but it would a bit odd to sing about Herod in a worship song.
Therefore, I suggest we strive for accuracy in our praise songs. I know it doesn’t flow quite as well, but I recommend that worship leaders everywhere who want to continue using the song “Days of Elijah” change their slides to read
And these are the days of Your servant Zerubbabel,
Rebuilding a temple of praise.
But even if you don’t change the slides, this is the way I’ll be singing it from now on.
And I sing loudly...
This Lamp is BACK (for the love of Margaret...)
06/20/2008 09:24 Filed in: Personal
In case you’re just tuning in, we’ve (yes, that’s a royal plural) been down since late February. I create this website in a program called RapidWeaver and a few months ago, the main file for the site got corrupted. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it was a RapidWeaver problem or a me problem. Whatever it was, everytime I loaded the file, all of my blog entries immediately deleted themselves. What that meant is that if I were to publish with that file, all of my blog entries on the internet would have disappeared.
Of course, I know you’re saying, “But didn’t you have a backup?” Well, normally I would have. But in a freak convergence of events, I was switching over to the new Time Machine method for backup. In order to do that, I had to erase the backup on my external hard drive that had been created with my previous backup software. I erased that backup BEFORE I realized that the RapidWeaver file for This Lamp was hosed. That was a bad day... a really bad day.
That left me with my only other backup which was dated from last October. My task over these past few weeks has been to re-create all blog posts from October 2007 through February 2008 based on what was published on the web. It wasn’t as easy as a simple cut and paste. All links had to be re-created as well as a lot of formatting including any text that was in italics. It really shouldn’t have taken more than three weeks or so working on it in my spare time, but I had a couple of other projects that came along that were paying projects, so well...
When This Lamp went into cardiac arrest at the end of February, it had hit a peak of roughly 700 hits a day according to Sitemeter. The interesting thing is that even in its hiatus, the website has still managed to maintain over half that amount of traffic. I think the average blogger would love to have between 350 and 400 hits a day, so it’s not too shabby, and hopefully readers will come back.
Normally, I have a number of upcoming blog posts in the works started within RapidWeaver. All those posts that would have come your way in early March were lost including a review I had been working on for a while on the NET Bible. Of those lost projects, the NET Bible review is the only one I will begin again. Look for it in July, and my apologies to those who have been waiting a year or so. The other lost posts will just stay lost as their time of relevance has past.
Sometime next week, I will launch a second blog-based website that has really nothing to do with most of the normal stuff discussed on This Lamp. This Lamp isn’t going away, nor is it going to be neglected, but rather, I am creating a second site with a different focus which will attract a whole new and different group of readers (I do have wide and varied interests, you know). Look for that announcement next week. I don’t know how many of you regular readers will be interested, but you’re welcome to join us there, too (and no, that time I was NOT using a royal plural).
My thanks and appreciation to all of you who sent regular emails asking about my progress restoring This Lamp and encouraging me in the process. I really didn’t enjoy the tedium of rebuilding the site, and never once did I consider abandoning it, but it was your encouragement that kept me pushing forward.
One more very important thing. In the reconstruction, for whatever reason, the HaloScan comments are completely messed up. I have no doubt that as soon as I publish this post, comments from what should go with a previous post will be attached to this one. I have no real way of ever fixing this, BUT it should work itself out in a few days as I add new content to This Lamp. In other words, eventually moving forward, new posts will be matched to the right comments. In fact, if you post here, your comments will remain, but will follow comments that were originally intended for an earlier post.
Well, it’s good to be back. I look forward to our upcoming discussions.