Tuesday, March 17, 2009

quail egg, drama, euphemism


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Hard boiled quail egg. Before and after.

From the vegetable garden, I witness a drama over the fence. The pretty ginger cat which always ignores me, is on one of her regular tours this morning. Having scaled the fence, she climbs a tree on the other side, clawing her way up the trunk, slowly as though she is stalking something. What she is stalking soon becomes apparent as two magpies rise from the branches shouting blue murder. The magpies circle her trying to sabotage what one supposes is her assault on their nest. The next thing I see is the pretty cat coming like a bat out of hell, back to where she came, from pursued by the other ginger cat of the neighbourhood, a big bruiser with a mean look. The pretty cat sits on a wall above my head watching the territory of the bruiser. The bruiser means while watches her from his section of the wall. Her attention is undivided and not a scrap of it is wasted on me, who photographs her, profiled up there like a feline avatar.

In the waiting room of the hospital where Heidi is undergoing a 1o-minute operation, there is a notice on the outside of a lavatory door which says: "Closed for repair. Sorry for the inconvenience."

2 comments:

Zhoen said...

Love the egg photos. Do we get to see prettycat?

Roderick Robinson said...

The excruciatingly difficult thing with a quail's egg is poaching it. A toughish shell ensures this. A three-toque recipe (ie, in the Annapurna/K2 range) in Raymond Blanc's cook book requires the poaching of a dozen. It's a genuine two-person recipe since the other cook is waiting urgently to integrate the poached eggs. I merely watched.