Saturday, January 19, 2013

landscape black swan rarebit

Landscape of a sort. In fact as you will see it is..


...abstracted from a photograph of paint peeling from a vent set into a wall.

The Black Swan a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb about the importance of recognising the random and unexpected  in our lives has been on my reading-list for some time.  Now that I have started it, I see that it has been worth the wait. Consider these words quoted by Taleb as a warning against relying on the unconditional benefits of past experience:
But in all my experience I have never been in any accident ... of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.
Captain E L Smith of The Titanic.

Toasted cheese is one our household favourites. That or Welsh rarebit. There is a difference. Strips of cheese laid on a the un-toasted side of a slice of bread toasted on one side is the basic. Rarebit is a little more elaborate and worth  a small extra chore. I have tried several recipes but the best and simplest is to break an egg into a bowl containing  about 3 oz of grated  cheddar cheese, add a teaspoonful of mustard and some Worcester sauce and stir together until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Spread the ingredients on bread which has been toasted on one side and place under the grill until the rarebit is golden brown and bubbly. That should be enough for two people of moderate appetite. But beware the addictive qualities of the snack.

2 comments:

marja-leena said...

Ah, so that's 'Welsh rarebit' - I should try it.

tristan said...

we might almost be treading the same path ... daniel kahneman mentions the black swan in "thinking, fast and slow"