Shorabat addas, or lentil soup

We bought a package of Ziyad red lentils, and Elaine made soup. Did she ever. Here, slightly rewritten, is the recipe that appears on the package:

2 cups red lentils
8 cups water or broth
1/2 t. cumin
1/2 t. turmeric or paprika
1 large onion, diced
1–2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
juice of one lemon
2 bouillon cubes, your choice of flavor (optional)

And the preparation:

Wash lentils. Combine with broth or water and bring to a boil. Cover and cook for thirty minutes. Stir occasionally.

When lentils are tender, add dry spices and boullion.

Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil until golden, and add them to the soup.

Simmer for five minutes. Turn off heat, add lemon juice, and stir.

Ladle soup into bowls, garnish with parsley and paprika, and serve with lemon wedges on the side.

Elaine chose water, substituted Better Than Bouillon Roasted Chicken Base for cubes, tripled the cumin and paprika, used three cloves of garlic, and sautéed a carrot, diced, with the onion and garlic. And she used an immersion blender on the finished soup. What resulted was spectacular — creamy, spicy, slightly sweet, totally comforting. We were hoping for something like the lentil soup we know from Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen in Chicago. But we ended up with something like a very hearty dal. We will be serving this soup the next time we have friends over for dinner.

More soup
Cabbage : Purée Mongole

[Google Translate tells me that “shorabat addas” is Welsh for “shorabat suitable.” But it seems to be Lebanese for — you guessed it — “lentil soup.” Why is Lebanese missing from Google Translate?]

Johnny Horizon

[Peanuts, March 8, 1972.]

I like it when a comic strip turns into a time capsule. Who was Johnny Horizon? Wikipedia explains. And here, from the Forest History Society, is his story. The naïveté — if we can just pick up enough pieces of litter, we can save the environment.

Peanuts past is Peanuts present. If all Peanuts is eternally present, all time is Peanuts.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard)

Nancy, meta and dowdy

[Nancy, March 5, 2019.]

From today’s Nancy, an Olivia Jaimes panel for the ages. Another kid has been giving Nancy drawing tips: “If you mess up a character’s eyes, just add sunglasses.” “If you mess up their mouth, just make it bigger.” “Worst comes to worst, you can just scribble it all out and add a label.” Thus this fourth panel.

What I really like is the dotted line — très dowdy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Just to be clear: “for the ages” is praise, not sarcasm. I like this stuff.]

HTML Scratchpad

HTML Scratchpad is a webpage for messing around with HTML. Before I cottoned to MarsEdit, I used HTML Scratchpad to check whether YouTube videos will play when embedded in Blogger. Not all of them will, and Blogger’s Preview is useless for finding out before posting. But HTML Scratchpad works: copy and paste the code and press Run. Then click to play, or not play.

“After you,” “Go ahead”

Say you’re in line at a grocery checkout and someone comes up behind with just one or two items. Courteous shopper that you are, you want to let that person go first. Is there much difference between saying “After you” and and saying “Go ahead”? Is one more appropriate than the other?

Or say you’re holding a door open for someone entering or leaving the store. Courteous as ever, you want to let that person go first. Again, is there much difference between “After you” and “Go ahead”? Is one more appropriate than the other?

I hear each expression as an invitation: please, feel free to go first. To my ear, “After you” sounds more formal, which might make it less suited for everyday use in the folksy midwest. But I’m curious to know what other people think.

Benjamin and Newman

Watching The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967) Saturday night, I wondered: could Mrs. Robinson’s icy “Hello, Benjamin” be the inspiration for Jerry Seinfeld’s “Hello, Newman”?

I don’t expect to have the answer to that question anytime soon.

*

The “Hello, Benjamin” I have in mind comes in at the 1:11 mark. As I just discovered, Safari in iOS doesn’t jump ahead to that spot as it should.

The last Automat

[Zippy, March 4, 2019.]

The Automat appears again and again in Zippy. Here, type automat into the search box and you’ll see. Today’s strip repurposes art from a 2014 visit to the Dingburg Automat.

I have a vague memory of sitting in an Automat with a friend in the 1980s. And I have a vague nostalgia for the Automat. The Automat appears in a handful of OCA posts.

How to improve writing (no. 80)

Here’s a sentence that gave both members of our household pause. From Jeffrey Toobin’s “May Days,” a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” item (March 4):

Virtually everything that Trump tells McCabe he disputes, starting with the claim that he received “hundreds” of messages from F.B.I. employees supporting his decision to fire Comey.

I’d call it a garden-path sentence. I first read everything as the sentence’s subject, with Trump both telling and disputing. So I expected that the sentence would run along these lines:

Virtually everything that Trump tells McCabe he disputes is contradicted by, &c.

But I was led down a garden path. The sentence’s subject turns out to be its first he, and that’s McCabe. Which creates a second problem, because the sentence’s second he refers to Trump.

How to improve this sentence? Make the subject clear by putting it first. That keeps the reader off the garden path. It’s helpful too to remove the easily misread hes. My revision:

McCabe disputes virtually everything that Trump tells him, starting with the president’s claim that “hundreds” of messages from F.B.I. employees supported his decision to fire Comey.

The condensed language of newspaper headlines often leads to garden-path sentences (for instance, and for instance). It’s surprising to find such a sentence in The New Yorker.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 80 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, has some surprisingly easy clues. I started solving with one: 32-Across, seven letters, “Users of Breathe Right strips.” NICEGUYS? No, that’s eight letters. Then I noticed 11-Down, ten letters, “Novel inspired by Cain and Abel.” And 12-Down, ten letters, “Wharton work.” And I was on my way.

I always like smart clues for little words. For instance, 51-Across, three letters, “Day preceder or follower.” And 53-Down, four letters, “Service members.” That’s right next to 52-Down, four letters, “Service members.” Nice work, Mr. Ruff.

A meta clue, 28-Down, ten letters, “Stumpery clue for ‘rise.’”

And one clue I’d question: 15-Down, six letters, “Mitigates.” That works only if the answer is an archaic meaning.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Introvert sticklers

Psychology Today reports on a study suggesting that “introverts [are] more likely to be annoyed by typos and grammatical mistakes than extroverts.” A sentence from PT :

First, let’s take a closer look at the study, then we’ll explore why introverts might be the ultimate grammar sticklers.

Uh-oh, comma splice, which I’ve marked in red. Better:

First, let’s take a closer look at the study; then we’ll explore why introverts might be the ultimate grammar sticklers.

Better still:

Let’s look at the study and see why introverts might be grammar sticklers.

There’s little need for “first” and “then” when the two matters are so closely related. And if the article has presented only a brief statement about the study, there’s little difference between a look and a closer look. I object to “explore” as slightly pompous, and to “the ultimate” as hype. But then I’m a modest introvert. Or stickler. Or both.

The study involved a mere eighty participants. This post makes eighty-one.

Related reading
All OCA grammar and introversion posts (Pinboard)