Metaphor Police: Walled Gardens

It is fashionable amongst the technoliterate to use the metaphor of "Walled Gardens" for any "closed" or "controlled" system or environment they don't like. Crying out in anguish, "it's a walled garden!" is supposed be not only meaningful but also critical. This confuses the hell out of me, because walled gardens are great.

I'd wager most people who use the term have never seen an actual walled garden. They are lovely, functional, useful, productive. They help keep rabbits out (sometimes). They protect from the elements. They allow a really efficient use of space in a low-tech way. They are attractive and can produce more, longer, than an unwalled garden. If you had a country home that had one you would probably never want to go back to not having one.

So here's the odd thing: I've never heard anyone talk about actual walled gardens as if they were bad things. Yet when people talk about technology the metaphor is used as an unequivocal evil. As a counterexample, here's a simple metaphor that works great because its metaphorical use matches its literal use: "piece of shit". Generally, not always, but generally, a literal piece of shit is not a good thing. Likewise, if you describe your car as "a piece of shit", people get that you are making an unambiguous judgment. It works fine as a metaphor. With literal walled gardens, my experience of them is as a good thing. Every time I hear the metaphorical used in disgust, I think, "what's wrong with that?"

"But it's a walled garden!" Uh... great, more lettuce/broccoli/apples for us!

Ok, I get that we need a shorthand criticism for closed/controlled/no-user-serviceable-parts environments, so *some* metaphor would be handy. I think we can do much better than wrongly maligning poor walled gardens.

Goofing Off With The Camera (longer exposures)

As mentioned earlier this week, went out Christmas night with the camera. The photos weren't especially good, but the fun was in the taking. Here are a couple samples.

See the blue & white sign in the middle of the roundabout? That's where we later setup the camera for the shot below.

The shot from the sign in the roundabout.

State of the Village

Another fine year for South Hackney, aka Victoria Park Village. Family-friendly cafes are doing well, with several more opening in the past year. Elbows continues to be a favourite, but recent addition Amandine is nice as well, joining Loafing and the latest, Tipico. Plenty of coffee yet not a chain in sight. Good! The butcher (Ginger Pig) and fishmonger (Jonathan Norris) are doing well, and The Deli Downstairs is doing great business at its location on the roundabout. I still consider it the "new" location for the deli but I guess it's been there a while now. Bottle Apostle continues to win accolades and custom. I suspect it's drawing folks in from a broader area than the local Hackney and Tower Hamlets neighbourhoods, deservedly so. SpitJack's continues as a favourite of the restaurants. We keep going back. If anything, it's gotten better -- e.g. the hamburgers have been cooked just as requested recently (I nearly weep with joy when I find a restaurant that doesn't overcook hamburgers). The Fish House continues a strong run. The Empress of India has changed hands and has dropped "of India". I've not yet been in this incarnation but Timeout reviewed it favourably. Su Sazzagoni also looks to be going well, but Chilliz restaurant, in between the Empress and Su Sazzagoni but open for years prior to each, has gone out of business and its replacement, Chambers, has just opened. Standard Tandoori, across the street, is our go-to curry vendor, and will hopefully continue its long residence.

Pub-wise, Lauriston holds steady as a firm local favourite and the Royal Inn on the Park has revamped its garden a bit. A ways along the north side of the park, The Brittania to the east continues its apparent mission to be all things to everyone while to the west the pub on the corner of Skipworth Road has changed yet again. Must be a cursed spot. Looks nice but I've not yet stopped in. South through the middle of the park, good to see The Crown keeping pace (nice pub, good food, the people at Geronimo Inns seem to know what they're doing), after the site hosted a well-intentioned but poorly executed organic gastropub followed by a doomed tapas restaurant.

Sad news up on Well Street: Izzy bid farewell to the kebab business, leaving by choice at the end of summer. Sadly, Izzy's has been replaced by a "we buy gold" shop. We are still well-covered for kebabs on Well Street, though, panic averted.

Christmas Cooking Notes

Geese from the butcher, "medium" but quite large, 5.5 kg min each. Removed legs for confit. Roasted crown of -- started 220 for 15-20 minutes, reduced to 200, did not take very long -- removed when breast was 70C outer, closer to 65C near the bone. Was very nice. Served the four of us well, with not much leftover. For the other one, removed the breasts and wrapped them together for the freezer, for a boneless roast later in the winter. Rendered all the fat out of everything and made the confit. Great yield of fat this year. Full large jar with the 4 legs, plus another sizeable jar of the pure stuff.

Chestnut dressing: poor chestnuts, kind of dry and low yield, very tedious to peel, so not nearly as many as for Thanksgiving. But overall the dressing was better. I attribute this entirely to the stock used. This one was made with roast turkey stock (from the thanksgiving turkeys) rather than chicken stock. Turkey stock is liquid gold. I don't know why, but it's always the best bird for stock. So next thanksgiving I need to get turkeys early just to make stock. I hope I remember this plan in time.

Green bean casserole and mashed potatoes were fine. Used King Edwards for the spuds. No complaints.

Cranberry relish was really good, and an excellent counter to the rich goose. I think it goes even better with goose than it does with turkey. Unfortunately we likely won't be able to get fresh cranberries whenever we get around to eating the goose legs.

Dessert involved "cake fountains", which are essentially fireworks you stick into your cake. Unusually for us, this did not lead to any fires, injuries, or property destruction.

A Nice Non-Encounter

The older youngster and I went out for a walk tonight and brought my camera and gorillapod. We were goofing off with some longer exposures in the village and at one point scampered to the raised garden in the middle of the roundabout for an interesting point of view. As we were setting up the gorillapod around the top of a lit street sign in the roundabout, a police car eased right by us. There was no questioning or stopping. The shot didn't turn out especially great, but it was very cool that we got to enjoy taking it hassle-free.

Last-Minute Christmas Cooking Tips

Probably too late, but if you're fretting about a turkey, my top tip is to cook the legs separately. Turkey is not an easy bird to cook, even less forgiving than chicken. The breasts are at their best a shade undercooked, while the legs are better well (or very well) done. I've heard of an interesting method to put ice packs on the breasts for an hour or so prior to roasting if you want to cook the bird whole. This would give the legs a head start, the breasts a handicap. Another method, which I sometimes use on chickens, is to make deep slashes across the legs & thighs -- rub in butter, salt, pepper, whatever else *after* the slashing. This exposes a lot more surface area and lets the legs cook quicker. You also get more crispy edges and pieces are a little easier to pull off the bone if you don't mind kids eating with their fingers. For turkeys now, I always cook the legs separately, roasting the breasts on the bone, breast side down on high heat for a while (220C for about 45minutes), then breast side up at lower heat (200C), until done (I take it out when it's 65C near the bone, or sooner). When you flip it, rub a new coating of butter over the bird to encourage the skin to get lovely deep golden brown and crispy. No matter how you roast it, let it rest after the oven. Thirty minutes is fine, or even longer. Fifteen minutes minimum if you're super impatient.

I'm cooking goose as (now) usual for Christmas. Goose is much easier to cook than turkey. Even so, I cook the legs separately, just because having confit of goose leg later in the year is one of the delayed delights of christmas. Plus, goose fat! Down to the very last nutella-jar full of last year's bonanza.

Thanks For All The Cash, Suckers!

So Citibank (recipient of huge piles of save-us cash from the taxpaying public) recently changed terms on some of their entry-level checking accounts. Flat fee if you don't maintain a certain deposit level across any and all "linked" products. Reasonable in general? Sure. But that particulars? Fee is $15 a month (seems high!) unless you maintain net deposit balances of... $6000. Wow! I may be out of touch, but that seems like an awful lot of money to have on hand to park into accounts effectively bearing no interest whatsoever. That's some brass, Citibank -- congrats!