Took this shot of the Gulf of Mexico on a calm day when my wife and I were driving around Naples, Florida. While there are public beaches along the Gulf Coast, I hate that a lot of it is taken up by large mansions, etc.
I have very fond memories of riding a similar ride to this one in the mid to late 70s when I was much younger. I loved this ride. Of course, it’s nearly, if not completely, impossible to find this ride anymore in the US because, I’m sure, it’s “too dangerous.” There are attractions similar to this at Oktoberfest which is always fun to watch those who’s have a liter or two of beer riding.
For those who’ve never seen or ridden one, essentially, it’s a cylinder. Riders enter and stand against the wall. The ride starts spinning and once it reaches a certain speed, the floor drops away, leaving the riders hanging on the wall. Pure physics.
Copyright © 2021 Mark D Wolinski On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower of inaugurated.
This past year while a lot of tourist attractions have been closed, museums have been putting their collections online for people to peruse from the comfort of their homes.
A couple of weeks ago, the Louvre announced their database of more the 480,000 works from the Musée du Louvre and Musée National Eugène-Delacroix are now available online.
The nice part is that the information pages may include multiple photos of each work of art and if currently visible at the Louvre, where it’s located at…for when you’ll next be able to visit that is.
The pages are in French, but if you use Google Chrome or the latest versions of Safari, the browser should be able to auto-translate pages for you.
Visit the Musée du Louvre Collection at https://collections.louvre.fr
It should probably not be a surprise that I love French patisseries. It’s great to see this three part video looking behind the scenes of the magic of the workers making everything from scratch and fresh ingredients.
Première partie
Deuxième partie
Troisième partie
Copyright © 2021 Mark D Wolinski Big Ben is actually the bell inside the tower…which you can not see from the outside. The tower is officially called Elizabeth Tower. Next time you’re in London, make sure you don’t make the same mistake of most every other tourist and say, “Oh! I see Big Ben…” Ya don’t!
Copyright © 2021 Mark D Wolinski The Atlantic has an article about a new cookbook by Sam Sifton that throws out the traditional recipe in favor of a less ridged structure. They pull this quote from the book for Teriyaki Salmon With Mixed Greens:
Turn your oven to 400°F or so, and while it heats, make a teriyaki sauce with soy sauce cut with mirin, plus a healthy scattering of minced garlic and ginger. It should be salty-sweet. Then put your salmon fillets on a lightly oiled, foil-lined baking sheet, skin-side down. Paint them with the sauce and roast them in the top of the oven for 10 to 12 minutes, painting them again with the sauce at least once along the way. Slide the finished salmon onto piles of mixed greens and drizzle with remaining sauce. Cooking’s not difficult. It’s just a practice.
I’ve often said that recipes are guides, not rules, but this feels more like a technical challenge from The Great British Bake Off more so than a “recipe.”
The one issue I would have with this example is the “healthy scattering of minced garlic and ginger.” Too much of either of those can make the whole meal go south pretty quickly, so while, as the pulled quote says, “Cooking’s not difficult. It’s just a practice.”
One has to wonder how many times you’ll need to spoil the salmon before you get it right.
I’m a huge fan of seeing photos from France in Paris in the distant past and 100 years ago is amazing to see how much is different and how much hasn’t changed.
These colored photos by Jules Gervais-Courtellemont will take you back through time to see how Paris looked in 1923. The vivid images are produced using the autochrome technique in which the plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue colored potato starch grains (about four million per square inch).
When the photograph is taken, light passes through these color filters to the photographic emulsion. The plate is processed to produce positive transparency. Light, passing through the colored starch grains, combines to recreate a full-color image of the original subject.