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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Sunday, May 02, 2004

From The Guardian: An educational look not only at commercial bread making, but supermarkets as well. It is not pretty. They used to say, if you like sausage, you should never watch it being made – but even the wurst abuse of ground meat can’t compare to the ghoulish process of making a fluffy loaf: The actual bread mixing is over in a blink. This is the wonder of the CBP. It replaces hours of waiting while the dough ferments. Two industrial steel mixers are being fed 225kg each of flour, plus water, vinegar, salt, yeast and the contents of a yellowy bin - layers of powders of different textures and a large glob of greyish fat. Then the vast bowls vibrate furiously for just three minutes before swinging up high, turning and disgorging an enormous lump of instant dough like a giant ball of chewing gum.   11:48:00 PM    comment []

My, doesn’t this look tasty! It’s Pork Cutlets in Aspic from the Dr. Oetker cookbook, German Meat Recipes. I picked up a couple of copies in Toledo, one for myself and one for Wernher & Fifi. They were sealed in plastic, so I didn’t get a chance to look inside until yesterday. The overall appearance is reminiscent of the infamous Knudsen Recipes. In case you’re wondering, the green objects meticulously placed on the pork cutlet perimeter are not olives – they are sliced gherkins, alternating plain slices and ones garnished with tomatoes.  The date on this book is 1970. 10:27:57 PM    comment []

I’m usually listening to Living On Earth on WUNC radio Sunday mornings, although it is not one of my favorite shows. This morning, they had a cute story about a guy who bought one of those little pet turtles 30 years ago and the sucker was still alive! When the story ended, the music cue was Happy Together. Stupid me, I sang along. Laughing as I remembered how Flo & Eddie sang this number in concerts shortly after they joined forces with Frank Zappa. Then it hit. Me. They were originally The Turtles! This is an example of a show’s sound editor having a little perverse fun – a guy who still loves the turtle he bought as a child, it likes music, he says, and fish sticks – happy together. The perfect choice. I went to the website, hoping to credit the music director, but there is none listed. However, I did find a good suspect – this guy, the senior producer: Chris Ballman Senior Producer Living on Earth's Senior Producer, Chris Ballman held that same title for four years at Monitor Radio where he helped launch Mid-Day Edition in 1994 and headed up the Early Edition staff before that. Prior to Monitor Radio, Chris was Executive Producer for News at WBUR-Boston rising from the ranks of overnight editor/producer at the NPR affiliate. Before heading to Boston, Chris was News Director at NPR member station WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts after a stint as reporter/producer there, and he began his broadcasting career as a reporter at Pacifica station WBAI in New York City. In his younger, wilder days, Chris did sound engineering for rock and roll bands in his native New Jersey, and flew helicopters for the US Army. He now tends a small garden in Arlington, Massachusetts where he lives with his wife Susan and two small boys Rowan and McCabe. 8:21:35 AM    comment []