INTELLECTUAL SUBSTANCES

Lunch today, late as usual, and typical of a Dutchman: Nasi goreng. It's almost the national dish of the Netherlands, in countless mediocre versions. Fried rice, Indonesian style, as no Indonesian would ever know. And infinitely variable. Cooked rice recycled in a skillet or wok with spiced meat, vegetables, and often onion, chilies, fish paste. The vegetable in this case was fresh green chilies, extra ginger added. Plus fatty meat. Some ground coriander seed, some green stuff, dollop of sambal on top. Quick, easy, and quite decent tasting.

The stuffed turkey vulture like it too.
Unlike what followed.

Astley's No. 109 medium flake in an Irish Zulu.
Rich deep purples, pale Sienna pink hues.
Dramatic grain, two-tone finish.


The turkey vulture, though an opportunist inclined to seize my wallet and some of my prized possessions, has no clue how to use them.

A pipe, for instance, is NOT for clubbing other creatures over the noggin. And a wallet is not an egg, or something he can give to the she-sheep to make her like him. He's rather naive on this and several other scores.


The pipe material, like many of my favourite woods, is not native to the Netherlands (and neither am I, as I was born in California of Anglo-Netherlandish stock long settled in the New World). Briar (good for smoking pipes), eagle wood (gaharu, which when spalted yields an ethereal and intoxicating incense), spalted tamarind (very decorative and elegant), kamuning mas (murraya paniculata, a shrub that produces fragrant sticky white flowers - the wood is beautifully variegated golden in hue), teak (柚木 'yau muk'; two ancient Hong Kong boxes of staved teak in the bookshelves), kamagong (hard dark timber, native to tropical rainforests in S.E. Asia), po'ok angsane (紫檀木 'ji taan muk'; sometimes called Amboyna or Padauk) ....
Und so noch viele weiter.

Briar (erica arborea) is perfect for smoking equipment; it endures heat and moisture better than many other woods, and has only the mildest flavour of its own to contribute. All modern smoking mixtures are geared toward the interplay of tobacco and briarwood.
Plus it's aesthetically pleasing.

TOBACCO INDEX


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