Month: November 2021

Seneca

I have been read a couple of books about or related to Stoicism in the last couple of years and one the next has been “Letters from a Stoic” of Seneca.

It is a sort book but it is interesting. You have an introduction about Seneca’s life before going through the letters. I liked as it gives some background about the person. As well, I didnt remember/know he was Nero‘s teacher and advisor.

It seems the letter were written during his exile and they cover a lot of aspects of his life and Stoic philosophy. It covers topics like poverty and richness from a Stoic point of view, keeping in mind that he was a rich man can be a bit surprising but it takes his wealth the Stoic way, if it goes, he will be fine. As well, touches a very interesting subject like slavery, that was the base of all Rome economy. He states everybody is a slave of something. The “free” romans were slave of vices: power, money, etc. And clearly says you need to treat a slave like you want to be treated, so it looks like it reduces the slavery to a concept of labor contract, and I think there is touch of “Christianity” in some comments. He was contemporary of Jesus. Maybe a coincidence.

He writes about many subjects like how you need to speak slowly, only mourn/cry the minimum time (very stoic), suicide vs illness (stoic), not taking hot baths, Scipio of Africa, olive trees, Socrates, vegetarianism, excess of alcohol, Socrates, Pythagoras, dont have a night life, negative of having bad companies, etc.

So I liked it, it wasn’t a hardcore book about philosophy so you read it like the memories of an interesting person in history.

Python Threads

I had to check the reachability of many IPs so I decided to “write” a python script to get this done quickly (yes, I can use nmap but not in this case). I realized that the script was very slow, even just sending two probes…. so I decided to find something else and this was perfect for me. So thanks for the original author as it helped me a lot. I have never tried python threads before so I was quite happy that it worked so smoothly. I adapted for my needs and this is what I have. I remember reading about threads in golang so it helped to understand what it is doing. But likely I will be able to use this as base for more tasks.

As well, I realized that I havent pushed anything in git and that there are extra security layers in place. So I had to create a new token for being able to push my changes to the repo.

Munich – Kaiserschmarrn

Last weekend I was in Munich visiting a good friend. We had good weather and enjoyed to be outdoors, mainly in the “English Garden” and the “Olympic Park”. I tried local cuisine like currywurst (sausage with a ketchup/curry sauce), kaiserschmarrn (broken up pancake with raising) and beer (with lemonade) in the famous Bavarian beer halls.

So this weekend I decided to try the kaiserschmarrn as it was something quite new for me. I followed this recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1/3 cup of raisins
  • 3 tbsp of rum
  • 3 large eggs, separate whites from yolks
  • 1 tsp vanilla paste
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1 cup plain flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • some almond flakes (optional)
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp sugar

Process:

1- In a cup, soak the raisins with the rum. Let is rest

2- In a crystal bowl, put the egg whites and try to beat them until form stiff peaks (no big deal it you dont get that far). I did it by hand. It takes time so be patience. See this 🙂

3- In another bowl, mix the egg yolks, melted butter, vanilla paste, sugar and salt. Be sure everything is combined.

4- In the yolks bowl, start adding bit a bit the flour and milk, and keep mixing until everything is combined

5- Take the egg whites and fold them in the yolks bowl slowly until everything is combined

6- Heat up an anti-adherent pan (mine is around 26cm diameter) using a bit of butter or coconut oil at medium heat. Pour all butter mix in the pan.

7- After 3-4 minutes, add the raisins. Keep checking the bottom of the pancake until is golden brown. Very likely less than 10 minutes in total.

8- Once the bottom is golden brown, sprinkle a bit of sugar in the top. Using a knike or similar, divide the pancake in 4 quarters. Then turn each piece at each time. Add a bit of butter to the pan while turning to avoid burning the new side.

9- Keep cooking until the bottom is again golden brown.

10- Tear the pancake into small pieces using forks or similar.

11- Add the remaining 2 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp sugar over the pancake pieces. Toss the pieces while the butter and sugar caramelize.

12- Ready to serve! You can add a bit of sugar powder on top and add some mermelade in the side.

Something I forgot, you can add almond flakes too!

Anyway, very happy with the result. It amazes me how tasty are the raising in some dishes… they are super juicy and it makes the difference in this one.

Oatcakes

Sometimes I buy from the supermarket oatcakes for having snacks at home. I like them because they are not sweet and I think they are “healthy”. But then you check the ingredients list and realized that there are things you wouldnt think…

Anyway, I decided to give it a go and searched for some recipes. I decided for this recipe as it showed some pictures although I used just oats and plenty more water than a couple of tablespoons 🙂

Ingredients:

  • 200gr oats
  • 25g butter melted
  • 1tsp salt
  • 100-200ml boiling water

Process:

  • Preheat oven at 175C
  • In a bowl, mix the oats and butter.
  • Then add a couple of tsp of hot water at each time until you can form a ball. Knead inside the ball. It doesnt have to be sticky! so dont put too much water.
  • In a work surface, sprinkle a bit of flour and in a rolling pin. Carefully flat the dough with the pin. I tried to reach 0.5 thickness. The sides will crack but dont worry.
  • Use a cookie cutter. I used 8.5cm diameter cutter. Quite big cookie but I liked that way. Likely you will be able to cut one or two cookies at each time. Make a ball again with the leftovers, add water if needed, and repeat the process. Flat with the pin, cut a cookie, recover the leftovers.
  • I put a big of sunflower oil in the try, then move the cookies.
  • Bake for 25-30 minutes. Turn them at least once if you can.

And this is the result!

To be honest, the taste was stronger than the supermarket ones. It tastes (obviously) a lot to oats!

I thought 200g of oats would make a lot of oatcakes but just managed 5 big ones and 2 small pieces.

Happy with the result, and glad to learn something new!