A carnival of technology

Folks have been complaining that I haven’t baked anything recently, so I guess it’s time to start that up again. I’ve decided to try something completely different, a sort of Moroccan take on baklava, so it should be pretty exciting. I’ve never used phyllo before, and I felt some degree of accomplishment just being able to find it in the grocery store. One thing I noticed right away was that the box actually spelled it “fillo” with “phyllo” written small underneath. Why do we transliterate ? as ph? Isn’t there pretty much a one-to-one mapping from Greek to Latin letters? It’s apparently actually spelled ????? if anyone’s curious, and maybe that weird accent is taken into account for the Latin spelling. I don’t even know what it does. The insane part of me briefly thought about trying to make my own sheets, but that nagging rational voice remembered all of my pasta failures, and I just bought the kind in the box.

Really, the only difference between the stuff I’m trying to make and the baklava you can buy at your favorite local Greek restaurant is the addition of some goofy spices. A couple of them were a little daunting, like rose water. I don’t think that’s something I can find at Publix. I asked the Internet, and it offered me some tiny little bottles of the stuff for like ten bucks plus shipping. Then I got the bright idea to try that Middle Eastern grocery store on Mansell next to the pizza place I like and the National Guard recruiting center I don’t like. They sell coke bottle sized containers of rose water for two bucks along with all kinds of other spices I’ve never heard of. The Internet’s a scam. And some jerk in a uniform tried to get me to enlist while I was locking my bike. I would stay away from that strip altogether if the pizza weren’t so good.