during the week i had come across a poster advertizing the "fest der farbe" exhibition at the zürich kunsthaus and it looked like an interesting exhibition — it's raining, so, in the afternoon we went by bus, tram, & tram to the kunsthaus…and joined the queue. we eventually make it into the exhibition (i get bounced once for not having put my rucksack into one of the downstairs lockers, and barely avoid getting bounced at the second attempt to get in: the french speaking curator–bouncer spots my camera and explains with a stern voice in frenched german that one is not allowed to take any pictures — which i promise not to do) and it is an interesting exhibition. as the title already alludes to, it's an exhibition focusing on color. starting at the impressionists and working its way to the 1960s, 1970s. the first half is made up mostly of impressionist paintings and the beginnings of abstract art. the picture that dorothee and i both like best is alexandra exeter's farbdynamik 1916–1918. needless to say, that there's no postcard or poster of her painting on sale anywhere. also, as it turns out, not a lot about her to be found in the internet — the only titbit we can locate is that she was part of the 1910s/1920s avant garde in russia. the second half of the exhibition more or less rapidly deteriorates into art for the well-off chattering classes: more or less randomly splattered blotches of color on various kinds of backgrounds. if the artists couldn't think of an original name they seemed to call it head of an angel (i counted four or so, none of which had any discernable motif. in contrast to last year's monet's gardens exhibition we are done with fest der farbe in a little over one hour. it's still raining outside.

p.s.: by sheer coincidence i found out that the kunsthaus folks seems to have had an 'e' to spare and turned alexandra exter into alexandra exeter…and her name really is aleksandra ekster

well…that recipe worked: a rather nice porridge, even though our oatmeal (coop's "bio-haferflöckli" — i wonder what the non-diminutive variant would look like: giant oatmeal flakes?) is probably not up to spec. i had started off with the full recipe, but as soon as i had a full cup measure of oatmeal in the saucepan i realized that there were only two of us and that we didn't intend to live on porridge the whole day. so:

• ½ cup of oatmeal
• 2 cups of water
• ¼ teaspoon of salt, and
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ¼ cup of cream

mix the oatmeal and water in a saucepan, heat it until it's barely cooking, stirring every so often and cook at low heat for 5min. then add the sugar and the salt. turn the heat off and cover with a lid until you are ready to serve: add the cream before serving and stir it in briskly (always wanted to use that word ). serve in warm bowls. add brown sugar according to taste (i.e., none or quite a bit).

serves 2.

we added chopped apples (doro) and dried plumes (me).

for some strange, unfathomable reason we have a craving for porridge this weekend. so i’m researching porridge recipes after getting up this morning (it’s our 19th wedding anniversary today and we are having a lie-in ) — i start off with wikipedia’s entry on porridge, get to wikipedia’s oatmeal porridge page, and, following the links, end up on the golden spurtle world porridge making championship web page. we settle for duncan hilditch’s porridge recipe:

Porridge - V Recipe: Duncan Hilditch, Chef/Proprietor of the Ecclefechan Bistro, Carrbridge. Current World Porridge Making Champion. Take one cup of oatmeal and put into a saucepan with four cups of cold water. Stir gently over a medium heat until it reaches simmering point, lower the heat and continue to stir - to avoid any lumps - for five minutes. Add half a teaspoon of salt and two teaspoons of sugar, and half a cup of buttermilk or cream. Give a final good stir and serve in a warm bowl.

© 2005 Carrbridge Community Council

let’s see how that one will turn out…

calm.