Daughter No. 2, age 10, has just asked "What are feathers made of".
I was hoping for a simple answer, but research (Google) has just taken me into a world of biological complication.
I was thrown out of Biology when I was 13 and banned from returning, which may account for my lack of knowledge and interest.
Has anybody got a simple explanation suitable for a bright 10yr old?
Bear in mind her question is not what are feathers, nor what are they for, it is quite specifically "what are they made of".
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Keratin. The same protein that composes hair and nails in mammals.
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Thank you.
I am shamed yet grateful.
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>> Keratin. The same protein that composes hair and nails in mammals.
>>
That's not really an answer though, is it? Just giving something a name?
What's keratin? A mysterious animal substance that is part of the animal, grows as if it were living, feels no pain if cut, replicates itself if trimmed, yet has no power to do so once disconnected from the body.
So a bit like a plant, with it's roots attached to its host?
How does it work?
Why do nails regrow but not apparently rhino horn?
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>>That's not really an answer though, is it?
Name: Keratin
What is it: Protein
Explanation: Like hair and nails in mammals.
Seemed like a pretty good answer to me given that the question was "what are feathers made of", and it satisfied a critical 10yr old audience and her friend.
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>> >>That's not really an answer though, is it?
>>
>> Name: Keratin
>> What is it: Protein
>> Explanation: Like hair and nails in mammals.
>>
>> Seemed like a pretty good answer to me given that the question was "what are
>> feathers made of", and it satisfied a critical 10yr old audience and her friend.
>>
How curiously incurious of them then. Most children I know immediately follow up any answer with a further more searching question, quickly spotting attempts to fob them off with fancy names or "it's just like" something else.
Actually it isn't just like hair and nails (I discover having looked it up). It's a different kind of keratin, distinct from hair and hoof keratin.
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>> How curiously incurious of them then. Most children I know immediately follow up any answer with a further more searching question,
A clip round the ear will cure them of that tiresome habit.
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""what are they made of""
We were taught that it was keratin - a proteinaceous material. You can tell it's protein from the stink if you burn them.
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Oooo, proteinaceous!
I thought I'd throw that in on top of WdB's information for extra credibility.
Her response? "What's that in Spanish?".
I can tell you after a bit of panicked research, its "proteÃnico"
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A friend has owned a Tex-Mex takeaway down Leith Walk in Edinburgh for a few years called 'Los Cardos'.
Maybe you can impress her by knowing that it is Spanish for 'The Thistles' (and also 'ugly mug' and 'prickly customer' apparently)
(Shameless ad - maybe if they see it I'll get a free burrito next time...)
www.loscardos.co.uk/
www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186525-d1758274-Reviews-Los_Cardos-Edinburgh_Scotland.html
Last edited by: Lygonos on Fri 12 Jun 15 at 23:57
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I wonder if Los Cardos serves Huevos Rancheros for breakfast? The perfect start to the day after a heavy night on Tennents Lager
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Maybe not, but I do! Reminds me: need more chorizo (that's 'choreetho', not 'choritzo', incidentally) and smoked chipotle Tabasco - great stuff, that.
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>> 'choreetho', not 'choritzo'
goo.gl/NLwfwM (Guardian).
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You've got me salivating now...fish tacos made with mahi mahi
Washed down with a few cold bottles of Pacifico or Modelo
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>> >> 'choreetho', not 'choritzo'
>>
>> goo.gl/NLwfwM (Guardian).
Enjoyed that, thanks Manatee. Also learned that my imagined pronunciation of "quinoa" was way off beam. I was saying it, goodness knows why, as CHI NOIR. I think I thought it was Chinese. But I'm not sure I've ever said it out loud, so nobody ever need know. Oh, wait...
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>> Maybe not, but I do! Reminds me: need more chorizo (that's 'choreetho', not 'choritzo', incidentally)
Why?
You don't say Paree, do you?
Or do you?
If the staff in a coffee shop say 'any panini? Do you say 'oh no, I couldn't eat two. Just one panino for me, please'.
Chorizo is a foreign word which has become Anglicised. Whether you say 'cor ease oh', or 'cor eeth oh', doesn't matter.
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>> "Just one spaghetto"?
>>
Yes, you could do and it would be grammatically correct.
It wouldn't be much of a meal though, would it?
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Much rather have just one Cornetto.
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Instead of two cornitti, from walls ice-creami?
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>> "Just one spaghetto"?
>>
>> Yes, you could do and it would be grammatically correct.
>> It wouldn't be much of a meal though, would it?
It would if it was long enough. But whoever cooked it would have a problem feeding it into an ordinary saucepan: by the time the whole thing was in the first end would be getting overcooked, with the tail end still needing ten or twelve minutes. And it would be extravagant to invest in a long thin cooking vessel with a long thin flame under it.
I wonder what length of spaghetto makes a reasonable portion? Ten or fifteen feet I guess. But it is a guess.
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Well I'm glad you came back to sort that out for us AC.
The mention of food-specific cooking vessels gives me the opportunity ostentatiously to mention my new asparagus cooker, a thing of beauty I found in Aldi reduced to £14.99. It has a basket for the stalks, and is tall and narrow so they can be cooked vertically with the woody bits in the water and the softer part steaming.
Yet another chuffing thing to find room in a cupboard for, I might have to chuck out a sandwich toaster or one of the redundant coffee gadgets.
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>>I might have to chuck out a sandwich toaster
Go and wash your mouth out with soap!!!!
I couldn't survive without one..
Ham & cheese and cheese & pickle are just two examples that my life would be less without.
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>> Ham & cheese and cheese & pickle are just two examples that my life would
>> be less without.
I do love a toasted sandwich. There a cafe in the church hall at St Ives Cambs. , which we visit occasionally, that does them. I always have one, and then another one, and if the boss isn't around, maybe another one. Cheese and onion for preference.
Somehow though, I never seem to get around to making one at home. Perhaps because I can't remember which cupboard the sandwich toaster is in.
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>>Somehow though, I never seem to get around to making one at home.
I sleep less than most and am often prowling the house/garden alone late at night.
A peaceful and toasted cheese & xxx sandwich with a cup of tea in the middle of the night is a wonderful thing.
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True, Manatee, but the coffee isn't that fantastic in there. Like the little touristy shop next to it though.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sat 13 Jun 15 at 21:16
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>> True, Manatee, but the coffee isn't that fantastic in there. Like the little touristy shop
>> next to it though.
Can't place the touristy shop..Mustafa look on streetview.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sat 13 Jun 15 at 21:23
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This is the church with the cafe in it... goo.gl/btGxAF
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That's the one. I mean the shop inside, with its entrance right by the cafe entrance.They sell all sorts of charity knick knacks from around the world, so you can get some touristy (as in probably not really "ethnic" but made for the trade) bits that are unusual at least. I have an "African soapstone" dish on my office desk from there. It's a tactile little piece.
You must have been in.
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>> You must have been in.
Yes, I'd forgotten about that...the boss usually has a wander round while I try not to look impatient (or sneak another toastie next door).
My usual reason for reason for visiting St Ives is to peruse the whisky at Wadsworth's, but the cafe has been added to the itinerary.
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>> If the staff in a coffee shop say 'any panini? Do you say 'oh no,
>> I couldn't eat two. Just one panino for me, please'.
Yes. Well, no, but I did ask for a panino in the very friendly little coffee shop in Moreton in Marsh recently, and ended up explaining (nicely).
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>> Yes. Well, no, but I did ask for a panino in the very friendly little
>> coffee shop in Moreton in Marsh recently, and ended up explaining (nicely).
>>
So you're that guy.
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Chore-ee-so here.
Where as I pronounce it "sausage".
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Bangers in my part of the world. Preferably with onion gravy. And mushy peas.
Snorkers in less civilised parts
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Wot, like ships in the Royal Navy?
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Boats, surely?
( ducks for cover)
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>> Boats, surely?
>> ( ducks for cover)
I think it was a reference to The Cruel Sea. Lieutenant Bennett - "Snorkers! Good-oh!"
www.imdb.com/title/tt0045659/quotes
In the book he was Australian so maybe that is where it comes from.
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Australian slang for sausages is "Snags".
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>> Australian slang for sausages is "Snags".
Perhaps it wasn't in those days. But anyway ON, Bennett in the novel is a greedy, rather gross character who loves the awful sausages everyone else hates, and has christened them 'snorkers'.
In the forties and fifties the British still thought Aussies very rough and ready. Hip Sydney intellectuals who think the British unclean and reactionary were unknown to science in those days. Lots of them now though.
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>> Australian slang for sausages is "Snags".
I've heard Aussies refer to them as little bundles of mystery - apt I thought.
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I now make my own sausages - had some tonight as a matter of fact.
No MSG in mine - just coarsely minced shoulder & belly pork, 10% by weight of breadcrumbs from home baked wholemeal bread, fresh sage and thyme from the herb garden, ground black pepper. ground nutmeg, salt and water, all filled into in natural casings of pig's gut .
They are not cheap to make!
Next batch will have a few more herbs.
BTW, SWMBO goes ballistic if I call them snorkers!
Last edited by: Roger. on Sat 13 Jun 15 at 20:19
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>> They are not cheap to make!
>> Next batch will have a few more herbs.
>> BTW, SWMBO goes ballistic if I call them snorkers!
All the local butchers make their own. We've made them here too. You can get half a dozen sorts in the local supermarkets.
'Snorkers' are something else though, something for people like Bennett, not gently-raised British officers.
There used to be a WW2 protein-rich product called 'snoek'. Perhaps snorkers contained it.
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"snoek" = whale flesh I believe.
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>> "snoek" = whale flesh I believe.
Only too likely, I mean yuck...
I have somewhere a photo of a line of blokes standing on the floating corpse of a whale flensing it, cutting out the drek from the good saleable stuff using these serious cutters.
The stench, the awareness of having murdered a huge intelligent mammal, must have disturbed many a whaler's dreams.
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>> "snoek" = whale flesh I believe.
Processed though.
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Just idling my time and musing on Lud's spaghetto problem. Easily solved without any recourse to specialist equipment.
Get Lady Lud to extract a portion from the packet to suit an average person. Then measure the combined length of all the pieces. Superglue the ends together and you then have a spaghetto long enough to satisfy your appetite.
Cook in a normal pan by boiling up the water and feeding the length in as it softens. Simples !
No need for thanks, just leave cash in the 3rd cistern along in the gents at Euston.
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>> Cook in a normal pan by boiling up the water and feeding the length in as it softens. Simples !
I refer you to my post from Saturday 13th, 19.11hrs. There's a problem with cooking time. Quite apart from the desirability of consuming superglue.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 14 Jun 15 at 00:24
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>> I refer you to my post from Saturday 13th, 19.11hrs. There's a problem with cooking
>> time. Quite apart from the desirability of consuming superglue.
It would be fairly easy to develop a machine for extruding continuous spaghetti and coiling it into the equivalent of those portion sized Cumberland ring sausages. Then it could either be sold fresh or dried. You would just drop the whole 30' coil into the pan and hoik it out 10 minutes later.
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You would just drop the whole 30' coil into the pan and hoik it out 10 minutes later.
...if you like it overdone. 8'30" is plenty. But I don't think 30 feet would be enough. According to my Heston Blumenthal scales, ten strands of Napolina bronze die spaghetti - total length 2.6m - weigh 9.2g. So for a slightly stingy 92g (uncooked) portion you'd need 100 strands, or 26m, or nearly 90 feet.
We were in Portsmouth again yesterday and took the water bus across to Gosport for the tour of HMS Alliance. That is 200-odd feet long and had a crew of 68, so might have been ideal for the just-one-spaghetto method. Only problem is that the messes are amidships, so the submariners would have had to start nibbling from the middle of the strand.
I was astonished, incidentally, that although the sailors were not allowed to use up water by washing, they were allowed to use up oxygen by smoking. Extraordinary priorities; perhaps the smoke covered up the smell of unwashed submatelots.
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>> I was astonished, incidentally, that although the sailors were not allowed to use up water
>> by washing, they were allowed to use up oxygen by smoking. Extraordinary priorities; perhaps the
>> smoke covered up the smell of unwashed submatelots.
>>
Oxygen and submatlots are easy to replace, fresh water is not. :-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 14 Jun 15 at 14:18
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Snoek probably deodorised bleached and dyed. Not unlike margarine I suppose. Double yuk.
Last edited by: NortonES2 on Sun 14 Jun 15 at 07:20
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I wasn't advocating actually eating the superglued spaggi Carmel. It was more of a laboratory exercise.
I'm sure that eating a 90ft Spaggo the traditional kid's way...sucking it in in one go would result in some impressive bolly sauce stained face slapping as the final foot arrives at your mazzard !
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>> sucking it in in one go would result in some impressive bolly sauce stained face slapping as the final foot arrives at your mazzard !
:&{
A vivid image Ted, and all too familiar.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 14 Jun 15 at 16:07
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Feathers........... - WillDeBeest
