Green Tyranny

[dukealien]

Green Tyranny


Last Sunday morning, having made
a single serving of Eggs Benedict
but with smoked salmon and
a Sauce Bearnaise instead of Hollandaise,
I plated it on antique glass,
watched carefully, trod slowly
so as not to spill a drop
of such laboriously founded victuals
and saw the fair white Sauce Bearnaise
when brought beneath the light of twisty bulbs
turn pea-soup green.

Thank God the egg that lay beneath,
its yolk poached golden yellow,
at least was decently concealed!
It all ate well, but what a shock -
fine food turned sickly by
a heinous, tyrant spectrum.

[Achebe]

Brilliant. Made me hungry.

[Quixilated]

Love this! Though it is light-hearted, it is really a bit of a tragic story. All that work, so much attention to detail, only to have it look green. But then ... It's like the fancy version of "green eggs and ham."

Especially love "laboriously founded victuals" and "heinous, tyrant spectrum."

[DavidF]

Green Tyranny


 
fine food turned sickly by
a heinous, tyrant spectrum.

Hi there, nice work I was right with you, looking forward to the meal.

I am now going to exasperate you. The spectrum was not at fault, it is unchanging. The filter on the bulbs removed too much red and blue. Will anyone care except me ? I think I kind of hope not. Any way it just might be worth thinking about.

D.

[dukealien]

@Achebe and @quixilated - Glad you liked it.  Making fancy eggs on Sunday mornings is sort of a tradtion at my house.

@DavidF - I'm not exasperated, except in the sense that an old, non-practicing physicist such as myself sighs when people talk about "centrifugal force."  (There is only centripetal force and angular momentum, but the two, together, present the appearance of a mysterious centrifugal force.)

The problem is not a filter, but the emission spectrum of the twisty (CFL) bulb:



The twisty bulb only emits on the frequencies represented by those three peaks, which correspond to photons emitted when energized electrons fall back from an available state back to a lower one (the nature of fluoresence).  The low background light is from the inner coating inside the twisty bulb to smooth things out a little (knocks off different wavelengths when hit by the limited lines from the fluorescent source - plus heat effects).

Incandescent bulbs emit over a steady (but not uniform) range because they're boiling off photons from heat - the Sun's the same way, but has even more elements doing fusion dances that emit a great variety of colors/frequencies, plus a lot of atmosphere to act as the smoothing coating of the CFL twisty.

In short, the CFL is a little crude.  Just read today that a way has been found to add a secondary filament or mirror to tradtional tungsten (incadescent) bulbs which can make them even more efficient than LED "bulbs" (and both more natural, i.e. Sun-like, and more efficient than twisties).

Please pardon the lecture.  I'm not exasperated, no, not at all!! 

Green Tyranny


 
fine food turned sickly by
a heinous, tyrant spectrum.

Hi there, nice work I was right with you, looking forward to the meal.

I am now going to exasperate you. The spectrum was not at fault, it is unchanging. The filter on the bulbs removed too much red and blue. Will anyone care except me ? I think I kind of hope not. Any way it just might be worth thinking about.

D.

[Leanne]

I'm still horrified by the departure from the glory of Hollandaise -- and the little dip into cliche with "pea-soup green" leaves a slightly bad taste in my mouth. That aside, I am relieved that the dissonance between appearance and taste was not too detrimental. Also, I now have an almost uncontrollable desire to serve breakfast under UV lamps, just for funsies.

[DavidF]

Please pardon the lecture.  I'm not exasperated, no, not at all!! 

[

 

Hi there, well I guess I now know what a twisty bulb is and that they don't use tungsten.

Darn my audacity in assuming that antique glass had something to do with the green.

I always enjoy learning new things about emission spectra and very odd choices for illumination and people and assumptions and whatnot.

Back to the poem, I think I might like a second comma in the last line, or no comma.
And how is it that you came to be colonised by these light bulbs ?

D.

[RiverNotch]

Green Tyranny I was kinda hoping for a complaint against environmentalism (say, the video below), but then I got Babette's Feast. Really happy now my recently filled stomach was watching The Godfather rather than Babette's Feast before this, haha, although all those people eating pasta....



Last Sunday morning, having made Mmm, Sunday morning haute cuisine.....
a single serving of Eggs Benedict
but with smoked salmon and
a Sauce Bearnaise instead of Hollandaise,
I plated it on antique glass, Somewhat missing an "an", although it's not really necessary.
watched carefully, trod slowly
so as not to spill a drop
of such laboriously founded victuals The wordiness of "laboriously founded victuals" is a real funny contrast to everything else's jargony simplicity; well, everything else but the title, "decently concealed", and the last line. Which I'm guessing is part of the point -- lovely!
and saw the fair white Sauce Bearnaise
when brought beneath the light of twisty bulbs
turn pea-soup green. Not really a complaint, but "pea-soup" brought a whole 'nother spectrum of flavors here that just made me hungrier. I didn't realize it was a genuine complaint until the next stanza, but then if the word was anything more disgusting (or less genuine), I would have been put-off altogether. Which, again, is not really a complaint, just a wee note.

Thank God the egg that lay beneath,
its yolk poached golden yellow,
at least was decently concealed! Do you really need 'at least'? It does make the cadence more even, but its fillery nature sticks out like hamburger buns a half-inch too thick....
It all ate well, but what a shock - Grammatically, this would read better without the dash, but then that bit of distance makes it more shocking -- I guess now, my mind revolts against the dash because I seek to curtail my abuse of it. That is, I'm not sure about the dash.
fine food turned sickly by
a heinous, tyrant spectrum. Sunday biley Sunday, eh?

A treat, but, truly, my great problem with this is no dessert. Either a sequel or some offhand mention of, say, Basil ice cream will do, thank you.

[ellajam]

I would surely rather have something that looks off but tastes right than the other way around. I am more of a cook than baker but I once made a gorgeous cherry pie, hand pitted with a perfect lattice crust but I had put in a tablespoon of almond extract in instead of a teaspoon, no matter how beautiful the inedible thing was a mouthful of cough syrup. Now I have other people bring the dessert.

Particularly loved "antique glass", good with no "an" , it made me think you had creatively plated on an old window pane, an "an" for me would change it to a drinking glass, tho my guess is it's a plate.

Anyway, lovely poem and interesting bulb lesson. My house is full of them, and besides the light quality they are just silly looking in antique lamps. Have any opinion on those expensive LED bulbs? What about the "Edisons" they're making now, any suggestions?

Thanks for the read, enjoying it.

[Keith]

Greta fun Duke, my wife has the same problem when shopping for black or navy blue, damned lights. They also use ultraviolet bulbs in hospital toilets, damned blue light stops me finding a vein.....they just vanish

[dukealien]

@all - Thanks for the reads, and the critiques.

@Leanne - While I would never use Bearnaise for regular Eggs Benedict with Canadian bacon, it is a Hollandaise variant and goes well with fish and steak, IMHO.  As to the glass, it was a clear "Depression" Glass saucer, technically "collectable" rather than antique, but OK to dress up the table a bit (my pattern is "Manhattan").

@RiverNotch - as @ellajam mentioned, CFL (twisty) lights are common in the States because some years ago a law was passed here forbidding manufacture of incandescent lights.  The law was passed in a mixture of motives both overt and covert:  overtly it was to further "energy independence" and reduce carbon dioxide emissions; covertly, to punish foul (middle class) capitalists by making them pay more to light theiir homes and to reward foul (crony) capitalists by making Americans buy much more expensive (also dangerously faulty as well as spectrally challenged) mercury-filled CFLs which cost - hence brought in - much more than perfectly good incandescents.

As you can see, your initial suspicion of a protest motif was justified.

@ellajam - Thanks for helping enlighten  @RiverNotch about our little (and not so little) tyrannies here in the States.  I don't know about Maine, but here in Texas it's quite easy to purchase standard incandescent bulbs.  They're imported, of course, but almost as reasonably priced as the US-made versions; quality varies from fair to poor.   I use them in my food preparation area, but not the dining area.  That may have to change!

[Namyh]

dukealien - Just when you think you've seen it all, you find out you haven't. Hallelujah! There's room for growth and maybe a few fancy eggs. Now I'm gettin' hungry. Enjoyed. Namyh