I believe it is stated by some people here that RJ corrected Faile's age when she got married upwards by a couple years. But search hates me and I cannot find those threads or any evidence of this on the internet. Ah, remembered I started the thread so I could find it after all.

But let's take the discussion further again. We have had some chocolate-ish recipes, so let's get back to the cerebral part. Fairtrade chocolate. In my opinion, it is a scam. Now, let me qualify that. Fair trade is, in general, a good thing. Indeed if we claim to live in a capitalist society then a free market is needed and what happens when the first world is trading with the third world is not a free market. Purchasing agreements that safe guard and develop the environment, sustainable production, education, local communities, etc, all fantastic, but that should be the norm, not some special deal. Things like Tony's Chocolonely that make fair trading, and fair employment practices the norm and a large scale are good. But. Where does the cost of Fair trade go? It costs many times the price of normal chocolate. And the majority of that money is not invested in the farming communities. From what I have seen a bag of cocoa that is enough for 500 bars costs about 50 cents. Fairtrade pays 55 cents. Hopefully that situation has improved. Most money that you pay for the chocolate of course goes to the marketing and to the high class outlets that are making more profit on each bar than a normal bar costs. But Fairtrade chocolate does cost more, a lot more, as a raw ingredient. And not because the farmers get paid more, but because of how it is transported. It must be transported separately from all the other cocoa. So while normal cocoa beans are being transported in huge quantities at the lowest scale cost, Fairtrade chocolate is being kept apart and not getting any where near the benefits of scale but instead incurs extra costs to keep the transport chain traceable and transparent. And why? So that people eating the chocolate can know that more money was spent on making sure they were feeling smug about eating Fairtrade chocolate than was invested in the laudable goals of the chocolate. Because that is the added value of the chocolate, the soothing of first world guilt, not the benefit to the third world. A better system should possible, where the purchase of the product directly helps the producers without needing to be tied to a separate and inefficient transport chain, and more should be done at an international level to make the need for specifically slave free chocolate, or environmentally friendly chocolate a thing of the past. This is my unpopular opinion #453.

Well, I've seen lots of things people do on the telly that I wouldn't want or dare to repeat, but I suppose it could be possible. In glass? Wouldn't like to do it in plastic. It is easy enough in water, and not that time consuming, but maybe there are other benefits

Microwaving? Mother's milk in a cup! Where did you see that that could be done? Housekeeping by Semirhage? Ten Things Guaranteed to Stop You Having to Clean the Kitchen Ever Again? Boiling in a pan of water. Simmering, even. Lots of times, without mishap, though the hole in the tin is probably a good safety element. It does indeed seem like magic, but the sugar content is incredibly high.

You enjoy this far too much. Do you get to press a button to get the pedestals to rise up? An A, if you please.

I have never seen caramel in a tin, and I guess it is not sold here otherwise people wouldn't be boiling condensed milk. Though this recipe has a hole in the tin, I have definitely done so without any hole without any explosion, and then as the tin is still whole and sterile the caramel will keep indefinitely until you want to use it. Not sure I would recommend that though as I don't want to be responsible for exploding tins of boiling sugar around the world. It must be said though that this caramel will definitely have a condensed milk-like flavour - which is not per se a bad thing but I imagine might not fit every dish. Works great with banoffee pie though, and I have never used it for anything else. Well, except for a la spoon, though that does not really count and is fantastically unhealthy.

I did not know that the Brown Ajah espoused dogma. Plus I never said I liked it (in small quantities, I do actually) I was merely contesting the argument that it was not chocolate.

Millionaires' shortbread 500g butter, softened 175g caster sugar 600g flour, sifted 1 tin of condensed milk (400g) 200g 70% cocoa or good quality milk chocolate The day before making, place the tin of condensed milk with a hole pierced in the top into a pan of water and bring to the boil and cook over a medium heat for two hours. Remove from the heat and leave overnight. Preheat the oven to 160 C/325 F. Beat together the butter and and the sugar. Beat in the flour 100g at at a time, until smooth. If the dough becomes to stiff to stir, knead in the rest of the flour with your hands. Grease and flour a shallow rectangular tin. Pour the dough in and make even with a pallet knife. Bake in a preheated over for 40 minutes at 150 C/300 F. Spread the caramelised condensed milk over the shortbread once cooled. Melt the chocolate and spread over the caramel. Slice before completely cool and then leave in a cool place for the toppings to set.

In all honesty, I don't have one. I had an "incident" in my youth involving profiteroles and the very rich chocolate sauce that comes with them. I don't remember if I was ill or simply over ate, but I was very physically ill and it took literally decades for the taste, or even the thought of it, not to make me gag. So I loved chocolate, but chocolate-flavoured things could have me running to the toilet. But I found my recipe book 🙂 I had done a good job hiding it, but not good enough. Chocolate does not seem to feature highly in traditional Scottish cuisine, though. Chocolate Eclairs 2.5 oz flour 2 eggs 1 oz butter 0.25 pint water 0.25 tsp vanilla extract Pinch salt 1 tsp castor sugar Whipped cream Chocolate icing Boil the butter and water in a pan; sift the flour and add to boiling liquid. Keep on the heat and beat the mixture until smooth and leaving the sides of the pan, stirring all the time. Allow to cool slightly then add the beaten eggs gradually. Keep beating, then add vanilla extract. Pipe finger lengths of the pastry onto a buttered baking tray. Cook in a high oven (I'm assuming that these means the same as hot, but not entirely sure, 220-230 C or 425-450 F) for about 30 minutes or until light brown. When cooked split and remove soft inside. Fill with whipped cream or pastry custard. Ice with chocolate icing.

Very insightful, though I would generally favour following the book's given motivation until there is a compelling reason (sorry) not to. Definitely, he was lax, a toady on her door would have been sufficient to stop her escape, obviously she was not a high priority. But iirc we see Rahvins's point of view where he expressly refers to Morgase as someone he still had use for. He was aware that she was struggling but took insufficient measures. There is no reason I can see to contradict his inner thoughts, unreliable narrator cannot be said to be at play here. Also not wanting to let RL intrude, but narcissists never let you go. Never. 100% they would destroy you rather than letting you go your own way. Rahvin might let her feel how useless she was but then he would reel her back in and feed on her hopelessness. If he was a narcissist anyway. Someone suffering out of sight gives them no supply, and risks them not being the centre of attention.

Except in Morgase's case, it works or it doesn't and when it works, it works, except when it doesn't. Which is necessary for the plot, and makes Compulsion a little bit less like a "I win" button, but still slightly unsatisfying. Though aside from that quibble, I definitely agree that while there is nothing that proves there was no Compulsion, and it does fit to an extent, it does not seem consistent with Lanfear's personality. She goes to great lengths to try to bring Rand to her voluntarily. Now it could be argued this would just be tiniest of tiniest nudges, but it still to me feels like a step over a line, that if Lanfear was going to cross, she would do so a lot more emphatically.

Pictures do paint a thousand words. Or whatever the saying is, that sounds a bit odd. But as the story does revolve around Rand from beginning to end, there are no specific books about him, and without following his development, it may be difficult to empathize with him. But I hope you find whatever enjoyment you can, it may be that the books will not be to your taste and you will have to wait for the next series to come out. But I truly hope you do enjoy the books, they have been such a pleasure for me, it is something that is great to share.

A D this time, please.

Is a French press a cafetiere? And we are talking about cocoa mass here, not cocoa solids? Don't even know what that is called in Dutch. Cocoa nibs though are pretty easy to find and I have still not broken the cherry on my mortar and pestle...

Would flowers grow in winter with a little fertilizer and a heater?

No, I don't think that Morgase would have been shocked or surprised, but I also think she would have still considered the Two Rivers part of her Kingdom. And while it is true we don't see much of the rural populace, we don't see anything that shows they are not aware of which nation they are in. We do see unclaimed lands, and the peasants are very much aware that no crown claims them or protects them. We see Bayle Domon and Julian Sandar that have their nationalistic prejudices, without having any direct interest in the conflict. I disagree that Iterulda is the exception. We see fierce nationalism in Mayene and Ghealdan, for example, and Murandy and Altara are specifically noted for their lack national spirit; which can only mean it is the norm everywhere else. I would actually say the peasantry is one the worst things in Jordan's world building. For one they are all ultra-traditional as far as I can remember. Working men, women in aprons covered in flour herding children about the place. Serving maids being sexually assaulted as part of their job, and maids and stable men being presented nearly uniformly as almost a sub-species of human in terms of their intellect, ambition and world views. We don't see a lot of the Seanchan settlers, but there is nothing that we do see that is not exactly the same as everywhere else. But anyway that is all as may be, for me I would have liked as I cannot imagine that Morgase would give up her claim to the area, while I'm sure she would not wholly be interested in sending in the Queen's Guard to enforce her claims. Whereas I'm sure the people from the Two Rivers would be suitably impressed by a Queen, and would be very hospitable, but would also still intend to be independent. As it is, that independence gets all a bit confused as Jordan has them falling over themselves to install a Lord as soon as the idea is even slightly mentioned. It is definitely a weak point in the story - or a claim that people, deep down in their bones, all want an unelected person to grow rich off their labour, and be unable to organise their own society without one.

I've always thought it must be similar to healing - a speeding up and strengthening of the plants metabolism, possibly also enhancing photosynthesis so that the plant does not die from lack of energy, or need to recover like after healing as would not leave the plants looking healthy even if they had grown a lot.

That is what we learnt at school anyway. And as a result when they have coffee for breakfast that is also often served in bowls to have bread products dipped in it. Maybe it is not so popular now, that was in the eighties and probably at best based on stuff a decade before that, but I would have thought it would take a long time to change such habits. Now where is that recipe book? *scratches head*

Yes the morning chocolate was a big thing. The morning chocolate by a venetian painter in the eighteenth century. In 1662, the pope himself even declared that drinking chocolate did not break fasting. In France, chocolate is still a normal breakfast, served hot in bowls with a sweet bread or croissant to dip.

I know, what a catchy title, took me a while to come up with it. Anyway, recipes, you have them, I want them. And anyone with recipes involving white chocolate will have amnesty from the Cocoacloaks that throng around these parts. All chocolate is worthy of devouring, we will not have discrimination here. As I am sure everyone is aware of, chocolate originated in South America. The cocoa tree was first domesticated 5,300 years ago in present-day Ecuador. The seeds of the fruit of the cocoa tree are very bitter and need to be fermented before being processed. The fruits of the three types of cocoa tree are shown above. After fermentation, the seeds are roasted and the husks of the seeds are harvested as cocoa nibs. The nibs can be ground into cocoa mass, and then liquefied by heat into chocolate liquor. The liquor can then be cooled and processed into cocoa solids and cocoa butter. The solids are then often further treated with an alkalizing agent such as potassium or sodium carbonate to remove the acidity of the solids, which gives it a much less bitter taste. This is often called Dutch cocoa, after the pioneering chocolate maker Coenraad Johannes van Houten, who developed the technique. You can see the relative degree of Dutching by the colour of the solids. The darker powder on the left are Dutched solids, on the right, natural cocoa solids. Dutching also has an effect on the level of caffeine (reducing it to a third) and the anti-oxidants (reducing them by 60%) in the cocoa solids. It is interesting to note that cocoa is so high in anti-oxidants that even Dutch cocoa is considered a high anti-oxidant food. Dutch cocoa forms the basis for most modern chocolate applications. I was not going to include how chocolate is made as I thought everyone would already know, but actually after reading briefly up on it I realised that there a lot of detail there that I was completely ignorant about, so I have included the basics anyway. Everyone loves chocolate, but of course, people being people, there has to be a dark side to it as well. While the plant was first domesticated in South America, currently most chocolate is grown in West Africa. It is estimated that more than two million children are involved in the farming of cocoa in Africa, with two major concerns being human trafficking and slavery. In a Dutch program about slavery involved in chocolate a spokesperson for Nestle appeared to downplay the importance of slavery as your normal chocolate farmer was so poor, it really did not make a lot difference. Here in the Netherlands, a reporter called Teun van de Keuken, made headlines when he reported himself to the police for being an accomplice to slavery. His argument was that he knew that chocolate was produced using slavery yet still financially contributed to the process by buying chocolate. Legal experts advised that there was definitely a case to be answered under Dutch law, and Teun collected tens of thousands of signatures urging for him to be jailed. In the end, the court decided the motion was inadmissible and without denying the horrors involved in cocoa production, prosecuting Teun and the more than two thousand other chocolate consumers that came forward, was not the correct way to deal with the issue. The publicity, and a cynic might point to research that people would pay many times more for chocolate that was guaranteed to be slave free, lead to Teun's own brand of chocolate - "Tony's Chocolonely", a name thought up for a new Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream that Teun tried to pitch to that company as part of his awareness raising about the issue - has become the market leader in the Netherlands, and costs at least three times as much as Verkade, the previous market leader. So that is a bit depressing. Even outside of the exploitation of the farmers, as part of Teun's programming, he traveled to Africa where the chocolate was farmed with a suitcase full of chocolate. In a village, with the Headman's permission, he distributed the various chocolate bars and sweeties out (after the Headsman had had first pick) to the villagers, none of whom had never tasted chocolate before in their lives, despite spending their entire lives farming the cocoa plant. Truly upsetting and humbling as an indication of the privilege that we have in the First World. Anyway on that point, I'll open the floor to anyone else that would like to discuss anything about chocolate or share a recipe, and go look up some good recipes to share. Where is Maw Broon's cookbook now?

We Shadowspawn do not need to bluster to pretend to be fearsome. We are terrifying. *turns eyeless gaze on Moridin* Accede to my request or not, but you only let your fear show with these games.

Could I respectfully ask for an N?

Could ask for the highly unlikely E. It being the most common letter in the English language and a near certainty with TH up in a three-letter word, I thought I would take one for the team and guess it.

Yes, they were going to leave before Tar'mon Gaidon, but Loial's eloquence before the Great Stump won the day for staying and fighting and dying so Rand could live and have a harem. Though the Seanchan Ogier appear to be not part of that, though that is all a bit confused in the lore due to lack of information. *has fingers crossed he has not made this bit up*

The answer obviously would take far too long to really go into. A short answer would not do the subject justice. I'll put the full detailed answer in spoilers to save people scrolling. This is a thread that I have been meaning to contribute to but did not manage so far due to acute laziness. However anyone tries to argue the point, knowledge and interpretation are inseparable. Facts alone are meaningless. Intellectual systems without factual basis are also meaningless. Or maths, so pretty much the same. For example, what does archaeology tell us without interpretation? If pottery shards are found at a certain depth at a certain location, is that fact interesting or illuminating? A theory of what those shards mean has to concocted. Or another example is New Coke. Despite worldwide domination (what would alien archaeologists make of the spread of Coca Cola merchandise in a few hundred years?), those at Coca Cola felt that their product always coming the bottom of blind taste testing was something they needed to fix. Because that was a fact. And facts are important, m'kay? So the multi-billion dollar (I may be exaggerating) disaster that was New Coke happened. But if it was fact based how could this be? As the taste tests were sip tests. Which were not accurate to how most people drink soft drinks. Interpretation is important. Intellect on its own though leads to the horrors that can be seen in the discussion of the Raven paradox. But I am not allowed to talk about that. *pouts* Oh, I haven't pouted in months! Everyone is being far too well behaved. *pouts again* I know, you are thinking what about Egyptian hieroglyphs. Exactly. No, come with me on this one. We can read hieroglyphs, even though they baffled everyone for quite literally thousands of years. Until they were deciphered it was the prevalent theory that they pictorial, which seems so dumb, as if they were, why could everyone not understand them? But anyway. Some English guy whose name escapes me and if you are too lazy to look it up then I don't see why I should, noticed that the Egyptians circled the names of their pharaohs (lit. big house, only used very late in Egyptian history) to protect them from evil magic. The circle is called a cartouche, from the French for cartridge as it was French soldiers who first remarked upon them in Napoleon's jaunt into Egypt. So this meant said English guy could work out what the names of the pharaohs were in hieroglyphs. This led to him painstakingly making a phonetic alphabet of hieroglyphs. Though of course, that does not help you understand what it actually means. Queue some French bloke, ah ha!, Jean Pollion, bet you didn't expect that, I can remember about one name in a thousand. So there. Anyway, where was I? Ah, queue Jean, who was a precocious little trolloc, whose father was a librarian. So little Jean grew up amongst books, and by the time he was a teenager could speak (well, read at least) something like 23 languages. And when he was looking at the latest research on hieroglyphs, he realised he could understand it. One of the languages that he spoke was Coptic, the language of the orthodox church in Egypt - that to this day still holds mass in the Egyptian language of priests, ancient Egyptian. And so now we can understand the very words of a civilisation thousands of years old. Thanks to amazing reasoning, and superlative knowledge. The two cannot be un-intertwined. I was going to go on about Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, but I'll leave that for another day. Disclaimer: I haven't looked any of this up, so the actual details may not be entirely consist with the external world outwith my brain, but that does not affect the argument contained within.