Pain and Pain

1. While running this loop yesterday, these words echoed in my head:

"What is pain?"

"French bread!"

2. ...which reminds me of one of the better bakeries in Los Angeles, La Maison du Pain. Or, as my friend Erica likes to call it, "The House of Pain." The House of Pain is known for their croissants...

3. ...As you may know, croissant means crescent (I did not know this). And there is an unexpected reminder of the French origins of the Crescent Roll on Pillsbury website: the highest rated Crescent Roll recipe with more than 10 votes is "Pear Havarti Crêpe Squares" (complete with circumflexed e!). Sadly, the only winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off ($1,000,000 grand prize) with her own wikipedia entry is Ellie Matthews (b. 1945)...

4. ...Ms. Matthews's winning dish has a horrible name, "Salsa Couscous Chicken." The recipe itself looks fine--it's apparently aiming to be a chicken tagine. El Paso Salsa is the only Pillsbury ingredient in the recipe, which blows a hole in the theory that a winning recipe needs to include lots of Pillsbury ingredients...

5 ... Ms. Matthews is an author, winner of the 2007 Milkweed Editions Award for children's fiction (it appears the award = getting your book published by Milkweed). Milkweed, the plant, is also known as Asclepias....

6. ...Asclepias is named after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. According to Plato, Socrates's last words were, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it, and do not forget."These words got Nietszche pretty riled up, and puzzle the rest of us...

7. ...unlike Plato, I don't think pain is intrinsically bad. When I remarked to a friend that I've grown to like the pain of running he told me that it isn't the pain I like but the endorphins. I find this strange. In addition to pain I also like pain. No one would say, "you just like the dopamine that's released when you eat pain aux raisins."