lunes, 14 de mayo de 2012

Grandes principios. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.
``My dear Mr. Bennet,'' said his lady to him one day, ``have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?''
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
``But it is,'' returned she; ``for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.''
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
``Do not you want to know who has taken it?'' cried his wife impatiently.
``You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.''
This was invitation enough.
``Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.''
``What is his name?''
``Bingley.''
``Is he married or single?''
``Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!''
``How so? how can it affect them?''
``My dear Mr. Bennet,'' replied his wife, ``how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.''
``Is that his design in settling here?''
``Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.''
``I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better; for, as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party.''
``My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.''
``In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.''
``But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.''
``It is more than I engage for, I assure you.''
``But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know they visit no new comers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him, if you do not.''
``You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying which ever he chuses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.''
``I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.''
``They have none of them much to recommend them,'' replied he; ``they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.''
``Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.''
``You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.''
``Ah! you do not know what I suffer.''
``But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.''
``It will be no use to us if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.''
``Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty I will visit them all.''
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

sábado, 12 de mayo de 2012

¿Cuál prefieres?

La primera de Queen?


O la versión de Glee? A mí me apasiona Glee, me apasionan los número musicales; las historietas me interesan menos. Pero me doy cuenta de que me encantan las versiones que hacen y casi tengo más en el Ipod que las originales....

jueves, 10 de mayo de 2012

Una Caperucita de Roald Dahl (Revolting Rhymes)


Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf
by Roald Dahl

As soon as Wolf began to feel
That he would like a decent meal,
He went and knocked on Grandma's door.
When Grandma opened it, she saw
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
And Wolfie said, ``May I come in?''

Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
``He's going to eat me up!'' she cried.

And she was absolutely right.
He ate her up in one big bite.
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And Wolfie wailed, ``That's not enough!
I haven't yet begun to feel
That I have had a decent meal!''
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
``I've got to have a second helping!''
Then added with a frightful leer,
``I'm therefore going to wait right here
Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood
Comes home from walking in the wood.''
He quickly put on Grandma's clothes,
(Of course he hadn't eaten those).
He dressed himself in coat and hat.
He put on shoes, and after that
He even brushed and curled his hair,
Then sat himself in Grandma's chair.
In came the little girl in red.
She stopped. She stared. And then she said,

``What great big ears you have, Grandma.''
``All the better to hear you with,'' the Wolf replied.
``What great big eyes you have, Grandma.''
said Little Red Riding Hood.
``All the better to see you with,'' the Wolf replied.
He sat there watching her and smiled.
He thought, I'm going to eat this child.
Compared with her old Grandmamma
She's going to taste like caviar.

Then Little Red Riding Hood said, ``But Grandma,
what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.''
``That's wrong!'' cried Wolf. ``Have you forgot

To tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?
Ah well, no matter what you say,
I'm going to eat you anyway.''
The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature's head
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, ``Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat.''

Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes
from Revolting Rhymes (Jonathan Cape, 1982), by permission of David Higham Associates for the Estate of Roald Dahl. Recording made for Calibre Audio Library which is a registered charity, used by permission of the Estate and of Calibre. Calibre brings the pleasure of reading to people who have sight problems, dyslexia or other disabilities through a free, nationwide postal service of audio books. www.calibre.org.uk

lunes, 7 de mayo de 2012

En el día de la madre

My son, my executioner

I take you in my arms
Quiet and small and just astir
and whom my body warms

Sweet death, small son,
our instrument of immortality,
your cries and hunger document
our bodily decay.
We twenty two and twenty five,
who seemed to live forever,
observe enduring life in you
and start to die together.

Donald Hall

martes, 1 de mayo de 2012

Qué pasará....



Este es un docu muy interesante - que le he robado a http://desayunarcafesolo.blogspot.com.es/, no tanto por el mensaje, que no comparto, sino porque explica muy bien cómo funciona el mundo y da cifras muy interesantes sobre lo que producimos y cómo lo producimos. Introduce conceptos que raramente se manejan y que sin embargo son cruciales para entender realmente el proceso industrial; un ejemplo, la energía que consume la producción de más energía. No basta con hablar de energía alternativa sin tener en cuenta cómo de eficiente es.
Pero lo más importante, y que no se dice en este documental, es lo siguiente: el australopitecus se convirtió en hombre con un cerebro la mitad de capaz que el nuestro; luego inventó la escritura; descubrió América; le dió una definición a "lo justo"; redactó gramáticas, venció a la peste negra en la Edad Media sin medicinas; calculó la circunferencia de la tierra sin ordenadores, pensó en la física cuántica y ha fabricado el IPad. A mí no me cabe la más mínima de las dudas de que ya tenemos la solución a todos y cada uno de los problemas que se plantean. Eso no significa que en el proceso no queden víctimas, lo cual es trágico si alguna de ellas somos nosotros o un ser querido. O está la extinción, que será trágica para los que la vean, igual que lo fuera morir de peste en el año 1.o00 o ser negro en Louisiana en el año 1.900.
El ser humano, desde que es, nunca ha retrocedido. Es probable que lo que hoy conocemos como Occidente esté en período de maduración y marchitando en favor de culturas más dinámicas. Es probable que el Estado del Bienestar esté viendo sus últimos días, o es posible que el capitalismo como lo conocemos esté llegando a su fin. No creo que una "vuelta" hacia atrás sea posible. El ser humano se ha juntado en ciudades porque es una manera más eficiente de vivir, comparado con el mundo rural, la agricultura intensiva ha dado de comer a más gente que ninguna otra; el comercio globalizado es el más eficiente y el más justo que da entrada a la mayor cantidad de productores y consumidores en mejores condiciones. Pero quizá haya llegado el momento de encontrar una nueva fuente de eficiencia transladando los centros de negocio a los suburvios, o mejor aún, a casa de los particulares y finalmente encontremos la solución en el teletrabajo; quiero pensar que el futuro se está construyendo es estos momentos sobre la base de las nuevas formas de comunicación. Pero mucho me temo que mi sueño tarde mucho en realizarse. De momento tenemos para muchos años de petróleo y no creo que nadie esté interesado en anticipar demasiado el momento del cambio, que llegará cuando tenga que llegar. No creo que yo lo vea, ni mis hijos, incluso ni los hijos de mis hijos. Pero veremos otras cosas.

     
Si el primero salió adelante.................porqué no va a poder este?

lunes, 30 de abril de 2012

Posiblemente la mejor canción del mundo

I am just a poor boy
Though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know

Lie la lie ...

Asking only workman's wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there

Lie la lie ...

Then I'm laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone
Going home
Where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me
Bleeding me, going home

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

Lie la lie ...


Me ha cosado bastante decidir cual cancion de S&G ponía, todas son mejores, pero esta  tiene un puntito, no?

domingo, 29 de abril de 2012

Esta por papá

ArchitectureThe Most Beautiful Train Stations in the World

http://flavorwire.com/282987/the-most-beautiful-train-stations-in-the-world
 Atocha Train Station — Madrid, Spain
http://flavorwire.com/282987/the-most-beautiful-train-stations-in-the-world
In 1972, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and The New York Times’ very first architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable observed that “nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than the railroad station.” A comment on the emerging age of the jetliner and a swanky commercial air travel industry that made the behemoth train stations of the time appear as cumbersome relics of an outdated industrial era, we don’t think the judgment holds up today — at all. Like so many things that we wrote off in favor of what was seemingly more modern and efficient (ahem, vinyl records and Polaroid film), the train station is back and better than ever. So, we’re taking the time to look back at some of the greatest stations still standing.
From New York’s grande dame of a terminal to a station complete with its own indoor rainforest to the home of the world’s most luxurious train, the Orient Express, here’s our roundup of the most beautiful train stations in the world. Let us know in the comments what we’ve missed!
Image credit: The Car Hobby; I want to be here

martes, 20 de marzo de 2012

Los negros de los libros de cocina



Alguien había pensado que los libros de cocina los escriben los cocineros o los famosos de las portadas? Hummmm, well think again! Interesante pieza del NY Times sobre los "negros" de los libros de cocina...
It was only my first day on the job as a cookbook ghostwriter, shadowing a top-flight chef, when the owner of a Chicago restaurant threw me out of the kitchen. I realized then that what had seemed like a dream job — helping restaurant chefs translate their culinary genius to the printed page — would hold more humiliations than I’d imagined.
Despite that inauspicious start, I wrote nine cookbooks and many other chefs’ projects over the next five years, some credited but most anonymous. Like many others in the nebulous profession called food writing, I was really a food ghost — one of the ink-stained (and grease-covered) wretches who actually produce most of the words that are attributed to chefs in cookbooks and food magazines and on Web sites.
Many real-world cooks have wondered at the output of authors like Martha Stewart, Paula Deen and Jamie Oliver, who maintain cookbook production schedules that boggle the mind. Rachael Ray alone has published thousands of recipes in her cookbooks and magazine since 2005. How, you might ask, do they do it?
The answer: they don’t. The days when a celebrated chef might wait until the end of a distinguished career and spend years polishing the prose of the single volume that would represent his life’s work are gone. Recipes are product, and today’s successful cookbook authors are demons at providing it — usually, with the assistance of an army of writer-cooks.
“The team behind the face is invaluable,” said Wes Martin, a chef who has developed recipes for Ms. Ray and others. “How many times can one person invent a new quick pasta dish?”
Mr. Martin, and dozens of others like him, have a particular combination of cooking skills, ventriloquism and modesty that makes it possible not only to write in the voices of chefs, but to actually channel them as cooks.
“It’s like an out-of-body experience,” Mr. Martin said. “I know who I am as a chef, and I know who Rachael is, and those are two totally separate parts of my brain.”
Employing writers and recipe developers has long been routine; chefs, after all, have their own specialized skills, and writers are not expected to be wizards in the kitchen.
Ghostwriting is common among business leaders, sports figures and celebrities. But the domesticity and intimacy of cooking make readers want to believe that the food they make has been personally created and tested — or at least tasted — by the face on the cover. And that isn’t always the case, especially for restaurant chefs.
Food ghostwriters come in many different flavors, including the researchers who might spend days testing every possible method of cooking beans for Bobby Flay, the aproned assistants at the Food Network who frantically document everything that the “talent” does on camera in order to produce recipes for the Web site, and the (slightly) more literary work of writers who attempt to document a chef’s ideas, memories and vision in glossy cookbooks.
The rank beginners might be thanked in the acknowledgments of a book; the next step is being credited on the title page; at the very top of the profession, their names appear on the book’s cover. But getting up that pole can be a slippery business.
In the 1990s, when I was in the trenches, American chefs were not the thoughtful liberal-arts graduates who permeate the profession today. The idea that a chef would start an avant-garde literary food magazine, as David Chang did last year; create his own imprint at a publishing house, as Anthony Bourdain did; or appear on “Charlie Rose,” as Sean Brock of the restaurants Husk and McCrady’s in Charleston, S.C., did last week, would have been laughable.
Many were brilliant and creative, and all were incredibly hardworking. But usually, nothing of the chef’s oeuvre had been written down except perhaps a master recipe for stock, designed for a trained kitchen staff and made in 40-gallon quantities.
Still, it did not matter if the chefs had no story to tell about why and what they were cooking: every last one of them wanted to publish a cookbook.
Andrew Friedman, who is currently writing with the chefs Michael White and Paul Liebrandt, said: “I’ve had chefs tear up reading the introduction to their own books. The job is to get them to the point where they verbalize their philosophy about food — even the ones who say they don’t have one.”
Years ago, there was a quaint trust among cookbook buyers that chefs personally wrote their books and tested their recipes, and a corresponding belief among chefs that to admit otherwise would mean giving someone else credit for the tiniest part of their work — unacceptable, in those macho and territorial times.
Today, in a content-driven media environment, the role of the writer is given far more respect, and many chefs do not pretend that they do their own writing. Last week, when Grand Central Publishing announced the acquisition of a big new cookbook by Daniel Boulud, the name of his “collaborator,” Sylvie Bigar, was featured in the news release.
In most cases, the job of a ghostwriter is to produce a credible book from the thin air of a chef’s mind and menu — to cajole and probe, to elicit ideas and anecdotes by any means necessary.
J. J. Goode, who wrote the just-released “A Girl and Her Pig” with April Bloomfield, describes the process as “25 percent writing and 75 percent dating.”
And although each project begins as a love affair, it rarely ends that way; disillusion is part of the job.
“In every book, there’s a point where you just can’t stand the sight of each other,” a veteran writer said.
In his first assignment, another writer I know had to produce a book on Japanese cuisine based on two interviews with a chef who spoke no English.
“That,” he said, “was the moment that I realized cookbooks were not authoritative.”
“Write up something about all the kinds of chiles,” one Mexican-American chef demanded of me, providing no further details. “There should be a really solid guide to poultry,” a barbecue maven prescribed for his own forthcoming book. (After much stalling, he sent the writer a link to the Wikipedia page for “chicken.”)
At the most extreme level, a few highly paid ghostwriter-cooks actually produce entire books, from soup to nuts, using a kind of mind-meld that makes it possible not only to write in the voice of another human but actually to cook in his or her style — or close enough. One recent best-selling tome on regional cooking was produced entirely in a New York apartment kitchen, with almost no input from the author.
“Those are the cases where you are pretty sure the chef never even reads the book,” the writer said. Another ghost told me that sometimes the only direct input he gets for one chef’s books is a list of flavor combinations.
(The authors most likely to write and thoroughly test their own work are trained cooks who do not work in restaurants, like Molly Stevens, Deborah Madison and Grace Young, and obsessive hobbyist cooks like Jennifer McLagan and Barbara Kafka.)
Some chefs have great respect for the work of a writer.
“It’s not easy to find a good one,” said Mr. Flay, a chef who has worked with many writers, including me. “They have to put their ego in their pockets.”
“I consider myself an ‘author,’ in quotes, but not a writer,” Mr. Flay said. “I have skills in the kitchen, but the writers keep the project on track, meet the deadlines, make the editor happy.”
He added: “I know a lot of chefs who write their first book themselves. Then they say ‘I’ll never do that again.’ It’s just not worth it.”
But for other chefs, a writer-for-hire has about the same status as a personal trainer; the relationship is friendly but not always mutually respectful. I was frequently stood up, always kept waiting and once took dictation in a spa while the chef received a pedicure.
My previous job, in the genteel precincts of cookbook publishing, had prepared me for part of ghosting: bundling the voice, knowledge and vision of a chef between the covers of a book.
But I was unprepared for the chaotic reality of the job: the natural enemies, like paranoid restaurant owners who blocked me from kitchen meetings; resentful assistants, often offended at being deemed insufficiently literate for the job; chefs’ wives, who were generally not delighted by the sudden appearance of a young woman whose job it was to find their husbands fascinating and drink in their every word.
There is the uncomfortable fact that wherever you stand in a restaurant kitchen, trying to shrink into a fly on the wall, you are always in the way of someone with a more important job to do. There are impossible deadlines, hours of waiting around for tardy chefs and off-the-map assignments, like the two days I spent under armed guard in a walled compound in Bogotá, while the chef I was working with disappeared into the Colombian countryside. During those two days, with no cellphone or e-mail and only a Dora-the-Explorer ability to communicate in Spanish, I was essentially a prisoner, with plenty of time to think about my next career.
And although that was the scariest moment, it was not the lowest. That might have been the time a chef took my name off the cover of our book because, he explained, it would hurt his wife’s feelings.
There was also one rising culinary star, soft-spoken but elusive, whom I prodded into producing a book with me. Flushed with gratitude, he insisted on cooking at my forthcoming wedding, promised a space inside a New York City landmark and then — quite soon after the invitations had gone out — stopped answering the phone, forever.
Another young chef came to my rescue and catered the wedding. I then spent six months writing a proposal for his book — until he signed with the most notorious bullying book agent in the industry, who told me that a writer should be so honored to work on this project that money would not be a factor.
Because cookbook ghostwriting brings low pay, nonexistent royalties (most writers are paid a flat fee, or a percentage of the advance doled out by the publisher) and only a few perks, most ghosts don’t last long. When a ghosted book is successful, watching someone else get credit for your work is demoralizing. And when books do not sell, which is usually the case, it is tiresome to play and then repeat the roles required: muse, publicist and interpreter.
But it can also be a gateway to better things. Julia Turshen, who is writing a second cookbook with Gwyneth Paltrow after their collaboration on “My Father’s Daughter,” began as the ghostwriter for the ghostwriter on a book by Mario Batali, tagging along with a notebook as the chef filmed a culinary romp through Spain.
“The guy I was reporting for ended up off the project, and that’s how I got started,” she said. Ms. Turshen, like many younger ghosts, is generally thrilled to be paid for the combination of writing and cooking.
Oddly, one of the best qualifications for the job is ignorance: the tricky steps and specialized skills that a chef will teach the ghostwriter as they work together are the same ones the writer will have to teach to a home cook in the text of the book. The best ghosts are the ones who anticipate the reader’s questions.
“It actually helps to be an idiot,” Ms. Turshen said. “A hungry one.”

domingo, 18 de marzo de 2012

Tweet

Sin comertario, para qué?



miércoles, 7 de marzo de 2012

jueves, 1 de marzo de 2012

El Tiempo entre Costuras de María Dueñas


Portada
http://eltiempoentrecosturas.blogspot.com/
La joven modista Sira Quiroga abandona el Madrid convulso de los meses previos al alzamiento arrastrada por el amor desbocado hacia un hombre a quien apenas conoce. Con él se instala en Tánger, una ciudad exótica y vibrante donde todo puede suceder. Incluso la traición.
Sola, desubicada y cargada de deudas ajenas, Sira se traslada accidentalmente a Tetuán, capital del Protectorado Español en Marruecos. Espoleada por la necesidad de salir a flote, con argucias inconfesables y gracias a la ayuda de nuevas amistades de reputación un tanto dudosa, forjará una nueva identidad y logrará poner en marcha un selecto taller de costura en el que atenderá a clientas de orígenes lejanos y presentes insospechados.
A partir de entonces, con la contienda española recién terminada y los ecos de la guerra europea resonando en la distancia, el destino de Sira queda ligado al de un puñado de carismáticos personajes --Rosalinda Fox, Juan Luis Beigbeder, Alan Hillgarth-- que la empujarán hacia un inesperado compromiso en el que las artes de su oficio ocultarán algo mucho más arriesgado.

domingo, 26 de febrero de 2012

domingo, 19 de febrero de 2012

¿Dónde pongo yo esto?

Pues en los dos sitios, porque esto va de libros y y el otro de recetas.
The Book Club Cookbook, Revised Edition: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's FavoriteBooks and Authors

In October 1939, Josef Kavalier escaped with his life. Trained in his native Czechoslovakia in the use of picks and tiny torque wrenches – the tools of the escapist – Joe, as he is called, smuggles himself out of the country as the Nazis sweep in. Joe escapes concealed in a coffin he shares with a giant clay statue, the Golem, which was revered and protected by the Jews of Prague for centuries.
Joe first takes refuge in his aunt and uncle’s apartment in Brooklyn, New York, sharing a bed with his cousin Sammy, a boy who “dreams of flight and transformation and escape.” The cousins quickly discover their shared fascination for escape artists – especially Harry Houdini – and a love of comic books. Within a few years, they have created The Escapist, The Monitor, Luna Moth, and other superheroes, whose adventures find their way into almost every American boy’s bedroom.
The foods served in Michael Chabon’s novel reflect the diverse cultures of 1940s New York, a city teeming with immigrants, artists, and bohemians. Joe’s girlfriend, Rosa Saks, cooks “strange recipes that her father had acquired a taste for in his travels: tagine, mole, something green and slippery that she called sleek.” Sammy’s mother, Ethel, serves Sammy and his friend Tracy Bacon traditional Eastern European food – flanken (braised short ribs of beef), challah, and, for dessert, babka.

Cocoa-Cinnamon Babka
Babka, or baba, is a breadlike cake sweetened with various fillings, including cinnamon and sugar, fruit, or chocolate. Baba means “grandmother,” or “old woman,” in Ukrainian, where the rich bread was originally baked in vertical pans to resemble a standing woman. Babka, a diminutive form of the word, is now more commonly used because modern loaves are smaller and more delicate than the originals.
For the dough:
4 ½ teaspoons (2 packets) active dry yeast
½ teaspoon plus ½ cup sugar
¼ cup warm water
1 cup nondairy creamer
½ cup (I stick) unsalted margarine, softened
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
5-5 ½ cups all-purpose flour
For the filling and topping:
1 cup sugar
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
½ cup raisins
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
6 tablespoons unsalted margarine, melted
1 egg white, lightly beaten

1. To make the dough: Sprinkle yeast and ½ teaspoon sugar into warm water. Stir and set aside for 10 minutes, or until frothy. Grease and flour three 9 x 5-inch loaf pans.
2. Heat nondairy creamer to scalding and pour into large mixing bowl. Add margarine and stir to melt. Cool for 5 minutes. Add ½ cup sugar, salt, yeast mixture, and eggs. Gradually add enough flour to form a soft dough. Knead on floured surface 10 minutes, until shiny and elastic. Place in a greased bowl, turning to coat entire surface. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 ½ hours.
3. To make the filling and topping: In a small bowl, combine the sugar, nuts, raising, cocoa powder, and cinnamon.
4. Divide dough into 6 parts. Working with one part at a time, roll out on a lightly floured surface, forming a rectangle 8 inches wide and 1/8 inch thick. Brush some melted margarine over the dough. Sprinkle with 4-6 tablespoons nut mixture to cover three-quarters of the dough. Roll it up, tuck in the ends, and place the dough in a prepared loaf pan, seam side down. Repeat with a second part of dough and nut mixture, and tuck in alongside first roll.
5. Brush tops with egg white and sprinkle with about 2 tablespoons of nut mixture. Repeat for remaining dough. Cover lightly with a damp cloth and let rise until doubled in size, 1-1 ½ hours. Preheat oven to 350˚F.
6. Bake babka 40-45 minutes, until golden. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm.