Well Read Well Fed

Local foodie blogs

2010-06-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

Kaela blogs from the Hudson Valley in New York at Local Kitchen. She mostly eats locally, and her recipes & photos are beautiful, if sometimes more involved than I think I can personally handle. She's got lots of great farms & markets near her, and I love reading for inspiration.

For local Connecticut food, I read Late Bloomers Farm. The author forages at different local-ish farms every week. I wish we were neighbors so I could get in on some of the foraging, since E & I hate to drive and the farmer's market is limited compared to the wide range of places she (or he? I guess I've never paid attention) reaches each week. This one I read for envy, and an idea of what might be at the market if I'm lucky.

Lots of others, too, but these are two I've been returning to again and again this spring!

Mr. Peanut & The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

2010-06-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

I had heard wonderful things about these two novels via industry buzz, and they arrived just before the weekend. I gobbled them down, and they're the kind of books I can't talk about in detail without giving away the plot. I liked them, but I didn't love them, and I'd really wanted to.

Mr. Peanut, by Adam Ross, was technically beautiful and confusing. Who wouldn't want to read a book that begins:

"When David Pepin first dreamed of killing his wife, he didn't kill her himself. He dreamed convenient acts of God. At a picnic on the beach, a storm front moved in. David and Alice collected their chairs, blankets, and booze, and when the lightning flashed, David imagined his wife lit up, her skeleton distinctly visible as in a children's cartoon, Alice then collapsing into a smoking pile of ash. He watched her walk quickly across the sand, the tallest object in the wide-open space. She even stopped to observe the piling clouds. 'Some storm,' she said. He tempted fate by hubris. In his mind he declared: I, David Pepin, am wiser and more knowing than God, and I, David Pepin, know that God shall not, at this very moment, on this very beach, Jones Beach, strike my wife down. God did not."

I love this beginning, and I think the book perfectly captures the inner lives we have and hide, the thoughts that are too disturbing and painful and horrible to share. All of his characters seem to have these lives (as do we all, Ross points out). He gets us to admit them--who hasn't pictured attending the funeral of a loved one? And somehow, in the picturing, we almost believe we've inured ourselves to the very real possibility that Something will happen.

But for me, the novel felt too long, in parts contrived, like at least 50 pages could have been cut. This is just personal, as I could appreciate the brilliance behind his plotting decisions--it just left me unsatisfied when I turned the last page. (This results in me harrumphing around the house, sighing until E asks what's wrong and I can vent my frustrations.) No more details or I'll ruin it if you decide to pick it up, but I'd be curious to know if this was a common reaction or if other people thought the daring moves Ross made paid off in the end.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake has a plot hook that I love and adore, and also think would make it a perfect book club book. The main character can taste the emotions of whoever made her food, which lets her in on all sorts of secrets and feelings about which she'd rather remain in the dark. There are revelations at the end that bring the ability into sharper focus, but while I'd be happy to bake a lemon cake and eat while talking with friends about the novel, I felt that not quite as much happened as I'd hoped. The character didn't use her ability to make anything change, but picked her way through the minefield of dinner options while events occurred around her. With this one, too, I was frustrated when I turned the last page. Love the hook, like the book, but I wanted fireworks that I didn't feel I got. I spent an enjoyable few hours with them--maybe my expectations were just so high after hearing people praise these books that there was no way for them to make me fall head over heels.

Ammonia in the Food Supply

2010-06-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

*I wrote this over the winter, posting now.

This is one of those stories that compelled me to read sections aloud to E—it actually made me sputter. We were planning our trip to the CT farm to get meat, and this just happened to be one of the top ten e-mailed stories on the New York Times website. At the very least, that it was being passed around to that extent shows that people do care about these issues.

It re-inspired us for the long drive up to the farm (I know—carbon emissions! But we’ll be heading up near his hometown so we’ll also get to play with E’s nieces, and stop in to say hello to his parents on the way back through.) But reading it aloud to E didn’t seem like enough of a reaction.

First of all, how gross is injecting food with ammonia? I’m not a scientist, but it sure sounds wrong on a very basic level. Especially with levels as high as those that have sickened people who had contaminated milk or chicken.

Second, 5.5 million pounds of beef treated this way were used by the federal school lunch program? Not to mention McDonald’s, Burger King, and the others who use it? Jamie Oliver, deliver us from this kind of lunch food! It’s another reminder of how hard it is to protect kids from everything out there, and that before I have babies of school age E and I will want to have a vast repertoire of easy lunch meals.

Third, this article certainly makes it seem like the injections don’t even work to kill the pathogens in as effective a manner as anyone had hoped—that it is ineffective is damning and far worse than just the fact that it seems gross.

Fourth, what a mess of a food system we have. “The department [USDA] accepted the company’s own study as evidence that the treatment was effective.” Beef processed this way was until recently excluded from recalls, because it was believed to be pathogen-free. I’m sorry…you took their word for it? “Believed to be” is one of those sentences that doesn’t belong in a sentence with easily testable facts. Either it has been proven pathogen-free, or it hasn’t. This meat has not, and indeed failed tests applied by the school lunch program (which was understandably dubious about Beef Products’ claims). But the agriculture department does not ban the sale of meat proven to be contaminated with salmonella, according to this article. And how about this gem of a sentence: “Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels.”

This makes me so angry. It’s a little bit cheaper—at the expense of taste, smell, and potentially safety—but hey, let’s make sure the consumer won’t find out. Untreated beef, the article points out, does contain some ammonia—but far, far less than in these products.

I’m even happier about our decision to forgo meat that isn’t as naturally raised and processed as we can find. But not everyone can stock a freezer with farm meat. If the USDA is supposed to regulate this kind of thing, it should actually do its job instead of letting things like this go by unchallenged. I like eating meat! I just want to be able to do it safely and humanely, which seems like too much to ask. As a commenter on the Times site noted, this is straight out of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Thank you to the Times and reporter Michael Moss for bringing this information to the public—now, what are we going to do about it?

Dreaming

2010-06-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

I feel like this must be a trick. How could something so beautiful be on the market for more than a minute?

Things I would love: 2 1/2 bathrooms, 3 fireplaces, surrounded by trees, that unbelievable dining room. Sure, it's closer to Pennsylvania than it is to anything near us, but it is awfully pretty.

This Means War

2010-06-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

I planted a ton of seeds from Seed Savers, neat, heirloom varieties, mostly things we'd be able to use in the kitchen. Purple dark opal basil, sweet Genovese basil, cilantro, thyme, lettuce leaf basil, green culinary sage, Grandma Einck's dill, bee balm, giant Italian parsley, Greek oregano, black cumin, chives, and cumin. I started them in a little glass greenhouse box my dad gave us last summer, and they were coming up gangbusters despite some cold temps.

So I lovingly repotted, happily watching them grow into something usable in our recipes, so I wouldn't have to beg fella to please buy a whole bunch of cilantro even though we just need two tablespoons of it for guacamole. Without the cilantro, it doesn't taste nearly as good!

I was really excited about the payoff of those hours in the sun (which was fun in and of itself, and the planting was just a great excuse to get my hands in the dirt, but it's still nice to have a reward).

And now? Ravaged. Oh, it was sort of cute the first day when E said, "Look quick! A baby bunny!" I came and said aww, and then it hopped up and ate all my parsley as I watched, before I could get close enough to chase it away. The next day all the black cumin was gone, which was supposed to produce beautiful blue flowers. Then everything, all my beautiful herbs, including E's bean plants which were starting to climb their trellis and the wild strawberries I got him last year. When it was just my parsley, Eric thought the rabbit was kinda cute. Now he's walking around mumbling about getting a fox for our patio.

I've moved all the survivors, and things I think might grow again, up to a tall ledge, so I think they're fairly safe. But bunnies are now the enemy.

Greenwich Farmer's Market 6/5/2010

2010-06-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

I went without a plan today, which is not a good idea when pickings are still somewhat slim. There are lots of greens, but I don't look at the piles of kale and see a way to dinner unless I've already looked at recipes to choose what I'm going to do. That tends to mean that we'll end up eating more meat, fewer local/organic meals, and that I won't have as many leftovers during the week. I flipped through a cookbook but didn't feel inspired, so it's a light week. I DID manage to leave without buying any plants, so there is that.

Bought dill goat cheese, pesto, a tomato, a cucumber, snap peas, honey, and raspberry jam (Jam Lady does not appear to have a website).

Sun: defrost veggie soup & homemade bread with goat cheese
Mon: pasta & pesto
Tue: salad with regular & microgreens, leftover feta, tomato, & homemade dressing
Wed: chicken burgers in pitas with cucumbers
Thurs: out
Fri: leave open to celebrate end of school year

I brought my camera this week but forgot to take any pictures.

Lamb

2010-05-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last week’s feta and a frozen lamb shepherd’s pie came from Sankow’s Beaver Brook Farm. When Eric suggested it he looked sheepish (har), since even last summer at the market I wouldn’t touch lamb.

I haven’t eaten lamb in…ever? Maybe I’ve tried a taste of it sometime, but the idea of eating something so cute that had barely gotten to live made me queasy. I’m going to try it now, though. Pasture raised, with no pesticides, these babies got to frolic in the sunshine. I was still not feeling it until I started reading Farmgirl Fare this winter, when I was craving the farmer’s market desperately.

I went through all the archives, looking at the pictures, watching the donkeys and lambs and chicks and pups and cats. And she’s a lamb farmer, and makes a really compelling argument for supporting farmers who raise their meat this way. They’re cared for and loved, get to play in sweet new grass and with their mothers, and they’re raised for a purpose: to feed people good food. Good for the environment, good for the soul, good for me getting to keep reading such a fun blog.

So my first lamb meal this week; I hope it’s delicious.

--

The verdict: meh. But I think it was because there was a very strong herb flavor that felt overwhelming to me. There were a few unchewable bits of meat that I had to get rid of, but otherwise it didn't taste distinctive (probably because of that strong flavor - maybe thyme? - that overpowered any delicate flavoring). They also have lamb curry and lamb stew, so I think I'd give those a try sometime this summer on a night we don't want to cook ourselves. We (okay, Fella) does the vast majority of the cooking from scratch, but he was really happy to be able to throw something precooked in the oven for twenty minutes and call it done, especially during a busy week. If we can buy something premade that still has quality ingredients and gives the money to the farmers raising the animals in the way we want to support, I think we'll do so occasionally.

Greenwich Farmer's Market 5/29/10

2010-05-29T17:40:00.000-07:00

A light week here for our meal plan, as we'll both be out a bunch. We bought parsnips & cilantro from Riverbank, microgreens from Two Guys, a mint plant from Smith's Acres (I think), sugar snap peas from Plasko's for snacking, raspberry pear jam from the Jam Lady for peanut butter & jelly sandwiches & snacks. We still have potatoes, some chard, a bit of feta, and eggs from last week.

Sat: travel for our niece's birthday
Sun: roasted chicken with cilantro & garlic rub, roasted potatoes & parsnips (usually we use carrots in this recipe but there were none at the market and there were parsnips, so we're giving it a try) - this is E's recipe, cobbled together from Test Kitchen, Barefoot Contessa, and Alton Brown. It is insanely good, so I'm a little nervous changing it up with the cilantro & parsnips, but we'll be brave.
Mon: travel for my dad's birthday
Tue: out
Wed: salad - local microgreens, leftover feta, defrost a soup from the freezer, and homemade bread
Thurs: out
Fri: ?

New ingredients we haven't bought from the market before: microgreens, parsnips, raspberry pear jam

Greenwich Farmer’s Market: 5/22/10

2010-05-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

This week we got Swiss chard (grown hydroponically so I don’t know if that changes the seasonality) and mixed greens from Two Guys in Woodbridge, feta and shepherd’s pie from Sankow’s Beaver Brook Farm, spinach from Riverbank Farm, potatoes from Plasko’s Farm, herbs de provence goat cheese from Beltane Farm, dill and lavender plants from the Herb Basket (because when we asked if they had cilantro this week they gave it to us for free since it was about to go to seed & that was so nice I wanted to buy something), pickles from the Jam Lady, fresh free range chicken eggs from the egg guy (I think it’s On the Rocks Farm, I’ll look next week), and we still have spring onions left from last week.

Meal plan:

Sat: grilled chicken, local feta, pitas, salad, local cilantro yogurt sauce

Sun: local Swiss chard gratin & local potroast made with the beef we got from Whippoorwill Farm this winter & have saved in the freezer ), gratin recipe from Serving Up the Harvest

Mon: leftovers

Tue: salad – local greens, local feta cheese, homemade dressing, homemade bread with local goat cheese

Wed: local lamb shepherd’s pie with maple roasted carrots & local creamed spinach, recipes from Serving Up the Harvest

Thurs: “Low fat but nearly as good fish & chips” from A Year In Lucy’s Kitchen using local dill & potatoes

Fri: Long weekend starts!

That gives us a local ingredient every dinner of the week, and hopefully some leftovers for lunch too! Hardly all local, but that's not really what we're going for at this point. I really enjoy handing money over to the small farmers who grow organic, healthy, happy food. And this is just the second week the market's been open, so it's the very beginning of the season when pickings are slim! I'm so excited to get to do this all summer.

Risotto Woes

2007-02-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

I am always on the lookout for a new risotto recipe. Perfectly done risotto is, well, perfect, and such a warm, cozy, flavorful meal should be a staple on my menu.

Problem is, it isn't. I have a great mushroom risotto recipe that I love, and I have loved various restaurant risottos as well, but the last few risottos I've tried have left me with the blahs. So much work, so much time, so much STIRRING, for a badly textured flavorless mess?

Well, hope springs eternal, so when I saw a recipe for Risotto with Artichoke Hearts, Red Bell Pepper, and Prosciutto, it seemed like a good time to try again. I was afraid to mess with the recipe, so when I saw frozen artichoke hearts instead of canned that's what I used, which was a mistake. I also don't think I julienned the peppers fine enough.

Once everything was added, I just had to add broth. And keep adding broth. And more broth. Stirring all the time.

Very slowly the rice began to plump up. But suddenly, my allotted broth was all gone and the rice was still tooth-breakable. Luckily, I hadn't thought it sounded like enough broth and had bought an extra can. I ended up having to add a full half more broth than the recipe called for. This made me grumpy.

Plated with Parmesan I reviewed it with a resounding meh. Why bother with Prosciutto if you can't even taste it? And why frozen artichokes which add an added cooking component and seem sketchy? Now I have a box of frozen artichokes in my fridge and no idea what to do with them. The red peppers were untastable except in bites in which there was a strand, and then the flavor was overwhelming. Ditto with taste of artichokes. It was definitely not worth the time and hassle and was not a good end to my cooking week which had seemed so promising with Chicken Curry and BBQ Chicken Pizzas. Meh, and I was ready to toss the recipe forever.

And then...I came down with a sore throat that has been plaguing me badly enough to keep me home from work. And for dinner last night I had two big helpings of soft, creamy risotto with gentle flavors and soothing texture. I plan on having it for lunch soon and polishing off the leftovers which had almost ended up in the trash. Now...I reserve some judgment on this dish. It didn't work in terms of an exciting dinner, but for a cozy comfort meal, it did its job well.

The recipe from Epicurious follows:

RISOTTO WITH ARTICHOKE HEARTS, PROSCIUTTO, AND RED BELL PEPPER

2 cups chicken broth
1/2 small red bell pepper, cut into julienne strips
1/2 cup frozen artichoke hearts, cooked according to the package
directions and drained
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, minced
a 1/4-inch-thick slice of prosciutto, cut into 1/4-inch dice (about 1/4 cup)
1 cup Arborio rice (Italian short-grain rice, available at specialty foods
shops and some supermarkets)
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley leaves
white pepper to taste

In a small saucepan dilute the broth with 2 cups water, bring it to a boil, and keep the broth at a bare simmer. In a heavy saucepan cook the bell pepper and the artichoke hearts in 1 tablespoon of the oil over moderate heat, stirring, for 2 minutes and transfer them with a slotted spoon to a bowl. In the heavy pan cook the onion in the remaining 2 tablespoons oil over moderately low heat, stirring, until it is softened, stir in the prosciutto and the rice with a wooden spatula, and cook the mixture over moderate heat, stirring, for 1 minute, or until the rice is coated well with the oil. Add the wine and cook the mixture over moderately high heat, stirring, for 1 to 3 minutes, or until the wine is absorbed, add 1/2 cup of the simmering broth, and cook the mixture at a vigorous simmer, stirring, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the liquid is absorbed. Continue adding the broth, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and letting each portion be absorbed before adding the next, until only 1/2 cup of the broth remains. Stir in the vegetables and 1/3 cup of the remaining broth and simmer the mixture, stirring, for 1 minute, or until the liquid is absorbed. (The risotto should be creamy, but the rice grains should be al dente.) If necessary add the remaining broth and cook the risotto in the same manner until the rice is al dente. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the Parmesan, the parsley, and the white pepper.

Serves 2.
Gourmet
February 1991

Return of the Indolent Hedonist

2007-02-02T17:57:00.000-08:00

It's been so long that I've forgotten how to do this. In fact, I actually forgot my username and password there for a while, but I finally remembered.

I made some delicious food this week. And I think you all will immediately grasp why it caused a return to WRWF. May I have the honor of presenting to you: Chicken Curry.

And in fact, it was even better than it looks, which is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. And easy, too! I am tempted to make this every week, especially since it fed the two of us for nearly three dinners, but I will try to resist.

Here is the recipe from

Epicurious

. I would recommend looking it up to see other users' suggestions; some of these always prove helpful:

CHICKEN CURRY WITH CASHEWS
In this recipe adapted from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook, ground cashews thicken the curry and give it a rich, nutty flavor. Both roasted and raw cashews work well, so use whichever you prefer.

click photo to enlarge
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped (2 cups)
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
3 tablespoons curry powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 (3 1/2- to 4-lb) chicken, cut into 10 serving pieces (or just breast or boneless thighs)
1 (14.5-oz) can diced tomatoes (fire roasted?)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3/4 cup cashews (1/4 lb)
3/4 cup plain whole-milk yogurt

Accompaniment: cooked basmati or jasmine rice
Garnish: chopped fresh cilantro

Heat butter in a 5- to 6-quart wide heavy pot over moderately low heat until foam subsides, then cook onions, garlic, and ginger, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add curry powder, salt, cumin, and cayenne and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Add chicken and cook, stirring to coat, 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, including juice, and cilantro and bring to a simmer, then cover and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, about 40 minutes. (If making ahead, see cooks' note, below.)

Just before serving:
Pulse cashews in a food processor or electric coffee/spice grinder until very finely ground, then add to curry along with yogurt and simmer gently, uncovered, stirring, until sauce is thickened, about 5 minutes.

Cooks' note:
Curry, without yogurt and cashews, can be made 5 days ahead and cooled completely, uncovered, then chilled, covered. Reheat over low heat before stirring in yogurt and ground cashews.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.
Gourmet
January 2005

It may sound slightly involved but it really wasn't. We used three boneless skinless breasts and three "" thighs. Most of the cook-time is spent happily bubbling away smelling delicious, although I did turn the chicken every ten minutes with tongs to be sure that both sides got immersed in goodness. I also recommend buying some Naan to go with it. Stop&Shop carries a version in the bakery section, and we just heated it as per the instructions. I ALSO made my first rice ever (I know that's hard for you to believe) and I oversalted it but besides that it came out well. Eric did better the next night.

So there you have it. Thank you for causing me to fall in love with Indian food--it brings me so much pleasure! Happy eating, loves.

Summer Salad

2006-07-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

Behind my house, my little container garden has been providing us with occasional yummy treats like this summer salad.

You see here lettuce of two shades, a bright green and a reddish, as well as a whole bunch of spring onions. Look at how vibrant the colors are. You can tell it's going to be healthy and tasty.

Eric and I decided to make a big summer salad for dinner, so I went out after work to cut the greens.

We cleaned and tossed the lettuce and scallions with some feta cheese and Annie's Goddess Dressing. It was a delicious summer meal, and it made us feel happy about our little garden.

Chicken and Sage Roulades

2006-07-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

One day Fella and I were deciding what to make for dinner, and took stock of the situation: chicken, bacon, a tomato, and a sage bush. He decided he could work with that, and got out his roommate's copy of The Silver Spoon. He found a recipe for Chicken and Sage Roulades.

He pounded some chicken and topped each piece with a sage leaf.

I was painstakingly removing every bit of plastic from the cocktail toothpicks we had and soaking them in water so Eric could roll each piece up with bacon and pin it closed.

Then he cooked these in oil, turning pretty often if I remember correctly.

They looked pretty when they were done:

While they were cooking we also cooked up the tomato to make a little sauce in case it was dry. It wasn't dry, but sage doesn't give so much flavor, so I was glad about the sauce.

I was also pleased we'd have leftovers since we'd made SO much chicken. And then: We. Ate. It. All.

Corn and Red Pepper Soup

2006-07-15T20:21:00.000-07:00

I have had only spotty Internet for the last month and a half, but maybe I'll make it up now. Then again, maybe not...I'm working at the summer program and they have utterly exhausted me. Utterly! Three weeks to go, though, and there's lots of good mixed in with the frustration, irritation, and aforementioned exhaustion. I have cooked though, so now that I have Internet again I should (theoretically) also have no excuse.

One day Eric was sick and I decided to try to be domestic and make Corn and Red Pepper Soup. I took some oil and heated it, cooked an onion until it was soft, added some garlic, and threw in 5 cups of frozen corn and 2 cups of water and brought it to a boil and cooked it for a while. (And yes, Bright, that is a Tobasco bottle in there. The recipe called for 1/4 tsp of it and I bought it specially for this with you in mind!)

Then I poured that into a blender to puree it. (This is the point at which I usually roll my eyes when reading a soup recipe and decide it sounds too difficult. It wasn't so bad though, just a little annoying.)

Then I added chicken proth and peppers and brought it to a boil.

Verdict? Watery. Shouldn't have added that first water, maybe just the chicken broth then and nothing later. It was warm and somewhat flavorful, so it wasn't a total wash, and Eric appreciated the effort. I didn't eat it all though, most of it went to waste, so maybe if I try it again I'll also cut the recipe in half. Oh well!

Moroccan Birthday food

2006-07-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Back from the land of the disappeared...

I have pictures of food from the past that I never posed, b/c I was out of the blogging loop. Some good traditional Jordanian food stories later, for now... my birthday.

I wanted as many people as possible to be able to come to my birthday, even the poor ones, so I decided instead of going out to make Moroccan food at my house. (Of course I got carried away and ended up spending way too much on the ingredients myself). In the beginning I was way ambitious and planned on making 3 appetizers, 3 main courses and dessert. Not very realistic, and not necessary, but I love the food so much I couldn't decide what my favorite was, so I was going to attempt to make it all. In the end due to time constraints I ended up making two appetizers and two main courses. The appetizers are easy to make at the same time b/c they're basically two variations on a theme. The first is a red pepper relish, made with roasted red peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika and chili pepper. The second is an eggplant salad, made with eggplant instead of peppers, jalapeno pepper and I can't remember what the other differences are, but many of the same ingredients. Both relishes (independent from each other) are sauteed then simmered until it becomes of propper relish consistency, and are very good with bread.

For main course I made one tagine and one couscous. For the tagine I wanted to do something typically Moroccan with meat and dried fruit, but couldn't decide b/w prunes and appricots, so i decided to combine. So it was lamb, prunes, apricots, honey, onions, and a bit of cinamon stick as the main things, with roasted sesame seeds on top.

THe couscous is usually lamb and chicken, but I made it just with chicken for those who don't like lamb. It has tons of all sorts of vegetables (pumpkin, zuccini, carrot, onion, etc), and just about every spice you can think of including tumeric, clove, cinamon, ginger.. the list goes on. Then you pour it over cous cous and top it with a mixture of carmelized onions, nuts and raisins.

The photos don't look as good as the food tasted, partly b/c of the flash and partly b/c food is still in pot and all. But trust me, it was very good. Everyone said it was good, and not just in an "I'm saying this to be nice" way, but really I think they liked it.

Tajine:

Cous Cous Mixture:

It wouldn't be me cooking if I didn't leave a mess in the kitchen:

Even though I didn't end up having time to make baklava for dessert, it was ok, b/c my friend Emad brought a cake that he made. Emad is a very good person to have as a friend b/c he is a PASTRY CHEF. Needless to say cake was very good.

Me and some guests at my (old, no longer live there) apartment:

wish y'all could have been there!

greetings, dahlingks

2006-06-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

...so it's been awhile since my last post. I am shifting blame to China and CTY, which have been surprisingly time consuming.

Many golden cookie points to Christine however, for beautifully picking up the slack meanwhile. Auxiliary credit to fella.

On the Bright side of things, I have so much to blog about on wrwf that I don't even know where to begin.

Now, would y'all out there prefer photo blogging or text blogging about Chinese food? Because I don't have me photos here at Stanford so in the case of photo blogging I'll have to wait till I return in August. What say you?

Baking Powder Biscuits

2006-06-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

You've probably noticed that Fella feeds me extremely well. These biscuits are a classic from his Gram, which he made while I snoozed in the early hours of morning. (By early hours, I clearly mean that it was before ten a.m., which is really the first hour I want to open my eyes or talk to anyone on the weekend. Or ever, for that matter, but I don't usually get a choice.) I've had these before and they're great to make little lunch sandwiches, as dinner rolls, or in this instance, as breakfast. He was also nice enough to type up the recipe.

In a bowl, sift together 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 3 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Cut in 1/3 cup shortening till like coarse crumbs. Make a well; add 3/4 cup of milk, all at once. Stir quickly with a fork just until the dough follows the fork around the bowl. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface (dough should be soft). Knead the dough gently 10-12 strokes. Roll or pat dough 1/2 inch thick. Dip 2-1/2 inch biscuit cutter (or whatever size you have!) into flour; cut dough straight down. Bake on an ungreased baking sheet at 450 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Of course, I wasn't there for the cooking part, but it doesn't sound too difficult, right? I want to try making these on my own sometime.

There are lots of things you can do to these biscuits since they're wonderful, but I think we picked the absolute best: slathering them with butter and honey. If this doesn't look divine to you, you're out of your mind. Flaky biscuits, sweet butter and honey...dessert for breakfast!

Summer Salad

2006-06-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hopefully highlighted often this summer will be food made with the assistance of the garden I'm growing outside. It's nothing too fancy, but it is exciting, since we started everything from seed. It's pouring rain right now and some of my plants have floated away, but I'll share pictures when I have them. We broke in the garden by having a pre-dinner fresh salad over Memorial Day.

The lettuce is from Eric's garden, the scallions from mine, and the tomatoes purchased because we don't have any tomatoes yet. Hey, can't have it all, right? We put a little Annie's Natural Goddess dressing on it and loved every bite. Yay for summer and gardens!

Mother's Day

2006-06-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Poor little abandoned bloggy. It's the end of the year, school is very busy, and most of the people who read and comment are prancing about China! Nevertheless, time to get back to it.

On Mother's Day we went to the Frick Museum in the city and had a lot of fun. The paintings were amazing and we saw an interesting Moya exhibit. There was a Monet I really liked, and a Vermeer that showed the wife's pearl earrings (if you read "Girl With a Pearl Earring" you understand why that's so cool), the Gilbert Stuart of George Washington, two Whistler's of women that I adored, a Hogarth of Miss Mary Edwards that had a very interesting backstory (her husband was a gambling jerk so she had her child declared a bastard to save her fortune from him), a Romney of Lady Hamilton also most interesting for its backstory (along the lines of she was beautiful and one guy's mistress, but he tired of her and gave her away as a surprise present to his uncle, and he adored her and married her but she fell in love with some other guy, very soap opera-ey), and some stunning Turner's, of seas and ships and harbors. I'd never heard of Corot but I liked his paintings very much, and a Holbein painting of Sir Thomas More was pretty stunning. Yes, I'm aware this is a food blog, but enjoy a little cult-chah, o te? ;-)

Anywho...we also got Mom a fondue pot, which we decided to break in after brunch the next day. (Everyone was stuffed, but we persevered.) While she was at church I chopped up some fine quality bittersweet chocolate bars:

Then heated cream in a pot until very hot, added the chocolate, a tbsp of cognac, and whisked. End product was very rich and very yummy. Served with brownies, pretzels, bananas, and various other fruits.

We actually had a hit and Mom had a happy weekend. Good for everybody!

Pasta Yumminess

2006-05-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

We miss Bright, who's off playing in China, and are already missing Annie, who's soon to follow. Take lots of pictures, ladies, I expect a feature on real Asian cuisine!

This is what I do for dinner any night I have a few ingredients around and am too lazy to try something new. It's also the first meal Fella ever made me, before we were dating, and it sold me.

I saute up some onions...

and when they're soft, toss in some tomatoes.

(Cherry, grape, campari, full size--all good, sliced or whole, cooked until mushy and the skins are sliding off.)

That's really it!

But the beauty here is how it can be dressed up or dressed down. Chop some fresh basil and sprinkle on top, and it's a light, flavorful meal. Out of tomatoes? Just put some extra butter in there. Have wine in the fridge? Deglaze with it and let everything simmer down, getting the tomatoes all soft. Have chicken? Toss it in. I had some blue cheese crumbles the other day, so they went in when it was all being tossed together, and got melted and gooey and oh so flavorful. Ditto for feta. One day when I was craving spice but felt too poor for Indian food, I shook in a bunch of red pepper flakes, which definitely added some heat! Of course, when I have cream, I add a few tablespoons to turn it delightfully sinful. (Although sometimes it curdles a little, maybe because I haven't let the wine boil off all the way? It's still edible, just not as good.) Endless variations, always yummy, I could make this every day.

Mitsuwa Market

2006-05-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post just one more before the big heave-ho to Cathay. About a month ago, Madame S of the library and I visited Mitsuwa market, a nifty little Japanese indoor shopping mall/strip market of sorts in Costa Mesa. We browsed the supermarket, bought some ice cream mochi (cappuchino!), and had lunch from one of the little restaurants in the food court. It was fun and educational to study the plastic displays of food, accurate down to the little kernels o'corn. Mysteriously, I think one of the restaurants served Italian food, but every other place served ramen and other fast food type Asian tasties.

Preparing for the feast.

I ordered some sort of plain no-meat curry, soba, and salad with ginger dressing. It was quite tasy; I didn't know that, also, the Japanese are big on potato salad. Huh.

S had the potato salad and pork katsu and is seen here chomping on some sort of unidentified yellow object. God bless all things breaded!

I have no idea what I was doing here. I look ridiculous. In reality, I am not really that stumpy. I hope.

We left: ecstatic!

Veggie curry stirfry explosion.

2006-05-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

I was inspired by all the delicious food posts going on here lately, so I thought for my inaugural post I would share with y'all a curry dish I made last week. It was inspired by the "Tofu in Curry-Coconut Sauce" recipe in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but with some twists. It also featured the maiden voyage of the new wok my mom got me for my birthday!

First, the lovely ingredients:

The ingredients pictured above are, clockwise from left: grapeseed oil, minced fresh cilantro, rice, vegetable broth, coconut milk, chopped fresh basil, and one chopped onion. Other ingredients not pictured: chopped Chinese-style extra-firm tofu, sliced and salted eggplant, two minced serrano peppers, two chopped bell peppers, and some rough-chopped bok choy.

After my sous-chef prepared all the ingredients, the first step was to make what Ms. Madison refers to as "golden tofu". This just means frying well drained, chopped-up tofu in some oil so that it becomes a nice golden color on either side. She says to use peanut oil but we didn't have any on hand so I used grapeseed oil instead. Voila:

Next, we stirfried all the veggies (except the bok choy) in grapeseed oil for a minute or two:

It turned out that we didn't have any Thai curry paste or powder about, so, being too lazy to run down the street to the local Thai market, we made do with the Trader Joe's Indian curry powder. Because I believe in fusion cuisine. After the veggies were looking tender, we added the curry powder, coconut milk, veggie stock, and tofu. This was mixed about for a while, and then the bok choy and herbs were added and cooked until the bok choy was good and burstingly green. We certainly didn't plate it in any fancy fashion (particularly as we don't own any serving dishes) so I will show it to you in the glorious context of my new wok:

It was devoured with rice and was delicious! And that is the story of my debut post on WRWF. Next, a long-overdue post on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go!

Annie and Banoffee Weekend

2006-04-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

Guess who came to visit??

Yes, ladies and gents, Annie came to CT, and it was good. Of course, I fed her, and you get to hear all about it. The first thing we ate was pasta. I didn't know at the time that Annie's segued into eating some meat, so I prepped for a veggie dinner. Annie and I peeled 16 garlic cloves while Fella cut cherry tomatoes, and we put them in a pan and drizzled with olive oil and red pepper flakes. I should have taken more pictures of this, but I only managed to get one after it was done.

This was SPICY. And delicious! I ate three bowlfuls and then had it as leftovers for the next three nights. Pre-Ireland it would have been too spicy for me, but now I just had lots of water and bread and dealt with it. And it was good.

For dessert...oh for dessert...I decided to hark back to Ireland and celebrate my first Irish roomie visit with a pie.

Banoffee Pie, to be exact.

First, I slaved over a hot stove for hours to make the graham cracker crust.

Then I poured 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk into a glass pan which I placed into a waterbath and put in the oven. (Fuzzy pic.)

And then I waited. And waited. And finally made enough distressed noises about the fact that the milk wasn't turning into toffee that Fella came over to look, checked the recipe, and gently informed me that I was supposed to tent foil over the milk before putting it in the bath. Oops. I was sad, he fixed it, and then we waited. And waited. And it STILL didn't look even a little like toffee, so he did an Internet search to find out if other people had had the same problem. They had, because the temperature needed to be almost 100 degrees higher in order to work, but the recipe had gotten it wrong.

So we cranked up the heat, and waited, and then Annie arrived. I had hoped to present her with a freshly baked banoffee, but instead she got to help assemble the pie.

We spread the toffee, and as you can see from the background, it actually looks like toffee.

(I can't see what Annie wrote on her hand, can you?)

Annie expertly chopped bananas to layer over the toffee.

Annie and I both sliced bananas, and in this picture, were both making funny faces too.

Oh yeah, and there was some wine consumption as well. A nice white and a nice Chianti, both yummy!

So as you know, we have the graham cracker layer, then a toffee layer, bananas, toffee, bananas.

Toffee:

Banana:

Here's Fella whipping cream and making a funny (and somewhat scary) face:

And the finished pie looked so wonderful. It brought back lovely memories of sitting huddled in my D sweatshirt, freezing, hearing the Simpsons and Wildboyz in the background, and lamenting about Roland, my package frozen in Irish bureaucracy, and the bus system as well. And it made me remember digging into those delicious pies with a spoon (which Annie and I did for breakfast the next morning as well.

The cream was light and fluffy, the toffee substantial and textured, and the bananas fresh. I was VERY pleased with myself. If, like Fella, you don't like bananas, then the effort is wasted, but if you DO enjoy the wonderful goodness, this is well worth the effort.

The slice view.

We ate, drank, and were merry, and it was SO great to have Annie come for a visit! Love!

Spending

2006-04-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

A novel by Mary Gordon.

I picked out Spending from a guidebook for book clubs; it was marked as "erotic fiction." Ooooo. But it's not porn; it's not (I bet) even as graphic as Clan of the Cave Bear.

What I enjoyed about it was how the language was so lovingly rendered:

Limp, there's something of the abashed little animal about it, peering out of the brush, blinking in the light. Then, suddenly, something much more like a divining rod, or a branch in the wind, or a long-legged bird. There's no way of painting the transformation. No middle ground that represents a change, in the way that the head of Vermeer's girl in a turban gives at once the impression of turning toward the viewer and turning away. No way to express the delight a lover feels when it's in her hand or mouth: proof positive. Delight, like the expression on the face of the Vermeer girl looking at her strand of pearls. And disappointment when it goes down. The pearls purloined. More and more I began to think of what an unusual thing it is for a woman to be looking at a man's body.

Spending comes from the pov of Monica Szabo, a modestly successful painter, who encounters a man willing to play as her muse--to do what female muses have historically done--provide money, time, space, sex, and inspiration. But what happens when her lover becomes financially dependent on her? What does this mean for their sex life? Gender, power, money, sex, art--Gordon knits these things together with surprising deftness and skill.

Enjoyed it! Recommend it.

Veggie Attempts

2006-04-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

I tried really hard, I did, to work on eating more veggies and less meat. But it's summer and the grilling has begun, and really we might as well eat chicken now in case the bird flu comes, right? And it's practically a sin to NOT eat beef and burgers when it's offered to you. So...oh well. I have been doing moderately better, but I'm not kidding myself here about making that leap!

When I WAS being good....

This is corn and sweet pepper soup from Trader Joe's, and it was really yummy. Very sweet, maybe too sweet, but a little freshly ground pepper nicely counteracted it.

The sandwich is on a sun dried tomato wrap, with red pepper hummus, cheese, tomato, and roasted red peppers. It was delicious, lots of my favorite things, but I had four in three days and then needed a nice long bread from it all!

Fella made his with all the same things, plus some beef left over from his dinner the night before, and used bread we'd had on the side to build it:

Yay attempts!

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

2006-04-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

yummay.

You would think it would be overdoing it to have so much garlic, but it actually came out tasting very mild and...warm. I came across several different recipes for this dish, but chose the one from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. It turned out marvelously....

I cooked Ginger-Lime spinach (also from Mark Bittman) to go with it, and it was a pretty well balanced meal. The spinach is super easy to prepare, and a tart companion to the mellow chicken.

Bravo, Mark Bittman.

Cookie Points for me; aka Cinnamon Basil Chicken

2006-04-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

Using the recipe Bright posted from The Herbal Kitchen, I attempted Cinnamon Basil Chicken. Lots of interesting things in here that I don't usually use, like ginger and cinnamon. Okay, so not LOTS of things, but those two things I never use, especially ginger, which Fella had never used and I had only played with in Ireland when this Chinese chick I know was cooking for me. ;-) Still, we decided to be adventurous and try it. Here was some of the prep work:

I did the chopping of onions and ginger beforehand to make things move a little quicker; I also bought WAY too much ginger so if anyone knows of another cool recipe with ginger in it, let me know.

Fella kindly agreed to do the cooking of the chicken. I bought a whole chicken, quartered, so we had to halve each quarter for the required eight pieces. We put them in the hot skillet skin side down, and boy did they smell marvelous when they got going! (Note: I was very worried that the skin was sticking, but learned from Fella that that's supposed to happen, and the stuck part cooks off, and it helps you know it's done when it's not sticking anymore.)

It also was really cool to watch the cooked bit travel up the chicken. Then we took the chicken out and made the sauce with the onions, ginger, garlic, canned tomatoes, salt, and cinnamon sticks. We put the chicken back in the pan, brought the tomatoes to a simmer, then turned the heat down really low and covered it until the 50 minutes was up. (This is the before picture, not after the 50 minutes.)

At the end, the sauce was still a mite watery, which the recipe said was fixable, but that would have taken more time and it smelled really good and I was STARVING, so we just dealt with it. We put it all in a bowl and tossed in the basil. (Warning: blurry picture.)

This was a really good meal. I had a few issues with it, primarily that if you do in fact use a whole chicken, really the only place you have any decent meat is on the breast. It says 4 servings but I'd say 2.5. (I had the .5 for lunch the next day.) Also, the cinnamon and basil were not in fact the major tastes here, which the title had led me to believe they would be. The basil even seemed like sort of an afterthought, just kinda tossed in at the end.

Quibbles aside, it was delicious. The chicken was tender, the sauce was yummy. The cinnamon was a very subtle taste that mainly came across in the aftertaste, but that really added a rich and interesting note. Fella was afraid it would be overwhelmingly cinnamonny, but it wasn't. And anything with garlic, onions, tomatoes, and basil can hardly be bad. The ginger was a mellow note too, and I really liked it. Good stuff! And once the prep work was done, the rest was fairly easy. Yay Herbal Kitchen and Brightski! Cookie points to Chris and Fella.

New siiiiiite

2006-04-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

New site! New site! A brief announcement to say...I am moving my heiferly keister over to a new apricot blog, and of course I'll still be alllll over wrwf. Visit meee! (Even better, comment meee!)

The Problem with Procrastinating and 105

2006-04-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've forgotten all the food I took such pretty pictures of. But take heart, I will post many of them anyway, and we can try to figure it out together. (And I may try that chicken recipe, Brightski, it looks luscious!)

This was either pumkin or sweet potato bisque that I had at 105 in Cold Spring Harbor when Mere and I just made it in time for brunch. I love this restaurant for the ambience, although occasionally the food does not live up to the presentation. Usually my family goes there for dinner and reliably has a wonderful time even when the food is not perfect. This bisque was gorgeous--rich, flavorful, tasty, and not at all boring or overpowering. You know I'm not lying when I say I licked the bowl clean. This wouldn't normally be a pick of mine, but they do a fantastic lobster bisque that (tragically) was not on the brunch menu, but I found it hard to imagine them making a bad bisque, having had the other. I was right, even if I can't remember what it was made of now.

The main meal was meh. And truth be told, I've had a better tasting lemon cloud, but I've never seen a prettier one:

Very well done. And Mere and I sat in the recessed alcove overlooking the harbor and watched the mist rise off the water and were very happy and had wonderful conversation, even if the food wasn't the best.

Cinnamon Basil Chicken

2006-04-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

At Christine's request, courtesy of The Herbal Kitchen (see below). Major cookie points to anyone who makes it and posts pics ;)

Cinnamon Basil Chicken
4 servings

1 frying chicken, about 4 1/2 ounds, cut into 8 pieces (Bright: I've used 8 chicken thighs and that works well)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, halved and sliced from root end to top
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
one (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained of half the liquid
three 3-inch cinnamon sticks
3 star anise pods (optional)
1 1/2 cups torn leaves of sweet basil or cinnamon basil, gently packed

Season all sides of chicken with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil over medium high heat in large skillet with a tight-fitting lid. When the pan is hot, put the chicken pieces in the pan, skin side down, and cook uncovered until the skin turns deep golden brown, at least 6 to 8 minutes. Turn the chicken and cook another 2 to 3 minutes on the other side. Take the chicken out of the pan and pile it on the platter.

Reduce heat to medium and add the onion, garlic, and ginger to the pan. Stir them around for 3-4 minutes, or until they soften and begin to brown. Add the tomatoes, cinnamon sticks, star anise, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Put the chicken back in the pan. When the tomatoes come to a simmer, cover the pan, turn the heat to very low, and cook for about 50 minutes, or until there is little resistance when you pierce a thigh with the tip of a paring knife. If the sauce seems watery, turn the heat to high and boil it uncovered until it thickens. Scatter in the basil as you toss the chicken in the sauce with tongs. Serve right away.

The pictures from the cookbook look beautiful. Someone make this! (CHRISTINE)

Cookbook Madness!

2006-03-29T19:48:00.000-08:00

At the library, it's part of the daily grind to restock the display shelf with new books. Lucky me gets to fondle all the glossy new volumes of literary goodness. And also! Cookbooks. My "borrowed books" shelf creaks under the weight of all the cookbooks. Ones I love:

The Herbal Kitchen
Haven't tried cooking any of it yet, but the photography is amazing and the recipes are mouthwatering. Temtping: berry rose sangria, basil lime fizz, cinnamon basil chicken, penne with walnut pesto and eggplant, shrimp in garlic-sage butter, halibut in carrot-cilantro broth, onion rosemary focaccia, chocolate-jasmine pot de creme, strawberry rose geranium ice cream.

How To Cook Everything
The adobo chicken in this book is legendary; I'll have to give it a try. Made the ginger-lime spinach recipe and it was perfect in its simplicity: light, fresh, and very easy. Mark Bittman's trademark cooking technique is all about ease, which is key for lazy monkeys like meself.

Vegetable Love
Didn't borrow it, but it seems incredibly thorough. Need more vegetarian cookbooks.

The Best Recipe
A classic; Annie introduced me to it! Used the turkey recipe for Thanksgiving (brining, vegetables, herbs), and it was the best turkey we've ever had. The sage-bacon stuffing wasn't bad either. The garlic mashed potatoes were gone in the first 10 minutes. Not a single dud in this one to date...seems like it's best for the Western classics: mac n' cheese, turkey, desserts, meats.

Healthy College Cookbook
A fantastic standby for me. Recipes have rarely more than 6 ingredients or so, and it's still tasty! Lots of non-meat options; in fact, I'd say that most of the book is meat free. The vegetarian lasagna and the carrot soup is a combination that'll keep you happy in leftovers for 3 days after cooking.

Phfew! Anyone else got any awesome recipe books?

Oops

2006-03-29T19:07:00.000-08:00

I just made a post-migraine scallion risotto, and even remembered to bring my camera downstairs...and then promptly forgot to take any pictures of it. But I thought I'd post an oops since none of you lazy ladies are playing. ;-)

I miss you all!

Cruise!

2006-03-25T19:24:00.000-08:00

Not to make you jealous...okay, to make you jealous. :-) Fella and I went to the Bahamas, and as I said I didn't take pics of the food. But...I can fake some connections to Well Read Well Fed.

Lots of drinks...Long Island Iced Teas were the drink of choice that day (NOT by me) and few tropical punch type things, one of which I spilled, hence the soggy napkin. On the plate was tortellini with walnut sauce, chocolate cheesecake, and lots of bread and butter. Note the Dartmouth water bottle, random pants, books, and sun tan lotion.

I also read "Regeneration," which Vy reviewed on her site (which is as good as she said), as well as "The Man in the Iron Mask" by Dumas (if you haven't yet read The Count of Monte Cristo, run don't walk to read that book. Really.), "The Closers," a random crime book because fluff books are part of vacation, and "A Moment on the Edge," a collection of crime stories, all written by women. It was interesting and I REALLY liked a few especially, including "A Jury of Her Peers" and "The Irony of Hate," both spectacular. Also read "The Queen of the South," historical fiction, which I enjoyed far more than I anticipated, and "The Third Twin," another trashy-mysterious novel. I loooove vacation.

There's the boat of good times and fun!

And here's the lovely beach and clear water. Oh yeah, and Chris and Fella. :-)

Yay for spring break!

Chicken Parm

2006-03-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

This is a post from a long time ago...I'm back from my cruise and will be putting up more soon, although I decided not to embarass everyone I was with and take pictures of all my food as per usual. ;-) So here's one from three weeks ago:

We used a box of tomatoes for a pasta sauce, and had some left over. This made up chicken parm was born of that. Note the slivers of Parmesan cheese on top. Very tasty.

Gratuitous Pictures of Food

2006-03-23T21:34:00.000-08:00

My very own appeasement policy.

Here are pictures of food that I will never get around to posting otherwise.

Taal is an Indian restaurant right outside CalState Fullerton. Although the decor was rather lacking and the waiter actually believed that my keema mattar was "hot" (it was not), it was a pretty kickass meal. Christine, I think Taal will take down your Indian restaurant anyday. With a vengeance.

Jonathan gives Taal the thumbs up

Coconut shrimp, drizzled with chocolate, which I ate at a restaurant I forget about.

Where are all the posties, people? love, techtech.

On Booty

2006-03-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

A very entertaining book. Inventively plotted, to say the least.

YAYs:
1. As Xiney and Anney have observed, Smith's language is unique and very easy to absorb. I felt that it had a tilting gaze: looking at everything a little bit sideways, with some odd moments of dry humorous observation. Sometimes it felt a little distracting, but for the most part--a yay.

2. Keen understanding of race. Being not black, I can't really say it's authentic or right-on or whatever, but everything she writes seems REASONABLE.

BOOs:
1. Howard and Kiki seem like an unlikely couple. Like, if he's so hoity toity, how did they meet? What drew them together in the beginning? It seems like Smith just threw them together without enough back story.

2. Howard is a bastard and so is everyone else, pretty much. Zora is annoying, Carl is a jerk, Levi is a poseur, on and on and on. Everyone-as-bad-guy can work, but in this case, it felt a little bit too heavy.

3. The story got really random by the end. It seemed very choppy & pasted together, especially re: the painting. and the sex with Vee, who seemed at least partially a sympathetic character who had more potential than Smith gave her.

Moments of Hmm!:
1. Smith knows what dastardly deeds can happen in academe, for sure. I kept seeing Dartmouth professors--Erskine/Pease, Claire/Zeiger, and so forth.

Overall? Good stuff, not overwhelmingly good, but good.

On "On Beauty"

2006-03-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

be forewarned - spoilers ahead.

i couldn't have said it any better than ms. christine. christine, you picked all the quotes i picked. zadie smith definitely has a way with language, and certain corner on the market in the way of diversity - have any of you read her first novel, white teeth? in some ways, she reminds me of more old-fashioned novelists - austen, particularly, maybe a bit of the brontes, henry james, even the occasional coziness of lousia may alcott - in her sprawling, interconnected story lines, her many intertwined characters, the plot twists. i love that.

i was immediately drawn into this book, fascinated by her word choices, some of them just edibly delightful. but i didn't fall in love with a single character. at different moments, i felt sympathy, perhaps, or a bit of kinship, but i never liked them. howard, in particular, has few redeeming qualities. i liked leroy and kiki best, and carl, too, i suppose, because they had a kindness that the others seemed to lack; they weren't as freakin self-centered as every other freakin person in this novel, except maybe also carlene. and i find it hard to push through a whole book with people i don't care for; it was mostly smith's language, and the need to find out what happened next that pushed me through. and, jesus, howard's second affair? with monty's daughter? who had de-virginized his own son? at her mother's wake? eeeeeesh. and yet i almost found myself rooting for him and kiki to get back together, simply because it - well, i guess it just seemed easier than to start new lives. lame, i know. but they had really loved each other at one time.

i also struggled with this purportedly huge divide between intellectuals and non-intellectuals. huh? am i oblivious? i mean, i get it to some extent, and perhaps i just have a skewed perspective - i grew up in a college town, where people were pretty much either farmers or professors [a friend of mine today, born and raised here in colorado said, "i picture vermont as a place where everybody lives in little cabins in the woods and milks their own cows" - he's not entirely wrong], but anyway, it seemed like smith was - or the characters were - making a big deal out of nothing. perhaps that just proves i'm not an intellectual.

and yes, chris, all the monty drama, without a whole lot of actual monty.

the ending was difficult for me - what precisely happens? are howard and kiki getting back together? is howard going to lose his job? is that the best thing that could happen for him, for them? what's next? i suppose it's a partial credit to the book that i wanted more, more closure, more anything, but also a strike against it for that lingering disatisfaction.

still, i think, a brilliant, sprawling sort of book, a very modern book. and how delightful it really would have been if kiki and carlene had run away together with that beautiful painting and murdoch the dachsund and left all those selfish, intellectuals to their wished-for tenure and high praise!

and for those of you ireland ladies, there's a fascinating piece in the march 6 new yorker on playwright martin mcdonagh - he wrote the the lieutentant of inishmore and the cripple of inishmaan, both of which we saw. they were hard to forget. he says of himself "i was trying to write a play that would get me killed". worth reading.

in addition, i high;y recommend the new movie "the three burials of melquiades estrada". a western for today. when i grow up, i'm going to marry tommy lee jones.

On Beauty, by Zadie Smith

2006-03-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

Hellooo? Anyone else out there? ;-) I have lots of random things to say, so I'll jump right in. If you haven't finished the book, there are probably spoilers, so wait to read until you have. Here's my take on "On Beauty," by Zadie Smith.

Firstly, my own assumptions...didn't cross my mind that the family was black until Smith spelled it out for me a bunch of pages in. It just wasn't what I pictured in my head. (Clearly, I didn't read the flaps.) Then, it didn't cross my mind that a character named "Kiki" was 300 pounds...that name just sounds squeaky and pocket sized to me! Every so often I did have to go through and check what assumptions I was making and whether or not they were true, which was interesting.

I thought the beginning romance unwieldy and unnecessary. It seemed to be supposed to connect the two families, but really it seemed to me they had enough connection already, and Jerome's personality seemed to sort of vanish after the very beginning.

There were a lot of spots in this book that made me think, "Wow." One of those was on page 69 about Mozart's requiem. "The choir is the heavenly host and simultaneously the devil's army. It is also every person who has changed you during your time on this earth: your many lovers; your family; your enemies, the nameless, faceless woman who slept with your husband; the man you thought you were going to marry; the man you did." I thought the people she chose to list said a lot about Kiki and her inner self which is so hard to describe in a character. That was one of those moments that drew me close to her.

In honor of the food section of this blog, I loved the description of the food at the party: "Soul food has a scent that fills you up even before your mouth gets near any of it" (84). It made me want to try all of those dishes in a big way.

"Is that what it's like, wondered Kiki, to be an intellectual? Can the tuned mind tune everything else out?" (89) I saw myself in that, for sure, and I'm wondering if any of you did. There was a real anti-intellectual streak in this book, as the intellectuals were filled with hypocrisy and self-importance and cruelty, and those who considered themselves outside that realm, like Kiki, Carlene, and Carl, had a vitality and an honesty that (it seems to be implied) one cannot find inside oneself while inside an institution. How true that is I don't know...but it just seemed to be assumed rather than interrogated, if I may sound English majory for an instant.

Women's bodies also had a prominent space in the book. It surprised me how people reacted to Kiki's body sometimes, but it did not surprise me how women reacted to their own. "This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust...It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies--it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it." How true, eh? I wouldn't have thought to pick newspapers and shoes as the conveyors of this deadly hatred, but that she did caught my eye and my ear and made me think harder about it than I would have otherwise. On the other hand, and this may not be a popular opinion, I do sort of think part of the deal in a relationship is caring for your body...and to marry someone and have that body change by 200 pounds does not seem fair. So I was happy that Kiki liked her body, but sympathetic with Howard on that point (and I wasn't sympathetic with him much!).

A point that irritated me: there was ALL this Monty drama, and I felt like we never got to know Monty. Were his intellectual points really foolish? Was he really such a jerk? He seemed it, but then why did Carlene love him so much? Were we not supposed to know him? He was almost like a mythical enemy, someone we knew was out there, we knew the protagonist was against, but who was not really as much of the problem as everyone seemed to think.

Another lovely idea: that of fittingness. "Or - if one wishes to be grand about it - to write the poem that is exactly the fitting receptacle of the feeling or thought that you hoped to convey. In Claire's presence...you were the fitting receptacle and instrument of your talents and beliefs and desires" (214). I thought that moment would probably appeal to all of my literary dork friends as much as it did to me. It seemed to have the pulse of what we try to accomplish when we write (I use the we rather grandly there, my friends), and the feeling for which we struggle to gain.

And for Care, of course, the part about sibling love between the three. "They caught up with each other's news casually, leaving long, cosy gaps of silence in which to go to work on their muffins and coffees...Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel - before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed sheets" (235). Our best fort was actually in the bedroom we shared in Florida, but the idea remains the same, and I really liked it. Made me miss my sis!

I'm sure most of you caught the intersection with Lolita on 315, "pressing down on him as Lolita did on Humbert." I was seriously grossed out by his sex with Vee...the wrongness of it, the time and place (after she slept with his son? a funeral? her mother's??), her blatant immaturity and faking...just ew. (That's the note I took, "EW.") It made me dislike him much more seriously than I previously had. I could understand Claire, and had guessed it only a few pages earlier than it was revealed, especially when compared to Kiki...the opposite in many ways, and a nice way to sabotage himself too. I got that, in the context...but that was just wrong.

Other very real moments for me were Howard saying, "What a period this was to live through! His children were old enough to make him laugh" (386) and "She never did direct a movie or run for the Senate. She could not fly a plane. But here was all this" (424). Lots of nice moments, but I was never really enthralled by this book. I didn't understand the painting subplot's point, and I liked Kiki and connected to her but didn't know if I ever agreed with anything any of the characters were doing: staying, leaving, having sex, stealing, doing the right thing for the wrong reason, doing the wrong thing for sort of right reasons...I was just never sure, and I disliked Howard by the end enough to not really care! I was hoping Kiki and Carlene would run away together, to be honest, and I was disappointed that neither of them decided to oblige me and be lovers. Oh well. It was an interesting book and I enjoyed many bits of it.

Pancakes for Chris

2006-03-09T03:51:00.000-08:00

Lazy weekend breakfasts are so nice. Eric was even nice enough to put chocolate chips in my pancakes because he knows I like them best that way. Not so much healthy, but yummy!

The buttermilk was leftover from the herb loaf, so he decided to make pancakes with it. (Another Alton Brown recipe.) And a little bit of bacon too...because it is so good, even if I am trying to be better!

Herb Loaf

2006-03-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

Another muy delicious recipe from Alton Brown. Fella made this because we had a lot of leftover herbs from various meals, and it was really nice. There were some rosemary, thyme, and chives in this version, and some fresh crushed black pepper. The loaf was of the crumbly dry sort, but especially warmed with butter it was delicious.

There's the side view. We had this for dinner with chicken parm, as a nice side. We also had it toasted with butter for breakfast, and for random snacks. The pictures are a bit fuzzy, but this was a very fresh way to use up some bunches of herbs that otherwise might have gone to waste. I think buttermilk was the only purchase necessary besides things we already had around.

Fun with Falafel

2006-02-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

Really, this food was incredibly fun to make just because of the word falafel. Say it out loud. Falafel falafel FALAFEL. It's even fun to type. Look at how much fun Amanda is having!

This meal came out of remembering that I ate falafel at Homeplate a few times when I was wanting some non-meat food. I remembered that I liked it, so I looked up a recipe in my vegetarian cookbook. It looked remarkably do-able, and the word was so fun I said it to Amanda a bunch of times and she responded that she liked FALAFEL and would be happy to eat it with me. We embarked on a food journey which yielded excellent results.

Attack of the Falafel

We ran into trouble immediately, which will not surprise anyone who knows either of us. My food processor is bitsy and could not handle the 15 oz of chickpeas, which needed to be ground. (Grinded?) Neither could the blender; we decided the mixture was too dry and poured in lemon juice along with the crushed garlic which was actually supposed to go in at this stage. It still didn't work, so we decided to attack it by hand. The kindergarten teacher jumped right in and began to mush, which worked nicely.

The recipe for FALAFEL calls for fresh parsley, coriander, mint, and cumin seeds to be mushed in as well. Well, I couldn't picture using enough coriander and mint and cumin in the near future to justify buying them all, so I made the executive decision not to, and only bought parsley. It also calls for fresh breadcrumbs, but I don't have any bread here and I do have seasoned breadcrumbs for chicken and other things, so we used that. Then we shaped them into balls and stuck them in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.

After half an hour was up...no wait. We decided to use our time wisely and start eating, because everything had taken longer than we thought it would and we were hungry. So cheese and crackers for us.

THEN we dropped the FALAFEL balls into 1/4 inch of oil and fried them for about 8 minutes, turning them once.

If the FALAFELS look like they're falling apart...well, they are. Apparently when you put lemon juice into chickpeas you basically make hummus, and hummus does not fry as well as chickpeas. They began to crumble. Some of them did crumble once we put them on paper towels to drain.

While they were chilling, we made a tahini sauce with garlic and lemon, but didn't feel like it was the right consistency, so we ran out and bought a tub of plain yogurt (and other dairy goodness) and mixed that in. The sauce got white and thicker and it looked and tasted much better. We served our FALAFEL in warmed pita bread with lettuce, tomatoes, and our sauce. Remarkably, it came out really well. Amanda and I both love garlic and lemon, and we both cook with what might be called a sense of abandon mixed with "oh well there's a pizza place down the street if it goes really badly."

Behold the loveliness! So this was such a delicious veg meal that we made it again a few days later. We put lemon juice in again because it had tasted good even though we suspected it would fall apart again. (It did.) We'd made plenty of tahini sauce and basically just had to buy more chickpeas. Doesn't it look so pretty?

We felt very healthy and virtuous. Therefore, we immediately turned to our other dairy product purchase...

Thin mint ice cream.

And so we had bowls of that too. Really, I don't know how anyone could resist.

This is a vegetarian meal I can both cook (even after work since it doesn't take so long) and enjoy. If anyone wants the whole official recipe let me know!

Valentine's Day

2006-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

One of my Valentine's Day presents was a delicious one. Eric made Chocolate Lava Muffins, and they were delicious. He made the batter earlier so I don't know all the details, but I know it's from Alton Brown's cookbook, which has treated us remarkably well lately.

The outside was cakey and rich and the inside...ohh the inside was gooey and soft and melted chocolatey...it was delicious! So good. Just like a chocolate lava cake you'd get in a great restaurant.

He also made a raspberry compote to drizzle on the top. I should have stopped to take more pictures...but I couldn't! It just tasted way too good. Still hot from the oven...I highly recommend these to anyone who can find someone to make them for you! :-D

Harvest for Hope

2006-02-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

Remember in the haze of senior year when I was occasionally actually being a flexitarian and generally only eating chicken in my Indian food and food court sandwiches? I have not done much of that lately, have completely gone off the veggie Annie and flexy Bright food, and instead been eating far too many burgers (with blue cheese crumbles, tomato, and guac) and having a love affair with bacon. (No, really, it's quite passionate actually...and pancetta and prosciutto...how did I not know these things existed until now?) I have actually felt more healthy and been sick less often lately than in a whole lot of years past, but I'm not sure I can credit the bacon. I still have a bunch of past recipe photos that I'll be posting that will belie this, but I'm going to try to do better with my eating for a while and see how that goes.

I have mixed feelings here, as y'all know...I dearly love my meat products and am not a huge fan of the other sorts of protein out there. But I understand that one cannot claim ignorance as a valid excuse anymore when overeating of meat is wreaking havoc on our health and environment. (Even Albert Einstein said so!) Missa (who waves hello from her island down there) told me she was reading "Harvest for Hope" by Jane Goodall, so I decided to give it a try. It's not such an in your face, gross-you-out book as some of those that try to convert eaters to one thing or another, and indeed she doesn't demean people who don't want to give up meat and makes suggestions for cutting back or how to buy healthier meat.

And some of the stuff that's out there GROSSED ME OUT dudes. Sadly, the part about veggies was just as bad, if not worse--they're growing pesticides inside the cells of your tomatoes (and everything else) now! They genetically modify practically everything, and there's just about no way to know unless you buy certified organic everything. And they have no idea what it's going to do to humans' health, either. And the GM food spreads and is impossible to contain, so it's wiping out a lot of the natural crops now. (Of course, there's more of it and it could do a lot of good potentially if it was getting to the hungriest mouths. There's just no way to know if it's harmless.) The meat is GM too, with cows and steers and pigs that can no longer walk because they are engineered to be heavier than their bodies can stand. (They can't even have sex--they need to be artificially impregnated. If that isn't cause for sorrow I don't know what is.) They're killed while living, often, and in gruesome ways. And the chemicals we put on our crops and in our food is in their food even worse, and we don't know what that'll do to us yet.

I don't understand how any person feeds his or her kids with all this danger out there...and I don't know how any pregrant women eat, knowing what's in our fish and meat and grain and fruit and veggies! You try to protect those you love in all sorts of ways, yet what you're feeding them and yourself can do so much harm, directly and through harming the planet and everything around us.

This is getting far too long, but I am feeling perplexed and hoping for a dialogue. I won't give it up altogether, but I'm trying to think of how to be better without being hungry. And I'm poor, and organic is much more expensive. Annie, do you buy all organic? What do you eat--have any yummy recipes? Bright, I know you're doing lots of veggies and tofu in your delicious style...how do you do with it all? The buying, the cooking, I need inspiration, folks. And what do you do when you're out at restaurants, or eating at school (where there's always other food but it's mostly just salad). I'll also definitely recommend Goodall's book; I'm interested to hear what any of you think about it.

Ovens in Foreign Lands

2006-02-21T08:36:00.000-08:00

well no I haven't read Lolita yet, but I decided to come out of hiding anyhow, since some of you may wonder if I've rotted away. This is a story from a long time ago, a story of cooking gone wrong, since we need some well fed bloopers to balance out the lovely food pictures.

Ribht before Thanksgiving I finally decided to learn to use our oven. I was confused, because there was no cord coming out of the back... The stovetop is gas, but I'd never had a gas oven before. So I finally figure out how to turn it on... 1) turn on the gas 2) light the pilot light on the stove 3) get down on your hands and knees 4) pull open the drawer at the bottom of the oven (which always won't come out, then once out won't go back in), 5) reach in the back of the oven to light a very small wire at the back. Then Turn the oven to desired degree (or best guess therof, since the temperature knob is so worn the numbers are mostly illegible).

So I wanted to make this lemon cake recipe I have, some of you thetas may have seen it before. I've made it maybe 5 times so far, and had never messed it up once. So I wait for the oven to heat up (no indicator of when this is), put my cake in, check on it a while later to find:

A perfectly shaped cake that popped out of the pan oh so easily, but oh no its completely black! But yellow and perfectly lemony on the inside! (I made another cake after, because I was in lemon cake mood, and it turned out ok. This has continued to be the pattern of our oven: first thing may or may not be a total disaster, but second version is ok)

Blizzard of '06

2006-02-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

For all of y'all who weren't in the middle of it, they weren't kidding--two feet of snow! I've never appreciated plows so much...nor been more perplexed about where to start shoveling. For context, here's a picture of Box looking like a station wagon:

And the snow is above the knees of my neighbor. When I walked out of the house in the morning I had no idea where the steps were and where they ended, it was so high, and I faceplanted. And sat there in my PJs laughing hysterically. Yaaay blizzards.

See how high the snow is on the flat garbage cans? Craziness.

On a cold day, what do you want to eat?
Soup, that's what.

Which I didn't have that day, incidentally, but I did have soup another night, and I wanted to show off the pictures of Buried Box anyway. Fella roasted a chicken and potatoes (which is another post), and after feasting on that he used the leftovers to make Chicken Corn Chowder. He used Cream of Chicken soup as the base, which caused him some pain, but I thought it was a delicious (and cheap and easy!) way to construct a more serious soup. He sauteed peppers and onions, ripped up the chicken, chopped the potatoes, and put frozen corn and creamed corn and all the rest into a pot. Heated it up, and eureka.

It was warm and filling and creamy and flavorful. Tender and yummy, just the thing for a blizzard day. Or any day, really!

spank me, I've been a naughty librarian

2006-02-17T22:41:00.000-08:00

So I didn't read Lolita (yet). Surprisingly, none of the local libraries had a copy. Considering that I live in OC, it's probably conservative censorship gone overboard (again). I will read it, definitely soon.

Anyway, here is a picture of some tofu I made recently as penance. Tofu, red peppers, green onion, and cooking wine and salt. Glisteningly good.

Chris's Humbert Bash

2006-02-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

This was a novel that I was unable to separate from the circumstances in which I read it. I think we all have these books and songs and movies, and they don't even have to make too much sense--I am thinking of being moved to tears by silly movie "Armageddon" and random song "Long December," or the way I enjoy "Con Air" because of the Usual Suspects. Sometimes something just hits you at the right moment, and makes an indelible impression, for whatever reason.

This book made me feel that way, albeit in a very negative way. Had I read this book in high school or college, I think I would have been impressed enough by the language and narrative force to, like Vy, sympathize with Humbert for at least parts of the story. However, I read it a few months ago, and so I found that to be impossible. I was looking forward to the love story, and ready to believe in it from the reviews and quotes, even though I knew the love object was not one I approved of; the actually story stopped me cold. I haven't reread it for this review--I don't think I will either, at least not for a long time. I believe that my reaction to this book is mostly based on my current job--working with kids all day about the age of Lolita.

Most readers do not have this daily contact with many little potential Lolitas, but because I do I could not get past the utter wrongness of it. It is very different to see little faces every day after reading the book the evening before and thinking about what I would do to someone who tried to touch one of my kids that way. (It would not be pretty, or legal, and would involve lots of Vy's favorite words.) I couldn't picture him watching her without shivering in disgust and being hypervigilant about who was around while they were on the playground. I was always VERY aware that it was abuse, and that I was horrified by it. I read the whole thing, but it was a struggle. I was physically sickened by it.

After, I tried to go through and find a quote that I liked to add to my quote book, but I actually couldn't do it. Knowing what the language was about stripped it of all its pleasure for me. I was sad for him...but always much sadder for her. And we didn't hear enough from her, although that was probably a blessing...not to know how and in how many ways she had been damaged, scarred by a ruthless predator. He showed her no mercy, and he deserved little of my interest and less of my pity.

Maybe everyone should read it because it is a classic, but I don't think it is necessarily a good thing that the author's skill is able to negate what should be most people's natural response. Skillful indeed, but not a novel I could enjoy.

Vy's Take on Lolita

2006-02-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

Sorry guys, taken from my blog again... I know it's lame, but I'm starting to get so crazy-busy, I've got to review these books as soon as I finish or else they get lost under all the reading/writing I have to do for class. Anyway, without further ado, here it is in its meager cut-and-paste glory:

One quote to sum up my impressions of Lolita: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns." (9)

I don't want to beat this dead horse again by gushing about how wonderful and brilliant Nabokov is. I recently read Pale Fire, another one of his amazing novels (perhaps better than Lolita), and his short story "The Vane Sisters," which if I remember right was initially rejected by the New Yorker because they failed to see the clever twist he inserted in the concluding paragraph. But I digress, and I haven't even gotten started.

For the past few days while I was reading this book, I was infatuated with a little girl named Lolita. I understood exactly what it was about nymphets that was so unbearably alluring; I knew why Lo's maturation would be a tragedy. The cover art of the book spoke to me. Nabokov paints Humbert Humbert's love and obsession in such a human manner that it is impossible not to sympathize with him for at least part, if not all, of the novel. The cover of the Second Vintage International edition 1997 includes a quote from Vanity Fair: "The only convincing love story of our century." I thought it was bullshit before I started reading; now, I'm inclined to agree. But here's the dead horse again, and here I am happily beating it. I'll move on.

So because I have a habit of discussing craft, I'll talk about that. I was most impressed by Nabokov's ability to pick such a dancing, whimsical writing style and remain true to it for the entire book, even during emotionally charged scenes where H.H. is clearly losing control--he still retains writing mannerisms such as word-play, name-play, associative literary leaps, etc. The murder scene, for example, or better still, the moment when Lolita leaves. I appreciated that Nabokov resisted the temptation to turn this story into a "claim of innocence" and left it simply as it is, the ultimate confession of taboo love given by a semi-trustworthy narrator who is in the end as human and pathetic as the next guy.

For me, the best moments of the book were where Humbert intentionally played with the reader's emotions and loyalties. I remember thinking as I was reading and wondering who the murdered victim would be: "Well, this guy's a creep, but he seems like a good guy, he isn't going to kill Charlotte, he isn't going to kill Lolita, he loves her." That thought was vindicated with regards Charlotte. Then on page 280, I realized how much more fickle I was compared to Humbert:

" "One last word," I [H.H.] said in my horrible careful English, "are you quite, quite sure that--well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but--well--some day, any day, you will not come to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope" (to that effect).
"No," she said smiling, "no."
"It would have made all the difference," said Humbert Humbert.
Then I pulled out my automatic--I mean, this is the kind of fool thing a reader might suppose I did. It never even occurred to me to do it. " (280)

I about had a heart attack when I read those last two lines. My immediate assumption, of course, was to trust Humbert's narrative and so I gullibly believed that he pulled out his automatic--and then when he corrected himself and addressed himself to the "fool reader," I realized that Nabokov was pointing out how easily the reader trusts and mistrusts a narrator, and how superficial my sympathy for H.H. was, and how precarious the whole Lolita situation had been all along. That moment was when I realized the full tension of the entire novel. It was a brilliant move on Nabokov's part. I don't think it was the only time he played a card like that, but this was the one that I found most striking.

I also enjoyed the word- and name-play a lot--I can't say I caught all the literary references, but his fun with words--e.g., "We had breakfast in the town of Soda, pop.1001" (220), and too many more to count--added another dimension to the novel, helped to humanize him, give him a personality outside of his love for Lolita. Also an impressive move on Nabokov's part, since otherwise it would be difficult to distinguish Humbert apart from Lolita--and even though he is almost always with her in the novel, his humor and means of expression give him a distinct identity.

My one qualm with the book was that, somewhere near the middle, I lost Humbert. We were no longer on the same page; he hadn't changed his obsession of course, Lolita did not speak much, and it was tiresome to see her in the same light through the same lens for most of the novel. To have her introduced that way, and to view her changing self that way, that was fine. It's a minor problem in light of the book's many strengths, and one that didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. There was another distinct moment when I lost Humbert, I think it was the first or second time he slept with Lolita, or around the time he started having her on a regular basis, and her withdrawal became noticeable--at that moment I remembered that this was a sort of sexual abuse and not merely the boundless, unbreakable love Humbert made it out to be. Of course by then I sympathized too strongly with Humbert to pull back far enough to hate him. Another great move. To state the patently obvious, Nabokov really is a brilliant writer.

I do have to say, though, I think the most effective part of the book is the final paragraph:

"Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much a part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to live at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." (309)

Moved me almost to tears, that one. Not so much because I knew what (I presumed) Humbert didn't, that Lolita died giving birth to a stillborn girl, although that affected me too, but because that last line just--oh. It got me. Especially because the entire novel up until the last paragraph is addressed exclusively to the reader, Humbert's sudden and unclear switch to addressing Lolita at the beginning of the last paragraph is highly effective. It was as though suddenly he was speaking to me with all the hapless, helpless, Humbert tenderness, love, and obsession he possessed throughout the novel. As the reader, I was privy to his confessions, and suddenly privy to the last recorded bald statement of his love for Lolita, addressed to Lolita, who would never read it as per his wishes.

Right, I'll stop beating that dead horse now. So, all in all, Lolita is a gorgeously written, wonderful novel, and of course I definitely recommend it. It really is one of those books everyone should read. What a perspective. What a way of writing.

Apple Pancake Worship

2006-02-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

I made this for friends and family on New Year's day. It was so easy to make--you just need a pan that can be used on the stove and in the oven.

'Twas orgasmic.

New Dishes, New Worlds

2006-02-07T17:14:00.000-08:00

"The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star."
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Thinking way too much about Calvino

2006-02-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

Bright, it is definitely not your fault that you "didn't really get into it." I also loved the concept, but I also didn't really get into it, either. I think it's all part of Calvino's plan. All the reasons why we slogged through the book (even Vy admits doing this) were direct effects of Calvino's project—to write a book that makes "getting into it" hard because "it" is about the interpretation of events and characters, not of events and characters themselves; and to write a book that celebrates, mocks and reveals the meaninglessness of interpretation, the impossibility of ever "figuring it out" because there is no such thing as a stable or certain "it."

I tried to explain my frustration and fascination with the book below.

****

"When our supper ended in a muteness which the sounds of chewing and the smacking of lips gulping wine did not make more pleasant, we remained seated, looking one another in the face, with the torment of not being able to exchange the many experiences each of us had to communicate" (5).

The above sentence contains one of the few mentions of eating in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. (I had to transition from corn and bean salads to the literary-critical act somehow!) Yet just as the narrator has resigned himself to muteness, the host of the castle pulls out the tarot cards. It is this deck of cards that ends up allowing each guest to "speak" his or her own story. As Vy wrote, each person's story is related to every other person's story (even those of Lear, Hamlet, Oedipus) because the stories are told through the same cards.

What I missed in Castle were—unsurprisingly—raw, human, characters with individuality, tics, habits, obsessions. Even in the narrator's description of eating—"when our supper ended in a muteness which the sounds of chewing and the smacking of lips gulping wine did not make more pleasant"—individual eaters are absent. No one appears to be smacking and chewing his or her own meal; the sounds, rather, just float in the air, belonging to the group.

The guests, however, do have relatively different styles of gesturing and using the cards. The guests also are explicitly moved to "speak": the narrator, for example, notices that "[o]ne of the guests drew the scattered cards to himself, […]; he took one card and placed it in front of himself. We all noticed the resemblance between his face and the face on the card, and we thought we understood that, with the card, he wanted to say 'I' and that he was preparing to tell his story" (6). The desire to tell one's own story is what all of the guests have in common.

After plodding through the first few chapters, I realized that Calvino was not interested in making me care about characters, however, and that one guest's desire to "say 'I'" was yawningly similar to the others. (Vy, please don’t kill me!) The stories, with their "journey[s] through forests, battles, treasures, banquets, bedchambers" (39), all sounded kind of alike.

On the other hand, the guests seemed entirely isolated from one another, even when they crossed paths in the cards. In the chapter "All Other Stories," for example, one guest's story branches off from that of another guest. The narrator tells us,

And so, as Astolpho began to recount his adventure, one of the most beautiful
ladies of the company, introducing herself through the amorous profile of the
Queen of Coins, was already placing at his path's destination The Hermit and The
Nine of Swords, which she needed, because that is precisely how her story began
[…]. (41)

Guests do not work together or acknowledge each other when they cross paths; there is neither collaboration nor collusion at the castle and tavern tables. There is only an "every man for himself" mentality: as soon as a card is endowed with meaning, "other hands immediately try to pull it in their direction, to fit into a different story" (71). The guests' desire, in fact, is not to share their stories with others or make an impression on others but, purely and simply, to speak their stories and to express themselves. It doesn't seem to matter if anyone is listening.

The guests' ability to tune out the listener/reader/interpreter, and the lack of human-like interactions and activities (except for the "smacking of lips gulping wine") annoyed me as much as did the absence of characters I could care about. But the reason that Calvino skimps on the storytellers and their stories is because he is busy interpreting the stories.

The narrator throughout Castle is a single man, but this man often uses the pronoun "we" to speak for everyone at the table, save for the storyteller of the moment. In many of Calvino's sentences, the main grammatical or thematic subject is not a storyteller or his or her characters but a we, which comprises the narrator and everyone else at the table save for the storyteller of the moment. In the "Tale of the Ingrate and his Punishment," for example, the we is as active as the storyteller himself, who has just been assaulted and robbed by a brigand. The brigand has left the storyteller ("our companion") hanging upside-down from a branch:

We sighed in relief at the news given us by the Arcanum Temperance, set
on the table by our companion with an expression of gratitude. From it we
learned that the hanging man had heard footsteps approaching and his upside-down
eye had seen a maiden […]. We had no doubt that the man strung up by his feet
would be freed and restored to his natural position by that simple child of the
woods. When we saw the Ace of Cups fall, with its depiction of a
fountain purling amidst flowering mosses and rustling wings, we could almost
hear the gurgle of a nearby spring and the gasping of that man, lying prone to
quench his thirst. (9)

Every sentence is filtered through the eyes of the we, and frequently the speculations of the we, such as "we had no doubt that the man strung up by his feet would be freed," must be interpreted as having actually happened, because the story just moves on.

By foregrounding the interpretation of a story, Calvino seems to be arguing that the interpreter is more important than the storyteller, or that the interpreter is the true storyteller. Any storyteller who wants to "say 'I'" is deluded; there is no such thing as an I. The only new stories are interpretations of old ones. The narrator, in fact, defines the writer as a juggler, who merely "arrange[s] on a stand at a fair a certain number of objects and, shifting them, connecting them, interchanging them, achieves a certain number of effects" (105).

So, although I was more in the mood to read about such things as the chewing and the smacking of lips gulping wine, I'm glad that I slogged through Castle. I especially like Calvino's idea that fiction is no different from real life. If the act of living demands continual perception and interpretation, and if to live is to arrange, shift, connect, and interchange what one is given, then where does fiction end and reality begin?* We are all jugglers, I suppose—regardless of whether we agree on the cards in the deck.

*Reading and writing, remarks the narrator, are objects in the landscape that are "placed among rocks, grass, lizards, having become products and instruments of the mineral-vegetable-animal continuum" (106).

Swordfish and Salads

2006-02-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

What's the best kind of fish in the world? Nevermind, I gave that away in the title. Fella made me dinner the other night and it sure was good. Shrimp cocktail and cheese and crackers to start, although I forgot to photograph that part. He plated beautifully, too. We have a fish place right down the road where he got the shrimp, cocktail sauce, swordfish, and two types of garnish for the fish. One was a corn salad, and the other was a bean salad. He used my grill pan (thanks mom!) and even made a diamond pattern on the fish. Skill, my friends, that is skill. It was a very interesting combo; the hot fish and cold salads, the plain and delicious fish with the zing of the salads. Yum. Without further ado, here's the pic:

Look at that! Beautiful. Aaaand tasty. :-D

Pancetta and Chive Quiche

2006-02-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

I promised this post a looong time ago, so here it finally is. Fella cooked a marvelous quiche, although I don't remember all the steps now that it's been a while, but the pictures are the important part anyway, right? Here goes:

Pie crust from scratch was delicious, flaky, buttery...everything one dreams about in a pie crust. However, I'm not sure if the amount of work involved justified making instead of buying! (Then again, I wasn't doing the work, so...;-))

Yummy....

Assembled with chives sprinkled on top...

And the final product.

I don't exaggerate when I say that this was one of the yummiest concoctions ever. The goat cheese inside actually melted in our mouths as we ate. It was unbelievable light and fluffy, but one good slice totally filled me up. (Which means that I had it for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner the next day too!) I was too hungry to take a pretty picture of my slice, but here it is:

A ten and a total hit!!

Huh

2006-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

that basically sums up my reaction to the Castle of Crossed Destinies. I'm not sure what to make of it.

I think the concept is brilliant, and the tarot cards themselves are a fascinating way "in".

I know I'm old-fashioned when it comes to novels, and so the concept itself wasn't enough for me. The structure really overpowered the narratives, I thought, and distracted me from enjoying the stories. He spent so much time referring to the cards themselves that I got distracted from what was going on in the particulars of the story. Cups? Swords? What? The nod to Chaucer is creative, but frankly, I lost interest pretty quickly. I have a short attention span anyway, and low tolerance for experimentalism. It's probably my fault that I didn't really get into it.

Still, it is a beautiful book. Just not my kind of beautiful, unfortunately.

Thanksgiving at the K's

2006-01-31T16:54:00.000-08:00

I love Thanksgiving at my mom's house...she makes the most wonderful things and makes me very happy! Bright and I posted about this a while ago, but here are the pics.

Two lovely ladies sharing a holiday and a dog:

And all that family jazz aside, the important part: the food.

Here we have turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, stuffing, broccoli cheese casserole, creamy pearl onions, and corn casserole. In addition to homemade applesauce, bread, wine, water, and sparkling cider. Sometimes life is just good.

Scrumptious!

2006-01-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

So, another food post. Durango, Colorado, is a tourist town, and business is slow during the week. Thus, restaurants have various deals and gimmicks to get all the destitute locals such as myself into their establishments. The Cyprus Cafe offers a two for Tuesday, where you get two dinners for the price of the more expensive one. So my roommates and a friend and I went out last Tuesday. It was delightful from the very beginning. We had to wait almost and hour and a half (during which I drank several beers and played word games) but it was warm (our house doesn't really have heat) and had atmospheric lighting and was full of wiity adults. When we eventually sat down, we were given warm pita and olive oil, and we ate it and must have looked pathetic because the waitress brought us more, with hummus this time. Then it came time to order, a very difficult task. Robyn got the chicken alfredo with sundried cranberries. Nina got the roasted duck with wild rice. Meg got the scallops with ginger sauce. I wish I could remember the details of their meals but I was so focused on mine: wild salmon coated with goat cheese, wrapped in grape leaves, and grilled, with wild rice, and lightly steamed onions, carrots, and green beans. Every bite made me smile involuntarily. It was simple, but incredible. And the bill came to over $100. Thank god it was two for one.

Best Bruschetta Ever

2006-01-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

We made this once...and then again the next day...and then again a few days later. Delish!

Toasted some nice French bread (it was cheaper than Italian and the right size, sue me) in our lovely skillet from Mom. Rubbed those pieces with cut garlic and olive oil while making a big bowl of freshly chopped tomatoes, finely chopped garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fresh basil off the basil plants. We spooned that mixture over the bread individually and shredded fresh parmesan on top. It was so good...just writing about it makes me want MORE!

Zongzi!

2006-01-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

As WRWF's resident "oriental" (haha, take THAT, Edward Said), I thought it might be nice to celebrate Chinese New Year with a brief photo journey of the making of Zongzi. While strictly not a holiday food, zhongzi require substantial skill and effort to make. Thus, Chinese families often make them in bulk--think tamale making; it's a similar process.

You start with some lightly soaked sticky rice, some twine...

yes, that is a litter box. It is, as far as I know, clean.

some shiny fragrant banana leaves...

According to biologydaily.com, which mysteriously has an article about zongzi, wrapping the zongzi is "a skill which is passed down through families." Witness here hapless Aunt WuDie trying to teach me (and failing):

add some good ole elbow grease...

stuff the twisted banana leaves with sticky rice and voila!

Shazam! ZONGZI!

My family likes plain zongzi; I like to lightly dust the sticky rice with brown sugar for a simple breakfast. Of course, officially, zongzi is usually stuffed with savory fillings like shrimp, pork, and other meat. It can also be stuffed with sweet bean paste or egg custard as a desert item. The wrapping and knotting of the string that ties the zongzi together indicates the filling.

zongzi crossections:

Calvino is a God

2006-01-26T10:05:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd post now just in case my wrists give out after I have to write for workshop this weekend. Disclaimer: This is mostly exactly what I wrote for my review on my own blog, meaning it's long and rambling and quite possibly full of crap. In a nutshell, I found my experience of The Castle of Crossed Destinies to be a lot like that of if on a winter's night a traveler--I didn't really like it while I was reading it, and then as I neared the latter half of the book I was suddenly illuminated and fell in love. Calvino has a way of not telling you what he's after until you're already well towards the end. I've learned to trust him, and so far, it's paid off pretty well.

Anyway, so here's my novel-length review, copied near verbatim from my blog:

"We began to spread out the cards on the table, face up, and to give them their proper value in games, or their true meaning in the reading of fortunes. And yet none of us seemed to wish to begin playing, and still less to question the future, since we were as if drained of all future, suspended in a journey that had not ended nor was to end. There was something else we saw in those tarots, something that no longer allowed us to take our eyes from the gilded pieces of that mosaic." (6)

The Castle of Crossed Destinies is essentially a two-part book made up of "interconnected" short stories or vignettes narrated by a group of travelers through tarot cards. The idea is that the travelers have magically lost the power of speech, and so they attempt to tell each other their histories-in-brief using different interpretations of the tarot cards. Part One of the book, "The Castle of Crossed Destinies," used the Italian Bembo deck (now obsolete), while Part Two, "The Tavern of Crossed Destinies," uses the French Marseilles deck. The difference is crucial since Calvino bases his interpretations primarily on the individual pictorial illustrations rather than on the usual "mystic" interpretations used in reading an entire tarot spread. Although the stories told in both Parts One and Two share thematic similarities, the different decks introduce variations in Calvino's invented and retold tales. Calvino also shows the illustrated cards in the margins of the stories, in the order that they appear in the narrative. The stories are "told" in two files, horizontal or vertical, and interconnect at points--hence my use of "interconnected" at the beginning of this paragraph.

I bought this book because of my recent passionate love affair with Calvino, rekindled by a re-reading of if on a winter's night a traveler and by the brand-new experience of Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities, all of which I absolutely adored. [See the earlier review of Cosmicomics somewhere in my archives...] Again, reading Calvino is a lot like drinking heavy cream; either you love it or its too rich and smothers you. I have to admit, The Castle of Crossed Destinies was vaguely disappointing, but I am still an ardent lover of everything Calvino does. I have a lot to say about this book, but for the sake of space and my poor dying wrists, I'll try to keep it short.

Reading this book, I uncovered two major premises that Calvino was working with, the first and more obvious being the use of tarot cards to tell a story in pictures. I thought that premise was brilliant, but I did think that the execution was lacking, more so in "Castle" than in "Tavern." To me, "Castle" didn't pull me in as much as it could have; it seemed too relaxed, and I didn't see the desperation of a group of mute travelers urgently wishing to tell their stories. I got more of that in "Tavern," when each story seemed to possess an undercurrent of desperation, and Calvino keeps reiterating that "it is difficult to fit one card to another [...] because for every new card the young man tries to align with others, ten hands are outstretched to take it from him and insert it in another story each one is constructing" (65). Although Calvino doesn't take pains to develop these characters--and understandably so since it isn't at all what he's trying to get at--I sympathized/empathized with them more in "Tavern." I have other reasons for liking Part Two also; I'll get into that in a minute.

Despite being vaguely disappointed in the execution, I do think Calvino delivered in terms of ideas. In Part One, I loved the idea of selling a city's soul "The Alchemist Who Sold His Soul," and "The Doomed Bride" was interesting, and I thought the pivotal stories of Roland were written beautifully. But there is, as always, the problem of losing something in the translation between written and pictorial art. I have a working knowledge of tarot readings and common interpretations, and I tried to find larger images of the cards Calvino was working with, but the Bembo deck is pretty much obsolete, so I ended up giving myself eyestrain trying to study and interpret the illustrations in the margins of the book. The "Tavern" ran a little differently since it's fairly easy to come by illustrations of the Marseilles deck, and I had fun going back and retelling the stories myself through different interpretations, reversals, etc. I really enjoyed just about all the stories in "The Tavern," especially "I Try Also to Tell My Tale" (but maybe that's me as a writer!). I also love that Calvino encourages "authorial instinct" by including his method of spreading the cards, e.g. from Part One "The Castle":

thus allowing for new interpretations reversing Calvino's stories, or altogether new stories told along the diagonals and around the square. His tarot spread in "The Tavern" more explicitly tells many more stories using more of the available space and most of the possible directions... So, "The Tavern," then.

Now, this could be my personal reading of the book and of Calvino's intention, but what I really enjoyed about The Castle, particularly Part Two "The Tavern," was the less apparent premise that all stories are one. In "The Castle" Calvino makes clear references to literary figures like Faust and Roland but portrays them in a different light or under different circumstances (though Roland, I believe, is more or less a straight retelling? I don't know about Astolpho). In "The Tavern," Calvino invents his own stories and then relates them in detail to literature and mythology: the stories of Hamlet, Oedipus, Justine, Perceval, Lady Macbeth, Faust (again!), Helen of Troy, and King Lear. He also makes references to St. Jerome and St. George and the dragon in his own tale, "The Writer's Tale," which judging by the scarcity of marginal illustrations relies only lightly on the tarot cards and instead tries to explain the purpose of storytelling. And this, I think, is the pivotal story of the entire novel.

In that story, "I Also Try to Tell My Tale," figures from all of the other stories appear even though the anonymous narrator here has not narrated the other stories. The characters do not belong to him. He then spends pages describing how he believes the extroverted St. George and the introverted St. Jerome can be made out to be each other, "in the way painters and writers have of believing in a story that has gone through many forms, and with painting and repainting, writing and rewriting, if it was not true, has become so" (108). I think because the execution of his premise in "The Tavern" became so lucid, I enjoyed Part Two more thoroughly than I did Part One, although in retrospect, once I'd figured out what he was going for, I liked the whole book very much.

The unspoken question here is perhaps what I found most intriguing about the book: how many stories exist in the world, and what if we run out of them? As a writer, I subconsciously worry that one day all the stories will be told, or maybe they have been told already, and then what am I going to do? Is it inevitable, can it be avoided? Do stories possess a limitless capacity for retelling, reworking; do they ever get old? I don't know. Calvino admits in "The Writer's Tale" that he also doesn't know. But he offers a possible solution, and the possibility of many retellings, as compensation, and once I figured out what he was saying, the writer in me really appreciated that.

Maybe it's because of that little worry of mine that I did, by the end of the novel, enjoy it so tremendously that I immediately reread it and studied the tarot cards to make up my own versions. I have to admit I found something intensely freeing about Calvino's conclusion, "And perhaps they really are one story, the life of the same man: maturity, old age, and death" (109). That it's all right that all stories emerge from one another, take new shape in their own reversals, can be reworked across tangent diagonals and at crossroads with other people's stories. Who would have thought that King Lear could also exist in Hamlet? But it does.

food is grood

2006-01-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

Because we haven't had any food entries for awhile, and I know *I'm* hungry:

So here is Thanksgiving '05. The stuffing has sage, prosciutto, homemade breadcrumbs, lots of butter, rosemary, and onions. Potent stuff!

aaaaand that's it. I forgot to take pictures of the turkey or anything else, so...

More food entries forthcoming!

Dazed and Amused

2006-01-17T20:02:00.000-08:00

Jesus: conceived by aliens?

Last night, I dreamt that the alien overlords (who had zapped out the unwilling, then buttered up the masses with material distractions) were about to wipe out everybody on earth with a massive flood.

I and some others (a motley assemblage: library co-workers, random kids, family & friends etc.), climbed down a hidden staircase in my garage, squeezed down this manhole, and into a one-room building resembling a portable classroom. For some reason I thought that we could wait out the flood here, while the rest of the world rambled on unaware. At the end of the dream I went from window to window, pulling down the blinds.

It was strange. Strangest that the images I remember most clearly were startlingly beautiful: the brilliant green of the grass before we descended, the quality of the sunlight (before the apocalyptic alien attack).

This morning, after waking up, I decided I would credit Arthur C. Clarke's book Childhood's End for this nightmare (?). I read it a few weeks back and it creeped me out mildly. Clarke's earth meets a similarly unpleasant end...

strangely attractive.

Let's recap the glut of scifi books I've been devouring of late.

1. The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (Doris Lessing): this was recommended to me my freshman year by the worshipful Prof. Sears. According to Lessing's website: "It is the story of the lovely and amiable Queen of the benign Zone Three and of her forced marriage to the soldier King of the martial and hierarchic Zone Four...It is as if every posture or clich� about male-female confrontation has been set in a brilliant, clean landscape where it appears heightened; dramatized, yet lightened. It is filled with Doris Lessing's profound knowledge of what happens - and what is possible - between men and women."I finally find a library copy, and my conclusion? Meh. It was more like a cross between a soap opera and a sophomoric fantasy novel.

2. Boat of a Million Years (Poul Anderson): Fantastic concept--follows the story of immortals from their beginnings (including ancient Syria, Japan, etc.), to their flight into space. Execution? so-so. The timing felt incredibly off, with many detailed pages about ancient life and about 2 pages or so of conclusion, 400some pages later. What?

3. Mind of My Mind (Octavia Butler): Octavia Butler does some interesting tricks with her writing. I've heard good things about her newest novel, which has to do with vampires and addiction. Mind of My Mind is pretty old, but has some of the same concerns: community, racism, addiction, power.

4. Chapterhouse Dune & Heretics of Dune (Frank Herbert): I. love. Frank. Herbert. I actually started the Dune series in high school, at Pablo's suggestion, and it blew me away. Its scope! Its depth! Its audacity! I read Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune this past summer, and finished with the last two books about a month ago. Well worth the wait. The Dune series is, believe it or not, much more hardcore than Tolkien and demands a lot more mental energy. It's not nearly as friendly as Tolkien (there is absolutely nothing adorable in Herbert) and doesn't make casual introductions about setting, plot, character; the reader has to wade into the muck and either swim or drown. But if you can stick it out, Herbert's reflections on history, gender, the environment, power, and religion are stunning and seductively articulated.

5. The White Plague (Frank Herbert): Not one of his best. A mildly involving scientific thriller which reminds me a lot of Crichton: a man driven mad by the murder of his family creates a virus which kills off almost all the women in the world. What is the response of individuals, countries, peoples? Not as grand as you'd expect Herbert to be, but a nice read nonetheless.

6. The Godmakers (Frank Herbert): Only one reaction: whhaaaaa? So confused.

7. Oryx & Crake (Margaret Atwood): wrote about this before. Ugh, depressing, but marvelously written and imagined. A more likely apocalypse--

8. Parallel Worlds: a Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos (Michio Kaku): not quite scifi, but as close as you'll come in nonfiction. Kaku writes lucidly and engagingly about superstring theories and highly theoretical physics. The theories themselves pretty much pounded my brain into a pulp but in an enjoyable manner.

---

Loves long walks on the beach, pina coladas, anal probes.

I'm admittedly oldfashioned when it comes to scifi. I like swashbuckling; Star Wars is still like the BEST THING EVER to me and my love of all things space-y stems from it. I'm not into this cyberpunk, pomo Neuromancer stuff. I want explosions, aliens, and wrinkled ugly villains. Bring on the apocalypse.

Vy's Pick

2006-01-02T22:25:00.000-08:00

The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino. I picked it up on a whim after reading and loving Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and if on a winter's night a traveler... I'm not sure that whim will pay off, as I've heard mixed reviews. But the concept seems cool, and hopefully Calvino can pull it off--and if he doesn't, well, I hope I don't make everyone hate him, because his longer novels are excellent.

So, what say, ladies? I know we're off schedule, but about how long should we give this one? I'm doing nothing but reading, so people who aren't on long breaks right now can decide this one...

Memories of my Melancholy Bores

2006-01-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

The title is an inaccurate description of my feelings, but I can't resist a bad pun. I actually enjoyed this novel intensely; it's always a pleasure for me to really snuggle into prose that is so dripping and evocative. But I agree with all of you; way too short an effort for it really to have a lotta oomph. I love the fairy tale aspect of it: a sleeping beauty, the frenzied suitor, the improbably beautiful surroundings...but it just wasn't...quite...enough.

I will say that I'm surprised the story ended happily. Happy endings aren't really kosher in literature, I think. Overall, glad to have read it, will probably read it again, but...yah. No fireworks.

Did anyone else just love the description of his affair with Ximena Ortiz? I was briefly fascinated by that character.

Humph

2005-12-31T14:56:00.000-08:00

well. i had high expectations for this book. it got some rather lovely reviews. but man, it was hardly a book. it was a blip. i titled this post humph as a disclaimer - i fear that i am the scrooge of book groups near and far (dickens' novels, if discussed, would no doubt face my wrath as well). and i don't want to hurt anyone's book choice feelings or bring anyone down, but man. and another disclaimer - i read this over the course of a 24 hour trip from vermont to colorado. i do plan to read it again, and perhaps i'll post again after. this book felt like atwood's book to me - a grand idea with a lousy and all too slim follow-through. ergh. like vy, i am a fan of garcia marquez - both novels and stories. this book, to me, might have made a nice story or novella in a collection, but could not stand alone. would this tiny volume have even been published if written by someone not of garcia marquez's stature? i, scrooge bellerose, think not. i plan to ponder a bit more, and i shall post again, but these are my initial thoughts. love and a happy new year to you all!

Chris on Melancholy Whores

2005-12-31T10:49:00.000-08:00

My disclaimer is that I don't particularly like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Vy knows this, and given the facts it's actually rather surprising that we've remained friends. I read Cholera and 100 Years upon her suggestion, and found that while I'm not enraptured by his story, he has occasional lines that seem to cut to the heart of the issue--love, death, hatred, sex, whatever--and practically punch you in the stomach with their truth and beauty. I like those lines, and I found myself reading for those while being hopelessly lost regarding his characters, timeline, and magic.

Therefore, I decided to read this one like an English major, sans highlighter because it's a library book. I took detailed notes with lots of commentary and things I wanted to talk about. However, because I am a terribly procrastinator, this was two weeks ago and I subsequently left the notebook at home when I came back to CT, and therefore pretty much have no idea about the specifics I wanted to address. I don't think it would have been that interesting anyway! So a few ramblings...

The first quote that Vy picked out was maybe my favorite of the entire book (perhaps proving why we're able to be friends ;-)): "That night I discovered the improbable pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty" (29). There he goes again, recapturing me just as I've begun to get bored. I found that I didn't care much about the main character or his obsession, though, just the occasional rays of light Garcia Marquez shines on the topics that will never be able to be defined. I think it's interesting that the first (and only?) time we encounter Delgadina awake (92-3) she is hiding from his rage and we do not ever see her eyes. It would be a totally different book if she ever awakened, you're right Vy, and I spent most of the time dreading that he'd have her wake up and move from the ephemeral to the concrete and the magic would be lost. After the book was finished, though, I felt like I needed more and wanted the story from her perspective instead. I disliked the narrator from the moment he said, "the few who weren't in the profession I persuaded, by argument of by force, to take money even if they threw it in the trash" (11-12). He seemed too odd a vehicle for the purity of love Garcia Marquez wanted us to believe in, although I suppose that contrast is part of what gives his lines their occasional force. Damiana seemed a special character done no justice by the narrator, although depicted strikingly by the author, given the few details we actually have of her.

Wish I had my notes so I could poke at it a little better, but there it is. He's amazing at some things and I still don't like his stories overly much. He kept me on edge, thinking about love and lust, time and age, but I wouldn't necessarily say I enjoyed the read.

Vy’s Terribly Short and Biased Opinion

2005-12-30T17:23:00.000-08:00

So I thought I was late, but apparently I'm the first to be tackling Garcia Marquez? Ah, well. Not that I have much interesting or enlightening to say. On to the disclaimer and the rambling mostly-praise:

First off, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been and always will be my all-time favorite author. I can always open any one of his novels to any given page and know that my interest will be immediately compelled; One Hundred Years of Solitude may be the only novel I read cover to cover a grand total of 4 times in succession, then after a period of rest, read it twice in succession again. I’ve read just about everything he’s written, except for the autobiography and two of the novellas, and loved them all. As a writer I want nothing more than to be able to write like him; actually, the Karna novel I’m working on now might contain an echo of Garcia Marquez’s language, the fantastical pseudo-epic tone of One Hundred Years, and hopefully a dash of properly executed magic realism. This man is my hero. So I’m approaching Memories of My Melancholy Whores with just a touch of bias.

So, I was waiting for this book’s release for-frickin’-ever and was planning to compulsively buy it long before we decided to read it for WRWF. I read it twice, though not in succession, let my thoughts ferment for a while, and here’s what I’ve come up with. Compared to the tone of some of his other works, the tone of Melancholy Whores didn’t sit quite right with me at first. I think partly because of the first-person viewpoint and almost journalistic feel of the first twenty pages, I wasn’t immediately engaged. It’s unlike Garcia Marquez to condense background information in the beginning of a novel, though I can see why he might’ve had to do so for reasons of space. The info-dump about the narrator’s history was of course all in the passive voice too, which might have contributed to my mildly drifting interest. But once Rosa Cabarcas started making arrangements with the narrator, things picked up, and I was hooked.

I’ve always believed that Garcia Marquez is a master at writing about love in its many guises, and he didn’t let me down here. The narrator’s increasing frenzied frustration, his contentment in sleeping beside the girl Delgadina and constructing her as an idea in his own mind, and the conflicts engendered by old age and love: “the improbable pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty” (29), “My only explanation is that just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they had happened. For if I evoked the emergency of the rainstorm, I did not see myself alone in that house but always accompanied by Delgadina” (59), “Incredible: seeing and touching her in the flesh, she seemed less real to me than in my memory” (63), and so on. The idea of an imagined person juxtaposed over the body of a real person, and the way Garcia Marquez expressed it, was what I found most intriguing in the novel. He delivered linguistically as well, as always, but I wasn’t as enraptured by the prose as I usually am when I read his work. Love in the Time of Cholera encapsulates a similar theme more beautifully, I think. So the power of this novel boiled down to the idea of the imagined versus the real and the reconciliation between the two, which is fine, since I’ve also been reading a lot of Borges lately and he writes a lot of the same. It was an interesting reading experience for me, because I went in expecting the beautiful flowery prose and the magic realism and all that jazz, and came away with something a bit more like his nonfiction pieces, which is fine--just not what I expected. Took me a while to get used to that.

The idea behind the prose, though... that's what moved the story for me and kept my interest. I've always found the ways in which Garcia Marquez explores love and the intimacy between individuals intriguing. “I had discovered a cautious tone of voice that she heard without waking, and she would answer me with the natural language of her body” (75). The idea of discovering love at the age of ninety, the idea of discovery itself and Garcia Marquez’s slow expression of it through indirect avenues like the ownership of a cat, an office celebration, the material of the editorial column, the relationship he develops with Delgadina while she sleeps and he explores her body through kisses or sleeps beside her, even the things he brings to brighten the dingy room for their incommunicative nighttime trysts. I loved it.

I have to say though that I was slightly disappointed at the novel’s conclusion—of course Delgadina would fall in love with the narrator, I expected that. But I wondered how he would take it, having built up in his mind the idea of her voice, her habits, her movements and gestures… it might have been interesting to run with that idea for a while, to see if he was right in his intuitions or if she failed to measure up, and how he might react. But then again, that would be an entirely different novel.

So, unsurprisingly and ramblingly, I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and I love Garcia Marquez, and he will forever remain my hero. I’d certainly recommend this one, but I’m not sure that I’d place it among the canon of his earlier works. I think he writes better in the third-person than the first, for one, and I did miss the grand poetry of his language from One Hundred Years or Love in the Time of Cholera or Autumn of the Patriarch or even Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which also has a journalistic feel… All in all though, I’d rate this a good thought-provoking read, and knowing me, I’ll probably be re-reading it again sometime soon to experience it all over again :-)

Bright's Pick

2005-12-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Let's say Dec. 31? I know our schedules have been thrown off a bit...

Chris's Musings

2005-12-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

Meh.

I went into this with distorted expectations. Not because I adore Atwood like y'all do, because I don't. I liked the Handmaid's Tale and haven't liked anything else I've tried, and have gone so far as to not finish some of her books that I've started (which is usually something close to a cardinal sin). I LOVED the concept, here. Not the maids part, because like Vy I thought that was unfounded, but the idea of rewriting from Penelope's perspective. I thought it was brilliant and really hoped that I'd feel like I was meeting the enigmatic abandoned woman behind the throne.

Frankly, I didn't feel like that ever happened, and I was disappointed. I agree, Annie, she's a feminist and the voice was likable, but I just never really bought the way it was done. I wanted more Penelope, or more maids, but I wanted to really get to know one or the other. I almost felt like she could have done two books and instead smushed two competing ideas together. I thought we might actually learn something about Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks, for example--but Atwood just name-dropped her and left her. Her choices about who and what to talk about were so disjointed from what I hoped/wanted/expected/would have liked that I felt like in some ways it seemed like more of a disservice to all of them, just another retelling in which they didn't get the spotlight.

I can't believe you managed to fit Zorro into your post, Bright. I laughed out loud there. I agree, she didn't take the easy way out and make you like someone, but I wish she'd at let us get to know one of the characters on a more satisfying level. (Curiously, I feel like I know Odysseus better now than ever before; he was one of the more interestingly done characters, to me.) Like Vy, I think a lot about reworking epics. (Small difference is that my attempt is 2 pages and staying there while she actually writes them. So I get it, this stuff is harder than reviewing it!) I hadn't really thought about manipulation of voice and tone, and now that I am I guess I think she did it well. But, again, for whatever reason I never connected to Penelope, and never believed in her voice, which I guess is the most damning thing for a book like this.

Rework the epic from a different point of view and tell me who Penelope is, or rework it entirely and crazily and invent a new story from the maids. For me, this book tried to do too much and ended up losing me entirely. If I'm writing like a fourth grader, I apologize...do you have any idea how many Lewis & Clark reports I've "edited" this week?? :-) Interesting and thought-provoking pick, Annie!

Vy's Take on The Penelopiad

2005-12-06T17:42:00.000-08:00

"Now that I'm dead I know everything" (1). Come on, guys. What an opening. I got out my underlining pen then and there.

Now I have to say upfront that I'm probably personally biased here, since I myself am currently in the middle of reworking an enormous epic from the point of view of a slighted character... but I digress, and I haven't even started.

I agree with Bright and Annie to some extent: The Penelopiad isn't nearly as profoundly impressive or darkly moving as her other written work, but it was definitely enjoyable, and there were images that still haven't left me. The maids running from Penelope, only "Run isn't quite accurate. Their legs don't move. Their still-twitching feet don't touch the ground" (190). Or the images of the maids as "animal young [...] engendered in mud" (67). The story was definitely about the maids--I remembered enough from one of my Anthro classes to recognize the moon-goddess and labryx imagery Atwood was playing with. I thought it was really interesting on that level--Odysseus returning not to reclaim his kingdom but to ritually overturn the female governing principle, as took place ceremonially yearly in (I believe) Crete.

But what really caught my attention here and had me infatuated with this book--and again, maybe I'm biased and speaking as a writer--was Atwood's manipulation of voice and tone. I haven't been exposed to many of her novels, but her shorter works and The Handmaid's Tale (from which I assume the majority of her work) are very consistent in terms of the narrator's voice, the tone of the piece. I thought she leapt very easily from the almost-dark tone of Penelope's musings to the light but intensely bitter tone of the Maids' Chorus to the theatrical scene in the courtroom. I normally dislike changes like this, but Atwood kept up the underlying bitterness and sense of injustice so well in each of these tones that I didn't find the rapidity of the tone changes jarring at all. I wonder what y'all thought about that?

I also loved the Penelope's narrative voice. She straddles the line between ancient and modern, as evident with her use of modern metaphors or references to technology. Her speech is for the most part "epic," or at least derivative of the grand epic language, but she weaves back and forth between more modern, conversational, colloquial phrases, like "Never mind" or "I had other things to worry about" or "You think you'd like to read minds? Think again." At times, purposely I think, Atwood makes the contrast in Penelope's speech jarring, but for the most part it mingles well. I really appreciated this in the book, probably because I'm trying to do something similar with the dialogue-language of my current project, and hell is it hard. Then again, Margaret Atwood is a friggin' genius.

I actually saw the book as less an exercise in content than an exercise in writing and language. It seems to me anyway that Atwood works to convey a message, and while the message was here as well, I thought it (rightly) diminished by the brilliant manipulation of the language and play of form. Maybe it's just me, though...

Now, my biggest problem with the book that made me step back every now and then--and I think y'all are gonna jump all over me for this--was that I didn't buy the premise. I remember the scene clearly in The Odyssey, and I assume you guys did like me and broke out your battered copies of epic and re-read it... I love the idea of reworking epics, and especially of giving women characters the voice they lacked at the time--but I just don't think Atwood has enough to go on here. Sure, it was a terrible thing for Odysseus and Telemachus to string up the maids, and yeah, it's possible that something was fishy about the whole thing and The Penelopiad is certainly a viable option. But Atwood kept hitting me over the head with this idea that the maids were completely wronged, and don't get me wrong, I'll get hit over the head by Atwood's ideas any day--but I didn't see enough fact in the epic to sustain her insistence.

I do believe that the death of the maids would haunt Odysseus and Penelope, but I think the Chorus lines came off as too insistent in too many forms. Too much at once! And the courtroom scene was way too much for me. The moon-goddess/labryx idea struck me as the most sensible one to apply here, and that I bought completely. But I also didn't think The Penelopiad was fair to Odysseus, who didn't know that the maids were in on anything--they were taunting him with the suitors, I think his was a fairly easy mistake to make.

I'll stop now before I rant for pages, also I have to run to teach my class. To sum up, though, all in all, I thought this book was a quick, enjoyable read, and as always I appreciate Atwood's talent for description and cracking enigmatic characters and her superb versatility with language. I definitely don't think I would have loved it so much if it hadn't been for the form/structure and language... but again, might just be me.

If there are any writers currently rewriting epics who are reading this, though--well, then I highly recommend. Very instructive. But then again, Atwood's books always are.

I guess I'll have to take you atwood

2005-12-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

these title puns are getting shittier and shittier. I think I'll stop.

Anyway, I'm with Annie on this one. I really enjoyed the Penelopiad--it was a stunningly swift read, as well--but a nice little side dish of a book altogether.

But a side dish was all it was and it didn't really satisfy my appetite for a hearty Atwood book like The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. I found myself really disliking all the characters--was there a single one that was really, really sympathetic? I envy Atwood's gift for uncovering the dark side in her characters, and she most admirably refrains from the ease of an "innocent" character, but by the time I finished the Penelopiad I felt rather drained by the total lack of sympathetic qualities. Bitterness, jealousy, anger, murder, revenge...and not much else.

Then again, I always feel drained after reading Atwood. I always feel like I've been through a harrowing ordeal, but one that--well, builds "character." I can't stop reading her writing. She does it extraordinarily well and I thoroughly truly enjoyed the Penelopiad, in a masochistic sort of way.

Atwood really understands the female psyche. I also think it's interesting that the hanging woman figure showed up in the Handmaid's Tale (which will haunt me forever), as well, which kept popping up in my mind as I read the Penelopiad. Creepy and fascinating. Like Zorro.

2005-12-04T17:55:00.000-08:00

so, ladies. i shall push the scenes of bad sex further down the page by writing, well, more honestly, blathering in an attempt to remember, the penelopiad. drumroll, please. and vy, you ought to post soon, as i know you've been long finished. i have long loved margaret atwood's stories, a few of her poems ( i wrote a particularly dismal paper on her poetry when i was in huntington's english 80 freshman year, actually written in between ski runs at a resort in northern new hampshire), and a novel or two. i think she is brilliant, a feminist in the best sense, and enviably prolific. i think atwood is right to look more closely at the odyssey; i think the idea behind this canongate series also a right one. but i liked this book; i didn't love it. penelope has an accessible and interesting voice, and the chapters told by the maids have a nice rhythm. the depictions of the afterworld are intriguing, with their references to the present, the matter-of-fact appearances in seances and the like - it reminded me of myla goldberg's wickett's remedy, which i read just prior to this, and thus it wasn't quite as revolutionary as it might have been.
i think, in the end, this book is more about the maids than it is penelope. the second to last chapter is a scathing indictment, i think, of odysseus, of the way women of the underclass have been treated for years, for ever. and the closing lines of the book (and don't you see it on stage) (it's even written as if a stage direction) "the maids sprout feathers, and fly away as owls" are about the maids, again. and i'm distressed by their deaths, as we are meant to be, but i feel confused, as if i am missing a piece of the story. and maybe i'm meant to feel that way, as penelope does, not really understanding why odysseus kills them, and whether eurycleia has a large or small role in their hanging.
essentially, i think this is a smart and inventive book, but i'm a bit unsatisfied. perhaps i need a second or third reading. bits are lovely - the second chapter, the maid's chorus line, penelope's brutally honest jealousy of helen and helen's corresponding insipidness, and the chapter on marriage, again brutally honest, is heartbreaking in penelope's straightforward telling. and odysseus is not completely one-sided, neither the absolute hero (despite his many transgressions) of the odyssey itself, nor a completely terrible husband and father; there really seems to be a part of him that loves penelope, that is humorous, tender, though distractible (even when dead).
i thought that this book would make an absolute stunning play, a better book than play. it's so visual - the chorus of maids, the lone figure of penelope, the anthro lecture, the videotaped trial. i can really see it on stage. somehow better than on the page.
so, i look forward to discussion, and other posts. tally ho!

2005 Bad Sex Fiction Award

2005-12-03T10:40:00.000-08:00

Presented by the Guardian Unlimited. The winner is a food writer, coincidentally, which makes it an especially appropriate entry for us.

Winkler by Giles Coren (Jonathan Cape)

And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.

Excerpt from my personal favorite runner-up:

"Ooh-la-la!" she breathed as he smelt the clean aroma of her short bobbed hair and the rain-sodden grass around it. "Oooh-la-jolly well-la!"

And so they made love together in the pouring rain, with Nurse Murray emitting a stream of girlish exclamations which seemed to indicate that she was enjoying herself. "Gosh", "Golly" and, as things moved towards a conclusion, even "Tally ho!"

Somebody, please, please, please, let's discuss. Please?

Book Giveaway--3,000 must go

2005-12-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

My library is weeding out books. 3,000 from the fiction section must go. I am distressed beyond reason. However, the upside of this is that I can take as many books home as I want for free. If any of you bold readers out there have any requests, I am more than happy to send you some free books.

I've already taken home some Graham Greene, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Cervantes, Agatha Christie. We're throwing out most of the short story anthologies because no one checks them out. And there's a lot of trashy stuff in there too--no mystery, scifi, but lots of romance. Just name your genre and authors and I'll keep my eye open for them. I'm also happy to oblige the "grab bag" mentality--I'll just take whatever looks good to me and you get what you get :0)

So let it be written, so let it be done.

2005-11-29T09:58:00.000-08:00

Hedonists all--

The Times Online just ran a splendid article on best sex scenes in books, in a response to the bad sex scene awards. I quote a few paragraphs for your reading pleasure:

Clan of the Cave Bear was a particular favourite among my contemporaries. Jean Auel’s series of prehistoric tomes, while hardly the stuff of great literature, are memorable in their description of sex as unexpected, dirty, brutal. When you’re at such an age it makes a thrilling change from the fairytale rubbish heaped on girls from the nursery. No light-suffused drawing rooms in which chaste desires are played out in slow motion for her readers. Sex, you learn, is a different animal from love — visceral, gripping in a way that Darcy’s icy manners could never be.

I need to get around to reading this Cave Bear book. So much hubbub!

Donne, in To His Mistress Going to Bed, exhorted his lover to “License my roving hands, and let them go/ Before, behind, between, above, below.” That, as Paris Hilton would say, is so hot.

The magazine is currently inviting readers to submit their nominations for best scenes, to be published Dec. 10.

T-Day.

2005-11-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

Christine: that sounds delicious
Bright: christine
Bright: how can we
Bright: still be talking about food
Christine: hahahaha
Bright: after the...obscene gluttony of t-day dinner
Christine: because we're gluttons and hedonists?
Bright: god bless us every one.

Christine's dinner:
1. turkey
2. stuffing
3. mashed potatoes
4. sweet potatoes
5. pearl creamed onions
6. broccoli casserole
7. corn casserole
8. homemade applesauce
9. apple cobler
10. pumpkin pie
11. ice cream

Bright's dinner
1. lemon-olive oil mushroom spinach salad
2. vegetarian sage stuffing
3. bacon-sage stuffing
4. prosciutto, roasted garlic bulbs
5. garlic mashed potatoes
6. turkey
7. roasted carrots with dill
8. pumpkin pie
9. razzleberry pie
10. ice cream

Massive posts upcoming...

Sage Butter Pasta

2005-11-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to make this recipe since I first saw "Sizzling Sage Butter" in my Pasta Cookbook. This was yummy, but not something I'm dying to make again.

First, we sauteed butter, sage leaves (fresh from the garden), and garlic.

This was my sole contribution to the project: I chopped cheese. I did a very good job, too! Look see!

We also had delicious garlic bread that we bought from a store ready-made:

Here's the pasta, buttered and sage leafed and salted and peppered:

And for dessert, a pair of cannolis, one regular and one chocolate (from the same Italian place that we got the garlic bread from). Also fun:

I believe we decided that to do this again, we ought to make it with a flavored ravioli. The sage butter is too delicate to easily flavor a whole dish, so something with a little more texture and flavor is the way to go. I have a REALLY EXCELLENT recipe and pictures for you as soon as I upload them...get ready. ;-)

No "Fowles" here

2005-11-19T12:29:00.000-08:00

It’s a sad truth of the art world that the value of your work shoots up after your death. On the other hand, if John Fowles hadn’t died a few weeks back, I wouldn’t have known that he existed, except in the vaguest sense possible. It’s a lousy trade-off any way you look at it, but oh well.

I picked up two of his books on the recommendation of another librarian, and read them in reverse chronological order: The Magus, which was published when he was well-established, and then The Collector, which was his wildly popular entrée as an author.

The Collector has got to be one of the creepiest books I’ve read, somewhere in Margaret Atwood territory. It has a greater sense of psychological malaise than Atwood’s fatalism, but—yeah. I trembled in me wee l’il boots.

In The Collector, a shy, lower class Brit obsesses over a beautiful young art student named Miranda, who is out of his league in terms of social standing. Fowles tells the story from both his perspective and hers, so there’s an inherently unwieldy subjectivity that adds to the drama. The Collector is so named because he collects butterflies, and he eventually builds a prison in his basement, kidnaps Miranda, and—well, you’ll have to read the book.

The Magus is a much longer novel, and much more difficult to plow through, as Fowles starts to play with intense mythological imagery. The main character, a English schoolmaster named Nicholas Urfe, full of pretension in a young-bohemian-world-weary way, becomes involved in a mysterious patron’s mind games on a beautiful Greek island. Mythological characters begin to appear, as do people that are supposed to be dead. All quite elusive. He reflects on war, art, nationality, but does so in a fairly accessible way. He's eminently quotable:

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. (The Magus, 1965)

Read it for the descriptions of the island, and for his insight into the maddened minds of a male lover; I wasn’t terribly impressed by the story but Fowles’ has a singular gift for description.

After reading these two books it’s clear that Fowles has some major issues with class and gender. He’s especially interested in the virgin/whore complex, as his male characters all seem to obsess over this split in their love interests. They all waffle intensely between desiring and despising women. One obituary of his described his work as bringing "sexiness" to the literary world, which I find questionable, but there is certainly a strong erotic charge to his work.

Isn't annie s'posed to get around soon to reading his best-known work, The French Lieutenant's Woman?

Golden Showers

2005-11-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

In the past few days, I've been carrying around Memoirs of a Geisha. One of the other library clerks saw me standing in the hall with it, and said: "why the HELL are you reading that?"

This person, whom I shall heretofore refer to as Lady S (hi there Lady S! (waves)) and I then had a chat in the break room about Memoirs. Lady S took Japanese for 5 years and so, I assume, has something of a longstanding interest in Japanese culture. I find it telling that the geisha Golden "consulted" sued him for publishing her name in the acknowledgments against her wishes. She was, apparently, ruined and shunned by Japanese after the book came out. In interviews, Golden had stated that she (Mineko Iwasaki) had been sold into slavery as a child and her virginity had been auctioned off for 100 million yen. All untrue, according to Iwasaki. And why would Golden do this, except to enhance the beguiled pleasure that readers take away from reading about such casual trade in the sexuality of Asian women?

I have also had the misfortune of reading Liza Dalby's book Geisha before reading memoirs. Geisha takes an historical-anthropological view of geishas, and is not without its flaws, but feels like a much more balanced perspective than Golden's. Dalby herself was an anthropology PhD from Stanford. Golden pretty much stole the character of Pumpkin from Dalby's book, in which Dalby's "older sister" Ichiume is exactly like Pumpkin, right down to the nickname Pumpkin. The mischieviousness, the naivete, even the shape of her face is right out of this book. The sad thing is that Ichiume died in the '70s when her okiya burned down, and now she's indirectly defamed in this shoddily concealed theft.

As I read Memoirs, I kept thinking about perspective and subjectivity and objectivity. Is it fair to dislike Memoirs because it is written by a white male? Not exactly. Is it fair to dislike Memoirs because Golden capitalizes on stereotypes of Asian women in order to titillate a Western audience? Absolutely.

I think Arthur Golden's recipe is painfully transparent: Cinderella, but set in a Japan in which the Cinderella is whored out (as Asian women often have been in Western narrative, right? Think Madame Butterfly, or any of the early 19th century American Bowery plays) to wealthy men (how titillating!). Hatsumomo and Pumpkin are the evil stepsisters, Mameha the fairy godmother, and the Chairman the obvious Prince Charming. Perhaps Nobu is an out-of-place Rumpelstiltskin, but I digress.

Sayuri's longing for the Chairman feels awfully akin to Madame Butterfly's devotion to Pinkerton. I was reminded of a quote in M. Butterfly, a somewhat satirical play on Madame Butterfly:

Rene Gallimard: You made me see the beauty of the story, of her death. It's, it's pure sacrifice. He's not worthy of it, but what can she do? She loves him so much. It's very beautiful.
Song Liling: Well, yes, to a Westerner.
Rene Gallimard: I beg your pardon?
Song Liling: It's one of your favorite fantasies, isn't it? The submissive Oriental woman...

I also take issue with Golden's use of voice. I got so sick of how he used "you see" in Sayuri's narration. It felt akin to the awkward use of dialect you encounter in so many English 80 courses. I have never, ever, heard a person--a native Asian-language speaker--use that phrase. It is an affectation and a linguistic assumption, along the lines of "me so hornee".

Why does Golden do it? To present Sayuri in a stereotypical (and therefore commercially viable) way.

Remember how I bitched about lousy metaphor in Pomegranate? Same thing here, though I admit that Golden handles his prose a little better. There was some retch-inducing something about an apprentice transforming from inedible uncooked rice into "white fluffy rice to be consumed", which was just atrocious.

A fat lot of the appeal of Memoirs comes from the fascination with Asian-ness as a commodified sexual experience, a historically embedded obsession with exoticism, and a pure enjoyment of the stereotype of the Asian woman as delicate flower + sexually accessible.

Read the blurb on the back, if you don't believe me:

In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion.

Gah! Gah!

This whole thing just reeks of penetration, of a voyeuristic penetration of a "veiled, mysterious, exotic, seductive" society. Edward Said's Orientalism much?

Talk about one of your virgin-whore complexes. Memoirs proves that the virgin-whore complex occurs on a macro-cultural level, with Western attitudes towards Asian civilizations as one massive virgin-whore concept.

Sorry, Christine and Annie. I love you guys. But I just couldn't bring myself to like this book. It made me too angry. Full of "spleen", as they say.

But I am more than happy to debate! In fact, I'm really looking forward to it.

Memoirs of a Pizza

2005-11-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

So. Just saw the Memoirs of a Geisha trailer, and think I may finally have to get around to reading the novel. The library system has been raided for every single copy, and the waiting list is getting longer and longer. The pressure mounts; I guess it's time to give Arthur Golden a go.

My reluctance comes from how this novel has been reviled by a lot of Asian-Americans (and Asians too). Understandable complaints: exoticism, fetishism, sexualization/objectification of Asian women. It obviously doesn't help that Arthur Golden is about as un-Asian a name as you can get.

Sheridan Prasso, author of The Asian Mystique, explains:

Ms. Iwasaki and the other geisha I spoke with feel that the Memoirs of a Geisha misrepresented the geisha world in very serious and damaging ways. After all, Golden's book was essentially a Cinderella story very much an American fairy tale using Japan as its backdrop, and the story of a geisha as the young Cinderella with an undying love for her handsome prince. This story is completely unrecognizable to anyone who knows Japan or has met and talked with geisha.

However, Prasso loses some of her credibility when she says:

Plus, being a Westerner means that I can observe situations and relationships in a more objective way. After researching the history of stereotypes of Asians in Western culture, I think that if I were Asian myself I might feel too angry at all the injustices that have been done and the stereotypes that continue to this day. But as a non-Asian journalist with an anthropological background, I am able to write about them with a more objective eye.

Idiot.

The movie is an exquisitely amusing idea, in that it's a story about Japanese written by a Western man acted by Chinese actors and filmed in California. I think the NY Times had an article about this. The great unblinking eye of postmodernism might suggest therefore that the film suggests that truth is relative, and the myth of authenticity and blah blah but I think postmodernism is a big fat excuse for being intellectually lazy.

I like this quote from Big Bad Chinese Mama:

I am an anti-geisha. I am not Japanese, I am Chinese. There is a difference between the two, you know. I have gigantic size 9 1/2 feet, crater zits that breaks out through my "silky skin" before and after and during my period, and a loud mouth that screams profanities and insults and my mind. I have a little pot-belly, I have an ass that needs to go to the gym. I have hangnails and callouses and blisters and baggage (emotional, historical, and whatever the hell else kind of baggage that is keeping HIM from taking a chance on someone who actually gives a shit about herself).

I drink forties, coke with whiskey, and spoiled juice. When I get drunk, I give the finger some more and tell strangers to "fuck off." I chew with my mouth open. I once threw piss (not my own, because I am a real lady-remember?) at a guy who fucked me over. I have a higher tolerance than you and dance for nobody but myself. I won't clean up, even after myself. I go ape-shit at garage sales. I go even more ape-shit at the 99-cents store.

I, too, go ape-shit at the 99-cent store. I'm not expecting to see that in Memoirs, but I'll reserve final judgment till the end of the book. Discussion welcomed.

Annie's Pick

2005-11-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

Chicken Marsala

2005-11-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

Fella next door is a pretty good cook, and made dinner with (let's be honest, for) me the other night. (Not to take the focus off Reichl discussions, which are rather weak without full participation, btw, proud though I am of Annie for learning to blog...much less to debate this book? Why?)

First, we (he--you get the idea) did the chicken. Then we sauteed mushrooms and prosciutto:

Then the wine (which steamed delightfully)...then chicken broth:

Then we poured all this delightful-ness onto the chicken:

Yum...

Here's a closeup: tender chicken, tender mushrooms, wine sauce, chopped parsley, and the prosciutto...

And speaking of, WHY was I not told that prosciutto is so delicious?? I'm really angry that I spent 22 years not knowing about this delicacy. SO GOOD that I went back for thirds, after being all wishy-washy about not liking ham overly much and making a big show about being unsure. If you knew this stuff was so good and didn't tell me, we're having words.

And here is the lovely plating:

What a wonderful meal! I was still thinking about how good it was two days later and smacking my lips. Add a bottle of white wine, and it's a meal fit for kings. (I don't have the recipe we used but I could probably get it for you if you want it!)

yummy

2005-11-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

I actually borrowed this book from the library the day Christine announced it, and read it in one sitting ("devoured", if you will) and enjoyed it thoroughly. Since it's been awhile since I read it, forgive my vagueness.

But I really enjoyed this book. I loved Reichl's descriptions of food, and the various disguises were a fascinating study of the sociology of restaurants...

I felt like the parts with Carol, the co-worker who died of cancer, were a bit lacking somehow. I didn't feel like I connected enough as a reader with this character to feel really sad at the end of the book. It's a terrible thing to say, but I kinda...I kinda expected it.

I desperately wanted to eat the book. My God, what an amazing job Reichl had. I can't believe anyone would give that up. At the end, I was thinking "nooooo you foooool"

I went back to the library and checked out the Gourmet Cookbook, which was edited most recently by Reichl. It's hard to screw up writing about food, eh? But I think that Reichl did a splendiferous job.

annie's review of reichl's reviews

2005-11-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

so. i too had read reichl's previous books, and found them interesting, if not always written in my most favorite of styles. she is definitely a woman who has led an unusual life. i was glad to have that background coming into this book. i was really excited to read this one because of those earlier ones (fine choice, xine).
my favorite part of this book was the reviews ending every chapter. i felt her writing was at its best here, though part of that may have been that they were familiar and delicious. as a big dork, i began reading the restaurant reviews in the times at age 9. my parents thought i was a freak. but i remember when grimes shifted to reichl, and i used to love eric asimov's $25 and under column. and thus, something reichl writes early in the book, on page 18, rang absolutely true for me, and contributed a great deal to the worth of the book for me: "'Your reviews,'[ruth] said, "are very useful guides for the people who actually eat inthe restaurants you review. BUt how many of your readers will go to Lutece this year? a thousand? that leaves out more than a million readers. and at a time when people are more interested infood and restaurants than they ever have been in the history of this country, that's a shame. you shouldn't be writing reviews for the people who dine in fancy restaurants, but for all the ones who wish they could.'"
yeah, ruth! i enjoyed seeing into the inner workings of the times, of the restaurant critic's world, and especially the food descriptions, though i agree with christine that they are often a bit over the top. and i felt that way in general about the book. her best writing is the succinct and witty and orignal takes on the restaurants. less good, in my mind, is the wordy story line that connects them. not to say i didn't enjoy this book - i did, wholeheartedly. but i think i also recognize it for what it is, a fun vitamin-g filled expose. it's wonderfully entertaining, but not extraordinary writing. and it doesn't have to be, i suppose, for reichl to share what she wants to share. there are hilarious moments, for sure; one of my favorites being ruth's ventures as chloe with food snob daniel green. and in that segment, an even more hilarious statement (reminding me a bit of bright's mother, sorry, pumpkin!): lillian hellman says "'i was just jealous if women who took advantage of men, because i didn't know how to do it (136).'" ah yes. i can certainly identify.
i think there is a certain seriousness to the end of the book, a small scale reminder that power can corrupt, even if it just means gettingt he best seats in restaurant.
all in all, i enjoyed this romp through the culinary world. i don't think it was great literature, nor was it intended to be, but it sure was fun, and made me very hungry.
on another note, in another medium: watch these two movies - a great german one about a female chef called "mostly martha", and one about a hot spot in new york city called "dinner rush". i also currently live with one of the chefs at the fanciest restuarant in town; we have lots of incredible meals....his crucnhy sesame tofu with red chili sauce is to die for....

"Garlic and Sapphires:" Chris' thoughts

2005-11-02T20:49:00.000-08:00

Yay for Ruth Reichl!

I had previously picked up Ruth’s book “Tender at the Bone” when I was looking for this one (which was out), so I felt like I had a little bit of a grounding in her general philosophy and background. (“Tender” discusses her life as a child, her family, and young adulthood.) I feel like that may’ve helped me grasp some of the concepts I didn’t think she totally supported in this. The ghosty parts might have thrown me otherwise—what did you guys think about those mom and dad parts?

I loved the intro—it dragged me right in and was immediately engaging. (Plane, stalker woman, etc.) I thought she elucidated her transformations and the differences in how she felt subjectively and how she was treated objectively very well. Taking a glimpse behind the scenes of a great paper like “The Times” was exhilarating (even if they’re making us pay for Op-Eds now, which is uncool), and I like her take on things: witty, interesting, and honest…full of self-doubt and issues and fun.

And oh, the food. When she describes it, I can actually taste every morsel. Or, not really, but my senses really almost trick me into thinking that I can. I liked the way her food prose changed during the book parts and the review parts. She’s definitely more formal in the reviews, but they’re really well crafted. When she writes about food in the bookish parts, she goes off on sort of random flights, but I loved how fanciful and free she was.

Parts I especially loved: sushi descriptions. “…more like some exotic mushroom than something from the ocean, with a slightly musky flavor that made me think of ferns. Beside it the geoduck was pure ocean—crisp and briny and incredibly clean—so that what I thought of was the deep turquoise waters of the Caribbean” (75). My mouth watered so badly, and I smelled ocean salt and jungle. I also loved that Reichl was willing to take risks with Korean, Chinese, and Japanese food.

“Then came Molyvos, where I ate dolmades and tyropites and grilled fish, remembering what it was like to sit on a hillside in Crete with the oregano-scented breezes blowing across your face as you looked at the wine-dark sea down below” (267).
“I felt the sea urchin slide beneath my tongue, as subtle and sneaky as the glow of a buttercup under your chin, and then admired the pop of the caviar as it was crushed beneath my teeth. It was wonderful soup, as if the chef were dreaming of the sea. I tasted the linguine, fragile ribbons as delicate as butterfly wings with curls of white truffle skittering between them” (174).
It’s an ornate style, maybe a little over the top, but the imagery just floors me. I could see myself reading this book again, and I’m looking forward to the food memoir that I haven’t read yet. The recipes mostly looked fun and actually possible to make, although I haven’t yet…I still might…I thought they didn’t mess up the flow, even coming sometimes right in the middle of chapters. It worked for me.

I’ll stop here…

Chinese Comfort Food

2005-11-01T08:55:00.000-08:00

On those chill California mornings, I need something extra to get me out of the 5 layers of sweats. Alternatively, I use this stuff to wind down a savory dinner before shower, reading, and bed.

Mmmm.Or, if you prefer, hen hao he.

This is a fermented sweet rice soup, which is fermented rice (high alcohol content!) boiled with water and sugar. It has a sharp clean taste, or a fresh warm flavor.

It's usually prepared with dumplings or an egg, but I prefer it without any extras. I remember drinking it all through my early childhood in Hubei, which neighbors Sichuan. Sichuan is where the soup originated.

The American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei had some great notes on Chinese desserts:

There are two ways of preparing the dumplings -- boiling them in water or cooking them with sweet fermented rice. The fermented rice, made from steamed sticky rice, takes on a mild sensation of alcohol after it is heated. A nice dessert for winter, sweet fermented rice is regarded by Shanghainese as good for blood circulation and the complexion. It is especially popular among women -- some swear it is more effective than many skin-care products on the market!

Curiously, several other websites discussing fermented rice mentioned its supposed cosmetic/skin-improving qualities, noting several celebrities who used it. Didn't say if they put it on their skin or ingested it, so I dunno. It may explain the almost total lack of zits since I came home from Dartmouth and CTY--who knows.

Being at home now really brings the poverty of my college eating into focus. As much as I enjoy cake, chocolate, ice cream, I am really a Chinese sweets fan. Chinese sweets are traditionally much, much lighter than Western ones, with the emphasis on subtlety than overwhelming sweet-fat (chocolates especially). I'd choose sweet rice over ice cream any day.

The ingredients of a lot of Chinese sweets, additionally, are supposed to be healthy: red bean, ginger, sesame, lotus seeds, date paste, soy. Another popular desserty custom at home is to eat cold fruit--sliced apple (pingguo) or orange or tangerine or Asian pear after dinner. Not much (if any) dairy. In fact, I haven't had any milk or cheese since I've been home. It's time to embrace lactose-intolerance!

This soup is also spectacular for the personal-statement blues. I may end up hauling tons of this stuff to grad school, if the school ends up as being Asian-store-free as Hanover was.

It's even better than Keystone.

Been lousy 'bout postin'

2005-11-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

To get things off on the right foot:

Happy Halloween! (Belated.)

Amidst all the reading, Halloween-ing, barhopping (yes, I did. Ask me about the Jackass lookalikes and the bald man!), and class, I managed to do some cooking. I borrowed the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook from the library and set to work. I made the lemon-thyme roasted chicken of Amateur Gourmet fame, which was surprisingly easy. No pictures, unfortunately, because I spent half the time shouting at my lazy oven. I also made a peach-raspberry crisp for a family friend:

Sugared fruit, pre-crisping.

Which was (I was told) fantastic. Of course, the recipe calls for a pound of butter. How could it not be good? As we learned in Ireland, there's nothing that a little more fat, salt, or sugar can't solve.

A day after we demolished the roast chicken, I used the leftover skin, bones, etc to make a nice thyme stock which (with the help of carrots, bay leaves, potatoes, onion, rosemary) became a thinner version of Desperation Soup.

Feel the fear deep in your heart.

Naturally, Reichl helped to spur this cooking spree. I foresee a few more in the near future.

wheeee!

2005-10-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

haha! thanks to bright, i am now a blogger! eesh, am i turning into a computer nerd? say it ain't so! anyway, when are we posting on reichl, ladies?

The Lazy Librarian

2005-10-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

When I work at the children's reference desk, I always get endless questions from parents and kids about what books they should read. Kids have book reports for class, and usually parents are feeling flustered that all their kid wants to read are Goosebumps and Harry Potter.

I do believe in the "junk food diet" theory of childhood reading, however, meaning that one should just let kids read whatever the hell they want (Goosebumps or Animorphs included) and they'll eventually read themselves into better, "more nutritious" kinds of books.

Sometimes, the trick is finding a balance between what nervous parents want (semi-dull classics) and what kids want (Goosebumps). Girls don't usually have many probems with this, for whatever reason, but boys often do. The boys just love anything Star Wars. I've convinced a few parents who screamed at their boys to get "the kinds of books your teachers want you to read for god's sake" to let the boys get A Wrinkle in Time or some other somewhat more sophisticated SciFi book to hopefully appease both camps.

That said, I've created what I call the BRA--the Baffled Reader Advisory--to have on hand when I get one of these addled parents or young 'uns. It's been super useful, and I'd love some suggestions from my ever-so-literate hedonistas, of course!

Keep in mind that these books are meant to be fun and inspire a page-turner sort of reaction. We can reserve the slightly denser books for ourselves or for the high schoolers! I've also tried to include books that might appeal more to one gender than the other (i.e. Black Beauty for girls and Scifi for boys), though of course I understand about gendering the genres yadda yadda yadda.

For Beginning Readers
1. Dr. Seuss books (easy readers, picture books)
2. Phonics readers (“Real Kids”)
3. Caldecott winners (Owl Moon, Madeline, Mirette)
4. Danny and the Dinosaur
5. Concept books in the Picture Book section
6. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
7. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

For grades 1-3
1. Caldecott winners
2. Where the Wild Things Are
3. St. George & the Dragon, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White
4. Beatrix Potter books
5. The Spider and the Fly
6. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
7. Jumanji
8. Just Go to Bed!

For grades 4-6
1. Bunnicula series
2. Indian in the Cupboard
3. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
4. My Teacher Flunked the Planet (Coville)
5. Sideways Stories from Wayside School
6. Ralph the Motorcycle Mouse
7. The Midwife’s Apprentice
8. Catherine, Called Birdy
9. A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver
10. Holes
11. Encyclopedia Brown series
12. The Wizard of Oz
13. The Trumpet of the Swan
14. Stuart Little
15. Charlotte’s Web
16. Child of the Owl
17. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
18. The Phantom Tollbooth
19. My Side of the Mountain
20. The Egypt Game
21. The Golden Goblet
22. The Number Devil: a Mathematical Adventure

For Kids Who Love Fantasy
1. Lloyd Alexander books (Prydain Chronicles)
2. The Hobbit
3. Farmer Giles of Ham (Tolkien)
4. Eragon (Paolini, Young Adult)
5. A Wrinkle in Time
6. Indian in the Cupboard
7. The Dark is Rising
8. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
9. The Once and Future King (T.H. White)
10. The Sword in the Stone (T.H. White)
11. The Lord of the Rings

For Kids Who Love SciFi
1. Ender’s Game series
2. The White Mountains (Tripod series, John Christopher)
3. My Teacher Flunked the Planet
4. Star Wars junior series
5. His Dark Materials series
6. Short stories of Ray Bradbury

Great Books with Mature/Disturbing Content
1. Shabanu
2. Julie of the Wolves
3. The Giver
4. Animal Farm

Enjoyable Classics for Young Readers
1. The Wizard of Oz
2. The Jungle Book
3. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (Pyle)
4. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Pyle)
5. Peter Pan
6. The Prince and the Pauper (Twain)
7. The Wind in the Willows
8. The Secret Garden
9. Alice in Wonderland
10. White Fang
11. Call of the Wild
12. Black Beauty
13. Anything Edgar Allan Poe

Subjects that Kids Love:
1. Mythology (D’aulaire Greek Myths, etc.)
2. Folklore
3. Tales of the Brothers Grimm
4. Tales of Hans Christian Anderson
5. Sharks
6. Ballet
7. Sports (various)
8. Cats, dogs, wolves, butterflies
9. Trucks, cars, and construction vehicles
10. Dinosaurs
11. Drawing and art
12. Where’s Waldo books
13. Magic Tricks
14. Dolphins and whales
15. Space, astronauts, UFOs
16. Spiders and insects

High School Reading and More!
1. Jane Austen (Emma, Sense & Sensibility)
2. Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
3. Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
4. Rebecca (du Maurier)
5. 100 Years of Solitude
6. Watership Down
7. The Great Gatsby
8. To Kill a Mockingbird
9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
10. The Dune series (Herbert)
11. Brave New World
12. The Martian Chronicles
13. Neuromancer
14. 1984
15. Woman Warrior

If you recommend a book, I'll go check it out of the library, read it, and add it to the list. I'm a huge fan of children's books so suggest away!

Garlic and Sapphires

2005-10-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Another foodie book to start while the discussion of Soup goes on.

I had a new book all picked out. I'd read the first few chapters, thought it was entertaining (if trashy), and it was about a book club. I still intend to read it! But there wasn't enough food, and I found this book and thought it was great. Should be widely available in your libraries:

Ruth Reichl is a food writer and critic, and I read another book about her life with food that I enjoyed. This is the story of being the food critic at the New York Times, and I read a bit and really liked it. Other than that...I'll save my other stuff for discussion. Ready go!

Iranian Chocolat

2005-10-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

first, a disclaimer:

Well, I had high hopes for this book--the plot sounded so promising! But as Vy and Lis mentioned, the similarities to Chocolat got painful after a point. It even had the crotchety old lady with a sweet tooth (Estelle/Judy Dench). And the gypsies, and the exotic cuisine chic, and the grumpy old white male (McGuire), and young love...all fine subjects, but kinda dull if the borrowing from Chocolat is so transparent. Intentional or not.

I think Mehran's frenzied personifications became a little much; it was as if she was trying to reduce people to food while giving food the narrative importance of full-blown characters (which didn't turn out so well in this book, I believe). Just say no to shabby pathetic fallacies.

For example:

"The fesenjoon bubbled happily on the stove, blissfully unaware of the brewing crisis."

Ahhhh!! I actually said "ewwww" aloud when I read this.

I agree with Vy that the magic realism seemed like a nice touch, but it always seemed like Mehran just didn't quite have the skill (or desire) to make it really blossom. Also, I kept thinking "who cares" whenever Mehran wrote about Layla's cinnamon-rose scent. But maybe that's just because I'm a dipshitty reader who smells bad.

Oh, speaking of pathetic fallacy, check out this year's winner of the Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

Dan McKay
Fargo, ND

The library's cataloging system marked Pomegranate Soup as "Domestic Fiction." Now, I don't think of Chocolat, for example, as "domestic fiction" so much as "good, enjoyable fiction." Perhaps Pomegranate Soup is the sorta common denominator of this genre, whereas Chocolat manages to climb its way out of the genre category, as so much good scifi has done (i.e. 1984, Brave New World, etc).

I qualify my bitching with saying that the premise had great potential and that Mehran sincerely seems to care about her characters. Additionally, the recipes were truly enticing and the bits of Iranian history felt very real and charged. If only there had been more of that.

CJK’s first thoughts on Pomegranate Soup

2005-10-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

Not as long as Vy’s! I wrote this before I read hers, so now I’m going to go back and re-comment once I’ve thought about it.

First of all, I don’t know how a pomegranate tastes, and have always had a relatively negative mental relationship due to it being the reason Hades kept Persephone from Ceres….shut up, you ALL know what I’m talking about.

I seriously considered making pomegranate soup after hearing it described, but flavoring an entire soup with an unknown taste seemed mildly silly, so now I’m just on the lookout for a little bottle of juice to try first.

The book itself was a great first pick, as it meshed a lot of things we’re all interested in rather cohesively. Middle East, Ireland, and food/recipes is a good starting combo as far as I’m concerned. It’s not one of my favorite books ever, but it did keep me quite entertained. Layla is a pretty name, too. (I’m starting off intellectually, eh?) I thought the plot seemed a little forced—trying very hard to put together things that wouldn’t necessarily fit. Some of the character descriptions, while amusing and occasionally ringing true, also seemed to make them just caricatures. (I’m thinking particularly of the woman who was always watching her neighbors: Dervla?)

Spoiler alert: ending talk.

Seemed a leeeettle silly to me. Thomas has a heart attack in their kitchen while it’s on fire, and Bahar goes sprinting over to resuscitate him instead of running up the stairs to drag her beloved sisters out of the growing inferno first. Maybe I’m just a jerk, but he can just stay on the floor until I’ve got my family out, thanks. Layla and Malachy will live happily ever after, despite being 17…oy. And that paragraph about her hair and his comets was just so over-dramatic and sap-filled that even I couldn’t take it. (Actually, I think most of the last chapter was like this.) And Bahar and Declan, of course, because that makes sense…what?

The descriptions were ok, but I felt like the only potentially great character was Marjan, and the end of the book got way too far away from her.

All that to say, a book that ends with a big glass of Shiraz and Billie Holiday and recipes is still ok by me.

Elisabeth's contribution

2005-10-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem fair to have Vy start the discussion, given as she does come from such a literarily critical world, but sadly I didn't finish my response quickly enough, and I suppose I have to live with that.

My original post began in a similar way to Vy's- mentioning the initial similarities to Chocolat, however I also haven't read that book. I do agree with many of Vy's comments (those I take issue w/ I suppose I'll leave to comments on her own post), particularly about the failure to set a clear tone and the jarring between a quasi-magical and a very harshly realistic world, but these issues did not affect my experience of the book as much as they seem to have Vy's. I would describe the book as rough around the edges in many ways, but fundamentally I enjoyed it.

Despite a few areas where the characters or descriptions are a bit simplistic, for the most part I find both pretty charming. I do feel like Bahar's final resolution leaves much to be desired, but throughout most of the book I find her character's inner mysteries well done. Characters like the comedic priest and the shopkeeper who depends on his leprachaun are wonderful, and I love a lot of the little details like the old hippy van and the failed tanning beds. Sure Thomas McGuire and the local gossip are a bit too cliche, but little things like McGuire's obsession with disco and Thom Jr's tapeworm add a bit of fun even to these pretty stock characters.

In terms of the tone, I do wonder if the author was intentionally trying to balance the tone rather than choose a cheerful or negative tone... if this was the intent it could have been much more smoothly done, but on page 74 and in other places there is a reference to "garm" or hot personalities and "sard" or cold personalities and the need to find a balance between these different temperments. I think Mehran intentionally tries to balance the brutally harsh past with a present that is for the most part pleasant with only minor conflicts, and throughout much of the book I actually think she does a good job, even if the lighthearted ending might be a bit too much.

Like Vy though, the parts I found most interesting were the flashbacks to revolutionary Iran. The imagery of the food made me really hungry, but the discussion of a pat life in Iran made me think. I think Mehran did a very good job of releasing the details of the past slowly. Throughout much of the book I could not even tell what the characters views of the revolution were exactly, and where Mehran's sympathies lied, but I think the slow revelation of the events of the past is appropriate to the evolution of the Iranian revolution, which changed a great deal in meaning and in the people it appealed to throughout its course. We move from an initial vague urgency that is unexplained to Layla's initial account which reveals a deep underlying fear, but we are unaware of the cause. From Marjan's story we initially sympathize with the young student revolutionary cause, but through Bahar's marriage we see how the revolutionary student movement was in many ways hijacked by a conservative religious movement which Mehran clearly does not sympathize with. This progression takes us through the idealism and sense of betrayal and confusion that is common in reading about the Iranian revolution. I really like how its done.

It is interesting though how religion in some ways plays a large part in the forces that affect the girls' lives, yet we hear very little of their own religious beliefs. In Iran the women in Chadors are for the most part presented negatively, and the covering of women is presented as a political statement rather than a religious one (which many people argue is pretty much true, but of course man would disagree); clearly the women do not cover themselves in Ireland. Yet Marjan states emphatically to the priest that they are not catholic. The town itself is not only relatively religious, but its economy thrives based on pilgrimage. Yet for the sisters themselves the magical realism of food seems to sort of replace religion (in several cases burning hot food is the mechanism of salvation). Of course the biggest exception to this is Bahar's final moment on the mountain in which her salvation comes from the site of the christian pilgrimage. Is it religious, or merely spiritual? Where does it come from, and how does it relate to the other forces in the book? I have no idea... that particular part of the book I must admit I can't quite deal with.

Ultimately I think I would recommend the book. For all of its jerkiness in places, and even for the fact that part of its final resolution is so confusing, I think it takes the reader through some very wonderful descriptions and both charming and horrifying moments. It may not take you on the smoothest path to the resolution, but in the end there is a resolution that left me pretty content.

Commentary on "Pomegranate Soup"...

2005-10-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

Be forewarned: this is all coming from a very writerly standpoint, mainly because I've fallen into the rut of my seminar classes, which pretty much revolve around writerly analyses of books. Apologies in advance if I'm too in-depth, nit-picky, or verbose ;-P

I have to admit, I didn't like Pomegranate Soup (published 2005) at all for the first few chapters. Mehran seemed to have a problem here and there with keeping her subject-object agreement straight and with regulating her singular/plural tenses, and that kept jarring me in the beginning, though I think she got a handle on her writing towards the latter part of the book. The story also seemed very derivative... I've also never read Chocolat (published 1999) and while I've seen the movie, I hesitate to make too much of a comparison there. However, I do think the general story applies, and maybe because Chocolat was an acclaimed movie I found myself constantly comparing the first few chapters of Pomegranate Soup to the movie. For me, this did not cast a favorable light on Mehran's novel. I kept thinking, the story practically mirrors Chocolat--for God's sake, it even has the "gypsies" or "tinkers" like Chocolat's river-rats, and one of the sisters in Pomegranate Soup may become romantically involved with one of the tinkers just as Vianne Rocher becomes involved with one of the river-rats. Pomegranate Soup was the same old thing, the only twist being the addition of the ethnic element (more on this in a minute), and with some darker humor thrown in and some not-so-great writing.

The dialect, for instance. This may be partly a personal thing, but I find that repeatedly using dialect spellings is counterproductive and should be used only when addressing an accent that may be unfamiliar to people? I was exasperated by the repeated spelling of "Jaysus" for "Jesus," even more so because Mehran wasn't consistent and would spell it "Jesus Christ" when the full name was used. I kept wanting to say, I know how an Irish accent sounds, you don't need to spell it out for me every time, even if I didn't know, once or twice is enough! But that might just be me.

There were occasional phrases and oddly beautiful descriptions that would leap out at me--Thomas's "large potato head" (4), how "Layla had a way of raising expectations beyond the ordinary" (11), how Father Mahoney reminded Marjan "of a ripe quince fruit, pale-skinned and tart-flavored. Unexpected" (74). There were some other phrases that were lovely. However, Mehran allowed these snappy original descriptions (like "potato head") to become standard by repeating them so many times they lost their originality. I also think Mehran occasionally got carried away with her constant comparisons to food and purpled her prose: "So this was how love was supposed to feel, Layla thought, like the ecstatic cries of a pomegranate as it realizes the knife's thrust, the cesarean labor of juicy seeds cut from her inner womb. Like the gleeful laugh of oil as it corrupts the watery flour, the hot grease bending the batter to its will and creating a greater sweetness from the process" (64).

It's a pretty description in its own right, but it--along with several other food-comparisons--doesn't work in the context of this novel. The lack of other, non-food comparisons implies that the characters don't have anything else to reference, which would be fine if that were the case, but it isn't--and Mehran shows us this by revealing the sisters' history and pieces of their time in Tehran. I got quickly fed up with the food-comparisons that flooded the beginning of the book; they made the sisters one-dimensional even while the sisters were expanding as characters in other ways. Very contradictory, confusing, and generally not good.

Another major problem I had was that the tone was often inconsistent--which is also fine if it's done smoothly, but I didn't think it was. The majority of the novel was written with a view to realism. So I found it extremely jarring and exasperating that a magical element would suddenly come into play every time Layla was mentioned or took the stage. For example, we're told early on that Layla is always accompanied by a scent of rosewater and cinnamon. I'm thinking, okay, she must spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I even suspended my belief long enough to appreciate the follow-up: "The cinnamon-rose dolmeh never really surprised her sisters, though. Layla had a way of raising expectations beyond the ordinary" (11). But dear Lord, I'd had enough of it already by the time Mehran tries to convince me of the circumstances of Layla's birth, which were apparently responsible for the otherworldly aroma:

"After a nine-year drought, it seemed that this last child [i.e., Layla] had released in Shirin Aminpour an inner tourniquet that kept on flowing until there was nothing more to give. The weary doctors in Tehran General Hospital had no explanation for the merciless bleeding and just shrugged with defeat when they told her father the news. They failed to mention that, as the last drops of blood seeped into the hospital's sea green bedsheets, a tiny bud had popped out of his wife's womb. When the flower seed fell into the pool of blood, it blossomed into the face of a full-grown rose. The fearful doctors had kept this to themselves, partly to avoid a malpractice suit, and partly because the rosewater and cinnamon scent that accompanied the flower's miraculous unfolding reminded them of a time when military guards did not hover behind every surgery room door. So it is that people who are denied hope become greedy hoarders when granted even the smallest of drops."

Let me say first that I adored the prose in this little section. Let me then modify that praise by noting that the word "tourniquet," used here in the sense of a continuous flow, is actually a bandage or device used to check a continuous flow. Ahem. I'll let that speak for itself.

Now I'll say that Mehran does seem to have a knack for the prose style of magic realism. The section is beautifully written. I wouldn't be at all surprised to read something like this in, say, a Garcia Marquez novel, or something by Denis Johnson, or even Calvino or Borges. But. When they they employ magic realism, they make sure to first establish that the world in which the story takes place is one where such "magical" things can and do happen, and so the reader marvels at the "magical" incidents and isn't unduly startled by them. Mehran does not do this, and it costs her. I was struck by the beauty of the words she used but I didn't believe it for a minute. I kept questioning it, why this, why Layla, who cares, and the thing is, you can't have questioning with magic realism or the whole world of the novel falls apart. Which it almost did, for me.

All these gripes said, I loved the revolution/cultural conflict that was being teased out in the latter half of the book. Not only did I find it the most moving part of the story, but I also got the sense that that was the story that Mehran really wanted to write about. Her prose style seemed to take on new dimensions during the magic realism sections and during the little flashback sections when the sisters remembered, in pieces, their reasons for leaving Iran and the history that continues to haunt them. Suddenly there was a real tension in the story; the sisters weren't coasting along, to more goodwill and coincidence than may have occurred if this happened in the real world. I understand Mehran's need to hide this information until the end, because what's the fun in giving it all away at the beginning? But I wish she could have infused the present-day-Babylon-Cafe segments with a little more of that tautness, so I could have felt like something important was happening. Instead what I got was an eyeful of pretty description and nothing substantial below the surface for much of the first half of the book.

Anyway, I got all excited reading about those revolution/cultural/flashback bits, and Mehran was great at sustaining my interest there. But then she dropped it almost as quickly as she picked it up--I couldn't believe when she just had Bahar walk up a mountain and just release everything and get over herself. I understand that sometimes it only takes a moment for people to do a 180, but it takes a significantly introspective moment. Bahar only asked herself why she was constantly jumping to conclusions and being paranoid, which I assumed she must have been asking herself for the past however-many years. Somehow that question worked for her on a mountain. I can't say it worked for me.

Okay, I've written a lot, and it comes off kinda harsh. So let me finish by saying I enjoyed the book as a piece of light reading, despite feeling fairly distanced from the characters and disbelieving the narrative; the descriptions were nicely done, and the food was described superbly. I think I have to conclude that Mehran--though she could use some work with keeping a consistent tone, juggling tenses, and fleshing her characters out with a variety of comparisons--is a master when it comes to describing food. I was starving while I read this novel, and the inclusion of relevant recipes was an interesting innovation on her part. She has a real way with words with regards to eating and the feelings inspired by a plate of good food, both while it's on the plate and when it's hit bottom in our bellies. However, I did end the book starving for a real story, which I naturally expected when I opened the front cover and didn't quite get in the end.

To sum up in (very very) short: good descriptions. Poor characterizations, needs variety in areas other than food. Purple prose in places. Highly derivative. Too much dialect. And, to tell the truth, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to others or give it a second read.

Sorry for the dissertation, guys. I'm being drilled in thoroughness in my seminars ;-P Thoughts from y'all? :-)

Exotic Foods

2005-10-11T14:10:00.001-07:00

One thing I love about Jordan is that you can easily find all sorts of different fruits, vegetables and spices, and they're all so cheap that its not a luxury to buy them. Theres this stuff called Zatar, which is thyme and sesame seeds and maybe some other stuff. You dip some bread in oil and dip it in this stuff... mmm so good.

Above is my fruit basket, in which you can see pomegranates, guavas, figs (I'd never seen a fresh fig before- only dried) and mango. All readily available, although I think the pomegranates aren't really ripe yet. The seeds are mostly tranparent with a hint of red rather than bright red. I'm learning that I absolutely love the smell of guava.

Thali: My Newest Favorite New Canaan Restaurant

2005-10-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

First of all, there is Thali's decor.

This water is flowing down through plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling, pouring down into a trough behind the fish tank. Really cool fish!) Then the water trickles through streams in the restaurant floor. On the whole, it's very neat.

Of course, fashion has never meant much to me. It's all about the food, baby! I love this food and I highly recommend it. I can hardly say much more than that. It's flavorful, and rich. The Sunday buffet is filled with interesting treats and I really liked tasting all those things I'd never have the guts to order, but tikka masala rules the day here.

Here is a slightly blurry picture of their excellent Tikka Masala:

Check out the cool tilted bowls. This is SO much better than India Queen we can't even compare, and fresher and richer than Jewel of India, much as I love Jewel!

This is Mark's Chicken Korma:

BOY is that good. (Anyone remember how I was moaning about trying that dish in Ireland and not remembering what it was? This is it.) Nutty, sweet, and flavorful, this may be a new favorite. It doesn't help with the spice cravings, but it sure is totally delish.

Here is a picture of my leftovers from one such feast:

And here is a picture designed to make you want to come visit. This meal is within easy walking distance of my house. And it is SO GOOD. It was also a picture practicing taking closeups. Mmmmmm. Look at that sauce! Look at the spices! Look at the moppy bread and the long glistening morsels of rice! You want to come visit Thali.

Red Lentil Soup

2005-10-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

This is my first contribution to Well Read Well Fed, but I have good news to report.

After reading all of the tantalizing recipes in Pomegranate Soup, I was determined to try to make at least one. I was at the flea market on Saturday and among all of the wonderful bags of spices I saw red lentils, so I decided to start with Red Lentil Soup.

I don't know how red lentil soup is supposed to taste, but it came out well. With all of the trip-ups I had I think this is proof that with a good combination of flavors you can (almost) not go wrong.

Trip-ups included:
1) I forgot to buy chicken broth. Then later the store near me was closed, and I didn't feel like walking a whole way. I did have some chicken noodle soup, so I ended up straining it of chicken and noodles and using the broth from that.
2) So the ingredients list garlic, but in the instructions it never actually says when you should add the garlic. I guess you're supposed to fry it with the onions, but dutifully following the directions I forgot garlic all together until the soup had already been simmering 20 minutes, and added it at the last minute.
3) I mis-read the amounts originally, and read tsps to be tbsps. So my soup had a lot more cumin than it needed.

Still, in the end the soup was delicious, and I have lots left over to feed me for the next few days :-)

My flea market inspiration (red lentils are second from top on left):

Lentils cooked and ready to go:

Finished soup with fried onion garnish:

Yumm yummm- and get ready for book discussions starting in just a few days!

DEPRESSING

2005-10-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

Almost as depressing as this.

Margaret Atwood is a magnificent writer in that she can create the most malicious, menacing worlds imaginable. The first time I read the Handmaid's Tale I had nightmares for a week. And now, thanks again to that gifted Canadian succubus, I'm going to have another week of nightmares.

The worst thing about Oryx and Crake is that it feels like it could happen, especially in terms of genetic engineering and global biological warfare scenarios and such.

Go forth and read thou Oryx and Crake. It won some bigdeal prize, but I say: read it for the death, read it for the violence, read it as a cautionary tale. It's almost as depressing as George Bush.

Seed of Life

2005-10-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

Persephone stayed in hell and brought us damned winter for this??

I don't know if I've ever had 'em. Do the seeds taste good? Have you ever seen a fruit with so many seeds? It looks pretty useless with little flesh, so I hope they're yummy. Especially after READING THE BOOK and hearing about the soup, which sounded divine.

And I'm a little tipsy, but I just love this picture:

TELL me that doesn't look dirty, just try, ok?

Pomegranate Soup

2005-10-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

Our readers are assembled and frothing at the mouth to begin. Our first pick is Pomegranate Soup, chosen by Miss Elisabeth Page, currently on a Fulbright in Jordan. Due to be read by October 15, with comments posted by October 22.

If anyone out there would like to join las hedonistas, just give me an email or leave a comment in this post. If you'd rather remain anonymous but still read, we encourage you to do so.

I like

2005-09-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

mushrooms.