Soup and Fudge

Fall asserted itself yesterday. In the morning, I walked into the grocery store wondering, Do I really need this sweater? In the evening, we attended a cookout in a yellowing cornfield and shivered while a drama-queen of a rainstorm blew in on the party.

So yes, I guess I am ready for Beef Noodle Soup.

Here's the bread recipe. You might go a little lighter on the herbs if they're ground instead of leafy. They got a tad bitter, though I could still taste the buttery crispness underneath.

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My daughter returned from her vacation with four slabs of fudge, all for her mother, whom she loves very much. Which made me wonder, Why am I making more fudge?

I may not have eaten up those four flavors, but we know they won't last forever. That last bite could bring on fudge bereavement. Isn't it comforting to know that, with a few always-available ingredients, we can whip up a new batch in no time at all?

The recipe for Sea Salt Chocolate Fudge never mentions buttering that foil-lined fan. Oh, be wise! Butter generously!  I've got a fight on my hands, freeing the rest of the fudge from the pan.

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Tune in next week for a discussion on a book that I'm sure you've heard of.  (And hopefully, a repaired website.)

Brookies!

Still having website troubles, so here we are on Blogspot again . . .

This is a cookie for the indecisive sugar fiend.

When you visit the recipe site, you will find a more beautiful sample of the finished product. I used a rather large cookie scoop, and cookies that big take 17 minutes to bake!

As for the review of the extra-large book that I know you're all waiting on, I can report that I passed the pictures in the center last night. There's hope.

Rosemary Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Alas, Read Fast, Eat Slow is down. I don't want to deal with it tonight.

Here's something tasty for you, while I read a marathon book:

Yes, I know the title says "sandwiches," but I was rich in tortillas this week, so I ate this crunchy chicken salad as a wrap.

The website brags on the wonder of smoked almonds. I did not know such things existed. Will this mean a trip to the "special" grocery store a half hour away?

Nope. I was relieved to find them in my own grocer's nut aisle.

And they are tasty. I must have been pretty loud with my enjoyment because, next time I checked the pantry, there were my cashews, softly weeping.

You can find the recipe here. 

Why Won't Anybody Tell Us Anything?

First, two announcements:

1. KristenCarsonauthor.com in is the shop for some repairs. I really hope to be back there blogging by next week.

2. Recipes will no longer be a regular feature on the blog. Expect occasional appearances of great food, but mostly, we're going to talk about books.

Thanks for checking in here. I love my readers.

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“How would you like to live in Chicago?” my husband said one day.

“Hmmm,” I said, as visions of adventure and skyscrapers paraded through my head.

We’ve had conversations like this throughout our corporate-gypsy marriage. Prospects of Chicago or Xenia, Ohio, or some small place in Mississippi that I can’t remember have been our mind candy for years.

photo credit 

So I could relate to the women in Tarashea Nesbit’s The Wives of Los Alamos.

“How would you like to live in the Southwest?” their husbands asked them.

“Hmmm,” the wives said. “Where in the Southwest? What would you be doing?”

Their husbands could not tell them.

Butte in New Mexico

You probably know that Los Alamos is where they built the bomb that we dropped on Hiroshima. But back then, it was all top-secret stuff.

It all started with a man ringing their doorbell and asking if the professor was home. Then the husbands asked the wives, “Would you like to . . . “ Then more mysterious men turned up to interrogate them about that Communist club they had joined back in college.

Then: “We watched [our husbands] disappear into train terminals, through the doors of unmarked black sedans, down airport runways, and we were left behind, overwhelmed. We called our friends . . . And they met us . . . At our house with a . . . Chicken casserole and a flask. . . . We wanted to tell them everything we knew . . . But we could not.”

Once the wives got “there,” to the Southwest, wherever it was they were going, not that anybody would tell them where, they faced what amounted to a camp painted a uniform olive green. Maybe their house had been built for them, maybe not. The altitude, the dry climate, the hand-cranked wringer washers—all of it was new and strange.

Mind you, these women were not the sort of girls who stood in a farm yard calling “Soo—eeee, soo-eee, soo-eee!” before throwing grub to the family sow. These were women who wore high heels. They held college degrees half as brainy as their husbands. The Paris they heard about on the news was no remote and exotic idea; it was where they had studied abroad for a summer. And as for laundry, they hired people to do it.

But here they were in New Mexico, hand-cranking those wringers, the machines their mothers washed with, hanging their husbands’ boxer shorts and their babies’ diapers on the line, then bringing them in the next morning, “square little ice boards.”

They leaned on each other. They ditched the heels, taking up blue jeans and boots. They showed the newbies around, “here are the quonset huts, here are the trailers,” and smirked at them for still wearing the high heels.

And they all wondered: what could our husbands be up to in the Tech Area? There were even women scientists up there. The wives cozied up to them, hoping to pry the secret out. But all lips were sealed.

Then one day, they found out.

Norman Ramsey signs Fat Boy

Drawing on memoirs of wartime Los Alamos, Nesbit novelizes the three-year internment of women who just happened to be married to men who “wanted to know if their theoretical predictions could become a physical reality.” 

I read it eagerly, all the while imagining myself stuck in some small place in Mississippi and nobody willing to tell me what the heck we were doing there.