The Red Hat Doesn't Fit

I can't argue with success.

Haywood Smith has published a decent-size list of books, several of which belong to her Red Hat series.  So, anticipating a tale full of lively menopausal characters like the red-hatted ladies you may have spotted at your local airport, I opened Smith's Ladies of the Lake and commenced her tale of four sisters, Dahlia, Rose, Iris and Violet.

The action jumped from menopause to childhood and back again. I wasn't sure if the point of it all was Mama's quirks, or Grandma's, although if Smith based this on some real grandma, such a lady would have been so over-the-top, you couldn't not write about her.  I mean, if Grandma steals a gun from the neighbor, adheres to Buddhism, and bore Mama illegitimately, that's just too rich to leave alone.

It also might be too rich for even fictional credibility. Along with Grandma's exploits, wacky new facts just kept coming at me.  Before long, the story was like an umbrella with ornaments hanging from every rib.

So let's just acknowledge that lots of readers love Smith's books. I, however, didn't last long.

If you happen to be a Smith fan, don't expect anything new out of her for awhile. She's currently pitching in on the care of a grandchild who suffers seizures and needs medical marijuana. According to Smith, marijuana's wonders can be delivered via nonintoxicating extract. I wish  her and her granddaughter well.

I myself got rather intoxicated with the soup my daughter-in-law made today. I've never posted an untested recipe on Bye-Bye Nesquik, as in something I haven't personally cooked and enjoyed. But I figure that eating up a whole bowl and wishing I could lick the Crock-Pot clean qualifies as sufficient testing.  So even if I haven't made SLOW COOKER CREAM CHEESE CHICKEN CHILI with my own hands, you can bet I will, and real soon:

A Blizzard Named Franzi and Another One Named Doris

We are supposed to hole up this week around here, to not go outside risking life and limb in the howling arctic winds.  But Bye-Bye Nesquik is running low on wet cat food, not to mention that her  mullet needs a trim, bad.

In fact, the winds just started up.  They make the house crackle and the kitten dash from room to room, her eyes all big and her ears perked up.  

We may be having a winter like the one described in Ashley Shelby's Red River Rising.  In 1996-97, poor old North Dakota got eight blizzards.  They named them, just like hurricanes:  Andy, Betty, Christopher, Doris, Elmo, Franzi, Gust and Hannah.  After days of confinement under roof-high drifts, they dug out and searched for their frozen-solid cattle.  Then they braced for the next one.

When the National Weather Service added up all those inches of snow, they warned the people who lived along the Red River of the North:  It's going to be a lot of water this spring.  Buy flood insurance, folks.

Only the middle third of Shelby's book was what I expected.

The first third described an alphabet soup of agencies attempting to guess how much water they might expect.  This part of the story was all about reconnaissance flights gauging the snow-pack, about scientists taking measurements from bridges, and other scientists drawing graphs.  Cities like Grand Forks wanted a number; at how many feet will the Red River crest?

They didn't want the number too low.  The river might rise higher and there they'd be, with water rushing down their streets.

They didn't want the number too high.  The river might not rise that much, even if they'd spent millions of dollars laying down even one extra foot of flood protection all up and down the banks.

I might just mention here that it didn't help that the Red River's mouth is in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  That's northward, folks.  I used to read about a river in Siberia that flowed north into the Arctic Ocean.  The frozen-up waters of its mouth blocked the river's flow, causing it to flood the blighted plain.  Well, thought I, that is why we are the Promised Land and they are not. 

Little did I know we had our own misbegotten river right here. 

But back to our story.

The middle third of the book is the story I expected.  The town filled sandbags.  Pretty soon, the exhausted citizens worked all night, lit by flood lights.  Pretty soon, they ran out of sand and dug up the golf course and a couple parks, all while listening to the eery sound of the river rushing louder, over on the other side of the floodwall.

And, pretty soon, it was time to grab the photo albums and a few clothes, then run, with a last look back at the house.  Because, when they returned, they found the door blocked by the china hutch, the couch upright against a wall, one shoe on a ceiling fan and its mate in the basement.

The last third was the recriminations.  Why didn't the the engineers and the hydrologists predict the right river crest?  How do we start over again?  Why are so many of us taking anti-depressants and attending city council meetings, raising our fists in the air?  

Naturally, people who survived such an apocalypse vowed "Never again!"  But when the engineers showed them the plans for the grand dike that would keep even an 8-blizzard spring run-off out of their streets and second-stories, this master project would swallow up the grandest avenue in town, with its lovely Queen Anne homes.   The flood had already stolen all their frontier-era downtown buildings.  People of more modest means lost their cherished neighborhoods.  Urban planners built new homes for the displaced, far from the river, out by the freeway.  All this loss of what little beauty existed in Grand Forks drove home the truth that their hometown lay on a bleak and lonely plain.

Red River gave a lot of pages over to scientific and political drama, most likely to place the human drama in context. But the explanations of graphs and the many, many names of government officials in the public favor today and out of favor tomorrow tested my patience.  Shelby's account of a city turned upside down was thorough, her elucidations of complicated science illuminating.  But her book is not casual reading. 

And now, as the wind continues shake the rafters, I give you tonight's dinner, perfect for a blizzard-y evening:

Creamy Chicken Rice Soup

Mozzarella Ham Stromboli


We added apple slices and some slightly under-baked chocolate chip cookies to our dinner.   

CAGNEY & LACY – HA!

I’m skulking. 

I’m sitting in my darkened car on a cul-de-sac in my neighborhood, cornfields on the left, fine, 2700- square foot homes with Halloween decorations on my right.  I'm just waiting around here.  

The woman who lives at the end of the street says a certain cat’s been coming around every night, sneaking in her garage, eating her own cat’s food.  It looks suspiciously like the cat in the pictures posted all around the neighborhood for the last two weeks. 

Those would be pictures of Bye-Bye Nesquik’s lost Daisy. 

Emma and I sat in this cul-de-sac for more than four hours last night.  No sighting.  Maybe we can blame the persistent rain. 

Jim calls us Cagney & Lacy.  I tell ya, these stake-outs are considerably more boring than on TV.  

Tonight the weather is clear, and I’m holed up solo until 1) the computer battery runs out; 2) the phone batteries—all three of them—expire; and 3) until my contacts bother me so badly that I won’t be able to tell the difference between a cat and a leaf. 

Oh, and here comes a neighbor with a flashlight.  He wants to know what I’m doing on his street.  Just being a cat-lady, that’s all. 

It would be nice if I could knock off another hundred pages of Anna Karenina while sitting here.  Hard to read in a dark car though.   I may or I may not find myself making a Sunday Kindle purchase in the next few hours.    

If it weren’t so nippy, I’d be sitting outside in one of those handy fold-up-take-to-the-park chairs.   But our faux summer seems to have left us.  In honor of the newly-crisp weather, we’ll be eating
Chunky Veggie Chowder this week.  It’s one of those soups that tastes even better the second day.  So get out your veggie-cutting knives, loosen up your soup-stirring wrists and enjoy!

Note: 12:30 a.m.,  cat spotted, but it doesn't look like mine.

This is Why We Live Here

We cleaned the tile grout and the window sills and all the other parts of the house we never get to. We ran around town picking up the flowers and the wedding cake and the pans big enough to hold all the food, plus an extra fridge to hold all the giant pans. We shopped for the perfect grapes and strawberries and mixed up a fragrant chicken salad, then we stayed up a little late to make the bar cookies that go with the special soup for the pre-party lunch.

But beyond keeping track of everything that needed to be done, it really didn't feel like work.

When it all came together, we saw the people that we love best, people that we have known a long time, and a few people that are new in our lives but that we expect to know forever. I'm a non-hugger, but I just kept hugging this weekend.

I miss some places I have lived, their skyscrapers and their curvy hills. I'll go back and see them any chance I can get. But I moved here for the people, and I'm riding on that warm, full feeling I get when we come together and catch up.

It didn't hurt that the grass was a brilliant green, that the trees dressed themselves up in white and magenta blossoms.

I don't know how many times I said this to myself this week, but I'll say it again: I'm glad I live here.

If you are not so fortunate, you may comfort yourself with this soup: 

Chicken Tortilla Soup

As for the reading pile, I'm making progress on And There Was Light, by Jacques Lusseyran, (but understandably, given the kind of week I've had, have not finished it yet) and I'm bumping it up to "recommended" status.

He's deep into the French Resistance. What does a Resistance movement do, anyway? you ask. Well, they spread information by stealthily printing and distributing newspapers. They give safe passage to shot-down fliers. And there is no Resistance unless multiple peoples in multiple places are moved upon to act and, in miraculous ways, they find and assist each other.

Which seems to be what the universe is trying to teach me: Join in. Lend your time, means and talents. Let others lend you theirs.

Red Badge

Lets talk about your high school. Was it one of those fine institutions where you came out ready to quote great books in your church talks and your letters to the editor? When people drop names like Jo March or Count Vronsky or Lucy Manette, do you nod smugly, knowing exactly what books these characters come from?

Let's talk about my high school. Let's ask how I got my diploma and tassel and went out into a world where people talk about Jo March or Count Vronsky or Lucy Manette and I have no idea whether these folks are their neighbors or the anchors on the local news or what-all.

(Actually, I know these are characters in books. I just looked them up. But I'm already straining to remember which books, except for the Jo March one.)

So, you probably read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter ages ago, but I just got around to it last week. I'll bet I can't tell you anything that you don't already know about it.

But let me just say that, around this house, we have threatened to fine people that use unnecessarily big words to say something so simple as, "That bird scares me." To wit:

"With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community . . . "

I would think paper and ink would be hard to come by in Hawthorne's day, but he seems to have used up plenty.

Next, Hester Prynne (who commits adultery, but you knew that), refuses to name her partner in crime. And I don't get why. I should think she would want him to share in the infamy. But a good author, as we know, holds back the best stuff just to keep us reading. Except that he drops so very many hints that we know who it is quite before the child he has fathered --

"[W]ith strange rapidity . . . arrive[s] at an age that was capable of social intercourse." (Learns to talk.)

I guess The Scarlet Letter stands firm in the canon of great books because it explores the question, "What is just punishment? When does it become unjust?"

So, since you've probably already read Hawthorne's classic, I think I'll just recommend the Mormon scarlet letter, Carroll Hofeling Morris' The Broken Covenant. It's a few years old, but it kept me up nights, mourning the downward spiral of the heroine, if you could call her that.

Meanwhile, here's a great soup that gives me an excuse to buy one of my favorite foods, flour tortillas, and eat up all the extras not needed for Chicken Tortilla Chowder

The Traveling Husband

I always thought I'd make a great army wife--independent, able to tolerate the absences. That is not to say I never want my husband around, you understand. It's just that there are little perks, like reading in bed late into the night. Or traveling with him while somebody else pays the hotel bill.

Well, I got my traveling man and I have followed him to places that fed my appetite for exotic. Riiight, you say. You find something exotic about small towns in Texas that, even though they're 100 miles from the border, they feel like they're in Mexico? Or minor cities in Michigan where the calendar says spring but the morning air sure doesn't?

Hey--don't make me feel bad, OK? Maybe I would like to have grown up in a New Jersey suburb. The malls would have been great, not to mention that great pulsing city to the east.

Alas, I started this life somewhere a bit duller than that so, you see, I am way too easily entertained.

Then there is the downside to the traveling husband: when you're not tagging along with him, he leaves you behind with all his children.

It was never clearer, this downside, than at dinner time. Dinner is supposed to be a little oasis in the day. But when the kids were young, I was always jumping to cut their meat or catch their spills. This is not fun at all, I told myself many, many times. Then, when the kids got older and he left me behind, I had to answer all their trick questions like, "I know you said I couldn't play outside if I didn't practice piano, but my friend is lonely because her mother isn't home from work and she will probably hurt herself if somebody doesn't keep her company . . ."

Now that the kids and their trick questions have departed, dinner minus the traveling husband means that, whatever I fix, I will be eating for days on end. It had better be something that I like. To that end, I share with you:

Hobo Meatball Stew


I think the magic in this sweet-tasting stew is (now, don't make me feel bad again) the ketchup. See, it's not just something to smother over burger and (shudder!) eggs, is it? So, maybe there's enough cold weather left in your neck of the woods that one more night of stew will be just the thing.

Over on the Finished Book Pile, we have The Chosen Place, The Timeless People by Paule Marshall. Written in the '60s, this novel portrays Americans sociologists who descend on a Caribbean island bent on lifting the natives out of their poverty and backwardness. I think Ms. Marshall was a Caribbean native, so that tells you right there who the good guys are going to be. The pace ambles along as slow as a steamy tropical afternoon. I read it with a detached feeling until, far into the story, a couple of the them reveal the forces that drive them.

One of the weirdnesses of the book is all the African people living in towns with very British names.

Cow patties? Mostly a few whiffs, but one of 'em is long and uncomfortable and on the Brokeback-Mountain side of things.

Next up, Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano, "a novel based on true events." It reads like a well-done family history, where someone has taken the trouble to set the scene and add dialogue. (Fortunately, unlike many family histories, Fabiano's Italian immigrant forebears lived through some horrific events. Not much fun for them, but great reading for us.)

Now, a well-done family history with scene-setting and dialogue is not quite a well-written novel. Midway through, Fabiano decides to stretch herself and add some plotting. The Black Hand kidnaps a family member (true event, I think) and a couple other family members whet their sleuthing skills a la Nancy Drew. "Whaaaat?" I say as I read on. "This woman is seven months pregnant and she tackles the bad guy? Especially when, two pages ago, she complained that her feet hurt her so bad. And a couple pages later, she's limping home on those bad feet again? This is so improbable!"

Why don't you just read it up to the point where the book goes awry and I'll tell you how the kidnapping turns out?

No cow patties.

All Keyed Up for Backstage Gossip

This week on the Finished Book Pile, we have Making Americans by Andrea Most. Most examines how Jews invented the Broadway musical as a way to assimilate themselves into American life. Meanwhile, they created an idealized version of Americana, far rosier than the reality.

For instance, Rodgers and Hammerstein presented Oklahoma in 1943, a show full of optimism about pioneer life and a "Brand New State!" From what I've read, breaking in a new land was not all that perky. And never mind that in the ten years prior to the musical, desperate and dustworn Okies had been leaving the state in droves.

As I said in my title, I was ready to read some backstage gossip. But Most's book reads more like literary criticism, i.e. the symbolism of Joe Cable in South Pacific, what it means that Liat never says anything. To me, literary criticism is a suspect art. Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) once wrote about breathless students who had divined symbolism from her book ("The number four keeps recurring in your book. What is the significance of that?"). Tan says, "Just an accident, folks. I'm neither that good nor that organized of a writer to plant all that stuff in there intentionally." (I'm paraphrasing.)

So, what is the larger meaning of Joe Cable? All these theories can be fascinating. They might even be true. But Making Americans is certainly no beach book. Feels more like the lecture hall.

I also dipped into another Evelyn Waugh book, Put Out More Flags. It opens just as WWII is about to hit England. "It won't be that bad. The French will stop the Germans from bombing us." By eight pages in, I was already lost in a sea of characters, not to mention a lot of cultural references that I could only know if I read the same newspapers that Waugh read. It's probably a pretty good book, but the library wanted it back. So, with a combination of confusion and regret, I gave it up.

Coming up next: a horde of England books, to help me appreciate the things I'm going to see when I get there.

Now, since I'm typing all this with cold bony fingers, it's time for a soup recipe:

CORN CHOWDER
2 oz. bacon
2 slices onion
1 1/2 cups diced raw potatoes
1 can (16 oz.) cream-style corn
3 cups hot water
3 TB butter
1 cup evaporated milk
2 1/2 tsp. salt
Dash pepper
Some parsley or paprika

Chop bacon and onion coarsely and put into soup kettle; saute until onion is soft and bacon done. Add potatoes, corn, and water, cover and simmer until potatoes are tender. Add butter, milk and seasonings; reheat to boiling and serve piping hot with a little parsley sprinkled over the top, or a few dashes of paprika. Serves 5 at 240 cals. ea.

Let's just say that I'm so sad when the last drops of this soup disappear.

Rich boys

I had the happy accident this week of watching a movie that illuminated a book I had just read. I planned a nice mid-winter goof-off day in which I ate cookies and cashews, drank hot chocolate and watched a Tivo-ed "Sabrina," with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, and Greg Kinnear. As Ford and Kinnear, the rich brothers, traded barbs about who worked too much and who worked not at all, Dynasties by David Landes, came to life.

Landes wrote about famous-name family businesses (think Rothschilds, Fords, Guggenheims) and how they fared from generation to generation. Truthfully, much of the book was out of my depth as he talked about joint stock capitalization and Vichy France. But I got glimpses of personality here and there:

If Grandpa starts a bank, or invents a car, or strikes oil, who among his sons and grandsons will possess the talent AND the interest to keep the enterprise going? Just like in the movie, plenty of descendants would rather use all that wealth just for playing.

Would be a lovely temptation, no?

Now, when it comes to this installment's recipe, I debated whether to give you something workaday and practical, or something so yummy that you will blame the failure of your New Year's resolution on me. So I decided on both. You've probably already broken your resolutions anyway.

First the practical: SPICY BEEF AND VEGETABLE SOUP
1 lb. ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
1 jar (30 oz.) meatless spaghetti sauce
3 1/2 c. water
1 pkg (16 oz.) frozen mixed vegetables
1 can (10 oz.) diced tomatoes & green chilies
1 c. sliced celery
1 tsp. beef bouillon granules
1 tsp. pepper

In skillet over medium heat, cook beef & onion until meat is no longer pink; drain. Transfer to slow cooler. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours or until vegetables are tender. YIELD: 12 servings, 160 cals. each.

This was really great to come home to after feeling the nasty, icy wind that blew across the Wal-Mart parking lot this afternoon. We ate the soup with garlic bread from the bread machine.

Now, just so you don't overdose on nutritious stuff, I offer you BYU MINT BROWNIES.
1 c. margarine
1/2 c. cocoa
2 TB honey
4 eggs
2 c. sugar
1 3/4 c. flour
1/2 TB baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Mint Icing (See step #2)
12 oz. chocolate icing (canned)

1. Melt margarine and mix in cocoa. Allow to cool. Add honey, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt. Mix well. Pour batter into a greased 9x13-in. baking pan. Bake at 350' for 25 minutes. Cool.
2. Prepare Mint Icing: Soften 5 TB margarine. Add dash of salt, 1 TB light corn syrup, & 2 1/3 c. powdered sugar. Beat until smooth and fluffy. Add 1/2 tsp. mint extract & 1-2 drops green food coloring. Mix. Add 3 TB milk gradually until the consistency is a little thinner than cake frosting.
3. Spread mint icing over brownies. Place brownies in the freezer for a short time to stiffen the icing. Remove from the freezer and carefully add a layer of chocolate icing.
If you cut the finished brownies into 24 pieces, each has 310 calories.

I know, I know, I gave you Peppermint Cream Brownies in the last post. But you really can't have too much of a good thing. Besides those were just gateway mint brownies. These are the hardcore stuff.

I made them for Mercy's baby shower. We needed two pans for the ladies. And of course, what would my husband think if I made these and didn't leave any for him? What would Jim think if I stayed at his house the night before, carrying these lovely treats, and none for him?

Well, Jim made it clear what he would think. So I made a third pan.

In the end, we had so many brownies that, even after I packaged up a nice personal stash of them, I was still giving them away to friends and begging John to take some to bishopric meeting.

The other food at the shower was a great big green and brown cake. (You can sense a color theme here, can't you?) It was a German chocolate cake, frosted with ganache, a smooth icing that hardens into a shell, and embellished with green fondant, rolled and cut out to look like ribbons on a present.

It was a sugar-lover's party, oh yes.

Sorry, it's not exotic cheese

Today, we're going to go to the Finished Book Pile and see what we have there.

First up is Laura Kalpakian's novel, These Latter Days. If that sounds Mormon-y, it is, although the characters are highly imperfect. It's really kind of amusing to see them thinking, Well, this is really against the Word of Wisdom, but here goes (Note to my posterity: this is only funny in fiction). Sometimes it was hard to tell if I was reading the characters' misperceptions of church doctrine, or the author's. That Mormons believe we enter heaven two by two, and thus the importance of marriage, came up again and again, but they are all confused about it. Nobody seems to think there is any place in heaven for single folks, and they also are sure that if your spouse messes up and goes to hell, there you go right along with him. By the end of the book, it's pretty clear that Kalpakian has no use for the church or its leaders. But I read on anyway, citing the motto: We Don't Adopt Other People's Grievances; We Only Nurture Our Own. Besides, it was a delicious saga, great to turn another page and learn what happened to all the children when they grew up, who married who, who broke who's heart.

Next, I read The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen. News stories present everything as two extreme sides. Lawyers fight to win, not to find the truth. Everything is too much shouting and debate. It was one of those books that makes me say, "I guess so. But there's not much I can do about it." Tannen's fire for her subject grew when she wrote an earlier book, went on talk shows to publicize it, and was constantly thrown into debates that kept her from getting her message out. Or they didn't want her on if she wouldn't go along with the pit-one-against-another format.

Next, we have The Day the Earth Caved In by Joan Quigley, an account of a mine fire burning for decades under the town of Centralia, PA. It starts when the earth opens up and swallows a 12-year-old boy.

Centralia was not terribly far from Bethlehem, where I used to live. I've seen towns like it, "coal-cracker towns" the locals called them, hard-bitten, shabby places. Besides the main story, I loved for book for explaining those towns to me, i.e. who immigrated there, people who live their whole lives in a 5-mile radius, related to everybody, thoroughly caught up in the high school football games and bowling leagues of the community.

After that, I read Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab by Melissa Plaut. Ah, New York! I miss it. Following Plaut in her cab was a delicious virtual return to the throb of the Big City. Be warned, though. It's a pretty profane little book; Plaut sees the underbelly of the city, which I happily managed to avoid when I visited. And when she wants to relax, she and friends head for their favorite dyke bar. Still, she's a thoughtful writer and someone who's trying to be a decent person, in her own way.

Now, I'm reading a collection of short stories, fables and essays, The Best of George Ade. He's a Hoosier writer from days of yore--like, he went to college in the 1880s. I was charmed right away as I opened the first page and read:

"Two Sisters lived in Chicago, the Home of Opportunity.
"Luella was a Good Girl, . . . but she was Plain, much. . . .
"The other Sister was Different. . . .
"From earliest Youth she had lacked Industry and Application.
"She was short on Intellect but long on Shape.
"The Vain Pleasures of the World attracted her. By skipping the Long Words she could read how Rupert Banisford led Sibyl Gray into the Conservatory and made Love that scorched the Begonias." . . .

I thought I have to read this out loud to John. I tried, but it didn't translate well. We didn't catch lots of Ade's slang; also, the hearer misses the wink-wink message conveyed by the capitalized words. I could tell that John was Working Hard at Showing Interest.

But it still makes a great private read. And it's clean. I need something clean after Plaut's book.

And now, for a recipe that you might find appealing: Cheesy Wild Rice Soup

I took the soup to John's father's 95th birthday party last Saturday and when the other Carson wives wanted the recipe, it was so simple, I could write it down for them right there. When she saw the ingredients, one sister-in-law's enthusiasm appeared to cool a bit.

Maybe she thought the soup got it's cheesy groove from that $7-a-wedge imported stuff, but no, it's only Velveeta. Some people have scruples against Velveeta. But I don't see what's so bad about it. My cat likes it.

Oh, wait, that's probably no compliment to Velveeta.