By request, I offer you POOR MAN'S LOBSTER as our recipe for the day:
8 boned and skinned chicken breast halves
1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. pineapple juice
1/4 c. oil
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 TB brown sugar
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. pepper
Mix together all ingredients except chicken. Marinate chicken in the mixture for 3 to 6 hours. Drain well. Broil on second shelf 6 to 10 minutes on each side. Serve with melted butter and dip as with lobster. Calories equal 280/serving, unless most of the oil drains off. But then I guess you make up for that with the butter.
Recipe from a community cookbook.
I never have dipped this in butter, because I have never eaten lobster. We save that kind of thing for Abbey, the adventurous one in our family. She vowed to try lobster on a family vacation to Maine. We all sat around watching raptly as she tore off the legs and dug out the meat. Yes, she loved her little lobster feast. As for the guts, not so much. But they don't warn you about those, do they?
Over on the Finished Book Pile, we have I'll Go To Bed At Noon by Gerard Woodward. We've reviewed Mr. Woodward here before and, in that story, we thought the family who camps every summer in Wales was kind of bland. But now the family of Aldous and Colette Jones has grown up. Colette's brilliant, piano virtuoso son is a raging alcoholic, whose mind games and destructive bent make for never a dull moment in the Woodward household. Colette's brother drowns the sorrows of his new widowhood in drink. And Colette herself rather likes to while away the hours at the pub. The lady can put away a pint or two.
I wouldn't want to live any of it, but it was an instructive read. Includes some whiffs of cow patties.
Next up, we have Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. Mark this one down for history: your favorite book-and-recipe blogger just read herself some science fiction. However, this was not the alien/space travel type. Silverberg's main character can read minds. For good or ill, he can just burrow in there and know what his sister has been up to, or his roommates. When he meets a fellow mind-reader, he can tell when his own mind is being penetrated.
Sometimes, what he learns frightens him away. Once, when presidential candidate Richard Nixon was in town, the main character went down to the street where the motorcade passed by, just to experiment with getting in to Nixon's brain. What he found there frightened him so badly that he refused to vote ever again.
But in middle age, he begins to lose his gift.
Fascinating. Frequent, fleeting cow patties.
Next up, What Happened to Anna K.? by Irina Reyn. I needn't give you any hints about the plot because, supposedly, this story is a contemporary version of Anna Karenina. (Does this mean I have to go read the real thing, just so I know that last sentence is true?) Reyn set her version in New York among Russian Jewish immigrants. I loved peeking into their lives, their meals of sausages, beets and vodka, their wedding parties at Queens restaurants, their obsession with money, their strange nostalgia for a frozen and miserable homeland.
Reyn reveals "the Russian soul" to her readers. "Does it have anything to do with . . . the addictive qualities of vodka? Wars fought with little training, shoddy clothing, and primitive equipment?"
It was a yummy book.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
There Are Bad Days and Then There are BAD DAYS
Go ahead, name me your worst. Your kid forgot his lunch. The cop behind you turned on his lights. You cut your finger while making dinner. You got laid off. You backed the car into a Hummer. The doctor called you back for a "consultation" after the tests. You found icky stuff in the computer's history.
I'm impressed by your troubles, really, I am. But I can top them. Not with my own, thank goodness, but over on the Finished Book Pile, we have Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell, chronicling the life of General Custer, a man who had one very Bad Day.
It starts out gory, following a few cavalry soldiers as they come upon a scene of barbaric slaughter (missing scalps, evisceration, long gashes down limbs, arrows sticking out of delicate places).
So what happened at Custer's Last Stand? Well, we aren't sure. All the eyewitnesses ended up scalped, eviscerated, gashed and pierced. (See paragraph above.)
What we do know is that Custer was a mean dude. His cavalry had the highest desertion rate of them all. And why not, when he marched his men in 120' heat, making them wear their full wool uniforms and carry pounds and pounds of equipment?
He rose fast in the army, but historians agree that he ascended on a bubble of other men's brilliance and strategy. Custer's only strategy was to yell "Charge!" and plunge in. And it worked. Until one very Bad Day in 1876 when it didn't.
Connell's book circles around in time, examining all the theories and eyewitness accounts about the man. I was never sure the author had any organization in mind at all. But I stuck with it for all the tidbits that came up. For instance, I would not have wanted to miss the story of Mrs. Nash, who traveled along with the 7th Cavalry as laundress, midwife and baker of pies extraordinaire.
Near the end, all that circling tightens until he introduces some new eyewitnesses. When I finally closed the book, I walked away with the sense that I could see Custer in his last moments.
Next, we have Martin Dressler by Stephen Millhauser. Martin is a dreamer who comes of age at the end of the 19th century. He is the kind of restless soul who always looks for the next big thing to build. It's mildly interesting but, Mr. Author, I spent the whole book wondering why you didn't resolve the matter of Martin's women. He married Woman A. Woman B had every right to expect he'd marry her. Do you really think flesh-and-blood women react the way she did?
As for your recipe, we feature QUICKER CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS. This implies that there are more tedious ways to make chicken and dumplings, don't ask me what they are. Unless it includes plucking an actual chicken. That I know something about, and it is tedious indeed. That is, until it comes to the part about getting the very last bits off, the ones that are too much trouble to pluck. For that, my mom poured a little rubbing alcohol into a jar lid, lit it and burned off any final fuzz off the chicken carcass. Open flames always make the kitchen more interesting.
Come to think of it, I didn't really know what a dumpling was, until I tried this recipe. Basically, they are dough balls. Well, they cook up like a biscuit, but the broth they cook in makes the outsides gooey.
Cooks probably never fix foods they don't like, which might explain my dumpling ignorance. My mom loved crispy and crunchy, while I loved gooey and squishy. She loved throwing in a little of this, a little of that. I loved to measure ingredients. She loved dogs. I loved cats. She loved the countryside. I loved the city. She loved . . . wait, I'm getting off the subject here, aren't I?
Anyway, this recipe saves you untold effort, not that we know what it is, and fills you up on a wintery night.
Quicker Chicken 'n Dumplings
I'm impressed by your troubles, really, I am. But I can top them. Not with my own, thank goodness, but over on the Finished Book Pile, we have Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell, chronicling the life of General Custer, a man who had one very Bad Day.
It starts out gory, following a few cavalry soldiers as they come upon a scene of barbaric slaughter (missing scalps, evisceration, long gashes down limbs, arrows sticking out of delicate places).
So what happened at Custer's Last Stand? Well, we aren't sure. All the eyewitnesses ended up scalped, eviscerated, gashed and pierced. (See paragraph above.)
What we do know is that Custer was a mean dude. His cavalry had the highest desertion rate of them all. And why not, when he marched his men in 120' heat, making them wear their full wool uniforms and carry pounds and pounds of equipment?
He rose fast in the army, but historians agree that he ascended on a bubble of other men's brilliance and strategy. Custer's only strategy was to yell "Charge!" and plunge in. And it worked. Until one very Bad Day in 1876 when it didn't.
Connell's book circles around in time, examining all the theories and eyewitness accounts about the man. I was never sure the author had any organization in mind at all. But I stuck with it for all the tidbits that came up. For instance, I would not have wanted to miss the story of Mrs. Nash, who traveled along with the 7th Cavalry as laundress, midwife and baker of pies extraordinaire.
Near the end, all that circling tightens until he introduces some new eyewitnesses. When I finally closed the book, I walked away with the sense that I could see Custer in his last moments.
Next, we have Martin Dressler by Stephen Millhauser. Martin is a dreamer who comes of age at the end of the 19th century. He is the kind of restless soul who always looks for the next big thing to build. It's mildly interesting but, Mr. Author, I spent the whole book wondering why you didn't resolve the matter of Martin's women. He married Woman A. Woman B had every right to expect he'd marry her. Do you really think flesh-and-blood women react the way she did?
As for your recipe, we feature QUICKER CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS. This implies that there are more tedious ways to make chicken and dumplings, don't ask me what they are. Unless it includes plucking an actual chicken. That I know something about, and it is tedious indeed. That is, until it comes to the part about getting the very last bits off, the ones that are too much trouble to pluck. For that, my mom poured a little rubbing alcohol into a jar lid, lit it and burned off any final fuzz off the chicken carcass. Open flames always make the kitchen more interesting.
Come to think of it, I didn't really know what a dumpling was, until I tried this recipe. Basically, they are dough balls. Well, they cook up like a biscuit, but the broth they cook in makes the outsides gooey.
Cooks probably never fix foods they don't like, which might explain my dumpling ignorance. My mom loved crispy and crunchy, while I loved gooey and squishy. She loved throwing in a little of this, a little of that. I loved to measure ingredients. She loved dogs. I loved cats. She loved the countryside. I loved the city. She loved . . . wait, I'm getting off the subject here, aren't I?
Anyway, this recipe saves you untold effort, not that we know what it is, and fills you up on a wintery night.
Quicker Chicken 'n Dumplings
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Last Person in the 50 States to . . .
OK, I'm pretty sure I'm the last person in the whole United States to read The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
But just in case I'm not the last, let me tell you that you will, like about 12 million other people, enjoy reading about Minny, the big-mouth maid who gets fired for doing something Terrible/Awful to her employer. (The Terrible/Awful wasn't what I expected. It was better.)
You will enjoy reading about Hilly, the queen bee of the Jackson, Mississippi Junior League.
You will like Skeeter, the too-tall white girl with the frizzy hair, who gets an idea that seemed a little contrived as a plot device but eventually earned its keep.
You will enjoy riding the bus home with the maids and hearing them talk about the white people they serve.
Yep, it's no wonder you have to fight for a place in the long line at your library to read this book.
In honor of Minny, the big-mouth maid who makes the best caramel cake in the world, I offer you:
Banana Fudge Cake
We recently enjoyed this cake in honor of a certain two-year-old's birthday. The honoree, upon arriving at his beloved grandma's house, ignored his grandma and went straight for the big red box with the picture of a trike on it. I do believe that helping grandpa assemble the trike was the most fun he had all day. He carried wheel parts around. He brandished screwdrivers. He checked grandpa's work and made sure grandpa stayed on the job.
When the trike was all done, so was dinner. But do you think we could get him to sit down for some macaroni and cheese? Nooooo.
Really, I don't know what else we could expect from the little fellow.
He can't even reach the pedals yet. But that doesn't stop him from (as Emma put it) Fred-Flintstoning his way across the floor.
He was, however, willing to take a break for a piece of this cake.
But just in case I'm not the last, let me tell you that you will, like about 12 million other people, enjoy reading about Minny, the big-mouth maid who gets fired for doing something Terrible/Awful to her employer. (The Terrible/Awful wasn't what I expected. It was better.)
You will enjoy reading about Hilly, the queen bee of the Jackson, Mississippi Junior League.
You will like Skeeter, the too-tall white girl with the frizzy hair, who gets an idea that seemed a little contrived as a plot device but eventually earned its keep.
You will enjoy riding the bus home with the maids and hearing them talk about the white people they serve.
Yep, it's no wonder you have to fight for a place in the long line at your library to read this book.
In honor of Minny, the big-mouth maid who makes the best caramel cake in the world, I offer you:
Banana Fudge Cake
We recently enjoyed this cake in honor of a certain two-year-old's birthday. The honoree, upon arriving at his beloved grandma's house, ignored his grandma and went straight for the big red box with the picture of a trike on it. I do believe that helping grandpa assemble the trike was the most fun he had all day. He carried wheel parts around. He brandished screwdrivers. He checked grandpa's work and made sure grandpa stayed on the job.
When the trike was all done, so was dinner. But do you think we could get him to sit down for some macaroni and cheese? Nooooo.
Really, I don't know what else we could expect from the little fellow.
He can't even reach the pedals yet. But that doesn't stop him from (as Emma put it) Fred-Flintstoning his way across the floor.
He was, however, willing to take a break for a piece of this cake.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Good-bye Powell's
My favorite source of books ideas just dried up. For several years now, I received a daily e-mail from Powells.com, which introduced me to books on everything from Amish teens to amusingly fake biographies. You know, all the stuff you read about here. But now they have gone "on hiatus."
But that's OK. In the first place, their book ideas ran farther and farther afield from my interests (comic-book style novels about post-modern losers anyone?) and second of all, I probably have three or four years' worth of books on my reading list. We're a long way from drying up around here.
So, to check off a few more items on that list, the Finished Book Pile today includes Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolfe. This short story collection was a little spooky because the author looks like a guy in my writing group. His stories even have the same tone.
My favorite in the bunch was "Firelight," which begins: "My mother swore we'd never live in a boardinghouse again, but . . ." Something about unsteady mothers and squalor draws me right in, I guess.
Reading Tobias, I discovered that I never think of story characters as good-looking. They have lumps and flaws enumerated by the author. They have problems, else they wouldn't be worth writing a story about. But if the story ever makes to film, suddenly they become good-looking, though they still have all their terrible problems.
Next up, One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. Atkinson's story starts with a road rage incident, interrupted by a meek and bumbling crime writer. So many threads to this story and so many characters left me wondering how the author would pull it all together. But her characters were so entertaining (loved that meek and bumbling writer!) that I just sat back and let her worry about it.
And finally, we have And His Lovely Wife by Connie Schultz. Schultz is a real life columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. When her husband ran for Congress, she took a break from the newspaper and followed him on his campaign, endlessly introduced as "his lovely wife." It was a nice backstage look at political life.
As for your recipe, I invite you to buy a brownie mix (one with chunks in it) and bake it. That's what I did recently. I've been on vacation, living in a tiny apartment with a kitchenette in New Jersey. John and I fed ourselves on easy stuff, like Hamburger Helper and Birds Eye frozen sweet and sour chicken. The Birds Eye stuff was the kind of thing where you open the bag, look at all the frozen chunks and wonder how it can possibly be dinner in just four minutes. But it was great.
So, go ahead and imitate all that non-cooking if you want to.
Sorry to say, it will be a little harder for you to imitate the part where I take 4-mile walks around a darling but pricey Jersey suburb, as well as the part where I ride commuter trains into Manhattan and hang with the fashionistas. Not that I could be mistaken for a fashionista, since this year's look is skirts just below your bum. And I do mean Just Below.
It was my dream vacation. There's just nothing quite as nice as sitting on a park bench in the middle of the city, watching lovers kissing by a fountain, or tourists clutching their guidebooks, or uniformed children walking home from school.
But that's OK. In the first place, their book ideas ran farther and farther afield from my interests (comic-book style novels about post-modern losers anyone?) and second of all, I probably have three or four years' worth of books on my reading list. We're a long way from drying up around here.
So, to check off a few more items on that list, the Finished Book Pile today includes Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolfe. This short story collection was a little spooky because the author looks like a guy in my writing group. His stories even have the same tone.
My favorite in the bunch was "Firelight," which begins: "My mother swore we'd never live in a boardinghouse again, but . . ." Something about unsteady mothers and squalor draws me right in, I guess.
Reading Tobias, I discovered that I never think of story characters as good-looking. They have lumps and flaws enumerated by the author. They have problems, else they wouldn't be worth writing a story about. But if the story ever makes to film, suddenly they become good-looking, though they still have all their terrible problems.
Next up, One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. Atkinson's story starts with a road rage incident, interrupted by a meek and bumbling crime writer. So many threads to this story and so many characters left me wondering how the author would pull it all together. But her characters were so entertaining (loved that meek and bumbling writer!) that I just sat back and let her worry about it.
And finally, we have And His Lovely Wife by Connie Schultz. Schultz is a real life columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. When her husband ran for Congress, she took a break from the newspaper and followed him on his campaign, endlessly introduced as "his lovely wife." It was a nice backstage look at political life.
As for your recipe, I invite you to buy a brownie mix (one with chunks in it) and bake it. That's what I did recently. I've been on vacation, living in a tiny apartment with a kitchenette in New Jersey. John and I fed ourselves on easy stuff, like Hamburger Helper and Birds Eye frozen sweet and sour chicken. The Birds Eye stuff was the kind of thing where you open the bag, look at all the frozen chunks and wonder how it can possibly be dinner in just four minutes. But it was great.
So, go ahead and imitate all that non-cooking if you want to.
Sorry to say, it will be a little harder for you to imitate the part where I take 4-mile walks around a darling but pricey Jersey suburb, as well as the part where I ride commuter trains into Manhattan and hang with the fashionistas. Not that I could be mistaken for a fashionista, since this year's look is skirts just below your bum. And I do mean Just Below.
It was my dream vacation. There's just nothing quite as nice as sitting on a park bench in the middle of the city, watching lovers kissing by a fountain, or tourists clutching their guidebooks, or uniformed children walking home from school.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
I'll Bet It Was a Mistake
Sometimes I wonder how foods were invented. Who was it that dropped his dinner of raw meat into the fire and decided that, hmmm, it tasted better a little bit singed? And who figured out that if you stirred fungus into your bread, it would get all puffy? And whoever looked at a fuzzy, ugly kiwi and knew there was something to eat in there?
I think this post's recipe was somebody's kitchen mistake. Somebody got hold of Grandma's cake recipe and either missed an ingredient or forgot where they left off when the phone rang, and then stuck it in the oven and then, ten minutes before the timer rang, smacked themselves on the forehead and, "Wait! What about the eggs?!"
Then, when the whole family finished dinner and sat there feeling sorry for themselves because the cook hung her head over that messed-up dessert, I wonder if the father, who was one of those hardy eat-anything types, got up and dug into the cake pan anyway because sometimes even a messed-up dessert is better than none at all. And what the father found was some cake on the bottom and some cake on the top and a bunch of runny sauce in between. And he put it into a bowl and mulled his first mouthful and said, "Hmm, this is not so bad. All it needs is some ice cream."
And a new dessert was born. Nobody wanted to call it Cook's Mistake, so they called it Pudding Cake, to make it sound like they'd planned it that way all along.
This version, from my very spattered Betty Crocker Cookbook, is called Hot Fudge Sundae Cake:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 TB cocoa
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup milk
2 TB oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cups hottest tap water
Ice cream
Heat oven to 350'. Mix flour, sugar, 2 TB cocoa, baking powder and salt in ungreased square pan, 9x9 inches. Mix in milk, oil and vanilla with fork until smooth. Spread in pan. Sprinkle with brown sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa. Pour hot water over batter.
Bake 40 minutes. While warm, spoon into desert dishes and top with ice cream. Spoon sauce from pan onto each serving. 9 servings @ 240 cals each, not counting the ice cream.
Over on the Finished Book Pile, we have Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. The story takes you to a Greek Island as World War II rages around Europe. This is a book for people who love following the village doctor around, as well as the village communist, the village strongman. You can cheer on the characters that fall in love, and then grip the pages in your white-knuckled hands as the war finally comes to their shores.
Either the author carries a huge grudge against Germans, or the Germans were the cruelest buggers around. At any rate, he writes a delightful story, even if the ending is lame. No cow patties.
Next up, we have Family of Strangers by Deborah Tall. Ms. Tall asked her father who he was, where he came from, what his parents were like, and Mr. Tall barely grunted out any answers at all. So Ms. Tall hunted down the facts for herself.
It's a very genealogical memoir, and that's not praise because genealogy buffs, in my opinion, are not good story-tellers. It's fascinating to dig in to dusty records and find things. But when you tell the rest of us what you found, you need to package it up nicely. No overload of details, please, i.e.: "I asked the graveyard tender about . . . and he said they are all in the back row but it turned out there were two gravestones three rows up." No thicket of characters, i.e.: "my uncle's wife's sister's grandfather's . . . "
I stuck with it, no matter how lost I got. For one thing, it read fast. Each page was like a prose poem on loss and searching (she outdid herself, reaching for imagery), lots of white space on the page. And there was some small pay-off at the end, even though her search lead to one of the most depressing places on earth.
Next up: Renato's Luck by Jeff Shapiro. About the waterworks guy in some town in Italy. I gave it the old 10% try and felt that I was in the hands of an amateur. So I moved on to:
Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett. This is part of a series that takes you Europe sometime in the Renaissance and leads you through the intrigues of shipping merchants and patron princes. Open the book and the first thing you see is a four-page cast of characters, all of them with fourteen-syllable names or titles. It was quite daunting. I gave it the 10% try, too, but gave it up. Not that you should. Lots of reviewers on Amazon praised the series for its depth and drama, but a few of them felt just like I did: "I made several attempts to penetrate this novel . . . completely baffled . . . could not explain on pain of death what I just read."
But go ahead. And good luck.
I think this post's recipe was somebody's kitchen mistake. Somebody got hold of Grandma's cake recipe and either missed an ingredient or forgot where they left off when the phone rang, and then stuck it in the oven and then, ten minutes before the timer rang, smacked themselves on the forehead and, "Wait! What about the eggs?!"
Then, when the whole family finished dinner and sat there feeling sorry for themselves because the cook hung her head over that messed-up dessert, I wonder if the father, who was one of those hardy eat-anything types, got up and dug into the cake pan anyway because sometimes even a messed-up dessert is better than none at all. And what the father found was some cake on the bottom and some cake on the top and a bunch of runny sauce in between. And he put it into a bowl and mulled his first mouthful and said, "Hmm, this is not so bad. All it needs is some ice cream."
And a new dessert was born. Nobody wanted to call it Cook's Mistake, so they called it Pudding Cake, to make it sound like they'd planned it that way all along.
This version, from my very spattered Betty Crocker Cookbook, is called Hot Fudge Sundae Cake:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 TB cocoa
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup milk
2 TB oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cups hottest tap water
Ice cream
Heat oven to 350'. Mix flour, sugar, 2 TB cocoa, baking powder and salt in ungreased square pan, 9x9 inches. Mix in milk, oil and vanilla with fork until smooth. Spread in pan. Sprinkle with brown sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa. Pour hot water over batter.
Bake 40 minutes. While warm, spoon into desert dishes and top with ice cream. Spoon sauce from pan onto each serving. 9 servings @ 240 cals each, not counting the ice cream.
Over on the Finished Book Pile, we have Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. The story takes you to a Greek Island as World War II rages around Europe. This is a book for people who love following the village doctor around, as well as the village communist, the village strongman. You can cheer on the characters that fall in love, and then grip the pages in your white-knuckled hands as the war finally comes to their shores.
Either the author carries a huge grudge against Germans, or the Germans were the cruelest buggers around. At any rate, he writes a delightful story, even if the ending is lame. No cow patties.
Next up, we have Family of Strangers by Deborah Tall. Ms. Tall asked her father who he was, where he came from, what his parents were like, and Mr. Tall barely grunted out any answers at all. So Ms. Tall hunted down the facts for herself.
It's a very genealogical memoir, and that's not praise because genealogy buffs, in my opinion, are not good story-tellers. It's fascinating to dig in to dusty records and find things. But when you tell the rest of us what you found, you need to package it up nicely. No overload of details, please, i.e.: "I asked the graveyard tender about . . . and he said they are all in the back row but it turned out there were two gravestones three rows up." No thicket of characters, i.e.: "my uncle's wife's sister's grandfather's . . . "
I stuck with it, no matter how lost I got. For one thing, it read fast. Each page was like a prose poem on loss and searching (she outdid herself, reaching for imagery), lots of white space on the page. And there was some small pay-off at the end, even though her search lead to one of the most depressing places on earth.
Next up: Renato's Luck by Jeff Shapiro. About the waterworks guy in some town in Italy. I gave it the old 10% try and felt that I was in the hands of an amateur. So I moved on to:
Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett. This is part of a series that takes you Europe sometime in the Renaissance and leads you through the intrigues of shipping merchants and patron princes. Open the book and the first thing you see is a four-page cast of characters, all of them with fourteen-syllable names or titles. It was quite daunting. I gave it the 10% try, too, but gave it up. Not that you should. Lots of reviewers on Amazon praised the series for its depth and drama, but a few of them felt just like I did: "I made several attempts to penetrate this novel . . . completely baffled . . . could not explain on pain of death what I just read."
But go ahead. And good luck.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Twisting with Oliver
There are books written by fingers that fly over laptop keys and there are books written by the scritching of quill pens on yellowed scrolls.
I tend to read more of the former. But once in a while, it is good to open one of the classics. Therefore I embarked upon Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
I'd call it the equivalent of Eating Your Literary Carrots. I had to push myself to get through it. But a book shouldn't be ignored just because its place on the shelf has been crowded up with the recent and the exciting.
I know, vaguely (like the first lines of songs) about the musical, Oliver. My sister spent her personal monies on soundtracks of every Broadway musical she could get her hands on. So, as I read Dickens, I hunted for the places where the songs would fit in to the story. "Oliver, Oliver, never before has a boy wanted more . . ." was easy to spot. So was "I Shall Scream." I might even have found where "Oom-Pa-Pa" belongs, but I never could quite pin down the right spot for my favorite, "As Long As He Needs Me." In fact, I'm re-thinking Nancy as a lead part for glamorous actresses. The "he" that needs her is Bill Sykes, a man of unrelenting filth and cruelty. And I don't see how Nancy herself avoided being wracked by social disease, even one as innocent as tuberculosis.
The word "Dickensian" connotes stories of people living in unrelenting sadness and squalor. But Dickens' quill pen actually produced a good deal of satire. Thank goodness humans can be insufferable fools, giving the author ample material for his wry sense of humor.
As for your recipe, I bragged one evening about our yummy and easy supper of Grilled Pizza Sandwiches. She to whom I bragged insisted that she wanted to eat this wonderful thing, too, so here goes:
Grilled Pizza Sandwiches
These sandwiches call for salami, which I find unappetizing. I replace it with Canadian bacon.
I tend to read more of the former. But once in a while, it is good to open one of the classics. Therefore I embarked upon Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
I'd call it the equivalent of Eating Your Literary Carrots. I had to push myself to get through it. But a book shouldn't be ignored just because its place on the shelf has been crowded up with the recent and the exciting.
I know, vaguely (like the first lines of songs) about the musical, Oliver. My sister spent her personal monies on soundtracks of every Broadway musical she could get her hands on. So, as I read Dickens, I hunted for the places where the songs would fit in to the story. "Oliver, Oliver, never before has a boy wanted more . . ." was easy to spot. So was "I Shall Scream." I might even have found where "Oom-Pa-Pa" belongs, but I never could quite pin down the right spot for my favorite, "As Long As He Needs Me." In fact, I'm re-thinking Nancy as a lead part for glamorous actresses. The "he" that needs her is Bill Sykes, a man of unrelenting filth and cruelty. And I don't see how Nancy herself avoided being wracked by social disease, even one as innocent as tuberculosis.
The word "Dickensian" connotes stories of people living in unrelenting sadness and squalor. But Dickens' quill pen actually produced a good deal of satire. Thank goodness humans can be insufferable fools, giving the author ample material for his wry sense of humor.
As for your recipe, I bragged one evening about our yummy and easy supper of Grilled Pizza Sandwiches. She to whom I bragged insisted that she wanted to eat this wonderful thing, too, so here goes:
Grilled Pizza Sandwiches
These sandwiches call for salami, which I find unappetizing. I replace it with Canadian bacon.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
I Thought I'd Escaped Afghanistan
You have probably read three times as many books as I have since we last met. That's because you probably don't fall asleep every time you sit down to read a chapter. What's up with this extreme nappiness?
But anyway . . .
First up we have The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. Theroux has my dream job: go places, then write about them. There's probably a catch though, like going places I wouldn't want to visit. Theroux took a regular patchwork of trains all across Asia. You might think Asia would be a memorable and scenic place to visit. But our author doesn't sugarcoat things at all.
Here's what we know, thanks to his troubles on all those trains:
Great swaths of this planet are not very exciting to look at. Turkey comes to mind, as does Siberia. And Afghanistan where, Theroux reports, there is "not a single mile of railroad track." (And here I thought I'd escaped Afghanistan by tossing aside Rory Stewart's book.) He got across the world's least fortunate country some other way, I don't remember how.
Then again, some spots on earth are quite lovely: Thailand, Vietnam.
So if the scenery outside the train window is often dull as dishwater, what does the travel writer write about?
Well, his fellow riders provided rich material: The Russians packed odd train picnics for themselves. The Japanese acted like automatons. The Vietnamese, their lives disrupted by years of war (Railway Bazaar was written in the mid '70s) found the most resourceful ways to carry on with life. And the Turkish are still wearing clothes from the '30s, because that's when their leader brought the country into modernity, adopting Western clothing and habits. They just got stuck there, that's all. (Maybe Theroux's follow-up book will catch them wearing denim and tube tops. I'll let you know when it comes up to the top of my reading list.)
As for the Ceylonese, they were starving when Theroux visited. But many came to his literature lectures (he gave a few along the journey). And why would they care about literature, when they had life-and-death matters on their hands?
They came because every lecture included a dinner. They came and gorged themselves silly.
The book includes quite a few cow patties as Theroux passed through Thailand and Japan. Theroux approaches them partly as a married man far from home, and partly as a social observer, commenting on the national character.
Next up, Howard's End by E. M. Forster, is a drama of English class boundaries. The cast of characters includes the Schlegel sisters, independent girls who come from old money and a bit of German blood landed in England; the Wilcox family, up-and-comers who constantly strive to hang on to their relatively new wealth; and Leonard Bast, who stands in for the rest of us. He's a working man, but decisions made by the other two classes could, at any moment, topple him into ruin.
Mr. Wilcox kicks off the story by giving Mr. Bast some advice. What I found fascinating is Forster's study of each class's awareness. Mr. Bast tries to push in to the upper classes, but the penny-pinching habits so necessary in his life give him away. On the other hand, the Wilcoxes and the Schlegels have no idea what the stakes are for those who must work for a living.
As for your recipe, I have learned that my mom's stacked enchiladas, which are not anything like the rolled ones you see in stores or restaurants, are actually genuinely Honduran! That's right. Mercy used to eat them stacked. But she never knew the recipe. And my mom never wrote hers down either, not to mention that her enchiladas included something called "chili brick," which doesn't exist anymore.
I remember enchilada night as a night of gorging. When you like something that much, you figure out a way to make it. Judge for yourself, but I think I've come up with something that comes pretty close:
MOM'S ENCHILADAS
1 lb. ground beef
1 pkt (1.75 oz) chili seasoning mix
1 can (46 oz.) tomato juice
3 TB cornstarch
1/2 c. cold water
Vegetable oil
2 pkgs. (10 each) corn tortillas
1 lb. cheddar cheese, shredded
1. Fry ground beef; drain. Add chili seasoning and small amount of tomato juice.
2. Heat tomato juice in saucepan. Add burger mixture. Mix cornstarch and water, add to tomato juice. Bring to boil, then reduce heat, cooking and stirring until slightly thickened.
3 Heat small amount of oil in large skillet. Fry each tortilla a few seconds on both sides. Drain or blot excess oil, then place on dinner plate. Sprinkle with cheese, top with sauce. Add more layers as desired and serve. Continue until no one can eat anymore.
Calories come to about 258 per layer.
But anyway . . .
First up we have The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. Theroux has my dream job: go places, then write about them. There's probably a catch though, like going places I wouldn't want to visit. Theroux took a regular patchwork of trains all across Asia. You might think Asia would be a memorable and scenic place to visit. But our author doesn't sugarcoat things at all.
Here's what we know, thanks to his troubles on all those trains:
Great swaths of this planet are not very exciting to look at. Turkey comes to mind, as does Siberia. And Afghanistan where, Theroux reports, there is "not a single mile of railroad track." (And here I thought I'd escaped Afghanistan by tossing aside Rory Stewart's book.) He got across the world's least fortunate country some other way, I don't remember how.
Then again, some spots on earth are quite lovely: Thailand, Vietnam.
So if the scenery outside the train window is often dull as dishwater, what does the travel writer write about?
Well, his fellow riders provided rich material: The Russians packed odd train picnics for themselves. The Japanese acted like automatons. The Vietnamese, their lives disrupted by years of war (Railway Bazaar was written in the mid '70s) found the most resourceful ways to carry on with life. And the Turkish are still wearing clothes from the '30s, because that's when their leader brought the country into modernity, adopting Western clothing and habits. They just got stuck there, that's all. (Maybe Theroux's follow-up book will catch them wearing denim and tube tops. I'll let you know when it comes up to the top of my reading list.)
As for the Ceylonese, they were starving when Theroux visited. But many came to his literature lectures (he gave a few along the journey). And why would they care about literature, when they had life-and-death matters on their hands?
They came because every lecture included a dinner. They came and gorged themselves silly.
The book includes quite a few cow patties as Theroux passed through Thailand and Japan. Theroux approaches them partly as a married man far from home, and partly as a social observer, commenting on the national character.
Next up, Howard's End by E. M. Forster, is a drama of English class boundaries. The cast of characters includes the Schlegel sisters, independent girls who come from old money and a bit of German blood landed in England; the Wilcox family, up-and-comers who constantly strive to hang on to their relatively new wealth; and Leonard Bast, who stands in for the rest of us. He's a working man, but decisions made by the other two classes could, at any moment, topple him into ruin.
Mr. Wilcox kicks off the story by giving Mr. Bast some advice. What I found fascinating is Forster's study of each class's awareness. Mr. Bast tries to push in to the upper classes, but the penny-pinching habits so necessary in his life give him away. On the other hand, the Wilcoxes and the Schlegels have no idea what the stakes are for those who must work for a living.
As for your recipe, I have learned that my mom's stacked enchiladas, which are not anything like the rolled ones you see in stores or restaurants, are actually genuinely Honduran! That's right. Mercy used to eat them stacked. But she never knew the recipe. And my mom never wrote hers down either, not to mention that her enchiladas included something called "chili brick," which doesn't exist anymore.
I remember enchilada night as a night of gorging. When you like something that much, you figure out a way to make it. Judge for yourself, but I think I've come up with something that comes pretty close:
MOM'S ENCHILADAS
1 lb. ground beef
1 pkt (1.75 oz) chili seasoning mix
1 can (46 oz.) tomato juice
3 TB cornstarch
1/2 c. cold water
Vegetable oil
2 pkgs. (10 each) corn tortillas
1 lb. cheddar cheese, shredded
1. Fry ground beef; drain. Add chili seasoning and small amount of tomato juice.
2. Heat tomato juice in saucepan. Add burger mixture. Mix cornstarch and water, add to tomato juice. Bring to boil, then reduce heat, cooking and stirring until slightly thickened.
3 Heat small amount of oil in large skillet. Fry each tortilla a few seconds on both sides. Drain or blot excess oil, then place on dinner plate. Sprinkle with cheese, top with sauce. Add more layers as desired and serve. Continue until no one can eat anymore.
Calories come to about 258 per layer.
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