Maiden Voyage

Look at my new toy--holds 7 quarts!

It got a workout tonight.  We invited a family of beautiful children and their charming parents to join us for dinner.  In addition, our kids came home for the week--Yay!  This qualifies as feeding a crowd, no?

On its maiden voyage, the crock pot cooked a double batch of:

Italian Bow Tie Supper

For dessert:

Pineapple Layer Cake


I consider company for dinner as my reward for finishing Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb.  Despite a book jacket of shiny Christmas tree balls, the story was only vaguely about Christmas.   Mostly it was a profane little comedy about fifth-grade boys clashing with the nuns at their school.  The protagonist hangs out with the class slacker, a 12-year-old already carrying condoms in his back pocket.  You are forewarned. 

On this Thanksgiving week, may you load up on happy memories as least as much as you load up on stuffing and pie.  As for me, my house is is full of people to cook for, which is one of my reasons for living, if you haven't guessed that already. 

Out Night-Owling My Night Owl Self

I woke up on Saturday with a powerful case of short-on-sleep eye bags, not to mention styling a total bedhead.  That's what happens when you're up until 3 a.m., finishing David Wroblewski's Story of Edgar Sawtelle.  

Even if he wrote a few chapters with his perfumed-prose pen, the story gripped me. 

Although it occurs to me, in the light of day, that we never learn why the bad guy was bad.  What did he want that made him do -- well, I can't tell you what he did.  That would be giving it away.

And another thing:  why did Edgar -- oh, I can't tell you that either.  But what Edgar did was as puzzling as me mixing up a stiff glass of chocolate milk, then dumping it down the kitchen sink.  Plots have to make a little more sense than that.

Readers on Amazon mentioned the story's parallels to Hamlet.  Thanks to my sub-standard education, I never picked up on this.  Will I actually have to read Hamlet now?  Am I supposed to plug the bad-guy motivation from there into Wroblewski's story and call it good?

Still, I congratulate the author.  He kept me up until 3 a.m., didn't he?   He made this night-owl out-night-owl herself.  And this was a first novel, by the way.


But I think he owes us something on what drives the bad guy.

Now, having slept off my Edgar Sawtelle reading binge, I'm back to thinking about practical things, like what to fix for Sunday dessert: 

Easy Apple Crisp

You're on your own for the ice cream.

Next book:  a Christmas story.

Nice Doggie, Nice Doggie

If Oprah liked it, will I like it?

That's not exactly why I picked up David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, but I can just imagine Oprah holding up this thick book on her TV set and sincerely bearing testimony that it will hold you in its grip clear up to the last harrowing page.

Actually, I have no idea how harrowing things will get, but from the halfway point where I now sit, the antagonist is somebody I sure wouldn't want next door to me in one of those hotel rooms with the shared door.

Edgar is born to a family of dog breeders.  He has no voice.  When one of the dogs notices baby Edgar crying in hunger and no sound coming out, she knows she has found her Important Job.  Wake up momma and get her to feed him.  Go everywhere with Edgar and watch out for him. 

So I'm reading along, getting all heart-warmed by a dog, and wondering what's happening to me.  Why, just weeks ago, I said nice things about the two doggies at my daughter's house--"They are kind of gentle.  Oh, you sweet pooch," pat, pat.  You don't know how it disturbs me to admit these things, but OK, there's something sweet about an animal companion that waits for you to come home, that follows you around as if your business is her business, that knows what you want for your birthday . . .  Oh, wait, that's probably a bit much to ask.

If I were you, I wouldn't lay down money that I'm about to bat for the other team.  And besides, my cats do wait for me at the door and they do follow me around.  So I feel loved.

It's just that I get, if only a little bit, why all those people who choose an animal that has to be walked (rain, snow or ice) and that chews their boots and that slobbers on them . . . Ok, I get why they might feel all nutty with love for these creatures.

Anyway, back to Edgar.  His uncle appears on the dog farm.  The man is impulsive.  Or maybe he's dangerous.  Or maybe he's changed and isn't all that anymore, but the uncle and Edgar's dad sure do have a lot of arguments.  And Edgar's dog isn't much help on the day he has to call the early '70s version of 911.   

So here I am, halfway through the book, where things are just crackling with danger.  The house could use a good vacuuming and it's not gonna happen until I see Edgar through his troubles.

However, I do manage to feed people around here.   After laying about for a week, I re-entered the kitchen and produced:

 Microwave Pizza Dip

Outsmarting Your Off Days

I'm kind of laid-up at the moment, which calls for the family to eat straight out of the Costco freezer section.  Tonight, it was some kind of chicken-patty-and-cheese thing that moms can nuke for the kids' after-school snack. Billed for "smaller appetites," I requested that the cook fix me three, because my appetite is more than a distracted child's.

You need contingencies for these times when the cook is not up to it, or when the kitchen is a disaster.  Which reminds me of the time when Mr. Bye-Bye Nesquik was in one of his project moods.  I knew the day was going to be the kind when we turned on the faucet and it coughed up grime, not to mention finding my counters crowded with hammers, copper wire, paintbrushes and whatever else the mister needed for his project.   

I figured I'd get in there before he did, put a nice potato soup in the crockpot and leave it to simmer while he tore and built and cussed and went to the hardware store for more copper wire, paint or whatever.   Yes, at the end of the day, after all the chaos, we'd all have a steamy, salty reward waiting for us. We would avert hunger, and ill-tempered desperation. 

When dinner time came around, I lifted the lid off the crockpot and braced myself for the head of steam wafting off that wonderful soup.

And the soup inside was . . . . cool, the potatoes . . . . hard.

Because Mister's project included turning off the power to that particular outlet. 

Could've used a freezer full of Costco chicken-patty things that night, oh yes.

Or I could've used this SKIER'S STEW, because it would've cooked in the oven, on the side of the kitchen the mister didn't touch.

2 lbs. stew beef, cut in 1 1/2-inch cubes
8 medium potatoes, quartered
8 large carrots, cut in fourths
2 bay leaves
1 pkg. (1 1/2 oz.) dried onion soup
1 can (10 3/4 oz. cream of mushroom soup
1 can (10 3/4 oz.) cream of celery soup
1 can (8 oz.) tomato sauce

In large Dutch oven or heavy pan with tight-fitting lid make a layer of beef, then teh vegetables. Top with bay leaves, soups and tomato sauce.  Bake at 325' for 3 hours, 15 275' for 6 hours, or at 250' for 8 hours.  Or cook on high for 4 1/2 hrs.  YIELD: 12 servings, 395 cals. each.

From Managing Your Meals  by Winnifred C. Jardine.  Also available at: http://www.dvo.com/D_Managing-Your-Meals.php 

Meanwhile, I finished Lisa See's Shanghai Girls, in which she spends the second half of the book zooming out with a wider lens, attempting to document everything that the Chinese suffered as they came to America.  She bites off a lot, but narrows it all down to the personal drama again at the end.  Overall, I'm recommending it as a good read.

Next book:  562 pages, set in the backwoods of Wisconsin.  Since I'm not cooking for anybody this week, what else do I have to do? 

No Chopstick Snobs Here

When Lisa See sat down to write Shanghai Girls, she surely drew upon her immigrant parents' stories, rich material that schooled her in the dialects and the varied quarters of the city and the complications of bound feet.  She must have been one of those good children who want to hear the old stories again and again. 

How else could she make it sound so real? 

Then I checked her picture on the back of the book jacket.  I expected shiny black hair and high cheekbones.  Instead, I found myself staring at a woman with auburn hair and round eyes.

Which makes her novel all the more remarkable an achievement.   Her body of work captures the culture so well that the Organization of Chinese American Women recognized her as their 2001 National Woman of the Year. 

"We are kaoteng Huajen--superior Chinese--who follow the religion of ch'ung yang:  worshipping all thing foreign, from the Westernization of our names to the love of movies, bacon, and cheese," explains Pearl, the narrator of Girls.  Pearl and her sister, May, enjoy the run of the city, traveling to the neighborhoods that resemble Paris and modeling for the "beautiful girl" calendars that advertise wine, soap and cigarettes.

But then their daddy can't pay his gambling debts.

His solution?  Arranged marriages.  Oh dear.

Let's stop a moment and consider how we all might have ended up had our own parents had their way in matrimonial matters. 

Arranged marriage seems to depend on who your parents know and respect.   Mine knew a lot of farm boys.  One of my sisters went out with a son of the land, a boy who surely knew how to bale hay, set irrigation pipes and rise early for the morning milking.  Maybe he even had some nice farm-boy muscles.  But never mind that.  This isn't what parents look for, is it?

So they could have cast their eyes round about their wider circle, seen this young man and decided he would do. 

That he boasted of killing mice with his bare hands would not have bothered them at all.  But once my sister heard his mouse story, she was in a hurry to get home.

Mom and Dad urged another sister toward a confirmed bachelor, a middle-school gym teacher who could not look a girl in the eye.   "All he needs is a good woman.  Could really set him straight."

Like marriage is a field on which to exercise your humanitarian impulses.

Anyway, back to May and Pearl.   Once they get husbands and come up with a plan to escape the yuckier parts of the deal, war intervenes.   And our story takes off at a gallop.

I haven't finished it yet, but I eagerly await the next fifty pages of surprises.

On a side note, May and Pearl end up working at a tourist attraction, serving "Chinese" dishes that they never heard of at home.  Yeah, I know the menu at your local Ho Wah Buffet probably isn't all that authentic.  But given the choice between pickled eggs, or crisp-fried eel and the fake stuff, I'll take the fake.

I spent a summer waiting tables at my hometown's "Chinese" dive, the Golden Pheasant, and couldn't understand the appeal of the chow mein or the egg foo yung that I carried out of the kitchen all night long.   Ever tasted canned chow mein?   It's one of the world's least exciting foods.

But I got hungry by the end of the shift.  And the carton of leftovers was free.  And it was remarkably tasty, nothing like that canned stuff.  So there I'd be, counting my tips at 2 in the morning, munching on the chicken and onions and celery.

I found a chow mein recipe (in the same cookbook as Bye-Bye Nesquik's flagship dish, Chocolate Marshmallow Pudding) and played around with it until I got that slightly sweet Golden Pheasant taste.  Works for me, but then I'm not snobbish about my Asian food.

CHICKEN CHOW MEIN

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast

1 TB vegetable oil

2 cups diagonally sliced celery

3 medium onions, sliced

3/4 tsp. salt

2 cups water

1 TB brown sugar

1 TB soy sauce

3 TB flour

1/2 cup cold water

1 (16 oz.) can assorted chop suey vegetables

4 to 5 cups chow mein noodles 

Cut chicken into thin strips. Saute' for 5 min in oil, until delicately browned.  Add celery and onions and cook 2 or 3 minutes longer until slightly softened.  Add salt and 2 cups water; cover and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.  Add brown sugar and soy sauce; whisk together flour and cold water until smooth.  Stir into chicken/celery mixture, bring to a boil and cook until thickened.  Add drained chop suey vegetables and continue cooking until thoroughly heated.   Serve over chow mein noodles.  YIELD: 5 servings, 410 cals. ea.

How Not to Kill Off Characters

A postmistress withholds letters that pass through her hands, changing the lives of the citizens of her Cape Cod town.


That's the promise dangled before readers of Sarah Blake's The Postmistress.   What a tempting story! I said as I opened Blake's book.

Trouble is, she didn't keep her promise.   I'll admit that I kept turning the pages, hungry to know what happened to the three stars of her tale.  But I put up with a heap of overwrought prose ("Darling!" says the newlywed doctor, rushing back to his petite wife when he really should be getting out to that mother in labor),  a helping of improbable plot points ("The war has broken me!" says the female reporter, who then goes about acting quite unbroken), and a big smack of unintentional humor.

We find that humor in death.  Postmistress is set at the beginning of World War II.  All of England hides in cellars and bunkers as Luftwaffe planes buzz overhead.  America debates with itself whether to lend a hand.    Somebody dies.  You would expect as much, this being a war story and all.  And the possibilities for killing off characters in a war book are rich and varied.  But Blake chose to . . .

Well, let me put it this way.  Suppose I set a story in a steel mill, one rife with labor troubles.  If I need a death, I can make a bridge beam fall on the foreman.  Or I can send the idealistic hero down a dark alley where he meets three looming shadows, one of whom carries a steel pipe.  And let's not forget the morbid possibilities in a molten vat of liquid iron.  There's a screaming way to die, oh yes.   So why, with all these choices at my fingertips, do I make the secretary die from a bad baloney sandwich? 

Yes, when Blake killed off Character X, it felt like Billy Crystal photo-bombing a Lifetime Movie.

And the postmistress got less time on stage than the war reporter.  

But I hung around, even if my patience wore thinner with every passing chapter.

Another funny thing:  I was more than eager to get my hands on a new story, having spent so many weeks laboring through Anna Karenina (where, by the way, every single word and gesture of every single character rang true, and the translators kept the prose as clear as water).  So I open up my new book and what do I find?  One of the characters reading Anna K. 


With such reading woes, I'm lucky I get to eat the yummy Turkey Broccoli Hollandaise this week:

I shall be very happy lifting a forkful of this to my mouth.  Unless, of course, I choke on a chunk of turkey, or mortally cut myself opening the can of french-fried onions, or slip on a squashed floret that has dropped to the floor, or . . .

Standing on Top of Mt. Tolstoy

THE BOOK

THE BOOKMARK (that thin thing near the back cover).

Abbey says this is a mouthful.  

'Nuff said.

Now, let's wrap it up with  Gourmet Deli Turkey Wraps.

 Maybe you to leave out the bleu cheese.  I left out the walnuts.  No harm either way.