A Life Divided

Blogging Here and There

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 17:53:00 +0000

Okay, so clearly I haven't been blogging here in quite awhile. I'm still not ready, though, to call this blog defunct. Maybe on a temporary hiatus.

But I wanted to let you know that I have been blogging and writing elsewhere.

First, and hot off the press, I wrote another piece for Bloom about another little known Barbara. (I've decided that's my Bloom niche--writers named Barbara who are well known in their own countries and nearly unknown here.) First, it was Barbara Trapido. Today, it was Barbara Anderson, a writer from New Zealand who started writing in her 60s and published 11 books in the next 20 years.

Barbara Anderson, Unavoidably Detained

Even though this blog has been silent, for the past few months, I've been blogging weekly for the Hampshire College Food, Farm and Sustainability program. My job was to collect a CSA share from the Hampshire Farm every week and then cook with the produce. Lucky me! I had a great time, and there's a whole range of recipes over there, from Nigel Slater's Chocolate-Beet Cake to yummy Sri Lankan Butternut Curry and many more. There will be a few more holiday posts up in the next few weeks, so keep your eye out for them. (This week, I am taking a wee break. Even though I was not primarily responsible for the food at either of the two Thanksgiving dinners I attended (thankfully not on the same day), I did make 3 desserts (dark chocolate tart, chocolate cream pie and Dorie Greenspan's All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake), and I need a little breather.)

A few other things. I've had some assignments from Amherst magazine as well over the past few months.

There's the essay on crashing my 25th college reunion: The Reunion Crasher

And a book review of Jennifer Cody Epstein's lovely new novel: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment

I have a few more newsy pieces in the current issue, including one about the guy who went from Russian major to Green Beret to med student.

So, here's my blogging goal here. I leave for India on December 29. It is my fervent hope that I will finish the post about the trip to Scotland Alex and I took . . . in May. Yes, that's very lame, I realize, but so be it.

And in the meantime, Happy December!

Barbara Trapido Appreciation Week

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:57:00 +0000

I should start this by saying that I am lame. Barbara Trapido Appreciation Week (not its official title) was actually last week, and I'm only getting around to reporting it now.

I've written before about my great admiration for Trapido, a South African-born British novelist. I wrote about her a few years ago in my post about re-reading, and I mentioned her as well in my post last fall about Laurie Colwin. It turns out that I also write about her in a bigger way every 10 years (to the month!). In 2003, I wrote about her for the very nice but short-lived Readerville Journal, for a column called "Ode to a Lesser Known Genius." Trapido's agent was very helpful, and once the piece was out, I got a thank you message from Barbara Trapido herself, which thrilled me.

In the decade since, Trapido has published 2 novels, the autobiographical Frankie and Stankie about Trapido's childhood in South Africa (which actually was coming out right when my article was published) and the 2010 Sex and Stravinsky, full of mismatched lovers, teenage daughters, a truly horrifying mother and the mysterious Jack. (You'll have to read it to know what I mean.) I have continued to remain an enormous fan and to wonder why she is so little known in the U.S.

So when Bloom--a cool new site focusing on writers who first published after the age of 40--asked if I was interested in writing a piece, I knew exactly who I wanted to write about. (Trapido's first novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack, was published in 1982, when she was 41.)

It was a lovely project. I spent part of January re-reading four of Trapido's seven novels, the four that share a common set of characters. It is a testament to her that I'd originally only intended to re-read two of them, but then I just couldn't help myself and kept (re-)reading. (I'd read each of the four books at least twice previously, though not in the last ten years.) It was a joy and a pleasure to be back in Trapido's world for that time.

And last week, I also spent a delightful several hours on the phone with Barbara Trapido herself, just back from a literary festival in Mauritius (and truly a champ to agree to talk to me within hours of her return home to Oxford). Our conversation was long and rambly and thoroughly enjoyable, and I hope we'll have the opportunity to talk again. It's not often you get to gab so nicely with one of your favorite writers.

So, even though Trapido was last week's feature author, and Bloom has moved on, I encourage you to go over to check the site out and participate in Barbara Trapido Appreciation Week--because it's never too late for appreciation!

The Joyful Mystery of Barbara Trapido

Interview with Barbara Trapido

(For a cool photo of Trapido a few years ago, scroll down a bit in this flickr set--she looks to me here the way her character Katherine Brown would look. (Katherine was the narrator of Brother of the More Famous Jack and reappeared 20 years (and 4 books) later in The Travelling Hornplayer. If we are lucky, we'll see her once more. (But you'll have to read the interview to find out more!))

Meatless Mondays: March Forth for Mujaddara

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 02:15:00 +0000

March Forth! Today is the only day of the year whose date is also a command, an exhortation, a rally cry.

There are many things I could march forth and do today--I did, in fact, march down to my compost pile, in snow boots but not in snow shoes, which is an improvement over a few weeks ago. But I decided that I also needed to march forth and blog, and what I needed to blog about was mujaddara.

It is hard, admittedly, to get very excited about cooking in early March. The vegetables available are the same ones that have been available for months--i.e. vegetables in season in the southern hemisphere or those that can survive for months in a root cellar. It's hard to cheer for chard or kale or even sweet potatoes in March. March is that kind of month.

And it's still winter, of a sort. I was skyping with my friend Sonia this morning, and she was exalting about the sun in Geneva and how she'd walked back to her house with no gloves on except when she was in a particularly shady bit. I said that it was not not sunny here, and we agreed that was an improvement. There are flashes of sun on this early March afternoon, and the sky is brighter than it's been in days. But still, to get to the compost requires snow boots, and when I went for my Sunday run yesterday afternoon, I had to choose a route that avoided the bike path, which is still mostly snow-covered and slippery. Then again, I didn't leave the house until almost 5 p.m., and that would have been unheard of even a month ago. So, spring is on its way, but it's most definitely not here yet.

And so, mujaddara--a 3 ingredient dish that is absolutely more than the sum of its parts. It doesn't require any sad winter vegetables, although, of course, you could (and probably should) serve it with a vegetable on the side. (I enjoyed mine last night with a bit of roasted sweet potato.)

I'm sure that there are as many versions of mujaddara as there are Middle Eastern grandmothers, but I have been making the Food 52 version for several years now and have found no reason yet to expand my horizons. (The version in the new Ottalenghi Jerusalem cookbook might be that reason, but not quite yet.) The ingredients are these: lentils, rice, onions. There is also olive oil and butter, and there is salt, but that really is the sum total of the ingredients. You boil the lentils, you cook the rice, you caramelize the onions and then you mix it all together and let it sit--for 15 minutes, for several hours, for a day. What you will find is savory and a bit sweet from the onions and slightly salty and altogether delicious. Rivka's Food 52 recipe adds a spiced yogurt, and many (though not all) of the commenters over there found that it made the dish for them. Alas, it didn't for me. I made the spiced yogurt the first time I made the dish but not since. I may experiment with coming up with a spiced yogurt I like better, but in the meantime, I've been eating the mujaddara with plain yogurt from Side Hill Farm and enjoying every mouthful.

Last night, Alex and I were talking on the phone, and as soon as I said, "I made the mujaddara with caramelized onions," he said, "I'll be right over." His reactions are not always that immediate.

What I love about this recipe is that it's simple--you can basically caramelize the onions while the lentils and rice are cooking, limiting your time at the stove--and delicious and easily adaptable. If you or your guests are gluten-free, no problem. Vegan--just swap out the butter with olive oil. Vegetarian, easy. Carnivorous--well, maybe then you'd serve it as a side, but still, it's a delicious one.

Soon enough, we'll be able to expand our winter repertoire to include the earliest spring greens, asparagus, green garlic, chives and more. But in the meantime, as we wait March out (and entertain ourselves while doing so--it's Tournament of Books time again!), there is mujaddara, and that is at least some consolation.

Mujaddara (minus the spiced yogurt)

(adapted from Rivka at Food 52)

Serves 4

3/4 cups Puy lentils (aka French lentils, the tiny dark brown ones)
1 teaspoon salt, divided
1 cup jasmine rice
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 cups onions (about 3 medium onions), halved and thinly sliced

Put lentils, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 4 cups water in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer lentils until soft but not mushy, about 20 minutes. Drain lentils and set aside.
At the same time, add rice, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 1/2 cups water to another pot, set over medium heat, and bring to a boil. Turn heat down and cover. (My jasmine rice takes between 15-20 minutes to cook on very low heat.) Remove lid and fluff with a fork. Set aside.
While rice and lentils are cooking, set a wide, deep saute pan over medium-low heat and add butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil. When butter has mostly melted, add onions and toss to incorporate with butter and oil.
After 5 minutes, onions will have softened slightly and started to release their liquid. Raise heat to medium and cook 10 to 12 minutes more, until onions are very soft and browned. Add water by the tablespoon if pan gets too dry or if onions start to stick. When onions are well browned, add last tablespoon of olive oil and raise heat to high. Cook another 3 to 4 minutes, until bottom layer of onions has charred and crisped; try not to stir too much, or onions won't crisp up. (Note: I never added the final tablespoon of oil, and it was still fine.)
Combine rice, lentils, and most of the onions in large serving bowl and let sit for at least 15 minutes, to marry the flavors together. (This dish definitely improves with age.) Taste, and add more onions if desired.
If mujaddara has cooled significantly, reheat in a low oven or even in the microwave for a couple minutes. To serve, plate a big scoop of mujaddara and top with a dollop of yogurt.

Eat More Kale Soup!

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:40:00 +0000

I think I'm going to skim right over how long it's been since I first started this post. Let's just say that I believe it was in 2011. That's right--not even last year, but the year before. And then I'm also going to skim right over what a bad blogger I was in 2012. It's a new year, 2013, and we're looking ahead. So I'm going to first say Happy New Year to the five people who are still reading this, after my prolonged absence, and then I am going to tell you about one of the best ways to eat kale that I know of. (In the interests of honesty, I will also tell you that I made this linguine with kale and breadcrumbs from Food52 last night, and it was also delicious, but make the soup first!)

Remember Bo, the Eat More Kale guy? He's the guy in Vermont selling "Eat More Kale" t-shirts who was told to cease and desist by Chik-fil-A because, according to them, "Eat more kale" trespassed on their copyright of "Eat Mor Chikin"? This was in the news last winter--here's the New York Times story on it. I googled to see what's been happening since, and one thing that's happened is that a documentary called "A Defiant Dude" is being made about Bo and his fight.

While I don't own my own Eat More Kale t-shirt, I have, in fact, been eating more kale, and that's because of this kale and potato soup.

Last fall, or perhaps the fall before that, a kale-growing colleague brought me a big bunch of kale. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. It's not that I don't like kale--it's more that I'd never cooked it regularly. I poked around looking for recipes. I was tempted by Molly's recipe at Orangette for Boiled Kale with a Fried Egg and Toast--I like almost anything if it includes an egg and toast--but it wasn't quite what I was in the mood for. I decided, instead, to make kale soup. I remembered that there is a Portuguese soup called caldo verde (green broth) with kale and potatoes in it, so I thought I'd make that.

Alas, I soon learned that traditional caldo verde also includes large quantities of pork sausage. But since I had recently discovered that smoked paprika could add a nice smoky flavor to a vegetarian soup, I decided to experiment. (Exhibit A in this category is the smoky minestrone with tortellini and parsley pesto, which remains a favorite.) I also had been making a lot of potato-leek soup, and I used that as another inspiration.

I've made this soup over and over since then, and it's almost certainly true that I've never made it exactly the same way twice. That's actually one of the great things about it--you can be flexible with the ingredients, and the soup will still be delicious. As long as there is some kind of allium (onion, leek, shallot), some kind of potato, garlic, kale and smoked paprika, you will end up with delicious--and deliciously healthy--soup.

You basically start as if you're making leek and potato soup, by sauteing leeks (and/or onions and/or shallots) in a bit of butter. I usually put my first hit of smoked paprika in with the leeks or onions. Then, you add diced, peeled potatoes and mix everything up. Once the potatoes have had a few minutes to mix and meld with the leeks/onions, you add water. Meanwhile, you're dealing with the kale.

Kale can be kind of annoying to process--you need to cut out the tough stems and chop it thinly. (In traditional caldo verde, the kale is sliced into ribbons, and the soup isn't pureed. In my version, since I do puree it, it doesn't matter how thin the kale is sliced since it's all going to get ground up anyway in the blender. Still, thinner slices cook faster, so that's what I usually go with.)

Then, you add the kale, which eventually cooks down.

Once the potatoes and kale are both soft, you're basically done. I like my kale and potato soup pureed, so at that point, I use my handy immersion blender and whirl it all up until it's a nice shade of green. You could also put it through a food mill instead, if you were so inclined.

At this point, you still have options. I often add more smoked paprika, and I always season it with Maldon salt, which is another kitchen favorite. (Really, I was never a believer in the power of good sea salt until I tried Maldon salt, and now I am never without it. It is especially good for finishing a dish and bringing the flavors out.) Sometimes, I add a bit (maybe a few tablespoons) of half and half, which gives the soup a luxurious touch. (It also mellows out the flavor of the kale in a nice way, which is especially helpful if you have kale-doubters at your table.)

Last summer, for the first time, with this soup in mind, I decided to grow my own lacinato kale. (That's the dark kale, also called dino kale and Tuscan kale.) Except, being the haphazard gardener that I am, I bought a six-pack of it in the spring, thinking I'd plant that so I'd have some while waiting for my seeds to grow. But then, I didn't plant the six-pack or the seeds, and by late August, there was no kale at all in my garden. But suddenly I discovered that the six-pack of kale was still alive. Blessed, hearty kale. So, I planted it in the garden, and it grew. Not as huge as it would have been if I'd planted it earlier, but it still grew. And at exactly the moment it was getting big enough to eat, tragedy struck. I looked out my kitchen window one day in the fall to see how it was doing and learned that what it was doing was nourishing a deer. The deer was gone by then, but so was the kale, every single last edible piece.

The thing with gardening, though, as it is with blogging, is that there is always another chance. Summer will return, and hopefully before then, the urge to blog will return as well. (Maybe it even has already!) And January, after all, is a good month for blogging and soup eating and dreaming of, if not exactly kale, then of gardens in which to plant it and deer who will find someone else's greens to munch on next summer.

Smoky Kale and Potato Soup

3 large leeks (or 2 onions or several shallots or some combination thereof)
2 large (or 3 small) cloves garlic, minced
1-1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and diced
1 large bunch kale--I always use Lacinato, but other kinds should work
1-2 tbsps. butter
1 teaspoon smoked paprika (or more to taste)
2-3 tbsp. half and half (optional)
Sea salt

In a large soup pot, saute the white part of the leeks (and/or the onions or shallots) in the butter until soft but not brown.
Once the leeks are soft, add the garlic and continue to stir.
Add 1 tsp. smoked paprika to the leeks and garlic and stir until coated.
Meanwhile, while leeks are cooking, peel and dice the potatoes. Add to the leeks and garlic and cook for several minutes. If anything starts to stick, you can add a bit of water now.
Add approx. 2 quarts of water.
Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer.
Take out the tough ribs of the kale and chop the kale leaves finely. (I usually do it in ribbons, even if I'm pureeing the soup.)
Add the kale to the soup.
Cook for approximately 20 minutes or as long as it takes for the potatoes to be soft (they should break up when you mash them against the edge of the pot).
Puree the soup with an immersion blender or grind it up in a food mill (and return to the pot.)
Salt to taste, ideally with Maldon salt, and season with additional smoked paprika to taste
(Optional) Add several tablespoons of half and half (I never usually measure but use just a splash from the carton).
Eat more kale and enjoy!

On 20 years without Laurie Colwin

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Photo by Nancy Crampton

I still remember the day I found out. I was living in Eugene, OR, then, in my last year in graduate school at the University of Oregon. For some reason, a day or two earlier, I'd felt the need to re-read one of Laurie Colwin's books. I can no longer remember which one. Happy All The Time, perhaps, or The Lone Pilgrim? All I know is that the book was sitting on the kitchen table, and I was eating lunch and reading the New York Times. And there was Laurie Colwin's photograph. I stared. It didn't make sense. This wasn't on the arts page or in the book review column. It was an obituary. Laurie Colwin dead of a heart attack at 48. I was heartbroken.

It's been 20 years since Laurie Colwin died, and I still miss her. I never met her. This was not a personal loss, except that it was. Colwin was my first favorite writer as an adult, the first one whose books I read over and over, the first one I turned to for comfort and sustenance, the first one I wanted to be like. By the time she died, she'd published 4 novels, 2 books of short stories, one book of linked short stories and a book of food writing. Posthumously, a fifth novel and a second collection of food writing were published. She'd written for the New Yorker and Gourmet, for Mademoiselle and for Playboy. She'd won prizes, received glowing reviews. And yet she was not an intimidating writer at all. You suspected, if you met her, that you would just gab and gab, as if you were old friends. At least you hoped you would.

Losing Colwin was like losing a friend, and I am certainly not the only one who felt that way. Several months after her death, I read that there would be a memorial service at Symphony Space in New York City. I would still be in Oregon--there was no way I could attend. But my friend Bill--whose departure from Eugene the previous spring had briefly wrecked me--was in New York, and I was determined that he should go for me. Alas, he didn't. (And, it turns out, it was so packed that he may not have been able to get in!) But a few months after that, the memorial service was played on WNYC radio, and Bill taped it for me and sent me the cassette. (Yes, it was a different world 20 years ago.) He said that listening to the service made him wish he had gone. I didn't say, "I told you so." I just thanked him for the tape, which I listened to instantly.

Because this is now, and not 1992, I googled "Laurie Colwin memorial Symphony Space" to see what would turn up. And what turned up was a special 2009 issue of the New Haven Review in which there was a Laurie Colwin tribute. (The link opens a PDF file of it.) A number of essays from the memorial service are reprinted, and I read them for the first time since I'd listened to them almost 20 years ago. Deborah Eisenberg and Anna Quindlen both read excerpts of her work. Willard Spiegelman, editor of The Southwest Review, spoke of winning the cha-cha contest with her at their 9th grade prom in Elkins Park, PA. Colwin's friend, novelist Anna Shapiro, read excerpts of letters Colwin had written. (Colwin died before the advent of email. What would she have made of it? Would she still have sent friends a series of canning labels pasted onto postcards, as one friend mentioned? I kind of hope she would have.) But what I remembered most clearly was the contribution of Peter Smith, then dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. Smith had not known Colwin personally, but he had loved her books, and he was given the task of reading a few of the letters written to Colwin's husband and daughter after her death. Because, it turns out, they received hundreds and hundreds of letters of condolence from Colwin's devoted readers, one of them from me. My letter was not read at the memorial service, but more than anything, I was both heartened and humbled that so many other people were as stricken by Colwin's death as I had been, that so many people felt her loss so deeply. (For a more recent tribute to her, see this blog post.)

The original hardcover, 1978

The newest edition, 2010

What remains, these 20 years later, are her books, all of which, amazingly, are still in print. (In his Washington Post essay on Colwin published in 2003, Jonathan Yardley points out how rare this is--and it is still true almost ten years later.) And publishers, it seems, are still looking for a fiction writer who can match her combination of snappy dialogue, seemingly effortless prose, quick wit, a big heart. Multiple times in the past 20 years, I've seen a new novel--a domestic comedy, perhaps, written by a woman based in New York or Philadelphia--with Laurie Colwin hopefully mentioned on the back cover. I almost always read these novels, but I am also almost always disappointed. These writers, these novels, might be good, but they are not Laurie Colwin good. The publishers are looking for another Laurie, and maybe I am looking for another Laurie, but we will almost certainly never find her.

The one writer I've discovered who feels like a spiritual cousin to Colwin is Barbara Trapido. Trapido is a South African living in Britain, but she and Colwin were born within a few years of each other and share a love of the domestic detail, among other things. Trapido's books are denser and more whimsical than Colwin's, but there is--in my mind--an essence that they share. Trapido's first novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack, was published in 1982 and highly praised on both sides of the Atlantic. I wonder if Laurie Colwin, a self-admitted Anglophile, ever read it.

I recently stumbled upon a blog (reached through the same "Laurie Colwin memorial Symphony Space" search) written by another fan of Colwin's (one who actually attended her memorial!). He writes of how he wanted to write like Colwin and a grad school professor told him to be careful. The danger for him was writing characters like Colwin's--upper middle class, urban WASPs or assimilated Jews with old money and lots of things. This was interesting to me because when I think about my own desire to write like Colwin, it's not her characters I wish I could emulate--though I do enjoy it that she's particularly good at prickly, complicated women (see Misty Berkowitz in Happy All the Time and Billy De Lielle in Another Marvelous Thing). It's more her spirit, her optimism, her way with the perfectly chosen detail, her humor, her dialogue. Colwin's prose reads so easily that it seems that it must have been easy for her to write that way, but of course, it probably wasn't.

Two brief examples. In Happy All the Time, Colwin is describing the dauntingly accomplished dilettante Holly Sturgis Morris:

Holly could cook, do needlework, play tennis, and fish. She had studied the Italic hand, the Carolingian minuscule and the restoration of paintings and china. She could balance her checkbook to forty-five cents, make a perfect pie crust, identify most wild flowers in the northeastern United States, and bandage simple wounds. She could stand on her head, do a swan dive, repair lamps and knew the collections of most major museums. Guido had once recited this list to Vincent, including the fact that Holly spoke French and Italian.

"Does she fly on commercial airlines?" Vincent had asked.

"Of course she does. Why?"

"Anything short of a transport carrier would crash under the weight of those accomplishments," Vincent had said.

My favorite phrase in the whole thing--"bandage simple wounds." It's what still makes me laugh.

And here's this brief bit from Another Marvelous Thing, a collection of linked stories that follows the love affair (and aftermath) of a pair of unlikely lovers, a gallant older man and a cranky younger woman. From the first story, "My Mistress," originally published in Playboy.

In movies, men have mistresses who soothe and pet them, who are consoling, passionate, and ornamental. But I have a mistress who is mostly grumpy. Traditional things mean nothing to her. She does not flirt, cajole, or wear fancy underwear. She has taken to referring to me as her "little bit of fluff," or she calls me her mistress, as in the sentence: "Before you became my mistress I led a blameless life."

A few pages later, we learn how they meet, in one of my favorite pickup lines in all of literature:

Billy and I met at a reception to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the journals to which we are both contributors. We fell into a spirited conversation during which Billy asked me if this reception wasn't the most boring thing I had ever been to. I said it wasn't, by a long shot. Billy said: "I can't stand these things where you have to stand up and be civilized. People either yawn, itch, or drool when they get bored. Which do you do?"

I said I yawned.

"Huh," said Billy. "You don't look much like a drooler. Let's get out of here."

My fiction favorites remain Happy All the Time, Another Marvelous Thing and The Lone Pilgrim, though I also have a soft spot for her first novel, Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object. (I alternate favorites, depending on my mood.) Her two volumes of food writing (Home Cooking and More Home Cooking) have a cherished place on my kitchen bookshelf. I still consult her for advice on gingerbread, chocolate cake, Ismail Merchant's creamed corn. She is less strong on precise measurements and much, much stronger on perfect details. I would love Home Cooking for no other reason than that it includes the essay "Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir." But even less good Colwin is still better than much else. When I lived in Delhi in 1993-95, I took her novel Family Happiness out of the American Center library more than once. It's probably my least favorite of her novels, but it was the only one they had, and even lesser Colwin was desirable when Colwin was what I needed.

A month or so ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Northampton League of Women Voters book sale. It's held every year in late September in the vocational school cafeteria. Hardcovers are $1 and paperbacks $.50. No matter what promises of restraint I make to myself, I always fill a bag. This year I spotted, in quick succession, copies of Happy All the Time and The Lone Pilgrim, donated by the same person (I knew this by the initials penciled in.) I snatched them up, and I gave them to my friend Janna, whose birthday was approaching. It felt right to give them to Janna because Janna was 7 when Laurie Colwin died, and it seemed that the best present I could give her (well, along with a tart pan) was an introduction to Laurie Colwin. I envy her her first encounter with Guido Morris and Vincent Cardworthy, with Holly Sturgis and Misty Berkowitz, lucky people who are lucky in love and can toast to a truly wonderful life without irony.

It's been 20 years without Laurie Colwin. Her husband is now a novelist, her daughter grown. There is even an official Laurie Colwin website. And, the books are still in print. There is some comfort in that.

Last Gasp of Summer: Easy Oven Roasted Tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

I know that summer is over. There are flashes of red on the trees outside my window, an additional pile of blankets on my bed. My window of opportunity to run late in the day is growing narrower.

And yet, there are still tomatoes. Tomatoes at the farmers' market and tomatoes in my garden. Not in the copious quantities of August, certainly, but as September has edged into October, summer into fall, there are still tomatoes. I have made plain tomato sauce and roasted tomato sauce, this tomato soup and that tomato soup. I've made several batches of luscious eggplant and summer vegetable gratin (Quick, there's still time, but not for much longer!) And still, there are tomatoes.

Every summer, or at least most summers, I make an attempt at oven roasting tomatoes. I've tried the kind that you leave in a very low oven for hours and hours. I've tried the kind that you start in a hot oven and then turn the heat down as they cook, supposedly to replicate the Italian version in which tomatoes were roasted at the end of the day in a cooling bread oven. (For more on the story, see The Splendid Table.) I had fleeting successes but no recipe I tried became my go-to oven roasted tomato recipe. (And given that I'm very loyal to my favorite recipes, as indicated by my list of tomato-based things I make repeatedly each summer, that's saying something.)

But now, my flirtation with oven roasted tomato recipes may be ending. I may have found The One.

In late August, I came home from a few days on the Cape with my brother, sister-in-law and nieces to find a heavy Amazon box waiting for me. In it were the first six volumes of Canal House Cooking, a birthday present from my brother. We'd had a long conversation about Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones and Butter, which I had just listened to on my iPod and he had read (on his iPad), and which we both thought was terrific. (More on that in another post.) I mentioned that I had looked up Gabrielle's sister Melissa, formerly of Saveur, and discovered that she was one of the women behind Canal House Cooking, which is a cross between a magazine and a set of small, lovely cookbooks. My brother, to his credit, remembered that key detail, and with my September birthday fast approaching, he acted. It was and remains a great present. A subscription buys you 3 seasonal cookbooks in a year, beautifully designed, written and photographed.

Being a logical Virgo, I started with Volume 1, Summer, in a lovely shade of tomato red, and I went straight to the chapter called "Too Many Tomatoes." And just for the hell of it, I decided to try their version of oven roasted tomatoes, which is less a strict recipe and more guidelines. (You can roast them in a hotter oven for less time or a cooler oven for longer, for one thing, and there are no amounts set for anything. "Make as many as you want to make," it instructs.) I made, in the end, two cookie sheets worth.

I liked it that the recipe specifically called for plum tomatoes (of which I had many) and that it was light on the oil (the words "drizzle" and "a little bit"" indicated that). My tomatoes went in plump and meaty:

And came out hot and chewy:

In the past, I've put oven-dried tomatoes in the freezer for the winter. Occasionally they get eaten, but more often, they sit in their little foil packets until the next summer, and then I toss them. This year, though, will be different, because this year, I obediently followed the Canal House ladies' instructions and put them in a zip-loc bag very neatly, with a few basil leaves for flavor. (Please ignore my dirty cutting board beneath my nice packet of tomatoes--I had been chopping tomatoes on it, after all, and I did wash it post-photo.) (I should remember to do that before I take a photo next time, I realize.)

That night, pre-dinner, I toasted some country bread from the Hungry Ghost Bakery and spread it with some fresh goat cheese from Hillman Farms. (Their goat cheese has been one of my favorite discoveries of the summer.) I chopped up some of the newly oven-roasted tomatoes and put them on top. There was no time to photograph them because we ate them too quickly, and then two more pieces almost immediately thereafter. The tomatoes were sweet and savory both, not too oily, a perfect complement to the tang of the goat cheese. They were also a perfect way to say farewell to summer and greet the fall with cheer, knowing that among the many tomato-based products in the freezer, there are several bags of these, a hit of summer waiting once winter has truly arrived.

Canal House Cooking Oven Roasted Tomatoes.

The recipe really is more a suggestion than an actual recipe, but the keys are to use plum tomatoes, to spread them cut-side up on a cookie sheet and to drizzle with a bit of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. They recommend using a 325 oven for an hour and a half, or until the tomatoes have "shriveled up a bit and their juices have concentrated and caramelized somewhat." I was cooking something else at the time so my first batch ended up in a 350 oven instead, and it was fine. Use your judgement for how shriveled and concentrated you'd like them to be. Mine cooked at the slightly warmer oven for about the time recommended.

You can drizzle them with a bit more olive oil when they're out. To store, pack in a bag or container with a bit more olive oil and herbs for flavor--a bay or basil leaf or sprig of rosemary, They will keep in the fridge for a week or so and in the freezer for up to a year.

Smoky (late) Summer Soup #1: Tomato Bisque

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 20:47:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I made a luscious batch of Eggplant and Summer Vegetable Gratin for dinner, and Alex asked me, only half jokingly, if there was smoked paprika in it. No, in fact, there wasn't. But it wasn't unreasonable for him to ask, given that I'd been on a bit of a smoked paprika kick, making several batches of soup in a row that contained it.

This is one of those soups. I was already a smoked paprika convert before this. It's only been in the past year or two that I've discovered that its smokiness adds a layer of flavor and depth to vegetarian dishes. I've used it in my bacon-less version of Smoky Minestrone with parsley pesto, and it turned out to be the key in the kale and potato soup I still haven't written about yet. (I will, as soon as it gets a bit cooler out--it doesn't seem right to write about kale when it's still summer.)

A brief aside about smoked paprika. I use this brand, Safinter, in the bittersweet variety. (There's also hot and just plain sweet.) I found it for around $7 at Whole Foods. When I was in New York recently, I paid a quick visit to Kalustyan's, that spice lovers paradise, and could have bought their store brand more cheaply. (In fact, I could have even bought 5 pounds for $75, but that seemed excessive, even for me.) Next time, I'm going to Kalustyan's at the beginning of my NYC day rather than at the end because by the time I reached there, I was somewhat overstimulated and lacking in focus. I wandered the aisles in a daze and left empty handed, which seems a shame. (Several hours spent eating Indian food, wandering the Union Square Greenmarket and restraining oneself from buying a kitchen's worth of dishes at Fishs Eddy will do that to you!)

Anyway, back to the soup. I already have a standard summer tomato soup recipe. I also have a winter tomato soup recipe, though it would be sacrilege to make tomato soup with canned tomatoes in August or September, during our fleeting fresh tomato season. Still, a change of pace is always nice. And when the very first tomato I picked from the garden turned out to weigh over 2 pounds (seriously, that's one big tomato), I decided to try this version. Deborah Madison begins her introduction to the recipe by saying, "One magnificent, giant Brandywine tomato that needed to be used right away tempted me to turn it into a soup, just to see how far a one-pound tomato would go." Since my magnificent giant tomato was also a Brandywine, it seemed like fate. I added a few less impressive tomatoes to the huge one and tripled Madison's recipe so that it makes 3-4 servings, depending on what else you're eating and how hungry you are.

One brief note: Madison has you put the soup through a food mill, which I did, but I also blended it in the immersion blender first. You could probably stop there, but this soup is especially nice smooth, and the food mill removes any stray tomato seed or bits of skin.

Whether your tomatoes are massive or modest, whether they come from your garden or the market, late summer is a fine time to celebrate them in a variety of ways. And a bowl of tomato soup and some bread and cheese, make a fine supper whatever the time of year. (More soon about that bread and cheese we had with this soup--there was a special, seasonal tomato twist that made it especially fabulous.)

The soup in its chunky, pre-immersion blender, pre-food mill state.

The soup now smooth. Yum.

This one I call Still Life with Zinnias and Cookbooks!

Tomato Bisque
Adapted from Vegetarian Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

Serves 3-4
Preparation time 45 minutes

1 tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
2 large or 3 medium garlic cloves, minced
3/4 tsp. Spanish smoked paprika (more to taste)
3 pounds of ripe tomatoes, cut into chunks
2 slices of sandwich bread or 1 thick slice of bakery bread, torn or chopped into pieces
sprig of fresh basil or thyme
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. heavy cream or half and half

1.Heat oil in a large, heavy bottomed pot, add onion and garlic and cook for several minutes, until soft but not brown. Then add the paprika, tomato, torn pieces of bread, basil, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2 cups of water. (You can add more water if it looks too thick.) Bring to a boil and then cover and simmer about 20 minutes or until the tomato has broken down.
Puree the soup with an immersion blender and/or pass the soup through a food mill if you have one or stir through a fine sieve, pressing the juices out and removing the pulp. Return the soup to the stove, taste for salt, add more paprika one pinch at a time if you want more smokiness, and season with fresh pepper. Add cream or half and half last.

A brief appreciation of Jean Merrill

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:53:00 +0000

Ten years ago, in the summer of 2002, I went to a wedding with Alex. The groom was one of his work colleagues, and he'd waffled about whether we should go or not. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have, or, at least we should have skipped the reception (more about that later). But the one fabulous thing that came out of that August afternoon is that I got to meet Jean Merrill, the author of one of my favorite childhood books, The Pushcart War.

The ceremony was held in Skinner State Park, at the Summit House on top of Mount Holyoke, and we obediently followed instructions and parked our car part way up the auto road to wait for the shuttle. As cars kept passing us on their way to the top, though, we realized that not many of the other guests had followed the instructions except for one older couple whom we met while we were waiting for the shuttle. Their names were Jean and Ronni, and we chatted with them pleasantly as we waited at the side of the road. They looked to be in their late 70s and had clearly been a couple for many years. Ronni had long white hair and was lovely. Jean's hair was short and her manner matter of fact. When I asked her what she did, she told me she was a writer, that she mostly wrote children's books. I asked what she'd written. She paused and then said, "Well, the most well known one is probably The Pushcart War." I gasped. I gushed. I gaped. "The Pushcart War was one of my favorite books when I was a kid," I told her. And so it had been. I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to meet, by happenstance and not in a more formal setting--a reading, a book signing, a lecture--a person whose book I'd loved as a child. But here I was, and here she was, and I was delighted.

I learned little bits about her over those few hours--how she had gone to summer camp in Vermont with the groom's mother; how she and Ronni had 2 houses in Vermont not very far from each other, their summer house and their winter house; how Ronni was an artist and had illustrated many of Jean's books; how The Pushcart War had never been out of print; and how Tony Kushner, a friend, had attempted to write a movie adaptation of it and failed. (According to the New York Times, "The quirkiness and dense originality of the book — qualities that made Ms. Merrill’s epic tale so compelling — ultimately made adapting it as a film impossible, Mr. Kushner said.") I learned that she too had had a Fulbright Fellowship to India--hers, in 1952 to study folklore in Madras (now Chennai). My Fulbright happened nearly 40 years later, but both had been life changing.

Meeting Jean and Ronni was the best thing that happened that day. I was delighted and, really, genuinely thrilled at the happenstance of it all. And as soon as the library opened a few days later, I went straight to the children's section and took out The Pushcart War, which I hadn't read in probably 25 years. It didn't disappoint. Published in 1964, it's written as a history (in 1986) looking back at the famous Pushcart War of 1976, in which the pushcart vendors of the lower east side of Manhattan strike back against the truckers who are trying, through bullying, malice and dirty tricks, to get them off the streets. The pushcart vendors decide to fight back, first by embarking on the Pea Shooter Campaign, in which they blow tacks into truck tires via peashooters, causing the flat-tired trucks to block the roads, inconveniencing everyone, thus swaying the public to their side. The books is clever, quirky and funny, even if you're not analyzing it for broader social commentary (a la Waggish). It appears, sadly, not to be in print anymore, but I hope that will change.

As for the wedding, well, I'm not proud of what we did next. After the ceremony on the top of Mount Holyoke, we drove to the Lord Jeffrey Inn in Amherst for the reception. The photos of the wedding party were taken, seemingly for hours. The not very expansive hors d'ouevres table was ravaged. We mingled as best we could, growing hungrier by the minute. We found our table and discovered that we were seated--not with Jean and Ronni, not with the bride's cool friends from the Peace Corps, not even with the groom's other friends--but with the minister, the bride's estranged father and a few other random people. We ate the sad salad and made strained conversation with our tablemates. We fidgeted with hunger and boredom.

And, now, I must say it. We had some whispered conversation between us. I left the decision entirely up to Alex, given that the groom was his colleague. He decided. I agreed. And so, dear readers, we left. We each excused ourselves to go to the rest room after the salad course, and we exited via the back door of the Inn. It was possibly the most deliberately rude thing I've ever done, but in the moment, it felt extraordinarily liberating. We ran happily down the street towards the car, breathing in the fresh August air, and then we went out for Chinese food.

That was the end of Alex's friendship with the groom, of course, but he doesn't seem to mind. When I think back to that day, I feel a twinge of remorse--yes, we probably should have been good citizens and at least stuck it out through the rest of dinner before making our escape--but I mostly remember my delight in meeting Jean and Ronni and grateful for the opportunity to have told her how much I'd loved her books. (I was also fond of her book The Toothpaste Millionaire, which I also read multiple times.)

Jean Merrill died, at the age of 89, earlier this month, according to her obituary in the New York Times. Ronni, her partner of more than 50 years, survives her. And in a strange twist, when I was googling Ronni's name, I found a photo of her taken by Jessamyn West, who was in David Foster Wallace's class at Amherst with me and whose remembrance of him I linked in this post. Jessamyn, apparently, was a tenant of Jean and Ronni in one of their Vermont houses. Small world, indeed. You can see some of Ronni's environmental art pieces here.

And in honor of Jean, I'd recommend a trip to the local library, where you should still be able to find The Pushcart War on the shelf. In Jean's honor and her memory, take it out and read about Frank the Flower, General Anna, Morris the Florist and the Pushcart King himself, Maxie Hammerman. You won't regret it.

To India and Back: A Belated Travelogue

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:37:00 +0000

At long last, this is the post that has been holding up all the other posts I might have written in the past few months. At first, I thought I'd just jump in here and start talking about kale soup or graham crackers, but that didn't seem right.

First of all, of course, it had been months and months since I'd last posted.

And second, in the middle of those months and months, I went to India.

Plus, one of the reasons I named this blog "A Life Divided" in the first place was that my life is divided between India and here, even though the "here" part makes up the majority these days. It didn't feel right to hop back into my parallel life and hop back again without a comment.

So, the kale soup will have to wait a little bit longer, as will the graham crackers, and an extremely belated travelogue will ensue. Perhaps this will be a lesson to me, and next time I'm in India, I'll post as I go along, eliminating the need for a long overdue catch up post.

So, here goes:

I was in India for most of January, almost 4 weeks in all, divided among Delhi, Benares and Goa. I'd agonized about the planning, but it all worked out quite well--8 days in Delhi (3 at the beginning, 5 at the end), 10 days in Benares and an even week in Goa, plus one long(ish) day of travel getting from Benares to Goa.

My time in Benares, was, as always, interesting. I stayed, once again, in my beloved room 17 at Anami Lodge, right on Assi Ghat. I like Anami for many reasons--great location, family-run, cheap--but I like it better when I'm staying in room 17, which has a big balcony overlooking the river. I spent my first night in the much cheaper room 14 (250 rupees a night compared to 700 a night for room 17), but it was totally worth the money (about $9 a night) to shift once whoever was staying in room 17 realized that I was back and required it to be available.

Here is the sun rising over the river, viewed from my balcony, the one morning (my last morning) I was awake early enough to see it.

As there always are, in Benares, there were walks up the river. Last year, I saw someone having his portrait painted. This year, there were 2 Western guys painting what appeared to be either graffiti or an ad on a wall on one of the ghats.

Another day, I wondered through the gullis in Bhelupura towards the river, and saw this statue being sculpted before me.

When the man who I assume commissioned the statue saw me taking a photo, he insisted that I also take a photo of the photo the sculptor was working from. I agreed it was a good likeness.

As always, in Benares, in addition to all the walking, there was hanging out, and a lot of it. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have a more active social life there than I do here. There were dinners in and dinners out and a nearly infinite number of cups of chai. There were arranged meetings and accidental meetings and one 5 hour lunch date. There were endless hours hanging out in Harmony Books (more about that in a moment).

One of the lovely things about Benares is that I always make instant friends. Last year, it was Shagufta Siddhi, who sadly was away during this visit. This year, I was even luckier and made 2 instant friends. One was a hip woman from Bangalore named Navita (here with her charming daughter Shalu) with whom I shared that lovely 5 hour lunch.

The other was a Smith alum/UPenn grad student named Katy Hardy. Here is Katy posing in the stunning sari she was about to buy.

And here is the pile of saris Katy didn't buy. (Except actually, she did buy one of them in the end. It's also interesting to note that Katy's gorgeous sari was actually plucked from someone else's reject pile--the other woman's loss, clearly.)

One thing to note about Katy is that she speaks fabulous Hindi. I have lots of friends who speak excellent Hindi (all much better than mine, alas), but Katy's Hindi stood out, and not just to me. The evening we went sari shopping, the sari designer was so impressed by Katy's Hindi that he kept saying things that were supposed to be compliments but didn't come out that way. First, he told her that upon hearing her Hindi, he thought perhaps she was an Indian with a pigment condition. Later, he said that if he'd just heard her on the phone, she "could be 100% nagging Indian housewife," which was my favorite thing anyone had said for days. I repeated it probably a few too many times for Katy's liking, but I couldn't help myself.

And, as always in Benares, there were the hours upon hours I spent in Harmony Books. If I bought books to equal the time I spend there when I'm in Benares, Rakesh would need no other customers and I would have no money left, having spent it all on books. I was in Harmony every day I was in Benares, for chai and chat and catching up, for plan making and book browsing. (Rakesh, by the way, wrote an essay last fall for Publisher's Weekly about selling books in Benares; I was delighted on his behalf. The essay is here. How did this come about, I asked him? It turns out that the editor of Publisher's Weekly had wandered into his shop one day a few years earlier. Knowing Harmony, I wasn't at all surprised by this.)

But one day in Harmony stands out. I hadn't even been planning to go to Harmony right then, but I was walking past and popped my head in to say hello. There, I found Rakesh and Katy deep in conversation with a woman I'd never seen before--Asian features, British accent, Indian clothes. It became clear that she was living in Benares and volunteering. Katy informed me, in Hindi, that the woman had a monkey in her house. I thought, at first, that this was a bad thing, but it turned out that the woman had voluntarily taken in the monkey, a baby orphaned when its mother died on the electric wires. The monkey had been living with her for several weeks--he played in the garden during the day and slept in his own room at night. It was clear, though, that she couldn't keep him indefinitely and wanted to make sure he was reunited with his monkey brethren. To that end, she was trying to find a wildlife rehabilitation center to take him. And she had found one, except that it was in Orissa, which is not at all close to Benares.

So, the problem was not actually the monkey living in her house but that the woman didn't know the best way to transport the monkey to Orissa. Planes and trains were clearly out. But she wasn't sure enough about the road conditions to commit to hiring a car and driver to transport the monkey (with her as escort) to Orissa. It was, we all agreed, a conundrum. The woman had to go (to get back to the monkey, perhaps,) and Rakesh and Katy and I spent a few minutes pondering her situation.

And just when I was thinking that this was one of the reasons I loved Benares--because really, when else do I get to participate in a conversation about the whys and wherefores of monkey transportation?--and was about to leave Harmony to get on with my day, the door opened and a man stepped in. In a sonorous voice, he announced the imminent arrival of the director of the British Museum and his entourage.

Well, maybe it wasn't time to leave quite yet.

The problem is that Harmony is not a very big place. To illustrate this, I am posting a photo I took in Harmony in 2009. It has not gotten any more spacious in the intervening years.

The ensuing 10 or 15 minutes were very stressful for Rakesh and quite entertaining for Katy and me. Neil MacGregor, the British Museum director, came in along with several of his colleagues, and they began to browse the shelves, joining the several browsers already in place. Katy, meanwhile, decided to see if she could hand sell something to one of the Brits and in doing so, nearly gave Rakesh a coronary by attempting to climb up on the counter to get the book off of a high shelf over the door. I got behind the counter and took money and gave change. (I also stood on Rakesh's stool to get the book when Katy's attempt failed.) We chatted with the other customers while Rakesh paid attention to the VIPs, and after about 15 minutes, they swept out as quickly as they had swept in. Katy and I were quite tickled by the events, and Rakesh was just exhausted. In typical Benares fashion, I finally left the shop much later than planned, walked around the corner and ran smack into Navita and Shalu (see above) and ended up sitting with them for tea. My plans for the day were never completed, but I was perfectly content anyway.

Later, I posted on Facebook about the juxtaposition of events, monkey lady and British Museum dignitaries all in the shop within a 20 minute span, and one of my friends commented, "We're really going to have to step up our game here," which made me laugh.

So, as you might imagine, I was sad to leave Benares a few days later. It had been mellow and fun, relaxing and interesting, a bit of a whirlwind at the end (I haven't even mentioned the Bengali-German-British wedding we went to on my last night). Better, I figured, to leave before I was quite ready than to stay too long. And, after all, I was heading to Goa, where I would meet Andy and Janna, who had been there for several weeks already. If you have to leave a place you love, it's always good to have sun and sand waiting on the other end.

I had last been in Goa in 2004, where I'd spent a lovely week in Mandrem, in the north part of Goa. Why it took me 8 years to go back, I'm not sure. Not surprisingly, Mandrem is much more built up than it was 8 years ago, and Arambol, the next beach up, is nearly unrecognizable from the mellow, empty spot it was when I first went there in 2000. Still, while there may be more hotels and touristy shops and way more Russians than there were 8 years ago, the beach at Mandrem is still clean and clear and nearly empty, and that counts for a lot.

I made a tactical error at first and booked a guest house I'd found online. I won't name it, because it wasn't really their fault that I left after one night. I picked it because it looked cheap, clean and quiet, and it was, basically, all of those things. But it wasn't the place for me. First, I found the owner, whose baby the business clearly was, extremely annoying--the kind of annoying it's hard to overlook. Then, I woke up in the middle of the night to discover that it gets very chilly in the middle of the night if you're sleeping in a bamboo bungalow. Then, I woke up again at 7:30 sharp, when some nearby construction began--trees being wrenched from the ground and crunched up into sawdust, was what it sounded like. This would not have been pleasant at any hour, but it was especially unwelcome after having been up at 3 a.m. putting on pajama bottoms and sweaters. The final straw occurred when I opened the door and a snake slithered in. I knew it was probably just a garter snake, but I still didn't want it inside. The owner said the housekeeper would deal with it, and a few minutes later, she marched into my room with a big stick. I thought she would hook the snake on the stick and then toss it back into the garden. Instead, she beat the snake with the stick in my room, then tossed it outside, where she beat it some more. Poor snake. I felt very bad to be the cause of the snake's demise, and I was pretty sure that was the last night I'd spend there.

Thankfully, this was a problem easily solved. Janna and I went to the Villa River Cat, where I'd stayed in 2004.

Rinoo, the owner, remembered me and showed me the single room he had available--a very blue room, which I took instantly. By the afternoon of my first full day in Mandrem, I was settled into the blue room at the River Cat very happily, the poor dead snake a rapidly receding memory.

You can't tell from this photo how blue my room was, but trust me that it was very, very blue.

My first morning there, I was awoken by roosters outside and, amazingly for a night owl such as myself, saw bits of another sunrise through my tall, tall windows.

The River Cat is aptly named. In the back, beyond the lovely veranda and the garden, there is, indeed, a river:

And on that lovely veranda are cats.

Lots and lots of cats:

There were 9 kittens in all--5 bigger and 4 tiny--and 2 mama cats. Only one of the kittens had a name, the all black one whom Rinoo had named "Shoe Polish."

I was convinced that Shoe Polish being named made him (or her) more friendly. Here, s/he consented to use Janna's lap as a napping station:

Janna, as you can probably tell, was thrilled. And even more so a little while later when one of Shoe Polish's siblings arrived:

Here's the aerial view:

Janna and I spent quite a bit of time on the veranda, playing Scrabble, drinking tea and watching the kitten antics. (Kitten on the table, the chairs, in the hammock, on the steps, etc.) I even had to partake in a kitten rescue mission. Two little girls staying at the hotel were so enamored of the tiny kittens that they brought three of the four of them upstairs and were swinging them on a swing, while the mama cat paced and yowled on the veranda downstairs. (I was the mean grown up who said, "You have to take them back downstairs." One of the girls immediately said, "It was her idea," pointing to her friend. I was not swayed.)

I made an instant friend in Goa as well, an American woman living in Sweden who was there on holiday with her (sort of) ex-boyfriend and her 5 year old daughter, who grew fond of me over the couple of days we hung out and gave me the parting gift of many magic markered drawings, including one of my own hand and, my favorite, a purple (vegetarian) dinosaur with big teeth. My new friend was shocked when she heard that I was returning to Delhi for 5 days before I went back to the US--why go to Delhi if I could stay longer in Goa, she asked, not unreasonably. I told her that my Delhi was more fun than her Delhi, for one thing, and that the thought of going directly from tropical Goa to New England in January, with no transition, seemed unnecessarily harsh. It would be good to have to wear a sweater again for a few days before I had to wear a winter coat.

And so, after a week of sun and sand and sea, of lovely fresh fish and fresh fruit, of kittens and also a roly poly puppy, the incongruously named "Big Boss" who'd been adopted by the folks at a local restaurant, I regretfully left Goa to return to North India and then, a few days later, North America. One thing is for certain--I will not wait another 8 years to go back.

And there, really, my travelogue ends. Delhi was Delhi. I hung out with Sunil, lunched with Rasil, strolled with my friend Janet, conferred with the tailor, ate chole bhatura at the Bengali Sweet House, hopped on and off the Metro and ran around buying tea and gifts and more tea and snacks and just a few more cushion covers for my blue textiled living room.

And then I came home, and now, a few months later, I'm already thinking about my next trip.

There is a brief addendum. Janna stayed on in India for 6 or 7 weeks after Andy and I left, and one of the places she visited was Udaipur. I'd given her the name of the Ganesh Art Emporium, a funky shop run by an artist named Madhu Kant Mundra. Over the years, I've bought many, many Ganesh postcards from him as well as refrigerator magnets, tiny framed pictures of an elaborately dressed Krishna ("Krishna in his party frock," Abby calls them) and other sundries. The walls of my living room hold four framed prints of Madhu's, including my favorite, the Buddha in a boat rowing across a blue, blue sea . Janna had indicated that she'd found something for me there, but I had no idea what to expect until she came home in March and handed it over. When I saw it, I laughed and laughed, and immediately began to plot its place on my walls.

The Buddha with kitties. How apt.

The End.

On not blogging 31 days in a row

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:35:00 +0000

For the past three years, May 1 has signified the beginning of the WordCount Blogathon, in which a large and diverse group of intrepid bloggers agrees, en masse, to post every single day for the month of May. I decided to participate in the Blogathon the first time on a whim. I was in my first months of blogging, and I thought it might give me a jumpstart. The second year, I participated with intent, having learned some key lessons about what it meant to commit to blog every day for a month (Plan Ahead!). Last year, my third year, I decided at the last minute, filled with just a bit of trepidation.

All three years I really enjoyed participating in the blogathon, even with the inevitable feeling of hopelessness at the beginning of week 3 (2 1/2 more weeks of this, really?) and the exhaustion at the end, and the feeling of just not having one more interesting thing to say. Not even one. Still, I enjoyed the camaraderie, the discovery of new blogs I enjoyed reading, the guest post swaps and occasional theme days (it had been decades since I'd written a haiku).

The one thing that the blogathon didn't help me with, though, was becoming a more regular blogger. The blogathon gave me the structure and discipline to blog every day for a month--but not to blog regularly throughout the year. Of course, the blogathon is not to blame for that--I am. But one of my original goals in participating was to get myself on a regular blogging schedule, and that never happened. I am as haphazard a blogger as I ever was, even more so now, given the nearly 6 month silence here.

So, as May arrives once again (How can it possibly be May already?), I've decided that there will be no May blogathon for me. That doesn't mean there won't be blogging, however. What I've decided to do is less ambitious but possibly more important to my future blogging life. This May, I'm going to do what I meant to do all along with the blog and blog not daily, but regularly, at least once a week. I'm hoping by the end of May to have a bit of a rhythm, to feel excited about blogging forward into June and July rather than exhausted.

The first post will be the embarrassing one--the very long delayed post about my January trip to India that I meant to finish and post several months ago. Even as I've pondered other posts, I've thought, "No, I can't post about x, y or z (or, in this case, graham crackers, kale soup or mujadarra) until I get that damn India post up." And there it still sits, mostly written, in draft form, unposted. So, I'll start with that and then see where the rest of the month leads me. Meanwhile, I look forward to reading some of those brave bloggers who are participating in this year's blogathon and cheering them on from the sidelines as I mosey through the month.

Happy May!

Many People's Mom's Apple Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:40:00 +0000

It turns out that what I do in the fall is make apple cake. When I realize I've been overenthusiastic about buying apples from the farmer's market, I make apple cake.

When a freak October snowstorm covers the driveway with branches and causes the power to be out for 5 days, I make apple cake. (With the assistance of my tenant, who baked it in his oven since mine--with its electric starter--was out of commission.)

When four young women who are on the Smith College crew team come to my house as part of their "rent-a-rower" fundraiser and move nearly 2 cords of wood onto my porch in 2 hours, I make apple cake.

But really, it's not like I need much of an excuse. If there are apples, I'll make apple cake. And I'm writing this now in the hopes that you will too.

I discovered this recipe last fall on Smitten Kitchen. Deb called it "Mom's Apple Cake" because it was one of her mother's specialties. As it turns out, if you read the hundreds of comments that followed, lots of people's moms made this cake.

There is a reason for that--it's delicious. Also, easy to make and large enough to feed a crowd. The other thing that's nice is that it's forgiving. Each time I make it--either accidentally or on purpose--I tweak it a bit. I swap out the orange juice for apple cider. I use some whole wheat pastry flour instead of white. Maybe I'll cut down the sugar or the oil a bit--or maybe I won't. And each time, it's delicious. The apple to cake ratio is almost even, and the cake crumbles around the apples--or perhaps it's the apples melting into the cake--in a most delightful way. I've brought this cake to parties and to work, I've fed those hardworking Smith students with it as well as my companions in the dark of the freak snowstorm. No matter the circumstances, it is welcome.

One note about baking. The original recipe calls for a tube pan. I didn't have one so the first few times I made the cake, I made it in a 9" by 13" pan instead. This works fine, for the most part. The cake is best when the cake and apples are layered, and that's a bit trickier in the sheet pan, just because it takes most of the batter to cover the bottom of the pan. Still, it's worth it to try to layer, even if you put 2/3 of the batter down and then 2/3 of the apples, then top with the remaining 1/3 of each.

This past weekend, on a bit of a whim, I purchased a tube pan. Except I didn't get the 2-parted tube pan that lets you make the cake right-side up but a one piece tube pan that you have to turn over. Using a pan with a smaller surface area meant that the layering was much easier, and the apples and walnuts were nicely integrated into the cake.

And the bottom of the cake, upon its exit from the oven, was quite lovely:

It did not, alas, come out of the pan clean, even though I had assiduously buttered and floured it. This is what it looked like after I attempted to patch up the bare spots. Still, that it was not beautiful (or whole) did not mean that it was not still delicious.

I know it is nearly Thanksgiving and everyone's cooking focus is on pie and stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes. Even so, I hope that there might still be an occasion where a cake like this--sturdy, tasty, seasonal--can find a place at the table.

Many People's Mom's Apple Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

6 apples, MacIntosh, or a mix
1 tablespoon cinnamon
5 tablespoons sugar

2 3/4 cups flour, sifted (Can swap out some of the white for whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil (If you cut down on the oil, add more juice or cider to make up for the liquid.)
2 cups sugar (Can go down to 1 3/4 cups; you can also swap out 1/2 cup of the white for brown)
1/4 cup orange juice or apple cider
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
1 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan or a 9 x 13 sheet pan. Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice or cider, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean.

Baking Note: Keep an eye on the timer. I'd recommend starting to check after an hour. If you're making it in a 9 x 13 pan, it will probably only need an hour to an hour and 15 minutes to bake. In my tube pan (which is heavy), it baked in an hour and 20 minutes.

Audiobook Recommendation: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:31:00 +0000

You don't have to look far to find fabulously positive reviews of David Mitchell's 2010 novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. (If you buy the paperback edition, they're all over the cover and take up the first several pages of text.) The Guardian loved it, as did the New York Times (twice) and nearly every other major paper. The review that interested me most, though, was a very brief one, in AudioFile magazine, about the audiobook version. The first sentence is as follows: "This utterly original and wildly satisfying new novel gets such a dazzling performance here that you are torn between wanting to know how it ends and hoping it never does."

Well, I was intrigued! As it happens, I already owned a copy of Jacob de Zoet, thanks to my friend Derick, who sent me a copy earlier this summer. He'd borrowed Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, years ago, and when he was housesitting here in January, he read what is supposed to be Mitchell's masterpiece, Cloud Atlas. My own history with Mitchell is mixed. I enjoyed Ghostwritten (read on the train from Varanasi to Delhi in 2002) but never made it through the first section of Cloud Atlas. I am determined to be more patient and try it again, though, especially after Jacob de Zoet (which, apparently in some circles, is considered lesser Mitchell.)

There are many other places to read about the plot and themes of this novel. The thumbnail version is that it's set at the turn of the 19th Century in Japan, where the tiny island of Dejima in the bay of Nagasaki is the only point of contact between Shogun Japan and the rest of the world. Dejima serves as a trading outpost between the Dutch East India Company and Japan, and the Dutch merchants who live there are confined to the island. Enter Jacob de Zoet, a pious and upright young clerk, come to make his fortune so he can return home and marry his sweetheart. At first, Jacob is prized for his honesty, and then not so much. Betrayed by the Chief Resident who at first welcomes his attempts to straighten out years of corrupt dealings, then rejects them when he begins to enjoy the fruits of corruption himself, Jacob is left on Dejima when the chief leaves, demoted and seemingly destined to serve as the whipping post for the weaselly colleague who was promoted above him. But during his time in Dejima, Jacob has fallen rather hopelessly in love with Aibagawa Orito, a midwife given special dispensation to study on Dejima with the Dutch Dr. Marinus. Orito is bright and talented but disfigured by a burn to her cheek, making her seemingly unmarriageable.

In the second section of the book, Jacob is nearly absent, as the focus shifts to a sinister mountain shrine/nunnery where Orito has been brought (against her will) after her father's death. The narration of the story shifts between an attempt to rescue Orito and life in the house of sisters at the shrine.

The third section of the book returns to Dejima but also to the British frigate Phoebus and to its gouty, mourning captain. (It was at this point that I felt like I'd been flung, briefly and happily, into a cousin of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels.)

My temptation is to natter happily on about the plot, but that's not the point of this. I have no doubt that I would have enjoyed reading the book version, but I loved listening to the audio book version. Fat historical novels, when narrated well, turn out to be intensely pleasurable as audio books. The length and breadth mean that you can settle into the story in a different way. I learned that with the Patrick O'Brian books and again with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Both Patrick Tull (Patrick O'Brian) and Simon Prebble ( Jonathan Strange) are wonderful narrators, and Jonathan Aris, much younger than either, is a fabulous successor to them. I will not quibble that all the Dutch residents have (various) British accents. That the accents are so well done and the narration so seamless is enough. Paula Wilcox narrates Orito's sections, also very, very well.

The book started a bit slowly (for me), and it takes some time to learn the lay of the land, with the plethora of characters--Dutch and Japanese both--to become familiar with. But I felt that I was in good hands with both narrators, and as the book progressed and the plot thickened, it became hard to stop listening. I handed the CDs off to my friend Darnell once I was done, and soon thereafter, I received an email from his wife, my friend Leanna, which said the following: "D was so taken up with finishing Jacob DeZ that he refused all conversation last night and retreated to his chair, where he sat with headphone clamped on, absolutely rapt."

I'm not sure that there's higher praise than that. As for me, it's been weeks since I finished, and I still find myself thinking about it. I think of the plot twists, but I also think of the melancholy but satisfying final pages when Mitchell wraps up his story in the only way the novel reasonably could have ended. I spent 19 hours listening to Jonathan Aris and Paula Wilcox tell me the story of Jacob de Zoet and Aibagawa Orito and the rest, and it still wasn't quite enough. Better, of course, to end wanting more, but a bit sad all the same.

For more on Jacob DeZoet and on David Mitchell, here are a few links:

An article about Mitchell in the New York Times Magazine shortly before Jacob de Zoet came out.

This review in The Millions was one of my favorites.

The Written Nerd is a new blog to me (and one, it turns out that is now defunct), but I quite enjoyed her review as well.

Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:08:00 +0000

It had to be a pretty amazing recipe to get me out of my blog funk, but this one did it. Behold the peach tart, both gorgeous and delicious.

When I bought 2 boxes ($4 worth) of peach seconds at the Farmers' Market last Saturday, I was thinking peach jam or perhaps a crumble. I definitely wasn't thinking about a tart, as I had never actually made a fruit tart before. But I'd noticed up at Food52 that in the contest between this tart and another, this one had won by a landslide, and I got curious. Then I started reading the overwhelmingly positive comments, and then I looked closely at the recipe--the olive oil dough that didn't need to be rolled out, the peaches that didn't need to be peeled, the need for no special equipment. It seemed just the thing to try on a chilly Sunday evening (with the added bonus of the oven being on to warm the kitchen up).

The problem turned out to be the peaches, which, oddly for seconds, weren't quite ripe. By the time I realized that, though, I was attached to the idea of a peach tart and so I gave up the week's eating peaches for the tart. A lesson learned--your peach tart is as good as the peaches you put in it. I'm sure a tart with the seconds would have been fine, but the tart using the better peaches was divine.

The recipe is both easy and unusual. The dough is slightly sweet and slightly salty, the fat provided by a mix of canola and olive oils. There are also 2 tbsp. of milk in there and some almond extract. It looked weird when I first put them in the bowl together (no photo, alas), but they whisked up into a thick, glossy liquid. The dough itself seemed a bit oily, and I was nervous as I pressed it into the pan and covered it with sliced peaches (unpeeled! no blanching!). The topping is a mix of sugar, flour and butter. Amanda Hesser noted that it would seem like a lot of topping, and, indeed, it seemed like a lot of topping.

But in the 35 minutes the tart spent in the oven, the topping melted and turned into a sweet, glossy sheen on top of the peaches. When I looked into the oven the first time, I couldn't believe that I--a person who is accustomed to making baked goods that are tasty but homely--had produced such a gorgeous tart.

I had no whipped cream to serve it with, but Alex and I ate it in silence. Silently, we appreciated the crisp, almond-tinged crust, the soft and just sweet enough peaches, the chewy caramelized bits at the edge of the tart. Until I began to complement my own cooking, and Alex went back into the kitchen and asked if I wanted anymore or could he finish it off. (He didn't really.) Still I was given a stern warning: "Don't bring the rest of this to work!" he said. Point taken.

I am hoping devoutly that there will be at least one more week of peaches, and if there are, I will make this again, perhaps with whipped cream this time. But now that I know how easy this is, I am looking forward to using this tart formula for other kinds of fruit--apples, perhaps, or plums, and in the summer, some kind of peach-berry combination. As Amanda Hesser says in her introduction to this recipe on Food 52, "Every cook needs a good dessert recipe that can be whipped up anywhere." I think this one has just become mine.

Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart
from Food 52

1 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoons kosher salt

3/4 cups plus 1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

1/4 cup mild olive oil (I used the Trader Joe's extra virgin I had in the house.)

2 tablespoons whole milk (I used 1%)

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

3 to 5 small ripe peaches, pitted and thickly sliced (I used 5.)

Heat the oven to 425 degrees. In a mixing bowl, stir together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon sugar. In a small bowl, whisk together the oils, milk and almond extract. Pour the oil mixture into the flour mixture and mix gently with a fork, just enough to dampen; do not over work it. Then, transfer the dough to an 11-inch tart pan (or whatever similar pan you have on hand), and use your hands to pat out the dough so it covers the bottom of the pan, pushing it up the sides to meet the edge. (Mine didn't go very far up the sides, but I sacrificed that so it wouldn't have holes in the bottom. Hesser says the dough should be 1/8 inch thick.)

In a bowl, combine 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt and the butter. (Add an additional tbsp. of flour if you have especially juicy peaches.) Pinch the butter into the dry ingredients until crumbly.

Starting on the outside, arrange the peaches overlapping in a concentric circle over the pastry; fill in the center in whatever pattern makes sense. The peaches should fit snugly. Sprinkle the pebbly butter mixture over top (it will seem like a lot). Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until shiny, thick bubbles begin enveloping the fruit and the crust is slightly brown. Cool on a rack. Serve warm or room temperature, preferably with generous dollops of whipped cream

Wednesday Review: Claire Dederer's Poser

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:36:00 +0000

I realize that it may not be fair to begin a post about Claire Dederer's memoir Poser by talking about Elizabeth Gilbert, but so be it. That's what I'm going to do. And I'm not the first person to have done so. Janet Maslin, for one, talks about Eat, Pray, Love in her daily NY Times review of Poser, as do Judith Shulevitz and Emily Bazelon in their interesting conversation about Poser over at Slate. Poser has a prominent blurb by Elizabeth Gilbert on its back cover, and it is the only blurb on the home page of Dederer's website. (The short version--Gilbert loved the book.)

So, Gilbert. Last fall, I had a somewhat ridiculous conversation with friends in which one of them wondered aloud whether Eat, Pray, Love was the worst book ever written. I was incredulous. Because really, if you think Eat, Pray, Love is the worst book ever written, you haven't read nearly enough bad books. I am the first to admit, I liked Eat, Pray, Love, and I don't think it's a bad book at all. I read it soon after it was published; I bought it in hardcover, in fact. I was interested in the India section, of course, but I'd read Elizabeth Gilbert's work previously and knew she could write. Maybe I liked it because I read it before it became a cultural phenomenon, but mostly I liked it because Gilbert is a very good writer. I found her a witty and self-deprecating narrator, and what remains with me, four or five years later, are her meditations on what it means when you make choices that take you out of the mainstream. Gilbert may now be a married, world-famous gazillionaire, but she wasn't when she wrote this book. The crisis precipitating Gilbert's year-long journey was the breakup of her first marriage, in part because she didn't want children. Whatever you think of her pasta-eating in Italy, meditating in India and finding love in Bali, she remains a clear observer of her own life, and there are things to take from it. At least there were for me. Here is Gilbert thinking of the difference between her own life choices and her sister's.

Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘Across the broad continent of a woman’s life falls the shadow of a sword.’ On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where ‘all is correct.’ But on the other side of that sword, if you’re crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, ‘all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course.’ Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous.

In Dederer's book, the person who chooses to cross the shadow of the sword is not Dederer--who is married and the mother of a baby daughter when the book opens--but her mother, who, at the age of 32, when Dederer was 6 and her brother 8, took up with a hippie named Larry . . . while continuing to remain married to Dederer's father. Dederer's mother moved in with Larry, mostly taking the kids with her, while simultaneously trying to pretend that nothing had really changed, as evidenced by the fact that the parents were still married. When the book opens, Dederer's brother Dave, now a doting father and husband himself, wants nothing more than for his parents to divorce already. "He sent middle-of-the-night e-mail pleas to my parents, on which he CC'ed me. . . . 'It's time for a divorce,' he would write. Or, 'My birthday is coming. For my gift I would like a divorce.'"

Poser is structured, as the subtitle indicates, around Dederer's study of yoga, which begins when she throws her back out when her daughter is a baby. That each chapter is named for a yoga pose and uses that pose as a means to explore her life could have been a gimmick, but in this book, it's not. And honestly, I don't have a problem with finding a structure on which to hang your memoir. Writing a memoir is a hard enough task--figuring out a way to tell the stories you want to tell is a challenge, and if yoga poses work as your unifying structure, that's fine with me.

Poser follows Dederer from yoga class to yoga class, and backwards and forwards in her own life. In response to both her own childhood and to the expectations of the liberal Seattle circles in which she travels, she decides that the way that she will approach motherhood is by being perfect. And not only perfect but also good. As you might imagine, this doesn't work all that well or make her particularly happy. It frays her marriage and leaves her constantly anxious. As Poser moves along, we see Dederer have a second child, move to Boulder and back to Washington state and go through multiple forms of yoga. What Dederer has in common with Elizabeth Gilbert is her self-deprecating sense of humor and her willingness not to let herself off the hook. She is good company, and it's hard not to root for her--not just in her attempts to do handstands and complicated yoga sequences--but in her life as a writer, mother and wife.

I am of Dederer's demographic (born a year earlier) but not a parent or a yoga doer, despite all the time I've spent in the land of yoga. Still, Dederer's voice is one that is familiar to me, and it's one I enjoyed spending time with. Judith Warner may gripe in the New York Times magazine about Poser being part of the "burgeoning literature of postboomer-female midlife crisis," but I think she's just being churlish. Sure, I'd be glad to read Dederer on any number of subjects, but in Poser, she does a fine job of turning her critic's eye on herself, and for me, that made for a very good read.

(For a good interview with Dederer, see this blog post. I knew I liked Dederer when she mentions E.F. Benson's Lucia books in Poser. I liked her even more when she said that Laurie Colwin was her favorite writer.)

July Recipe Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:50:00 +0000

Today, I did something I don't usually do, which is make two different but related meals for lunch and for dinner. It was mostly because I was home with time to cook and because I spent about $30 on vegetables at the farmers' market on Saturday and was determined to use at least some of them before they'd been languishing in the fridge for too long.

I've written about both of these recipes before, but they are both so good and so perfect for the season, that I wanted to put them in the spotlight again.

The first dish--my lunch, as it were--is early summer orzo, a recipe I mostly made up. It's a mix of vegetables diced into tiny pieces, sauteed in olive oil and then combined with a minimal amount of orzo. I usually make it in the sweet spot of early summer, when both peas and corn are available. I combine these with summer squash, onions, garlic, basil and toasted pine nuts. The key is to have everything cut the same size (i.e., the size of a pea or corn kernel or pine nut or piece of orzo) so that each bite has a little bit of everything in it. The other key is to add the orzo to the vegetables rather than the other way around--this way, the orzo is incorporated into the vegetables rather than the vegetables serving as a complement to the pasta. You could make this with many different vegetable combinations, but I'm partial to the early summer one. Then again, I was amazed that shell peas were still available on Saturday, and I can't imagine we'll see too many more of them after this week's mini heat wave, so I can see making this pea-less, out of necessity. Sprinkle some Parmesan if you like, and you're set for lunch, dinner or a snack. It is equally delicious re-heated.

Here's the recipe, from June 2009: Early Summer Orzo

The second recipe comes from a Mark Bittman "Minimalist" column from the summer of 2004, his Pasta with Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes. I have been making this dish every summer since then, which I think is the definition of a keeper. So, in the early evening, after I'd come inside sweaty and grubby from mowing the lawn and watering the garden, I found myself, once again, chopping onions and garlic, dicing squash and cutting corn off of the cob. And the sauteing starts off the same way. The key difference here is the tomatoes. Tomatoes wouldn't work in the first recipe because they fall apart, and there, you're looking for intact bits. With this recipe, soupy is fine. You add the tomatoes around the time you put the water for the pasta in, and by the time the pasta is cooked, the tomatoes have broken down, and you have a delicious smelling pan of vegetables on the stove, waiting to be dumped upon the hot pasta. This dish might not be quite as pretty as the other one, but it's equally delicious.

Here's the recipe, from July 2008: Pasta with Corn, Zucchini and Tomatoes

Now, I have two different kinds of leftovers to eat this week, and while the chard and lettuce are still in my fridge, waiting for their turn, I can feel somewhat satisfied that most, if not all, of those vegetables I schlepped home so hopefully on Saturday are going to end up in my stomach rather than in the compost.

Enjoy!

It's a Pie Party! Blueberry Crumble Pie

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:06:00 +0000

So, first I made a pie crust (documented here), and then I made pie. Because even though as recently as a few months ago I was scared of pie crust, I wanted to be part of the pie party.

My friend Gina Hyams has just come out with a book called Pie Contest in a Box, and so she's made me think about pie more than I usually do. And then I read about Shauna Ahern, aka Gluten-free Girl, having an internet pie party. Apparently, thousands of people are making pies and many of them are blogging about it today. How could I resist?

I had to contemplate what kind of pie to make. Strawberries are almost gone here, and blueberries and peaches are not yet in season, though they will be soon. Rather than using non-local fruit, I decided to go for the local but frozen option--the blueberries still in my freezer from last summer's annual blueberry picking expedition.

I scoped out some recipes and relied mostly on a combination of Mark Bittman and King Arthur Flour. I decided that, despite my newfound comfort level with pie crust, I didn't want to make a 2-crusted pie. And given my love for peach-blueberry crumble and for blueberry crumble bars, it made sense to make a blueberry crumble pie.

I tossed the blueberries with sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, lemon juice and a dash of nutmeg. I made my standard crumble topping from oats, flour, brown sugar, melted butter and walnuts. I topped one with the other and baked. Delicious smells wafted from the oven.

What I didn't do was wait to cut it. It was after 9 p.m., and Alex was lying on the couch, sleepy and waiting for his pie. The King Arthur Flour Baking Book said "Hold your horses." (Really.) Don't even think of cutting that pie until it's cool. But reader, I cut it. I waited until the vanilla ice cream was sufficiently soft, and then I cut it.

And lo, it was wet. Yes, my blueberry pie had turned into blueberry pie soup.

But you know, between the blueberries and lemon, the oats and walnuts, the vanilla ice cream melting in rivulets across the plate, it didn't really matter.

There was pie, and it was good.

Blueberry Crumble Pie
loosely adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, with
additional help from The King Arthur Flour Baking Book

Crust
1 9 inch pie crust (I used Melissa Clark's all-butter Perfect Pie Crust.)

Filling
5 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen, picked over, rinsed and dried
1/2 - 1 cup sugar, depending on your preferences and the sweetness of your berries
2 tbsp. corn starch
Pinch nutmeg and/or cinnamon
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp. lemon juice
Dash of salt

Crumble Topping
1 cup whole rolled oats
1/2 cup flour
3 tbsp. brown sugar
4 tbsp. melted butter
1/3 - 1/2 cup walnuts (optional)
pinch salt

Note: I did not bake my pie crust ahead of time. None of the recipes I looked at called for it. However, given the soupiness of the fruit, I probably would blind bake it next time. The outside of the crust was nicely crispy, but the bottom was soggy. That might just be the way of fruit pies, but I'm going to experiment.

Preheat oven to 450.

If desired, partially blind bake pie shell. Good instructions for doing so here: Blind Baking a Pie Crust

For filling, toss blueberries with sugar, corn starch, lemon zest, lemon juice, nutmeg and salt.

Pile berries into crust.

Combine oats, flour, brown sugar, salt, nuts (if using) and melted butter. Distribute over blueberries and pat into place.

Place pie pan on baking sheet (in case of drips). Bake at 450 F for 10 minutes and then reduce heat to 350 F and bake for another 40-50 minutes. (I baked mine for another 45.) Cool on a rack for as long as you can stand it (longer is, indeed, better). Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Freedom from Fear of Pie Crusts

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:02:00 +0000

For a long time, I thought the world was split between bread people and pie people. Not bread and pie eaters, but bread and pie makers. Either you weren't scared of yeast and made bread or you weren't scared of the crust and made pie. I was a bread person, no question. I'd been baking bread since I was a teenager and laughed in the face of yeast fear.

Pie, on the other hand, scared me. It was the crust, of course. That delicate balance between flour and fat. How would I know when the butter was mixed in correctly? What if I put too much water in? What about the endless sticking and the attempts to put the sticky sad crust into a pie plate. By the time the crust was done, I was too stressed out to enjoy it.

So, I just didn't make pie. Occasionally I'd buy a supermarket crust for a quiche. But more often, I found alternatives for quiche and stuck with cookie crusts for pie.

I have Melissa Clark to thank for my conversion. Or maybe conversion isn't the right word. But I think I can safely say that I am no longer afraid of pie crusts, and I give Melissa Clark my gratitude. It was her perfect pie crust recipe in In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite that helped me face my fear and overcome it. Melissa's recipe was the start, but there were several other simple things that made this possible.

First, the chopper.

If you mix the flour and butter in a mini-chopper or food processor, you don't really have to think about pastry blenders or wonder about when the ingredients are mixed enough. A few whirls, and it's done. And when you add the cold water, a tablespoon at a time, it becomes clearly apparent when the dough is sticking together.

The second crucial piece is the plastic wrap.

I use this method when I bake biscotti--you spoon the wet and too soft batter onto a length of plastic wrap, which allows you to mold it into a shape that you can freeze until it's hard enough to work with. So it is with pie crust. You dump the messy, sticky mass of flour/butter/water onto the plastic wrap, and in moments, you have a nice round disk all ready to chill.

The last crucial item is the Silpat.

I used to try to roll out pie crusts on a cutting board, and it was frustration incarnate. But from the start of my getting-over-my-fear-of-pie-crust attempts, I realized I needed to change that. I put my Silpat on the dining room table, so there was room to work, with some flour handy nearby.

The marble rolling pin was a gift from my friend Derick 20 years ago. Why Derick decided he should send me a marble rolling pin in the mail from Boston to Eugene, Oregon, I have no idea, but 20 years have now passed, and while the rolling pin has lost its handles, it still works beautifully.

Because the dough is chilled, you can roll it out before it gets sticky. I put a bit of flour down on the Silpat, added a bit more as I was working and turned the dough over a few times. Rolling a pie crust out on a floured Silpat is not stressful, it turns out. Just when you wonder whether the dough is warming up, it's big enough for your pie. Voila.

This is maybe the fourth or fifth crust I've made since I discovered Melissa's recipe and the method documented here, and I've made 2 in the past 2 weeks! Unthinkable even a year ago.

Not that losing my fear of pie crusts is going to make me scared of yeast. I'm just going to have to widen my view of the world just a little bit, now that I am a person who can not only make bread, but also pie.

All-Butter Perfect Pie Crust
from Melissa Clark's In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite

Time: 15 minutes plus one hour's chilling

1 1/4cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

8-10 tablespoons unsalted butter, preferably a high-fat, European-style butter like Plugra, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces (Clark's recipe calls for 10 tablespoons; my crusts have been plenty buttery with 8.)

2 to 5 tablespoons ice water (I seem to always need 5.)

1. In a food processor, briefly pulse together the flour and salt. Add butter and pulse until mixture forms chickpea-size pieces (3 to 5 one-second pulses). Add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse until mixture is just moist enough to hold together.

2. Form dough into a ball, wrap with plastic and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before rolling out and baking.

Yield: One 9-inch single pie crust. Recipe can be doubled for a double crust; divide dough into two balls and form two disks before chilling.

Friday Links: The June Swoon Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:47:00 +0000

So, as typically happens post-blogathon, I fell into a bit of a June swoon. This one was delayed temporarily by the V.S. Naipaul flap, but it arrived nonetheless.

These links have been piling up, and the time has come to share them. I'm hoping that this time of rest in June will stoke my blogging energy again, so that I'll be back more regularly in July. Until then, a lot of links!

The India Links

The New York Times is running a series of pieces about India, and it's not surprising I'm finding them fascinating. A couple of weeks ago, they ran a piece about Gurgaon and how the city has been built up basically without any infrastructure. I had never spent any time in Gurgaon before Sunil moved there, and it is a very strange place. I went to one mall that is glitzier than any mall I've ever been in in the U.S., and I've watched Sunil's street being torn up for a very belated installation of sewer pipes. I've seen the fleets of cars waiting outside the multinational companies whose offices are in Gurgaon, and I've bumped along the truly terrible roads right next to them. It's rare to think of Delhi as organized in any way, but compared to Gurgaon it is.

Jim Yardley's article on Gurgaon

Jim Yardley answers questions about the piece and Gurgaon

The NYT Gurgaon slideshow

The slide with evidence that more than one pink-topped rickshaw exists!

My final India link is unrelated to Gurgaon. A few weeks ago, I had one of those frantic meet-in-the-aisles-of-Trader-Joes catch-ups with an old friend. She had her 3 month old baby in a front pack (last time I'd seen her, she had only a toddler; now there are 2!) and was supposed to be buying food for dinner. While her very patient baby waited, we gabbed hurriedly in the frozen food aisle. And she told me about a blog I'd never heard of about Indian food. The blog, Eat and Dust (a play, of course, on the title of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's 1975 novel, Heat and Dust, made into a movie in 1983 with Julie Christie, Greta Scacchi and Zakir Hussein) is written by a British woman, Pamela Timms, who's lived in Delhi for a number of years with her family. (Her husband is the South Asia correspondent for the Telegraph.) Her specialty is Delhi street food. I've only begun to explore the blog, but it's right up my alley.

A Telegraph article about Pamela Timms (They call her the "Delia of Old Delhi.")

The Obituary Links

It seemed an interesting coincidence that on the day when there were already all these India-related pieces in the NY Times, there was also the obituary of M.F. Husain, one of the most famous painters to come out of modern India:

M.F. Husain

Husain died at 95. It was clearly a bad week for talented nonagenarians, as the next day, obits for the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor appeared.

I had only vaguely heard of Fermor before Anthony Lane wrote a fascinating profile of him in the New Yorker in 2006. It may only be available to subscribers, but it's totally worth a read.

Anthony Lane on Patrick Leigh Fermor, 2006

Anthony Lane's response to Fermor's death, June 2011

Patrick Leigh Fermor Guardian obit

Patrick Leigh Fermor New York Times obit

The Local Links

We've had good news and bad news here in Western Massachusetts in the past 10 days or so.

The good news is that Amherst College, my alma mater, has named Carolyn "Biddy" Martin to be its 19th president. She will be the first woman president and the first openly gay president. Amherst was founded in 1821 and went coed in 1976. That's 155 years of being a men's college. When I was there in the mid-late 1980's, it felt more like a men's school that let women attend than a truly coed college. That's changed in the past 20 years, certainly, but this is a big step, and I'm delighted that they've finally taken it.

Amherst's announcement on Biddy Martin

New York Times piece on Biddy Martin

The bad news came a few days later. Our beloved local video store, Pleasant St. Video, announced that they are closing in July. They've been a fixture in downtown Northampton for 25 years. I've been a member for 16 of those years; I joined when I moved back to this area in 1995. Not only do they have a great collection, it's the kind of place where you might run in to pick something up and end up staying there much longer than planned because you're chatting with the folks at the counter or watching whatever movie is playing on the TV in the corner.

They are going out on their own terms, at least. The store didn't close overnight, and they are undertaking a fundraising effort to save their huge, varied, quirky collection by having people donate to the Forbes library in Northampton. For every $8 donation, they'll give Forbes a DVD. They're letting people donate generally or to save specific titles. (I wanted to save "Slings and Arrows," but someone else had claimed it, so I saved the films of Mira Nair instead, even though I haven't actually seen all of them.) It turns out that you can donate credits to save films also, and I have more than 30 credits on file with them. (I always bought credits in advance, and I have to admit that I wondered when I bought my last batch of credits last fall whether I'd use them all before the store closed.) I've already donated some to bolster my crush on Bill Nighy by saving the UK version of State of Play and a somewhat obscure but quite wonderful British film called The Lawless Heart, which Alex and I watched years ago and which I've always wanted to see again. I have a bit more time to decide. Meanwhile, according to the local NPR station, they raised $20,000 the first week, about a third of what they need to save whole collection. Let's hope the momentum continues.

Pleasant Street Video's Save the Catalog page

The local NPR station on Pleasant Street's Closing

The Valley Advocate on the end of Pleasant Street Video

V.S. Naipaul is a pompous ass: an addendum

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:40:00 +0000

I wanted to add one more link to yesterday's list of links about V.S. Naipaul's recent comments about women and writing.

Roxana Robinson wrote an eloquent piece about the dangers of views like Naipaul's and how they're reflected in the way books are read, judged and rewarded these days. One of the key paragraphs:

Naipaul’s pronouncements are antediluvian. I won’t dignify with a response his comments on the mastery of the household; Diana Athill, the editor-turned-writer whom Naipaul denounces, is quite right to treat his maunderings as absurd. But if we can agree that this is absurd, then why do the numbers show, year after year, that our literary culture supports Naipaul’s belief? Why is it that men’s writing receives more prizes, more attention and more public acclaim than women’s? How is it that we accept this as a cultural norm?

"Do Women Write 'Tosh'?": Roxana Robinson's response.

I also wanted to post a quote, which is pretty much the first thing I thought of when I read about Naipaul's comments, in particular his comment about women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world . . . And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too."

Years ago, in graduate school, I read Annette Kolodny's essay, "Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism." (The full text can be found here.) I don't remember many of the details, but there's one bit that remains, after all these years. It's this:

The (usually male) reader who, both by experience and by reading, has never made acquaintance with those [sex-related] contexts [out of which women write]--historically, the lying-in room, the parlor, the nursery, the kitchen, the laundry, and so on--will necessarily lack the capacity to fully interpret the dialogue or action embedded therein; . . . Virginia Woolf therefore quite properly anticipated the male reader's disposition to write off what he could not understand, abandoning women's writing as offering "not merely a difference of view, but a view that is weak, or trivial or sentimental because it differs from his own."

Virginia Woolf said that in 1929; Annette Kolodny wrote her essay in 1980. It's now 2011; isn't it time to move on? Aren't there other, better ways to spend our time than having to defend the writing of half the population against one arrogant bastard (as eloquent as some of those defenses have been)? Maybe we could actually be writing instead. Imagine.

Friday Links: The V.S. Naipaul is a pompous ass edition

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:09:00 +0000

Not surprisingly, V.S. Naipaul's comments earlier this week that he found no woman author equal to him have provoked an outpouring of comment. Naipaul went on to say that Jane Austen, in particular, was overly sentimental, and that his former editor, Diana Athill, wrote "feminine tosh." Let's hear it for open-mindedness and humility, Sir Vidia!

Here's a roundup of some interesting links about the controversy.

First, the Guardian's piece on Naipaul's original comments.

A few sum ups from American publications:

Delia Cabe in the Boston Globe

The Christian Science Monitor

Salon.com

A few responses from writers who happen to be female:

Diana Athill's response, also in the Guardian: Naipaul's attacks "just made me laugh."

The lovely Diana Abu-Jaber on NPR: From One Writer to Another: Shut Up, V.S. Naipaul

Jennifer Egan (no stranger to controversy about gender and writing) in the Wall Street Journal: "He sounds like such a cranky old man."

A Quiz

The Guardian included a quiz to see whether people could determine the gender of the writer by a paragraph, as Naipaul claims he can.

Take the quiz yourself.

I got 7 out of 10 right. What was more interesting to me was that there was only one passage (from Mary Wesley's novel Harnessing Peacocks) that I actually recognized, but it turns out that I'd actually read 6 of the 10 books on the list. (And of the 3 I got wrong, I'd read 2 of the books--go figure!)

About the photo:

I thought I'd be like the L.A. Times, which used a picture of Jonathan Franzen in an article about Jennifer Egan winning the LA Times book prize (and Jonathan Franzen losing it). So, I'm heading this with a picture of that pervasive sentimentalist, Jane Austen, so as not to have a photo of Naipaul on my blog. So there.

The Last Word

This last is a blog post linked by my old grad school pal, Kristen Lindquist, on Facebook. I'm grateful to her for it. I think this serves as an excellent final word, of the many that will be written, about Naipaul and his opinions.

Dawn Potter: A small response to V.S. Naipaul

May showers bring June flowers

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 02:32:00 +0000

So, I was all set to do another wrap up post like last year's "Thoughts on 31 days of blogging," but here it is, 10:22 p.m. on 5/31, and any further thoughts I have on 31 days of blogging are not particularly coherent. Though this moment does, in fact, feel emblematic of the whole blogathon. You can have a plan, but sometimes other things get in the way, and then you need an alternative. And if you're a person who told yourself that you were going to finish the goddamn blogathon whether you liked it or not, then you're going to finish it however you can, even if you have to limp a bit across the finish line.

I don't know if I learned anything new, really, having done this 3 times now. I still know that I would have trouble keeping up with daily blogging for more than a month. But I also know that I really do like blogging, and it gives me impetus to continue. The one bit of advice I have for future blogathoners is to plan, plan, plan, and when you think you've planned ahead enough, plan some more. I felt pretty good through week two, and then I looked at my list of ideas for posts and I'd used most of them already, and the second half of the month started looking really, really long.

Thankfully, just when I was in need of a last post to get me safely into June, my flowers cooperated. I woke up this morning to discover that my oriental poppy (which, for reasons I don't understand, I seem to have planted right next to the compost pile) went from having one bloom to eight, overnight.

And while the clematis does not quite have a grasp on actually growing up the broken ladder as it's supposed to, it does seem to have mastered producing flowers for the first time, so that's something.

And with that, I wish everyone a happy June! Thanks for reading.

Memorial Day Wordle

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Mon, 30 May 2011 16:24:00 +0000

It's always fun to do a blogathon wordle. The past two years, I've done them on my own. This year, it's a sanctioned blogathon theme day! My only problem with wordles is that I find it difficult to do just one of them.

I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I did both. What's interesting is that the wordle only seems to capture words from the past few days of blogging. Surely if I'd done this earlier, there would have been ample mentions of both rhubarb and cake, not to mention chickens. Instead, I have a Delhi metro/rickshaw-centric wordle, which is interesting in its own way.

Take two:
Click on them for the full effect. And then try a wordle of your own! The Wordle site has all the info on how to do it and all the options (there are many!).

On this Monday holiday, I have some vegetables to plant and a 9th birthday party to attend. I'll be back tomorrow with some final thoughts on this month of blogging, that is, amazingly, just about over.

False Indigo in bloom

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Sun, 29 May 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Just in time for the end of May and the end of the blogathon, the false indigo has bloomed. (I wrote about the false indigo first here in 2008, updated it here in 2009 and triumphantly reported its first real blooms here last year.)

Given its current state of bloom, I think I can safely say that the false indigo is here to stay:

In 2009, the year after I planted it:

In May, 2010:

May 29, 2011:

Saturday Photo: Lal Mohammed, Jaipur

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Sat, 28 May 2011 22:30:00 +0000

After my Delhi Metro post the other day and the expression of relief that I didn't have to deal with rickshaw wallahs so much anymore, I realized that I was maybe being a little bit unfair. Every once in a while, a positive rickshaw experience occurs, and occasionally, it even gets documented.

The man in the above photo is a Jaipur rickshaw wallah named Lal Mohammed. Here is how I ended up taking his photo.

In January, 2006, I was in Jaipur, where I lived for a year in 1999-2000, to see some friends and revisit old haunts. (And, yes, to shop at the huge Anokhi store there.) Because rickshaws in Jaipur have no meters and always require haggling, I did a lot of walking. But one place I couldn't walk was to Jaimala's house. When I had lived in Jaipur, Jaimala and her mother and sister Mala had lived in the servants' quarters behind Sunil's house, where I was living. But in the years since, they had saved enough money to first buy a plot of land and then to build their own house. Two years earlier, I'd gone out with Sunil to see them and their house, which had just been completed weeks earlier. They had since added more rooms, and Jaimala invited me for lunch on my last afternoon in Jaipur.

But how to get there? The house was on the edge of Jaipur in what was becoming a new development. I had never taken the bus in Jaipur so had no idea where to start. I couldn't go home on the bus with Jaimala because it would be Sunday, and she would already be home. Jaimala and I sat in front of Sunil's house, where she still worked for his tenant, and pondered the dilemma for awhile. Until Jaimala beamed at me, and said in Hindi, "I know, Sue-didi--Lal Mohammed can bring you." "Who is Lal Mohammed," I asked, reasonably. "A rickshaw-wallah," she said, going on to say that Lal Mohammed had brought them home on occasion and knew where they lived. "But how will we find Lal Mohammed?" I asked. I thought of all the rickshaw wallahs in Jaipur and wondered how he might be found. Jaimala looked at me as if I were dim. "I have his mobile number," she said. "We'll phone him."

Now, this would seem very logical to me--it's very clear to me how much life in India is now entirely dependent on a massive number of people having mobiles. But then, I hadn't quite grasped it yet.

Jaimala called Lal Mohammed on his mobile. It turned out that he wasn't far away, so he came over in his rickshaw, and we made the arrangements. And so, two days later, I myself called Lal Mohammed's mobile phone and told him I was ready. He came to my hotel and picked me up. We drove out to Jaimala's new house together. And while Jaimala and Mala and their mother and I gossiped and ate and caught up, Lal Mohammed also ate a plate of Jaimala's excellent curry-chawal. While Jaimala and Mala and I wandered through the nearby fields, chatting with women picking peas, looking at houses in early states of construction, Lal Mohammed watched cricket on TV.

Afterwards, we all drank tea. Jaimala and Mala wanted photos of themselves in front of their house, so I took several (one is below). Mala asked if I would take one of Lal Mohammed as well, and so I did. (That's Mala and Dolly, the dog, on the right.)

Lal Mohammed got me to the train station in plenty of time, and I paid him the sum we'd agreed on. (I can no longer remember what it was, but it was not exorbitant in any way.) He bid me farewell, and I went into the station to catch my train back to Delhi.

I haven't been back to Jaipur since, but I like to think that Lal Mohammed is still driving his rickshaw and that if I needed to, I could call him on his mobile, and he could take me where I needed to go with a minimum of fuss.

Friday Link Love

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Dickman) — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:00:00 +0000

The Lyall Links:

I've been a fan of New York Times London correspondent Sarah Lyall for a long time. Her recent piece, about President Obama's visit to London this week, was as entertaining as ever. (Her piece about the royal wedding was also excellent.)

I can actually remember the piece that made me take notice of Lyall way back in 1998. It was this obituary of Sir Anthony Glyn, an author known for "spirit and diversity." It was the first time I'd been so entertained by an obit, and it led to my increasing interest in reading obituaries, especially those written by that master, the sadly departed Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. (Although he is gone, his best efforts were collected into an edition, 52 McGs.)

The Carrington Links:

This week's most fascinating obituary was that of Leonora Carrington, British surrealist painter, sculptor and writer who lived much of her long life in Mexico. Thanks to Gina Hyams for linking the extensive Guardian obit, which includes many great details, including that during WWII, Carrington's family sent her nanny to Spain in a submarine to fetch her home! There was a New York Times obit today that was also interesting though not as comprehensive (and not written by a cousin of Carrington's, as the Guardian obit is). The image above is one of Carrington's.

The Grammatical Link:

As one who is perhaps a bit too over-fond of em dashes, I had to appreciate this screed against their overuse in Slate earlier this week. I have to admit, though, that the writer's attempt to use em dashes at every opportunity to prove her point reminded me of when I was in high school. In a protest against what we considered William Faulkner's excessively long sentences, we all attempted to answer our exam essay question on Intruder in the Dust in a single sentence. It's been a long time since that happened, but I suspect we used a few too many em dashes then, along with more semi-colons than any of us have probably used in anything since!

And on that note, Happy Long Weekend!