Tag: books

Eggplant Rescue and a Re-discovered Cookbook

Cookbook Shelf

We’re a little sick of eggplant around here. We joined a different CSA this year because the previous one (that I loved – every week a new culinary adventure of heirlooms and weird vegetables)  no longer drops at a convenient pickup location. This new farm, while perfectly fine with very generous shares,  has a rather blah selection and too much repetition. Green cabbage again and again, cucumbers, cucumbers and more cucumbers. (I think we’re done with them… no photos to show.) Yummy – but just same ol’ tomatoes and collard greens gigantic enough to cover a roof with. And eggplant. Week after week – at least one, and usually more, eggplants. And that’s even after splitting the share with my friend. (Do I sound like a brat, complaining about this bounty?)

Farm Tomatoes, My Peppers

Of course there is eggplant parm, baba ganoush, stir fried, thin slices salted and made into ‘chips’. I’ve made them all for what has become, an ambivalent audience. And in the next week’s load of vegetables – more eggplant!  This weekend I remembered a recipe I’d made years ago out of  Festa del Giardino: A Harvest of Recipes and Family Memories.  While this not the kind of cookbook I’m usually a sucker for — no beautiful photos — it has concise, easy to follow recipes that result in obviously memorable dishes. Like this Caponata I whipped up yesterday.

Caponata

I remember Molly being younger than 10 and a kid who hated veggies, digging in. I’m afraid you might be hard-pressed to find this book now out-of-print, by local author and lovely Sally Maraventano who came to the store for a book signing in 1999.  (But she does have her own cooking school.)

Festa del Giardino

I’m delighted to have found this obviously well-used cookbook again and inspired to rediscover the great recipes in it and the rest of this overflow stash that always escapes my periodic book-purges. Next, maybe I’ll bake bread…

Cookbook Cabinet

The Expatriate’s Itch

In the early hours of the morning I woke not sure of where I was. Italy? Kyoto? Croatia or some other place I once lived long enough for the exotic to become familiar? Sometimes I feel transported in time and space from sleep, and last night, inspired by what I read before nodding off. One of my favorite bloggers, Luisa Weiss, has written a memoir with recipes: My Berlin Kitchen.

Luisa grew up straddling the Atlantic – traveling between her divorced parents from Boston to Berlin. Any expat will tell you that the itch, the longing for a place we have loved, and perhaps, where we were loved (definitely enhances yearning) never quite goes away. One’s sense of home becomes an aching wistfulness about that other light, streets, sounds, smells, food. And for the author, this perpetual pining is in her DNA born to an Italian mother and American father and growing up between Europe and the States.

I’ve followed The Wednesday Chef for a few years now, savoring recipes and glimpses of Luisa’s life and travels. And love. Little glimpses of heartbreak, longing and now, blissfully, reunited with her first love and a new baby to boot. And always, fantastic food (recipes included! at B&N you’ll find this in the cookbook section).  I don’t know about you, but this is stuff I want to read about.

And now the glimpses she gave us in her blog have been fleshed out into a book – the same enchanting writing with the details filled in – of how this gal found her way. But as the traveler/expat knows, things are not always as they should be for example, as the foreigner in Paris. The beautiful streets can be lonely, every day may be grey in every sense of the word, and Luisa captures it all brilliantly.  A beautiful reminder to us always ready to pack our bags and disappear with some notion that things will be better there.

Why does one place resonate with us as opposed to another? I loved San Francisco where I spent a summer a thirty years ago – renting a studio with my friend in the Mission District – wandering the streets from sun to fog and exploring Pacific beaches. Luisa didn’t. I never loved Boston – a city I landed in for a few months. Kyoto will always feel like home, I’d move back to Italy in a flash…see? Don’t get me started.So much of it has to do with timing, and… as does anything and everything in my opinion – love.

I revel in my my garden, the fireplace, the kitchen, my bed, my dog, my home. I feel lucky to have my Connecticut home. But always, their is the faintest of siren calls — to make a move again. Not just to pass through — but to really inhabit another place, make friends, share meals. Well, there are always my dreams and awake in my kitchen I can cook up some of the yummy recipes from My Berlin Kitchen and pretend to be in Tuscany.

An Inspiring Book

Sometimes a book just gets under your skin. This is one of those books for me.  Behind the Beautiful Forevers is almost like a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction. Of course these are real people and a real world that Katherine Boo writes about – but she doesn’t report, she immerses us in the lives of the people of this slum. Her book reads like a novel. Boo’s own voice is unheard, she remains unseen, no mere reportage here.  It is only in the afterward that she humbly describes how she went about writing this compelling book. I am inspired by just how many different ways there are to tell a story.  Boo is certainly a master.

 

About Grief

During the run of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking  in June, I was invited to write a guest post on grief for the Westport Country Playhouse’s blog. Here it is:

A story not so different than my own
June 27, 2012

My husband died when he was 48.

Photo by Leslie Datsis

The lurking question with a death so young is: How? Was he ill? An accident? We can’t help but rubberneck. Rebelling against the urge to bow to the stigma of shame associated with addiction and suicide, I usually spill my story pretty quickly. I tell them exactly what happened. “I’m so sorry,” is the usual wincing reaction. But often, there is recognition and relief because they have a story not so different from my own.

My daughter was 8 years old when it happened. She felt sure all of her classmate’s lived normal, happy lives. I assured her nobody gets to escape sadness, and brought her to The Den for Grieving Kids in Greenwich. There she gathered with other children who had lost their parents and I joined the surviving spouses. We found comfort in baring our raw hearts. Our own particulars seemed terrible to my daughter and I, but we learned those left behind always have painful and complicated feelings. Over the years of going to The Den, we received and, I like to think also gave, solace to our groups. As lonely as we sometimes felt, it helped knowing we were not alone.

Indeed, memoirs of grief outnumber even celebrity reveal-alls on bookstore shelves. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking came out a year after my husband’s death. I recognized her language of grief, the trance-like telling of numbness and eventually, the glimmer of feeling again. I still read memoirs of loss compulsively, as if I might find an answer to the myriad of lingering questions I will always bear like a ragged scar. My life is full of joy but not a day passes without at least a passing shadow of memory.

But books like Didion’s or Nina Sankovitch’s elegantly written, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, remind me that the survivor’s intimate knowledge of mortality is not an awful thing. I know to breathe deeply the air I share for some finite time with my loved ones. To pay attention, to cherish moments and do my best to never be blithe about leave-taking, even for sleep.

Tag Sale

We need a new lawnmower and could also use some outdoor furniture. So yesterday, we went to tag sales. Fascinating, and at times, a little ghoulish walking through stranger’s homes, rifling through piles of a lifetime of belongings. Particularly weird are estate sales run by the off-spring. Standing by as strangers paw their parent’s belongings, I think they must hate us. Bargain-hunters inventorying beloved nick-nacks of their childhood cluttering every surface, sticky with years of grime. Assessing asses trying out dad’s favorite chair, haggling over the pyrex. The flotsam of the finished lives of someone they loved.

A red-flag to keep driving is the lemonade stand at the end of the drive. Surely a garage full of plastic toys and baby equipment follows. One driveway was full of divorce fall-out, the man practically giving away his remainders, apparently anxious to pack up his LandRover and be gone. I prefer the happier moving sale, often with the bonus of hearing about the planned adventure. The cheery couple with the stripped down house, laughing neighbors warming the still un-sold couch and chairs, are moving to Florida. We were too late for their lawn mower.

It’s the sales of dead parents stuff that sticks with me. Were people recently living in these claustrophobic homes? The musty rooms packed with old linens that should just be chucked. One house had a room of bizarre and unloved-looking dolls covering every inch of the floor – easily hundreds.  Once upon a time, each of these creatures was brought home as precious, but I wager by Monday, a dumpster will be full of hundreds of staring glass eyes and rigid limbs in a macabre mass burial.

I came home and looked around my house. Imagining someone filling their arms with books, heaving iron skillets off the wall, fingering my scarves, my clutter, I made a decision.  I don’t want to buried under a lot of shit no one really wants. I am cleaning and purging to make room for air and light. That’s really all I need. And a lawn mower.

Books to Show Me the Way

I am reading two books that happened to be reviewed in this week’s New York Time’s Book Review. Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.  The reviews are good and I feel glad for the authors for the attention they are getting — as if they are  my friends. Isn’t this the kind of connection and loyalty a good book inspires?

Birds of a Lesser Paradise is a collection of exquisite short stories that I have been savoring for more than a month. Like expensive European chocolate I want to make last. Rather than race through, the book sits by my bed for times I am alert enough to fully indulge. The writing is gorgeous, full of sentences that demand to be re-read. Not to beat the food imagery to death, but lest you think I am talking about bon-bons, these stories are like salty-sweet concoctions. They are deep. Against the backdrop of fantastic landscapes of nature and animals, we glimpse lives of loss and loneliness. Thoughts of them linger long after the story is done, demanding time to fully resonate.  Polly Rosenwaike ends her review of Birds by saying she “… wished it would send us deeper into the woods, and more fiercely stalk the mysteries that elude us, disturb us, tear us apart.” Of course readers’ experiences vary — but I disagree with Polly. For me, it is the subtle echoing quality to these stories that gives them their power. They don’t bash you in the head – they are not fierce. And need not be. And there is also the sheer joy of reading such fine writing.

Dani Shapiro‘s review of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, about a grief-driven, remarkable journey of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is an author’s dream. The review is thoughtful, quite moving — and makes me want to drop everything and just read. Forget the laundry, the rest of the Times and curl up with Wild for the rest of the day. I am not quite 20 pages into the book but am already struck by the honesty, the intelligent yet raw writing. And she certainly is fearless: would you head off alone on a 1,100 mile jaunt in the wilderness? The results are riveting. Dani Shapiro writes “”Wild” isn’t a concept-generated book, that is, one of those projects that began as a good, salable idea. Rather, it started out as an experience that was lived, digested and deeply understood. Only then was it fashioned into a book – one that is both a literary and human triumph.” When I read that I thought, “That’s what I want a reviewer to say about my book.”

Bravo to these writers — and thanks for the inspiration. I feel galvanized to go back to my revisions and more bravely bare my heart.

Time


Daylight Savings feels like a farewell to this remarkably mild winter.  I confess to being a little confused about why we muck about with time this way – something about children waiting for school buses in the dark not being a good thing? It just confuses me and this morning, I feel jet-lagged. But I’ll be happy for the long days. There are other signs of Spring –  in this morning’s walk around the house with Tetley (who barked at the squirrels) I spotted these:

The Swiss Chard that bravely hung on through the winter is already promising tasty dishes. There’s a lot to do around here and I look forward to getting my hands into the dirt, feeling the sun on my back as I yank the abundant weeds. But I also think about time. Probably because it was such an easy one, I enjoyed this winter. Off the hook on outside chores, I relished the hours reading in front of the fire without guilty thoughts of weeds to pull, grass to mow, and oh — all those leaves we never raked up in the autumn. The vegetable garden needs attention and renegade Rose-O-Sharon (an insidious shrub, if you ask me) sprouts are popping up everywhere. And the house is in desperate need of painting. But the stack of books waiting to be read is towering. ‘Savings’ or not, there does not seem to be enough time.

Working II

One of my ‘good-job’ barometers is that I should feel at least a slight rush of excitement upon arriving to work.

In the late 1980s I was a Public Information Assistant at the United Nations in New York. A classy job title: I gave tours in English and pretty atrocious Japanese. The UN felt like

the center of the world. Rounding the corner from 42nd street onto First Avenue I saw and – on a windy day heard – 180+ flags of the world flapping wildly. My heart always skipped a beat.  I loved greeting the security guards with a wave of my badge as I entered the employee-only gate behind suited diplomats, loved eating lunch in the cafeteria overlooking the East river (and the food was good too). Opening days of the General Assembly were particularly exciting; I ran charming photographers around the building for photo-ops with heads-of-state and once shook hands with Vaclav Havel. When Nelson Mandela was freed, I stood with my colleagues applauding madly for at least 5-minutes as he waited patiently at the podium to speak.  The massive hall of the General Assembly shook with emotion and then, as we settled and he spoke, you could have heard a pin drop as tears streamed down our faces.  Amazing times there. I didn’t want to live in NYC anymore though, so signed on to a UN peacekeeping mission and went to Europe. (Another story.)

For the past decade I happily walk into the bookstore 5 days a week. Less momentous than the world stage but still thrilling to me, seeing full shelves, spending my day with books and book-lovers. Much of my work happens in a messy little office in the back so these weeks during the holidays of being ‘out on the floor’ (by the end of my shift – I often feel like I could be knocked out on the floor) are a nice change. I enjoy random encounters with customers, sharing favorite titles with the youngest to oldest reader. We are connecting over books. Well, mostly. There are times these days, I also feel like an electronics salesperson. But still, we talk about reading — pretty good for the soul if you ask me.

Writer’s Block

This morning, I’m stumped. I write a sentence, start an idea and delete. Inspiration eludes me. I try to be disciplined about posting to this blog at least once a week and usually, something is percolating by the time I sit down at my keyboard. Something.

Nature never lets me down – some sweet moment in the yard sets me off on a trail of thought leading to something else I can put into words. Yesterday I picked a salad’s worth of arugala from beneath the newly fallen layer of leaves but beyond that, I don’t know what to write.

Arugala gets me thinking about food. I love to read about food but hesitate to write about it since I’m not really a foodie. But I do make a delicious and always different granola. I need to make a batch today as this bowl is the last of it. Oats mixed with a neutral tasting oil, honey, a dash of vanilla and cinnamon spread on a baking sheet in the oven. Turn often until browned to your taste. When cool, add the rest — nuts, raisins, coconut, flax and wheat germ for an even healthier boost.

So easy to make and much cheaper than buying it. I’ve also started making my own yogurt (also featured here sliding in next to my granola) seduced by this video from this site The Daily Grommet I sometimes visit when I should be doing other things.  It’s a simple thermos kind of thing easily improvised – but I was a sucker and bought the whole shebang. It came with two packets of yogurt mix made from the milk of New Zealand cows and did make 2 perfect batches – but buying more of these packets is pricey and defeats the purpose a bit. I’ve used a few recipes from other websites and have come up with some delicious, although still slightly runny batches.

If I wasn’t slightly embarrassed to tell you what I was reading I could write about it. But put it this way: I am reading said unnamed book (currently on the best-seller list) while I watch television (Jon Steward, Stephen Colbert) – it’s not deep or particularly good and we’ll leave it at that. I did read a delightful book (not in front of the tv) recently by a Jennifer Wilson who took a sabbatical from her life in the States to go live with her husband and two little kids in the little town in Croatia where her ancestor’s came from. Running Away to Home  often made me laugh out-loud – she’s very funny with a self-deprecating humor. Jennifer affectionately captures this tiny little village and the characters who live there. I appreciated the glimpse of Croatia – so much a part of my life still tangled with memories of sadder times.

Were I traveling of course there would be no shortage of inspiration, but for now I am content with armchair journeys and following the delightful accounts of not one, but two of my friends’ trips to Thailand. Coincidentally, they were both there in the middle of record rains and floods — but still had great adventures. Check them out.

So there, I’ve written a post. A reminder to myself to just start writing.

Changing Seasons, Stocked Shelves

Foliage-drama is lacking this autumn. Summer droughts and rains, hurricane Irene are all reasons cited for this ‘blah’ fall. Even the usual spectacular reds of my maple tree have yet to appear, the leaves dropping more brown than red. But the flip side is that days are mostly warm and we’ve yet to turn the heat on or even start a blaze in the fireplace and there is still a meal’s worth of swiss chard to harvest from the garden. 

But it’s time to get ready. Today, we will cover the draftiest old windows on this house with plastic.  I’ll retrieve wooly sweaters and corduroy pants from a plastic bin I happily packed away back in May. With far less pleasure, shorts, cotton blouses and flowing skirts (I rarely wear – but somehow, always imagine I might) will get tucked into storage until next spring.

Like the squirrels, I have been hoarding sustenance for the long, dark nights ahead – making piles throughout the house of books to see me through the season.  I picked up Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty from the sale bookshelf at the library (my bus-man’s holiday) because I enjoyed State of Wonder and this ode to her friendship with fellow writer Lucy Grealy has often caught my eye. I also picked up A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah for $2 – a former best-seller I never read. At work I have snagged a few advanced reader’s copies including Thrity Umrigar’s new The World We Found and a first novel by Ayad Akhtar, American Dervish described as “A stirring and explosive debut novel about an American Muslim family struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world.”

Bring on the cold nights and light the fire, I’m ready to read.

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