OK, the new recipes will have to wait. The bags are packed with sand toys and the collapsible fire truck and many books that we won’t have time to read, because it’s vacation with the kids! But it’s still a vacation, and that is good.
See y’all later.
1 comment June 15th, 2006
I know, I know, we’re all a little tired of the housewife chic shtick. So don’t read Flanagan, read Jen Lawrence’s thoughtful, balanced review of
To Hell With All That and her fascinating profile of Caitlin Flanagan.
Here’s a taste of Jen’s essay:
[Flanagan] writes the way she writes — gorgeous, inclusive prose, followed by a surprise sucker punch to the kidneys — because she knows it will incite rage, generate buzz, increase her stock, and allow her to call the shots with her publisher and the media. She presents the way she presents so that she can, in fact, have a successful writing career and still be at home in time to make a hot meal. She has constructed a persona that works for her; that her words leave deep wounds among her fellow mothers is irrelevant. Heat sells better than light.
And now I’m going to post some more recipes here so you aren’t stuck making Flanagan’s burritos.
1 comment June 15th, 2006
Cooking energy and writing energy never used to go hand in hand for me. When I was working on my dissertation, I would fuel my writing with periods of Snapple iced tea and Hershey’s kisses (my very-vanilla stimulants of choice), not stopping to cook a proper meal for a while. Then when the writing was going badly, I would cook and cook and cook: breads, cookies, elaborate, multi-course dinners. It was always one or the other.
Lately, though, cooking and writing energy seem to be coming together. Recently I was in a lull with both, though I didn’t realize it until one day when I got annoyed with Tony for cooking the boys scrambled eggs for lunch, the dinner-of-last-resort I’d been counting on making them. Thinking back, I realized we’d pretty much been alternating pasta and eggs for several days.
As for my writing, I’d heard an interview with Kenji Yoshino and decided that his new book, Covering, would give me the perfect structuring metaphor for my essay in Mama, Ph.D. Except I hadn’t read the book, nor could I find it in the local bookstore, and I kept forgetting to order it on Amazon (yes, I can give you the link but I still haven’t purchased it). It was all quite elaborate procrastination, of course, an excuse to avoid writing.
Thankfully, the lull seems to be fading. We went away for the weekend with good friends, and the prospect of a weekend at the beach got me digging out magazine recipes I’d been meaning to try. For our two nights away, we packed one small duffle bag of clothing and five bags of groceries. I made this baked egg dish (delicious), grilled zucchini pizza and mushroom pizza (pizza on the barbecue! a first for me, and a hit with the kids) and also these maple sugar breakfast rolls (which I’ll make again, because they’re easy, tasty, and I only used about a quarter of the maple sugar the recipe called for, so I have plenty left over). Finally, I made these nice almond shortcakes, which are so much like wheatmeal biscuits or hobnobs, I may never have to buy them again (delicious with raspberries and cream, or just get out the Nutella jar).
As for the writing, well, I’ll still go look for Covering. But in the meantime, my first column’s up, my second is suddenly drafted, and I’ve got some other ideas percolating. So in fact, I should stop with this and get to that!
2 comments June 11th, 2006
I found this recipe in a recent Saveur, a magazine I’d about given up on. The writing was seeming pretentious, the recipes nothing I was interested in making… But these cookies are simple and delicious.
12 tbsp butter, softened
1/3 c sugar
zest of one orange
1 c flour
3/4 c ground, unblanched almonds
2/3 c toasted white bread crumbs
Beat butter and sugar until pale and well combined. Add orange zest and beat again briefly. Add flour, almonds, and bread crumbs and beat again until a soft dough forms (I did this all — from grinding the almonds and bread crumbs to mixing the dough– in the food processor).
Transfer dough to a piece of plastic, shape into a 3″-wide log, wrap with plastic and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat oven to 300. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment. Unwrap chilled dough and slice into 1/4″-thick circles. Arrange circles on baking sheets, about 1″ apart, and bake until golden, about 20 minutes. Transfer to wire racks and let cool.
Serve with whipped cream and berries or nutella.
1 comment June 11th, 2006
At bedtime sometimes, Ben and I play the “I love you…” game. You know, “I love you brighter than the sun,” “I love you deeper than the ocean.” That kind of thing. Though sometimes we get kind of silly: “I love you crispier than potato chips,” “I love you fluffier than a pillow.”
Tonight, Ben said “I love you saltier than capers and bacon.”
Yes, even the fakin’ bacon is nice and salty.
June 8th, 2006
Reading Beyond Beowulf put alliteration on my mind, and now I’m seeing it everywhere. Enjoy this fabulous sentence from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (a book we should all read, by the way):
“It remains to be seen whether the current Atkins school theory of ketosis–the process by which the body resorts to burning its own fat when starved of carbohydrates–will someday seem as quaintly quackish as Kellogg’s theory of colonic autointoxication.”
June 5th, 2006
Yes, it’s time now for something completely different, a brief break from the boys, the baking, and the book. I’ve got alliteration on my mind because I’ve just finished Beyond Beowulf, the sequel to Beowulf. What? You didn’t know it had a sequel? Well, it didn’t, not until recently, and it is a roaring good read. Honestly, I picked it up the other night, hoping to be lulled quickly to sleep by the gentle rhythms of the iambic pentameter; two hours later, I was still wide awake, racing to the poem’s end.
Now, I’ve always loved a good epic. I learned Latin in high school and happily read all twelve books of The Aeneid in the original. Eventually I took lessons in Greek, too, though I never did well enough with it to get more out of Homer’s poetry than I had in translation. Still, despite undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature, I’d never read Beowulf. I still haven’t, but now I not only want to read that, but then I want to reread Beyond Beowulf. Truly — it’s a lovely story of a people trying to find a new place to live, plus it has trolls that dissolve into inky stains when they’re touched with fire. What more do you want from a book?
June 3rd, 2006