Hurriposting

Top 5 Recipes: A Wish List (as in, recipes I want to make):

1. Miso Soup
2. Julia Child's Soupe a l'Oignion
3. Baguette (for real this time)
4. Lemon curd. (It's just such a pleasurable experience.)
5. Any kind of gumbo so I can practice making a roux

But as for things I can't stop thinking about eating:

1. Brutti ma Buoni, these amazing Italian cookies my Aunt Grace makes whose name translates to "ugly but good." Italians, you kill it on a regular basis. 
2. Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic as described by Smitten Kitchen

I'm not even hungry, I just keep thinking about roasted chicken, garlic, and those cookies.

So. Not last post but the post before, I told you that there's a book I loved as a child but would not let my own children go near. This statement is not entirely accurate. When I was but a lass, I read these books obsessively (yeah, I know, that doesn't narrow it down. I have an obsessive personality; sue me.) but did not realize, no matter how many times my family told me, that these books were seriously creepy, to the point where I'd be uncomfortable with my child reading them. This is a universe where no one ever dies...even if they've been chopped into tiny pieces with a cleaver or eaten by a dragon. I'm talking about....

I took great pride in having read all fourteen in the series, plus Sea Fairies and The Life and Times of Santa Claus to boot. I didn't have any classmates who had read that many....or any of them, actually. My parents had read them all....I think, at some point, but years and years ago, so I couldn't talk to anybody about these crazy-ass books that I loved so much. 

I'm conflicted about the Oz books because I was not in a great emotional place when I became obsessed with them. When I was nine, I didn't have any friends and my teacher was the first adult I had ever met who did not like me. Do you remember meeting your first adult who didn't like you, or at least didn't like you as much as you were used to being liked? I was used to people loving me, or at least putting up with my weirdness, but Mrs. Lonergan (name burned into my brain via shame and humiliation) did not tolerate a child as silly as I was, and I did not know how to respond to this treatment. So for a full year, I retreated into books (and as I later realized, dance), because I literally did not have anywhere else to go. I was in an emotional state where I didn't see how messed up the Oz books were. I just saw that they were pretty and shiny and the mean guys were punished. 

Apart from the super-creepy "you never die, no matter how hard you try or how much you're suffering" thing that Baum states at least once in every book, the world is pretty awesome! There's a village made of people who are puzzles, there are miniature pigs who do tricks, everyone's pretty much nice all the time, and there's basically no poverty. My favorite of the series has always been The Road to Oz, because it has the most interesting and unusual characters. For example: 

Johnny Doo it, capable of solving any problem ever.

The Shaggy Man, who's basically a hobo, only he possesses the Love Magnet, so everyone loves him and does whatever he wants. He's friends with Johnny Doo it for this reason. He's just irresistible. 

And of course, Polychrome, daughter of the rainbow, who eats things like dew-drops and mist-cakes and whines a lot. But she's hot, so she can get away with it. 

It's a magical world....but still super weird. What do you think? Are the Oz books too creepy to let your kids read? I doubt I could handle reading them to my children. 

Swiss Pumpkin: Reichl disappoints

When I was growing up, I loved reading Ruth Reichl's autobiographical book Tender At the Bone. I identified with a child who grew up in the kitchen, as my parents regarded my sisters and I as really short sous chefs. (Parents, I jest.) I once tried to make a tart that she describes as transcendental, but I found it pretty pedestrian. "Surely," I thought, "surely I must have gotten it wrong!" I tried closing my eyes while eating it, but it was seriously underwhelming.

I'm beginning to think Ruth Reichl is just terrible at recipes (not to mention relationships. Burn!), because yesterday, Alice and I made her recipe for Swiss Pumpkin and it was terrible. We had gotten a free pumpkin at Harvest Fest, and weren't sure what to do with it, so I suggested this recipe that I had read about so many times. Reichl invented it and apparently made it multiple times for lots of people, all of whom received it favorably.

Here's how it works. You hollow out a pumpkin, layer it with French bread and some kind of Swiss cheese, then fill it up with cream and bake it at 300 for 2 hours. Simple enough. I remembered my mother making this for us when I was little, ladling out pumpkin soup straight from the pumpkin. We swapped cream for whole milk because we could get that free from the dining halls and took some cheddar from lunch. I knew it probably wouldn't taste as strong, but figured it would work out fine. For bread we went to Hungry Ghost and got a French batard that had made astounding French toast that day for breakfast. Everything was ready to go.

I first became suspicious when the recipe called for hardly any seasoning. Nutmeg, black pepper, and salt was all that was mentioned. We added some fresh chives from my Mason jar garden, but for some reason the spices were added last, on top of the milk. Then the pumpkin started to leak from the bottom. It was a little leak, but we were worried that all the milk would dribble out and the whole thing would be ruined. Desperate, we stopped up the bottom with extra bread and baked it in a baking dish.

It smelled pretty good. We scooped out some bread and cheese into teacups and took a bite.

It was bland. So bland. It was soggy, milky bread and some chunks of pumpkin. It tasted like high-end baby food, if your baby will only eat food served straight from a gourd. And in that moment, I remembered why my mother only made this recipe once: because it's not delicious.

At least it only cost five bucks to make.

That charming ingenious pig

Last night, I went to a class screening of Bamboozled that was so upsetting I actually felt sick to my stomach. Without hyperbole, that movie was the most upsetting thing I have ever seen in my life. So when I left to catch the bus back home (why yes, this was a night screening at Hampshire), I felt the need to hear a loved one's voice. I called Emily, which was nice. I really enjoy talking to my family, for several reasons. Firstly, they are my family and I love them and like to know what's happening in their lives. Secondly, we all have very similar senses of humor, so they actually get my jokes. What a welcome change. Thirdly, we tend to share very definitive opinions on controversial topics. Whenever I learn that a friend has a very strong opinion on, say......homeopathy, I usually just change the subject, because homeopathy makes me very irritated and the fact that there are people who think it really works is so exasperating that I'm prone to violent outbursts of the kind that end friendships. So when I call my sisters and the talk turns to brownies, homeschooling, or manners, I don't have to censor myself and can freely say that people who frost brownies deserve to be shot. It's very soothing.

But one of the best things about talking to my family is talking to them about books, especially children's books. Obviously, my immediate family all read the same books when we were growing up; my parents gave us their favorites and they naturally read what we read throughout our childhoods. From age seven or eight till far older than strictly appropriate, my favorite books were the Freddy the Pig books by Walter R. Brooks.

Freddy is a talking pig who lives on a farm in Central New York. He writes poetry, is a detective, plays football, and writes a newspaper....among other things. Freddy does all kinds of wonderful and interesting things, and just because the books are about talking animals (all the other animals in the area can talk, not just the ones on that farm and not just Freddy), does not make them cutesy. Freddy gets involved with starting a republic on the farm, for one, and there's a book about him handling a dictator rat, although that's one I've never read. Some of the books were better than others, but even the worst was pretty good. They also taught me a lot of interesting things, such as what a mustache cup is, a lot of interesting proverbs, and words like "peculiar" and "sophisticated" and "phaeton."

The Freddy books were remarkable in that the supporting cast was every bit as delightful as the main character. Some favorites include: Jinx the black cat who yowled outside people houses in the middle of the night to collect scrap metal for the war effort; Mrs. Wiggins the cow who, while not very intelligent, is full of common sense; Mr. Boomshmidt the circus owner who has animals putting up tents, taking tickets, and a lion for a yes-man. I love them all.

The Freddy books are absolutely books I will read my future kids. Coming up soon: the series of children books that I adored but will not let my kids touch with a ten-foot pole. 

Let the wild relaxation begin!

I love Maurice Sendak with all of my heart (except for the parts that are reserved for the Muppets and Russell & Lillian Hoban), but seriously, "Let the wild rumpus begin!" sounds 10 billion times more exciting than "Let the wild rumpus start!" You need an extra syllable in there, Sendak. Get it together, bro.

Today marks the beginning of Fall Break! I have been so stressed and exhausted this past week, folks, you don't even know. After dance on Thursday, I was too tired to smile, so the contented rush that comes from a really good dance class was lost! What a shame! But now I am on break, and my break started (as all good breaks should) with a trip to the library.

I finally signed up for a Forbes library card, and I have to say that library is stunningly beautiful. It's like the Utica, NY train station: beauty where you least expect it. I've embarked upon an incredible journey this weekend. I am beginning Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. So far I'm about 2/3 of the way into The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which is really good in a horrifying sort of way. No wonder Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett work so well together. They both seem to enjoy seeing how much horror you can pull off when your writing is very compelling. Undoubtedly this series will leave me weeping, but I'm still going to read it....just like how Season 7 of Doctor Who is making me whimper with sadness, but that hasn't stopped me from watching it.

You know what they say: vacations don't count unless they leave you cringing and sobbing in a corner.