Random Thoughts for a Sunday

Dan Brown doesn’t care if I think he’s a lousy writer. And I do think he’s a lousy writer. I’m not alone. This article from the London Telegraph shows why, by dissecting 20 of Dan Brown’s worst sentences. And if anyone figures out what on earth Brown meant by “her precarious body,” please let me know! While you ponder that mystery, you can also play with Slate’s Dan Brown Sequel Generator. Plug in Major League Baseball for an especially good laugh.

If that depressed you, try visiting The Manolo’s Shoe Blog for something that will make you smile.

Finally, you can never have too many cats. Or too much bacon.

A Weekend in and around Philadelphia

We just had an almost perfect weekend in the Philadelphia area. The trigger was our friend Joel’s birthday party, which was indeed the best part of it.

On Friday, we drove from the Washington ‘burbs up to Haddonfield, NJ, just outside of Philadelphia. We stayed at the Haddonfield Inn, which is where we usually stay when visiting that area. And we keep going back because we love the place. Friday night, we had dinner at Kitchen 233, which was new to us. I had the Angry Shrimp Pasta, and I loved it so much that if we go back, I’m having it again. Dave had salmon of some sort, which he also enjoyed. For dessert, the chocolate souffle is worth the 11-minute wait.

Saturday, we headed to Camden, NJ, and the waterfront, in order to visit the New Jersey Aquarium, now known as Adventure Aquarium . (If I have the story right, the state of New Jersey established the aquarium, then privatized it.) We really liked it. My favorite exhibit was the hippo environment, which stood out for several reasons. First, finally someone is acknowledging that hippos are aquatic animals! Yes, they’re mammals. So are whales. Hippos spend an enormous amount of time in water, and the West African River exhibit features them as the centerpiece. The two young females are frisky and playful, and a joy to watch. We also liked the birds in that room, because they were building nests all over the place, often flying overhead with pieces of straw.

What I didn’t like were the people shoving strollers into crowds, especially the woman mindlessly shoving her enormous SUV of a stroller into the legs of a cluster of people who had nowhere to go. Ninety percent of the stroller-parents used their brains and maneuvered around sanely, allowing their kids to see the exhibits without being rude to everyone else. The other 10 percent of the stroller-parents shouldn’t have been allowed to breed.

Saturday night was the big event, Joel’s birthday party at Marra’s in South Philadelphia. Joel paid for the whole thing and stayed away from the banquet menu, instead providing antipasti, mussels, pizzas, chicken cacciatore, and birthday cake for all of us. The food was excellent, and the server kept her cool with our large table of about 22 or so (we weren’t that demanding, but it’s still a lot of people). The best part, though, was that guests came in from all over — Dallas, Boston, New York, the Washington DC area, and Jacksonville, FL. Joel himself is living in California now, but wanted to party with his East Coast friends. And I knew most of these people from a fantasy baseball league they’d been in with Dave in the 1980s and early 1990s. It’s a good bunch, it was great to see them again, and I miss them already.

We drove home on Sunday, stopping off in Swedesboro, NJ, to have a quick lunch with some of Dave’s relatives. This was also the virgin weekend drive for Dave’s new Prius, which is definitely worth the fuss. At the time he first added gas, the mileage came to 52.07/mph. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Comfort Food, by Kate Jacobs

After loving The Friday Night Knitting Club, I had high hopes for Kate Jacobs’ next novel, Comfort Food. I will admit that there was a point early on where I felt a bit let down, mostly due to the syrupy perfection of Augusta (aka Gus), the protagonist. Then things picked up, the book took off, and I started laughing out loud. I don’t recall Knitting Club as being this funny, so I am here to announce that Kate Jacobs can pull off the humorous scenes as well as anyone in the business.

In a nutshell, Gus has her own cooking show and, in an attempt to boost ratings, the network pairs her with Carmen, a preening, ambitious, former Miss Spain. Gus already has her hands full with two difficult adult daughters she raised alone, an ex-future-son-in-law, a new love interest, a reclusive neighbor, and a contest-winner, all of whom end up on her show, along with assorted others. I did think Gus was an overbearing mother, and I did not sympathize with her the way I suspect Jacobs wanted me to, but Gus lightens up toward the end. It all comes together, as Gus fights to preserve her career, Carmen fights to start hers, the daughters just fight, the love interest fights to get a word in edgewise, and I fight laughing out loud in public.

(Yeah, it’s a simple plot. It works.)

This is brain candy, by the way. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just telling you. And I recommend it to those in the mood for brain candy.

 Animals? There are two cats who show up briefly and are not bothered or abused or neglected in any way, shape, or form. So this book is perfectly SAFE for animal lovers.

Goldilocks and the Three Cousins — Vacation Part Two: Utah and Idaho

Some family history for context: Mom’s younger brother, Ross, married his high school sweetheart, Joyce, when they were both 18. This was back in the 1950s, when such things were closer to the norm. After a few years, Ross and Joyce had a baby, then moved from their hometown in Illinois to Colorado, where they had two more babies. Then they moved to Idaho, the kids grew up, Ross tragically died of cancer in his late 40s, Joyce remarried a nice guy named Sam, the kids married, at least one of the kids divorced and remarried, they all converted from Catholicism to Mormonism, they all had a bunch of children, two now have grandchildren or step-grandchildren, and they all stayed in Idaho. The last I saw of them was in Colorado, when we were all children. Mom stayed in touch with Joyce, however, so when we began planning this trip, a visit to Joyce, Sam, and the Idaho cousins became part of the itinerary.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down. I even fretted about it, because I that’s one of the things I do best — fret. But realistically, I figured we’d end up somewhere between a disaster and a fairy tale. It was closer to a fairy tale: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, to be specific. Cousin #1 was too perfect, Cousin #2 was too … something, and Cousin #3 was just right! The cousins are aligned by the order in which we visited them, which is not birth order.

However, first we visited Joyce and Sam. As you may recall from the previous post, Dave and I arrived hellishly late and Joyce had to meet Mom at the airport. So they had a nice morning reconnecting and talking about my late Uncle Ross and bonding and all that, while Dave and I tried to recover from our travel ordeal. We then drove from Salt Lake City to Sam and Joyce’s home close to the Utah/Idaho border, and officially began the “visiting relatives” portion of the trip. I can’t say enough good things about Sam and Joyce as hosts. They were wonderfully generous and cordial. Sam is incredibly easy to get along with, and Joyce fell all over herself trying to make us feel at home.

Then it was off to visit Cousin #1 in Idaho Falls. I have pictures, but there were major camera issues during this trip and so I do not have access to those pictures yet. They’ll be posted eventually, although I don’t post pictures of minor children, so it will just be the adults. So why did I deem Cousin #1 “too perfect”? That’s said with quite a bit of admiration, but also a sense that he’s not someone I’d hang out with if we lived in the same city. Different styles, different values, different modes of being. He’s a good guy, I like his wife, I’m sure the 5 boys — 4 of whom are 8 or younger — will grow up to be delightful young men, etc., etc. But really, their house is astonishingly neat and clean with no household help and all those children. This is mind-boggling. There’s a lot of regimentation in their home, which I suppose is necessary with that many children. Also, Cousin #1 gets Masters degrees as a sort of hobby, and his wife takes Serious Classes. I admire this to no end. They are like Vulcans. And I am no Vulcan. We had a lovely visit, we ate pizza, and I left hoping that one of the other two cousins would be from my planet.

Cousin #2 is from my planet, but we don’t speak the same language. We visited her the next day. She lives in a modular home (used to be called trailers, but they really are modular homes) on a vast ranch with her husband and a few of their children. Two of her sons live in a house that the rest of the family abandoned due to sewer issues, but they come by each night for dinner. And a married daughter with children lives a short distance away. There are many dogs, some of which are “indoor” dogs and some of which are “outdoor” dogs. The younger daughter is 18 and in a 2-year program that will give her some kind of certificate deeming her beyond great with horses. She loves it, and hopes to work on a dude ranch some day handling the horses, possibly in Colorado. Dave and I liked her best, which seemed to throw her because she apparently gets lost in the shuffle and has been reportedly quite active doing the teenage-rebellion thing against her parents. Anyway, I asked her how many horses her immediate family owns, and it’s something like 20. But each horse is owned by an individual instead of there being “family horses.” So her mom has 3, she has 5, one brother has 2, another has 3, etc., up to about 20 total. Cousin #2’s son-in-law hand-builds awesome furniture out of rough-hewn cedar. There will be pictures, I promise.

Then it was off to visit Cousin #3, who was my favorite. He’s the one I’d like to get together with in the future, and he might be coming here in the fall, which would be great! His wife is funny and a bit sarcastic, so I could see bonding with her if I had the chance to get to know them better. He shares my love of cooking and made dinner using cast iron cookware, which is something I’ve gotten into lately. Their house was cozy (“just right”), the one son we met was independent without being annoyingly rebellious (“just right”), and we talked about our lives after dinner without it feeling like an interview with a stranger (“just right”). I wouldn’t exactly call this guy “Baby Bear,” but he matched my “Goldilocks” better than the other two.

Then it was off to Jackson, WY, and the Grand Tetons. That will be the next blog entry, some time early next week. I may even have recovered some of the pictures by then.

(Very) Odds and Ends

It’s another link day — cats, cooking, and common sense healthcare.

First, let’s look at the cats. Specifically, let’s look at 1,000 pictures of cats. Some of these animals are absolutely gorgeous.

As for cooking, a question that comes up now and then — and especially now, in the shaky economy– is whether certain items we consider panty staples are cheaper to make at home than to buy at the grocery store. An article on slate tells us one woman’s experience making bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, jam, crackers, and granola. She evaluates not just cost, but taste. The results might not be what you expect. I know I was surprised by one item in particular.

Finally, there’s common sense in health care, a hot topic these days with our devastatingly expensive “system” and the various thoughts on how to address it. This satire starring Fred Willard gets right to the point.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Gumbo Tales, by Sara Roahen

I have never been to Louisiana (as well as Oklahoma, Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Alaska, and Hawaii). But I love food writing, I love spicy food, and some of my more interesting ancestors lived in Louisiana back in the 1700’s and 1800’s. So, after Gumbo Tales received rave reviews, I put it on my list to read once it was a paperback.

Having read it now, my feelings are mixed. Roahen, formerly a reporter for a New Orleans weekly newspaper, sometimes writes with a strong sense of place. Her chapters focus on particular dishes, their origins and evolution, the different ways they’re served and, ultimately, her favorite restaurants. The timeframe for the book includes the year just after New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. As she notes the changes in the community and expresses concern and relief about various neighbhors, Roahen frets over whether her favorite eateries will return and rejoices when she sees signs of life inside their walls.

However … sometimes she rubbed me the wrong way. This didn’t happen often, but I will confess that when she was preparing her first crawfish boil, I was rooting for the crawfish. She also violated my rule of allowing food animals that escape to stay free. Still, her focus on particular food and drink, from sno-balls to po-boys, from pho to red beans and rice, gave the book a nice structure and is a model I’d like to see more food writers adopt. This framework gave Roahen an opportunity to weave in stories about the communities that make up New Orleans, including long-established Italian families and relatively recent Vietnamese enclaves. If you enjoy food writing, read this book.

This blog exists primarily to review books for readers with animals, and with that in mind, I will call the book SAFE despite the fact that Roahen retrieved the escaped crawfish.  She tells of parrots in trees, there’s a brief mention of chickens and turkeys prepared for slaughter, a half sentence about a hermit crab that died in her childhood, and those crawfish, but nothing extensive.

Mmmm, Bacon!

God made bacon because he loves us and wants us to be happy.

Yes, I’m still an agnostic. Don’t be such a literalist — the point of that statement is obvious: bacon is wonderful.

I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner last night, and it reminded me of how much I do love bacon. In a normal week, I stop at having three strips of it at breakfast on Saturday, but that’s just because I also love my arteries and don’t wish to clog them any more than I already do.

The wonderfulness of bacon has made the news in a number of ways recently. For example, a 115-year-old woman enjoys bacon regularly. If it’s good enough for the oldest person in the United States, it’s good enough for me! Of course, she has forsworn alcohol, cigarettes, and sex. Hmm. I’m not a smoker ….

Speaking of alcohol, the Brits have shown that bacon sandwiches cure hangovers. Thanks, British scientists! That is most welcome information.

Closer to home, an undisclosed location near San Francisco was the site of the recent Bacon Camp. I love this article because it mentions bacon-flavored dental floss, links to a recipe for bacon ice cream, has pictures of bacon sculpture, and shows buttons with amusing bacon-related slogans. Missing, however, was “bacon is a vegetable,” which appeared on a t-shirt in the most recent season of Top Chef.

Finally, would Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes have won a challenge on Top Chef? Maybe, maybe not. But if you want to try them at home, here is the recipe. I’ve had a peanut butter cupcake with bacon bits in the frosting, and it was awesome. I wonder if chocolate would be as good. Maybe I should make these and find out.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Toast, by Nigel Slater

Let’s see … bad food, sexual ambiguity, weak stomachs, cold parents? Yes, it must be a memoir of a British boyhood!

You know you’re in trouble when you read the author’s preface to the American edition and he expresses concern that we won’t understand it. And you know you’re in trouble when the 2-page British-to-American glossary at the back doesn’t even scratch the surface. Slater was right when he thought we might not get it. At least I didn’t get it. I recently said of a Russian novel that it shouldn’t have been translated. This book is in English, and yet I’m not sure it should have been published in the States. There are so many brands and food terms that aren’t obvious. I guess this is a demonstration of how regionalism remains a factor in food preferences and the way we talk about food.

Okay, I’m sounding cranky, sorry. There were some amusing vignettes, like when Slater’s family tried the radically different, alarmingly innovative dish called … spaghetti bolognese. However, after Slater’s beloved mother dies and his father takes up with the despicable Mrs. Potter, the silver lining is that Mrs. Potter can cook. We see Slater’s eyes open to the possibilities of good food made well.

But overall, this book was completely wasted on me. I’ve read lots of British novels and memoirs, so it’s not as if I’m unfamiliar with the culture, but this book was over the top. For that reason, I’m not going to recommend for or against it.

As far as animals go, an unnamed family dog comes to no harm. Slater reveals himself to be one of those nasty little children who tore flies apart, and there is an upsetting but brief episode in which two Jack Russell terriers get hold of his pet rabbit. So I’m going to declare this book MOSTLY SAFE for animal lovers, though if you’re a sensitive person in general, you probably won’t enjoy this book for the descriptions of the author’s constant barfing. Bon appetit!

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Eating Heaven, by Jennie Shortridge

Who wouldn’t want an Uncle Benny in their life? He was warm, funny, generous, and attentive to his nieces when they were little girls, and he remains that way now that they’re adults. They needed someone like Uncle Benny in their lives when they were small, because their father was a grumpy, cold-fish sort, and their mother was self-absorbed and somewhat neglectful. So the Samuels girls continue to love Uncle Benny, and when he becomes terminally ill, food-writer Eleanor Samuels — the protagonist of Eating Heaven — moves into Uncle Benny’s home in order to care for him. Isn’t that nice? Except Uncle Benny isn’t really an uncle. He’s the man with whom their mom had a prolonged affair, or so the girls suspect.

The truth about Uncle Benny is a prominent and intriguing subplot in Jennie Shortridge’s story about Eleanor’s journey of self-discovery. And really, this book is about who we choose to love, why we choose to love them, and why we sometimes love people in spite of what we know about them. (I especially like that last part, because I’ve always thought the “in spite of” test was the best indicator of true love.)

I’m a new fan of Shortridge’s. I don’t know if she’s written anything else, but I’ll be looking into that. I thought her characters had great depth, her plotting was excellent despite a few too many coincidences, her sense of place vivid, etc. Having watched my father’s final days last May, I was particularly taken with her descriptions of dying — it was as if I’d given her a checklist of symptoms and behaviors that she then incorporated into a narrative. On another note, with Eleanor being a food writer who cooks quite a lot, there are some of “her” recipes at the end of the book. I like that — if your characters are going to keep going on and on about how great the spice cake is, give me the recipe for the spice cake!

So this book comes with a strong recommendation. As for animal lovers, there is an animal character, a cat named Buddy. Shortridge uses Buddy to amp up the tension a few times, but animal lovers shouldn’t worry about reading this book, which, in keeping with the purpose of this blog, I am declaring SAFE.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of My Life in France, by Julia Child

This book was a delight! Although it is less than a comprehensive autobiography, it does encompass Child’s life in beyond her time in France, extending to the success of her TV show here in the United States. And Julia Child is so … endearing, without pretense except in those instances where she is trying to give the benefit of the doubt to someone with whom she has been at odds.

Child and her husband, Paul, went to France as newlyweds in 1948. She had never been there before, while he had lived there in his 20s and was returning to work for the U.S. Information Service. At that point, she was an amateur in the kitchen and seemed rather adrift in her life, other than having found a partner in Paul and playing hostess to their many visiting friends and family members. As she explored Paris, she fell into cooking, taking classes at Cordon Bleu, talking to local chefs, and allying herself with two Frenchwomen with whom she taught French cooking to English-speaking ex-pats. She and Simone Beck went on to write the innovative cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, taking wildly different approaches to recipes, getting dumped by their first would-be publisher, and maintaining a strong friendship despite the tension these situations created. All along, Child took time to smell the sea air of the Meditteranean, follow Paul to postings in Germany and Norway, and become America’s first celebrity chef.

She was also a cat lover, and among Paul’s many photographs illustrating the book is a photo of their first cat, Minette. There is also a memorable French quote that translates to: “A house without a cat is like life without sunshine.” I could not agree more! As far as animal incidents, there are a couple of negative images, but nothing that keeps this book from being SAFE for animal lovers. I can’t recommend it highly enough.