Books & Bakes Re-Cap

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup

Last night a group met at my house to discuss Magda Szabo's novel The Door and eat Hungarian food prepared by my old friend Erika. I think we all agreed that the book was wonderful and the meal outstanding. The novel is about the complicated relationship between a peasant woman and an intellectual writer, taking place in the sixties in communist Hungary. Erika, a native Hungarian, informed us of the novel's distinct "Hungarian-ness," but each of us found something to relate to whether it was female friendship, the role of caretaker and receiver, the complexities of mother/daughter relationships and even that of writing and material. The book was written in the 1980s and only recently translated into English, but The New York Times included it on their list of the Ten Best Books of 2015. It's a short book, but I think most of us at Books & Bakes would recommend it.

Now, the menu. Good Lord, ya'll. Not only is Erika a beautiful writer, a Caretaker Extraordinaire of a beautiful little girl with severe disabilities, but damn. She can also cook. I milled around the kitchen a bit before acquiescing entirely to her skill and concentration preparing authentic Hungarian dishes. I won't divulge that the night before I had attempted to make a traditional Hungarian pastry that I had to throw in the garbage and left me in tears. I thought I'd lost my touch, but Erika assured me that the recipe I was using was at fault. Perhaps that's true, but I think that I have too many proverbial frying pans on the fire and have just lost my mind. I guess I just divulged that.

Here's the menu:

Mulled Wine forralt bor
Cheese Biscuits Pogacsa

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup Meggyleves
Meat-filled Crepes Hortobagyi husos palacsinta
Mushroom-filled Crepes
Chicken Paprikash Paprikas csirke
Mushroom Paprikash Gombaporkolt
Hungarian Cucumber Salad Uborkasalata
Dumplings Galuska
Hungarian Pickles

Assorted Traditional Hungarian Pastries

Lacrosse and Weekend Recap

Henry and I left Friday afternoon for Palm Springs where he played about seven thousand games of lacrosse while I watched.

Here are a couple of good action shots. Henry is the one on the far left at the edge of the photo, number 15.

Here's another one:

Here's me, watching the field. I have a really shitty sports-mom chair that is sort of broken, and because it was Palm Springs, and the sun was shining mercilessly at times, I rigged my sweater as a sun shield and hid out.

Normally, I wouldn't post such an alarmingly close photo of myself, but I sort of like the weirdness of the colors -- my upper lip has entirely disappeared into what appears to be lily-white skin (that I've never had), there's an enormous line running down the center of my forehead (that I've had for a short time, but it appears to have lengthened and deepened), and some horrifying crepey substance below my neck which I swear to you is NOT my skin. All moles (beauty marks) and errant eyebrow hairs are original. Posting this here is a rather vain attempt to purge myself of vanity. Humor me.

I also got to do my favorite thing which is to sleep in a hotel bed made up with white linens. I threw myself down onto this bed on both nights we stayed in the hotel, eventually making my way under the duvet with my little chapter of War and Peace (yes, I'm still going strong with a chapter a day, are you?) and then a few pages of Magda Szabo's The Door (my Books & Bakes selection for January) before literally crashing around 9:15. Henry, I believe, watched television from his own bed and claimed that I snored. Good thing he's so handsome. Here he is taping his lacrosse stick.

Here's a photo that I took at sunrise from the balcony of our hotel room, where I most certainly did not snore:

In all seriousness, being the parent to a teenaged boy is really the best, especially when your son is nearly always charming and patient, drives well on southern California freeways and never complains. All of the superlatives more than make up for having to charade as a sports mom which means yelling out every now and then in excitement, wincing when said teenager goes sprawling into the ground, tolerating the Screaming Dads and every now and then throwing in a comment or observation about the game which appears out of my mouth like a sort of cartoon bubble. Since I barely know any of the other parents on the team (there are actually some really great ones this time around), I imagine they think I know what I'm talking about, but I can assure you, Reader, I absolutely do not know what I'm talking about when I talk about lacrosse.

What happened up there is that Henry came running toward me -- I mean, the player with the ball -- and I was able to take that amazing action shot. Two seconds later, he lay sprawled on the ground, and good lacrosse mom that I am, I barely winced and certainly didn't gasp and might have even yelled at the ref, but I can't remember.

Did I say anything about living in southern California and how fantastic it is? This venue was just a two hour drive from us -- desert and blue skies and snow-capped mountains ringing the fields. Whoa. Right?