Pandemic Book Club Grief In Anti-Racist Time

I becomes she. 

She leaned her forehead on the cool green tile of the dining room table, the peonies' blowsy above her, their blooms bigger than babies' heads. The leader of the book club she'd joined on impulse spoke on, enthusiastic. They were reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She had never read this slim novel, was only aware of the movie and Maggie Smith who played Miss Jean. Each sentence was a revelation and the whole book was imbued with sadness and humor. Sadness and humor. They both drove and defined her. Her, not Miss Jean Brodie. The leader of the book group introduced the Tennyson poem "The Lady of Shalott" and asked for volunteers to read a verse. She raised her hand to do so, waved her hand to be seen, a little block in the upper-left corner of the screen. Do you not know how to use the hand wave? the leader asked her, and she answered No, but she was on mute so he didn't hear her. She couldn't wave and couldn't speak. Nevertheless, (she was now speaking in her head and typing like Miss Jean Brodie or was it Muriel Spark?), she was asked to read Verse 5. Under tower and balcony/By garden-wall and gallery/A gleaming shape she floated by/Dead-pale between the houses high. Her own square on the screen was a photo of her, blurry, brushing her hair back in a beam of sunlight over her shoulder. She looked beautiful and it was only four years ago. Today she looked old. Also, fascism. She thought of her Italian grandmother, her illiterate grandmother, her love of Mussolini. Order. Miss Jean Brodie, too, loved fascism. She (not Miss Jean Brodie) thought of the mindset of the time. It was extravagant to be reading this book today, these times, to have these thoughts. The peonies were as big as babies' heads but also blowsy, sensual. Wanton, her friend had written. Sirens kept wailing over the mute heads on the screen. She leaned her forehead on the cool green tile of the dining room table under the wanton peonies, the slim novel the sirens the awe-fulness of everything.

Tripping to Sicily on a Leopard

Looking Sicilian

On Friday night ten people gathered at Casa Aquino to discuss Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel The Leopard and to eat a Sicilian spread. I think we were unanimous in our love for the novel, and the food disappeared, so I believe everyone was happy. Before I post pictures and the menu and have your attention, I wonder if you might hear me out about an idea I have of making this Books & Bakes literary and food salon an online business as well. What I'm thinking is a website where one can download the whole package -- the book suggestion, discussion questions and background/supplemental material and links, a full menu for the accompanying meal and recipes to download with links to where products can be found or ordered. You would, basically, be able to have a literary and food salon of your own, wherever you are and with whomever you'd like to invite, and I'd provide you with everything except, obviously, my physical presence. I'd appreciate your comments and suggestions for how much you'd pay for something like that. Given the constraints of caregiving, I am really trying to get creative with freelance work, so this might be a possibility.

Let me know.

In other news, I am going to Sicily with my sisters, cousin and father next weekend. My father turned 80 years old last April, and we decided that we'd like to take him to the old country. We'll be going to Sicily first because we've never been, but then we're headed to Calabria and the town where our family began. I am not sure what kind of internet service I will have while away, nor will I know if I can post from my phone, but if I'm gone for ten days, you'll know why. I'll take lots of pictures, in any case and post them on Instagram, if you'd like to check out my feed there.

Here's the menu from Friday night and some photos, excepting the dried fava bean soup, homemade cannoli and vanilla ice-cream. I forgot to take pictures of those! I would like to give a shout-out to my cousin Danielle who lived in Sicily for years and helped me with the menu. I ordered genuine Sicilian products from Gustiamo, a wonderful Italian food distributor where she works and highly recommend the outrageously delicious Sicilian extra-virgin olive oil and Sicilian sea salt. OMG, as the kids say.

BOOKS & BAKES

September 30, 2016

The Leopard

By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”

MENU

Campari and Blood Orange Soda

Caponata

Polipetti Murati

Slow-Cooked Octopus with Estratto and Wine

Bessara

Sicilian Dried Fava Bean Soup

Pesto alla Trapanese with Busiate Pasta

Insalata di Lenticche con Menta e Scorzetta di Arancia

Lentil Salad with Mint and Orange Zest

Citrus Salad with Anchovies and Black Olives

Cannoli

Vanilla Ice-Cream with Sicilian Olive Oil and Sea Salt

Big Ole Pan of Caponata

Caponata and Italian Flatbread

Insalata di Lenticche

Citrus Salad of Blood Oranges, Oranges and Grapefruit with Anchovies and Sicilian Black Olives

Polipetti Murati

Pesto alla Trapanese with Busciati Pasta

Looking Together United Them

I decided to serve dinner at the table for this month's Books & Bakes. One of the consummate scenes in Virgnia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is the dinner where all the family and boarders are gathered round the table and Marthe serves the boeuf en daube and Mrs. Ramsay thinks her thoughts and Virgina Woolf so brilliantly mines the mind, the female mind and writes them down for us in a sort of epic of the domestic.

... of grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune's banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture), among the leopard skins and the torches lolloping red and gold...Thus brought up suddenly into the light it seemed possessed of great size and depth, was like a world in which one could take one's staff and climb hills, she thought, and go down into valleys, and to her pleasure (for it brought them into sympathy momentarily) she saw that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting to his hive. That was his way of looking, different from hers. But looking together united them.

The boeuf en daube did indeed take three days to prepare, but most of that was done in the fridge where it marinated. I used my friend Cara Nicoletti's recipe from her blog Yummybooks. *

And she must take great care, Mrs. Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and yellow meats and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought. This will celebrate the occasion -- a curious sense rising in her, at once freakish and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two emotions were called up in her, one profound -- for what could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time, these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.

"It is a triumph," said Mr. Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment. 

We had the above boeuf en daube (prepared, literally, over three days), French Cheese and Crackers, Parsnip Soup, Mussels in Cider, Apple, Kohlrabi and Celery Salad with Walnut Oil Vinaigrette, Savoy Cabbage with Caraway and Cider and French Apple Cake for dessert.**

Cheers with Calvados!








Oh, and while we're looking together, here's my son Henry before the Homecoming dance. I think we can be united here -- however superficially so -- on the dash of this kid. Lest you think he's all beef, I assert that the beauty is as much on the inside as out.

* Cara is an adorable, kick-ass butcher and baker and writer and has just published a gorgeous book about food and literature called Voracious.   I'll forgive her ambivalence about Virginia Woolf because -- well -- you need to go out right now and buy it (and read the acknowledgements).

* I got many of the recipes from the delightful Seattle cookbook: A Boat,  a Whale & a Walrus. The French Apple Cake, especially, was amazing.

Stepping Out of the Eddy

I wish you all could come to next week's Books & Bakes salon. I'm reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse for perhaps the bazillionth time and discovering that it's even more amazing than it was the last time. It might be one of those books that illuminate your present no matter your past. It does for me. I'll be making what Mrs. Ramsay serves at the dinner party around which the book revolves, but I won't tell you what it is -- honestly, if you want to get into the great woman hive-mind, you should read this novel.

When doors slam, they slam and I jump.

But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making white circles on it. "William, sit by me," she said. "Lily," she said, wearily, "over there." They had that -- Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle -- she, only this -- an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him. She had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy -- there -- and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of it. It's all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after another, Charles Tansley -- "Sit there, please," she said -- Augustus Carmichael -- and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for some one to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.

Books & Bakes Re-cap

We missed you!

Here's the menu, a kooky and entirely delicious collection of Shopsin's recipes from his memoir cookbook Eat Me and the above featured Mini Baked Alaskas:

Bing Cherry Vodka Mojitos

Avocado Guacamole

Banana Guacamole

Creamy Tomato Soup with Garlic Toasts

Coconut Rice

Pita Feta Salad with Tabbouleh

Andy's Way Sandwiches

Chicken Pecan Enchiladas

Chicken Pot Pie

Mini Baked Alaskas

The most wonderful, erudite people came last night -- some I'd never met and now call friend. We laughed and discussed the book and ate ourselves silly. 

There's still time to sign up for next month's meeting on June 22nd. Email me if you think you can make it. And have a happy Saturday --

Literary Supper

This picture makes our bungalow look a whole lot bigger than it actually is!

Last spring The Husband and I offered to host a literary supper for our charter school's fundraiser. People sign up and pay to attend a small gathering, and all the money goes to the school. Last night, we had about a dozen people over, some we knew and some we didn't, including our school's principal who led us in a great discussion of Toni Morrison's powerful, spare novel Home. The Husband made an amazing stew of lentils, sausage and chicken with a big green salad and crusty bread. We drank wine and laughed and talked -- a lot about the book and a lot about the world in general. We ate Hallelujah Cake and talked some more before everyone left around 10:00. It was a wonderful community gathering and made me grateful, again, to live in such a diverse city and to be a part of such a progressive school.

Here's the recipe for Hallelujah Cake, which I've posted before and which comes from my Texas friend Johanna. It's a weird recipe that goes against the pastry chef in me's grain, but it works and it's incredibly good. Evidently, it's named for the exclamation one makes when you take a bite.

Hallelujah Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Butter a cake pan. I used a large oval Le Creuset, but you can probably use a 9X12 rectangular

Sift the following ingredients together in a mixing bowl:

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
pinch o salt

Melt together in a microwave:

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
6 heaping T of good quality unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup of water

Pour that wet mixture into the dry mixture and then add:

1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Mix well and pour into baking pan.
Bake for about 30ish minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

When cool, spread with this icing:

Mix the following together and beat in an electric mixer:

1 stick of butter, melted
8 heaping T good quality unsweetened cocoa powder (I use a very dark Belgian one)
1/3 cup milk
1 box of powdered sugar