verbatim

Disturbing Book and Movie Week

After all the recent stress, you'd think that I'd have gravitated toward some fluff to entertain me, but you'd be wrong.

People kept telling me to read Defending Jacob by William Landay, not necessarily because they thought it was such a great book but because it's about a boy Pete's age and it takes place in my neighborhood. I really was determined not to read it, mostly because it's in fact about a boy Pete's age who is murdered in my neighborhood, possibly by another boy Pete's age! Thanks, but no thanks. At one point I half-heartedly suggested it to my book group members, all of whom are also moms of 14-year-old boys (Pete's pals), and they understandably looked at me like I was nuts.

To start with, it's not my favorite genre at all—a legal thriller. But more importantly, do I really need to read about a kid who gets stabbed at Cold Spring Park, where we've been a million times for our summer farmers' market, soccer practices, etc.? (Answer: NO) 

But then Barbara invited me to the annual library luncheon, where Landay will be speaking, and I thought it might be boring if I hadn't read it. Or rude of me. So I did. 

Sure, it was kind of fun and interesting to read a book where the characters shop at my Whole Foods, get takeout from that Chinese place we tried but didn't like, go to JP Licks for ice cream, etc. But the story of an assistant DA who is supposed to be handling a murder case but then is taken off it because his own son is the prime suspect ... too upsetting. 

If you like legal thrillers and don't have a teenage son, you might like it. It's not badly written, and the premise is fascinating, with quite a few plot twists and turns, and some memorable and well-drawn characters. Too close to home for me, though.

So, to lighten things up a bit, we watched Flight. Oh. My. God. Denzel Washington plays a veteran pilot who makes a heroic landing of a plane that is quite literally falling apart in the sky. Everyone agrees that if anyone else had been behind the controls, there wouldn't have been a single survivor (as it was, 2 flight attendants and 4 passengers died, out of a total of 102 "souls" on board, as they kept putting it). The only problem is that the pilot is an alcoholic and a drug addict and was under the influence of any number of substances at the time of the miraculously successful landing. And, as you might expect, that kind of complicates things.

Pete wanted to watch this movie with us, and I'm very glad I decided against it. A few reviews suggested that it would be OK for a teen, but I am here to tell you that it is most definitely not. Some of the scenes were quite gritty and upsetting, but then again, some of them were a little too positive. I won't say that alcohol and drug use are necessarily glamorized, but I could easily see a kid's takeaway being, "If you drink too much, you can do some coke and then you'll be back to normal." 

It's a very interesting premise for a movie, and I do love Denzel, but it was extremely unsettling.

Next week, maybe I'll just reread Harold and the Purple Crayon and watch Oklahoma! a few more times.

Sh-Sh-Sh-Shattered

On Saturday I had just gotten onto Route 128, driving Julie to her soccer game, when suddenly there was a huge THUNK on the roof. I looked up at my sunroof, which was covered in spiderweb-like cracks—completely shattered. I don't know for sure what happened, but I guess a piece of a bridge or maybe a rock fell as I went under an overpass. (On my way back home, I noticed there are quite a few overpasses on that stretch of the highway, although I wasn't aware that I had just gone under one when it happened.) I'm very glad I hadn't slid the sunroof completely open (it was just tilted up) or else the big, heavy thing would have fallen into the car, and possibly on us! I'm also grateful that they make sunroofs (and windshields) out of such strong glass, because otherwise we would have been covered in a million tiny shards.

As luck would have it, I already had an appointment to drop off my car for body work, because I'd had my first-ever fender-bender the previous week, when I clipped the corner of another car as I was pulling into a parking spot (also with Julie, who will probably never want to ride in the car with me again!). My first two insurance claims ever, and both in the same two-week span! There goes the $100 "good driver" savings on my deductible.

Thank heavens no one was hurt in either incident, except for a double case of shattered nerves (mine, not Julie's).

Aftermath

I don't need to tell you anything you've seen on the news fifty times already or can easily Google. Instead I'll tell you what went on here, in my home and in my family, in my heart and in my brain.

For those first few days after the marathon bombing, I don't recall feeling particularly scared or unsafe, even though the suspects had yet to located or even identified. I was mostly thinking about the people who'd been killed, and the many more who'd been injured, and all their families. In fact, on Tuesday, I took the kids out to do some spring shopping at Target and Old Navy, which are located in, of all places, Watertown. It's the next town over—really, we live just about 5 miles from where all the action was about to take place! The next day or two went by as usual; I kept an eye on the news but still didn't really stop to imagine that the bad guys were anywhere nearby. All three kids had dentist appointments and chiropractor appointments; on Thursday Pete turned 14 (!) and Andy met us for lunch at Minado, our favorite place to overindulge.

Then all hell broke loose. We later learned from friends in Watertown that they were awakened in the middle of the night either by a robocall from their Chief of Police telling them to stay inside or by police knocking on their doors so they could evacuate and check their houses from top to bottom. One guy we know was driving home to Watertown at about 2:00 a.m. after some late-night festivities and was stopped and forced out of his Honda at gunpoint. Once he was identified and cleared, the police were extremely polite and apologetic and escorted him safely home. I had no idea any of this was going on; the robocall from my Chief of Police woke me at 7:00 to alert me to the lockdown here. Andy had already left for work an hour earlier, so he was stuck there.

(Note: There are people out there who seem to think that this was some sort of official martial law scenario. I'm here to say that it didn't feel anything like that. For one thing, there was never an order to stay off the streets, never a warning that we would be arrested or fined or anything like that. It was instead strongly recommended that we "shelter in place" both for our own safety, since there was obviously a violent and desperate man on the loose, and also so that the law enforcement folks could do their job without having to worry about bystanders getting caught in crossfire, or traffic in the way of a chase. It seemed to me an entirely reasonable request. I also know that it wasn't an order because I saw some cars go by my window—not nearly as many as usual, granted—and because I know people who did leave their houses for various reasons. No problem. The streets leading into and out of Watertown were in fact blocked off, for what seem to be pretty obvious reasons. I don't know why people are imagining that this had become some kind of fascist police state nightmare. Every single person I know who had anything to do with the police reported nothing but helpful, understanding, and professional interactions.)

For the rest of the day and evening I followed the news closely, learning what was going on at the same time as everyone else, or perhaps a little sooner because I follow so many Bostonians on Twitter. Being under lockdown, I felt both safe and unsafe. I tried throughout not to let the kids be aware of my unsafe feelings, and it helped immensely to be in touch with friends and family via Twitter and Facebook. And I was very happy when Andy got home in the middle of the afternoon! We had plenty of food in the house and nowhere else we needed to be, so shelter in place we did. (The kids were supposed to go to Fenway with their grandparents that evening, but the game was postponed, as was soccer practice.) And then, finally, it was all over. The last thing I said on Facebook before going to bed was, "A huge THANK YOU to the local and state police for getting the bad guy before my kids' bedtime." 

I say "all over," but of course I mean just the manhunt. At all the Saturday soccer games there was a moment of silence for the 8-year-old boy who died on Monday, since his team is in our league. Not a lot of dry eyes at that moment, I'll tell you. The bomber is right now in the same hospital where dozens of victims are still in critical condition or waking up to a life without legs. Boylston Street is still closed off as a crime scene, and a makeshift memorial has been set up a few blocks away. Ten minutes from now there will be moment of silence, exactly one week after that first bomb went off and rocked our world. Pretty much everyone is back to school and work now, but I imagine it will be a good long while before we feel anything like back to normal. Or maybe we'll all just have to learn a new version of normal.

I'm really proud of Boston. I'm proud that we host the greatest marathon in the world. I'm proud that our world-class police officers worked tirelessly for days and did the job exactly as they were supposed to. I'm proud that our citizens did everything they could to help, from submitting cellphone photos of the bombing to donating blood to housing runners who were stranded in the city to staying indoors when asked. If you're proud of us, too, consider giving a donation to The One Fund to help those who were most affected by this event.

Safe

I'm nowhere near ready to post any kind of coherent thoughts about what happened yesterday, but enough people have contacted me to check in that I figured I should at least let you all know that everyone Chez Verbatim is safe. We were nowhere near the Boston Marathon finish line when the blasts occurred, and we've been able to account for all of our friends who were either running or watching downtown. We are lucky.

This has always been my favorite day to be a Bostonian, and I was just bragging to someone last week from out of state what a day of "good, clean fun" it always is. It's Patriots' Day, so lots of people are off from work; it's public school vacation week, so kids are all out and about; there's always a morning Sox game, so downtown is extra-packed; and the marathon itself is obviously a world-class sporting event that we are proud to host. Over the years I've posted how much we enjoy our short walk down the street to where the runners pass the 16.5-mile mark; sometimes we spot someone we know, but mostly we just cheer on everyone who passes. So, yes, I'm sad and I'm scared, but I'm also furious that our beloved marathon has been forever marred in this way—what will happen next year? It's too much to consider.

Girls in White Dresses with Blue Satin Sashes

A few of my favorite things:

Check out these 8 bizarre sounds you've made without realizing it, and the foreign languages that use them. If you want to do this the fun way, read the text and try to make the sounds yourself before watching the video.

The amazing folks at xkcd have made a poster out of their awesome comic showing every subway system in North America—and attaching them, so you can, say, get from Cleveland Circle in Boston to Cleveland.

I'm not sure I can live if someone doesn't manufacture these Pantone undies.

Here are some photos of famous authors when they were teens.

I've been using the iPhone app Moves for a while now, just for fun. It counts how many steps you walk or run and combines it with a GPS so you can track your travels all day. Every time you arrive somewhere, it marks the spot and then you can either choose from the list of nearby place names (Were you at Starbucks or the bank next door?) or type in your own name for the place (Mom's house). It's not useful for anything other than seeing how much you've walked (and not even in miles, just steps), but it is fun. (This past Monday was my all-time record since I started using it: 5906 steps! I think that's probably about a mile, right?)

Two Books, One Movie, Zero Thumbs Up*

Book #1: Ben Ryder Howe's memoir My Korean Deli details a couple of years in his life when he and his wife and mother-in-law bought a "deli," which is apparently how New Yorkers refer to all convenience stores (which I find puzzling, since "New York deli" means something very specific to me, and has nothing to do with Slim Jims and quarts of Miller Lite). The synopsis at Amazon says, "This warm and funny tale of an earnest preppy editor finding himself trapped behind the counter of a Brooklyn convenience store is about family, culture and identity in an age of discombobulation." Which is true, I suppose, except it wasn't all that warm or funny, and I failed to find any great insights about family, culture, and identity in any age at all. Howe, who is a writer and former editor at the Paris Review, comes across as both prententious and kind of a dimwit. We never really get to know his wife and mother-in-law at all, aside from the fact that they're Korean (which is why it's a "Korean" deli, I guess), and I found his imitations of his mother-in-law's accent tiresome. Situations are set up and then never fully developed, anecdotes are just strung together with no rhyme or reason, and the writing is mostly very pedestrian (except when it suddenly gets very fancy-shmancy). The only parts that perked me up a bit were where he was describing what it was like to work with George Plimpton.

Book #2: My book group picked something I never would've even considered, which is often a good thing but not this time: A Week in Winter, the last novel by Maeve Binchy. This is the fluffiest of fluff, full of sappy two-dimensional characters in a thoroughly predictable plot: a bunch of very different people all spend a week in a restored bed-and-breakfast on the west coast of Ireland. Each one comes to a better understanding of himself/herself by the end of the week (well, all except one, of course), because it's such a magical place. Snore. Our book group hasn't met yet to discuss this, but I expect the blender drinks to be coming out a little earlier than usual this time. 

Movie: So we start watching Spartan, and I'm thinking, "Could Val Kilmer be the worst actor alive?" and then Andy asks me, "What the heck is this movie even about?" and then I say to him, "This sounds like a bunch of actors who are reading a David Mamet screenplay but don't know how to act in one" and Andy agrees. Then he glances at the Netflix DVD sleeve and—gulp—discovers that it was written and directed by Mamet! (Which is probably how it ended up in my queue; I have hundreds of movies in my queue and no recollection of how most of them got there.) I've since read through a bunch of reviews and am stunned by the many raves it go; people seem to think that Kilmer's performance was "understated" and "Mametian," but I found it "wooden" and "laughable." Even Bill Macy couldn't save this—he knows how to do Mamet but had just a tiny part. Anyhow, this is about a special-ops guy who is supposed to rescue the president's kidnapped daughter, blahblahblah. Boring. We usually love Mamet movies, but this one was a dog.

*Which is how I feel about the loss of Roger Ebert, who came to mean so much more to me beyond his movie critic persona. His presence on Twitter was something I looked forward to on a daily basis, from his entries in the New Yorker's weekly cartoon caption contest to his political essays to his thoughts on life and death and everything in between. Rest in peace.

Steak Night

Last night I tried a new steak marinade I found at Leite's Culinaria. It's Korean-style, although it's not authentic bulgogi. I had everything I needed on hand except for the Coke and the steaks. I did three boneless ribeyes and didn't need to increase the marinade quantities. They ended up a bit overdone (see note below re cooking) but the flavor was very good.

Korean Steak

1 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 cup Coca-Cola
¼ cup toasted sesame oil
¼ cup hoisin sauce
4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 scallions, minced
2 rib-eye steaks (bone-in or boneless) or sirloin steaks

In a small bowl whisk together the soy sauce, Coke, sesame oil, and hoisin sauce. Add the garlic and scallions and whisk again.

Pour the marinade into a large resealable plastic bag, add the steaks, seal the bag, and shake them around till they’re coated in the marinade. Place the bag in the fridge for up to 12 hours but no longer. Flip the steaks around a bit in the marinade every so often.

Pull the steaks out of the marinade, pile them on a plate, and let them rest at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. Discard the marinade.

Cook the steaks however you want: on a grill, in a cast-iron skillet on the stovetop, under the broiler—you can find detailed instructions here, but note that this recipe originally called for big honkin' 2½-pound ribeyes, so the recommended cooking time is considerably longer than what you'll need. In any event, you want to sear the outsides and then cook until the meat springs back to the touch. I recommend you use a meat thermometer—the internal temperature should be 115°F for medium-rare.

Transfer the meat to a cutting board and let it rest for 5 minutes before thinly slicing it.

New Recipe Success!

I've mentioned before that we are not big fish eaters around here, but I've been trying to rectify that a bit. And that includes shellfish, which, while not as good for you as fish, can still be a pretty good way to get some protein into a plate of pasta or rice. My kids had never tried bay scallops, and I was right when I guessed that they would like their size, texture, and mild flavor. And we love-love-love crunchy bok choy and gummy udon noodles, so this recipe was a sure bet. I doubled it, and we had only a little left over for my lunch the next day. It was delicious:

Udon Noodles with Bay Scallops and Baby Bok Choy

3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided use
½ pound bay scallops, dried on paper towels
1 pound baby bok choy, ends trimmed, roughly chopped
½ cup low-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon mirin
½ teaspoon sugar
2 servings fresh or frozen udon (I had never bought fresh udon before, so I got three 9-ounce packages of Nasoya brand for the 5 of us. We had a lot left over, but I don't think two packages would have been enough.)

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a 12" stainless steel skillet over high heat until just starting to smoke. Season the scallops with kosher salt and pepper and add half of the scallops to the skillet. Cook without moving until well browned on one side, about 45 seconds. Stir and continue cooking until lightly browned on the remaining sides, about 30 seconds longer. Remove the scallops with a slotted spoon and set aside on a plate. Reheat the oil until smoking and repeat with the remaining scallops.

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the skillet and heat over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add the bok choy and stir well. Stir-fry until bright green and tender, about 1 minute. Pour in the broth, soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin, and sugar. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low.

Cook the udon according to the directions on the package. Drain in a colander and immediately transfer to the skillet. Toss well and cook over medium-high heat until the noodles mostly absorb the sauce, about 30 seconds. Stir in the scallops and cook until barely heated through. Serve immediately.

Kid Updates, Briefly

Steph got a job as a junior counselor at a local day camp for the summer! She will be with the 4-year-olds, which was her first pick. The only problem is that counselor orientation is June 19–21, and then camp starts June 24. And ... because of all the snow days we've had (yet another just last week), school won't get out until June 26! We are hoping that she'll be able to arrange to take her finals early. She's not the only one in this predicament. In fact, plenty of Pete's friends who are going to sleepaway camp are going to miss their 8th grade graduation ceremony. Stay tuned....

Pete is done with basketball, has already started the spring track season, and will begin soccer this Sunday. Cue endless loads of laundry and nonstop carpooling.... A few weeks ago he went on the 8th grade winter retreat to Sargent Camp for three days, which was a great experience. The first group was up there in 2.5 feet of snow, the second group had a full day of rain, and his group lucked out with cold but dry weather. I knew they would be outside all day every day regardless of weather, so I was a happy mama when I read the weather forecast each morning. And they all had a blast. One of the best parts is that the teachers go, too, so the kids get to see what their teachers are like outside of the classroom—turns out they're all pretty "chill."

Julie had the first of her two All-City Band concerts. Every year they visit two elementary schools; with 15 schools in our fair city, each school gets visited only every 7 years or so. So she was delighted to learn that she'd be playing at her own school, plus another! She was really proud to perform for all her friends and teachers, and then it was exciting to visit another school and play for the audience there. I snuck in to the show at our school and came away thoroughly impressed. The big evening concert for parents is in a couple of weeks. Julie also had her last-ever city spelling bee (wah!). The word she got out on was TASSEL, which she not surprisingly guessed as TASSLE (à la HASSLE). Ah well!

Wild Geese That Fly with the Moon on Their Wings

It's been a while since I posted a compendium of my "favorite things," so here goes:

Marching infants!

Extreme prenatal genetic testing

Massachusetts is having a very Massachusetts fight over its official state rock song. (I'm firmly in the "Roadrunner" camp, in case you were curious.)

From The Onion: Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game of "Big City"

How a Book Is Born

Wow, there are really are 50 shades of gray!

Here's something to add to your Google Reader (that is, until July, when Google Reader will be gone and we'll all have to find an RSS aggregator from a more reliable company): National Geographic has starting posting random "found" photos from their archives. Here, for example, are the captions from three recent (lovely) photos:

• "A Burchell’s zebra at rest in the African terrain. From a March 1909 article about President Theodore Roosevelt’s upcoming hunting trip to Kenya." 
• "Shan man and two priests prepare to set off bamboo rockets in rain, Myanmar, November 1931."
• "A milkman and his terrier pose at the back of a milk truck, May 1948."

Two Movies in the Meantime

At some point during The Time When I Was Too Busy to Blog, I did manage to watch two movies with my kids.

First, we all watched Moneyball. So, you got yer baseball, and you got yer Brad Pitt. To which I say, "What could be bad?" And I'm right. This is a really good movie, retelling the tale of Billy Beane, who managed to put together a winning team for Oakland without throwing around tons of cash. I also liked Jonah Hill as the stats guy who is sort of like Nate Silver. The whole thing just plain works, and if you are a baseball fan, whether you remember every minute of the story from real life (Andy) or have never heard a word of it (the kids) or are somewhere in the middle (me), you will enjoy it.

Then Andy and I watched Argo with Pete. All thumbs up here, too, and again, whether you remember the actual events (Andy and I) or have no clue (Pete), this is riveting. Obviously no one knew the whole story about the concocted filmmaking plot until this movie came out (and, yes, I'm aware that more than a few liberties were taken with the actual story), but we all knew about the Americans hiding out in Iran. The era was recreated perfectly, from the music to the cars to the clothing and facial hair, and I really liked Ben Affleck in this. As far as the R rating goes, I had no problem letting Pete watch—there was some bad language and a few images of hostage situations, but overall nothing offensive that wasn't worth the price of admission in terms of a really good story. Oh, and it was such a pleasure to see Alan Arkin back on the big screen!

Deadlines: Made 'em!

I'm back! As any freelancer knows, you take work when it comes, and sometimes it all comes at once. And sometimes, despite careful scheduling, one project comes later than expected and/or is needed back earlier than expected, and then the same thing happens with another project ... and before I know it, all my time-budgeting has gone out the window. (As hard as that is, it's obviously still way better than when there's no work at all. I haven't had a dry patch to speak of in a few years, but it's very worrisome when that happens.)

Although my specialty area for copyediting is cookbooks, I still do lots and lots of other types of books, and I've done quite a few parenting books. This latest project was near and dear to my heart, as it was a complete overhaul of a classic: The Pregnancy Book by William Sears. In those years when I was busy being pregnant and taking cares of babies and toddlers, the many books in the Sears Parenting Library were cherished and trusted companions. I'm sure I still have a box of Sears books up in the attic somewhere. So, getting to work on this revision was an honor and a real treat. 

But ... at the same time that I agreed to do that big job, I got an offer from a brand-new client for an exciting cookbook project! On the exact same schedule! When they said it was a vegan cookbook, I thought to myself, "Oh, I've done those before," but this one is nothing like those other books. Vedge is the cookbook from the restaurant of the same name in Philly. I had never heard of it, but as is so often the case, as soon as I did hear of it I couldn't stop hearing about it. I don't read GQ, but this month's issue, for instance, has their picks for the country's 12 Most Outstanding Restaurants, and the restaurant in the #3 spot is Vedge. And note that it isn't the 12 Most Outstanding Vegan Restaurants—no, Vedge beat out all of those omnivore places too! At Vedge they're all about taking the most exquisite local produce available and maximizing the natural flavors and textures but with interesting techniques and additional flavor enhancers. The recipes in the book are all doable in a regular home kitchen—no sous-vide machine or brick pizza oven needed—but the results are extraordinary. I'm not surprised to hear that many omnivores go into Vedge not expecting to be satisfied and walk out forgetting that they didn't see a single animal product all evening.

So, both projects are done (which is more than I can say for all the stuff around the house that I've been neglecting for 3 weeks), and I just have one little thing on my desk. I hope to be back to blogging a bit more regularly now.

Postcard from the Comma Mines

Hi everyone,

I have a million tiny things to tell you (no, nothing earth-shattering) but am instead killing myself to make two—count 'em, two!—big deadlines on Monday.

See you on Tuesday!

Love and miss you,

Karen

Book Group

Last night we met to talk about The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. This is a long and dense novel, written in a very flowery, old-fashioned style (I'm assuming that the translator was true to the original in this respect). Here's the description from Amazon: 

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets—an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

The feel of postwar Spain is convincingly conveyed, and the characters are very real and very interesting. The plot takes a million little twists and turns, which made me want to keep reading despite the fact that I found it to be really too long and drawn out and just plain "overwritten." It reminded me a lot of The Name of the Rose, with its many mysterious characters and seemingly supernatural events and intricate plot, but it wasn't as much work to get through.

I did end up liking this book, but I don't know exactly what type of reader I'd recommend it to—it's too florid and romantic for someone who likes their mysteries on the gritty side, yet there is enough eerie and violent content to turn off anyone who's looking for a light escape. If you've read it, what did you think?

Also: We haven't yet picked a book for next month's meeting—got any suggestions for us?

Family Photos

I don't think I had a chance to mention that Andy's sister Jo has been in from London for a few weeks—visiting all of us and her son Al, who is at Berklee. This past weekend was Barbara's birthday (a BIG one), and as a surprise, Lily flew in from London too! Barbara was absolutely floored. Here are some photos from the birthday dinner at Legal's:

Just the girls:

Just the boys:

The whole family:

You may have noticed that Julie is not wearing her glasses—yes, she finally got contacts! That was the first time she wore them out of the house. She is so thrilled. The first time she showered with them, she was in there a very long time. I finally asked what was going on, and she said that she could never see anything in there before so she was taking the time to read all the shampoo bottle labels! Here are her before and after shots:

And that brings me to another question: After all these years, is it time for me to change the avatar photo I've been using on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.? I still like it, but it is years old. I was thinking of this:

Or should I stick with the black and white sideways-looking one we're all so familiar with? This one is kind of dark, but at least my eyes are open—a rarity when I'm photographed. Please vote in the comments or via email or Facebook or Twitter or voice mail or text message or letter or telegram or smoke signal or horse-hoof stomp:

1. Keep the old one.

2. Switch to this one.

3. Switch, but not to this one.

Thanks!

 

Thursday Link Dump

These are some of the interesting things you would have already been enjoying for a week or more if you followed me on Twitter:

This man takes photographs of his lovely (and tolerant!) daughter in the styles of the old masters.

This is just plain nice, which we all need now and then.

Publishers Weekly lists 10 books that we all (supposedly) read in high school and should reread now. I never read Bradbury or Pynchon.

Guess who got free pizza for spotting a spelling error?

Check out these really cool passport photos from the likes of David Bowie, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and more.

It's true: Cat-friend vs. Dog-friend.

Us old-school book publishing folks love these CMYK playing cards.

Nate Silver Offers up a Statistical Analysis of Your Failing Relationship.

And, finally, this is for those of you who still don't "get" Twitter.

So Meta

One of my favorite online resources is Ask MetaFilter, a forum where members can ask any question at all and get prompt, thoughtful responses. Unlike other online groups that have problems with unreliable, rude, or judgmental respondents, MeFi boasts an unusually large and responsive membership. I've seen questions on health, travel, computers, relationships, cooking, movies, and everything else you can possibly imagine.

I certainly don't read every single question, but when I have time I do enjoy scrolling through the entries as they come up in my Google Reader. Some of my favorite questions are the ones where someone vaguely remembers a childhood book or part of a song or a movie, and invariably someone nails it—usually within minutes of the question being posted. 

Anyone can read the questions and answers, but you need to pay a one-time fee of $5 to ask or answer questions. It is so worth it. Here are some questions I've asked in the past, just to give you an idea of the range of topics:

When I didn't get the joke in a New Yorker cartoon

When I didn't understand what seemed to be a crucial part of Per Petterson's novel Out Stealing Horses (I had posted the same query here but didn't get any responses.)

When Steph had been prescribed an unnecessary antibiotic and I hated to throw away the blister-pack-sealed pills in case a charitable organization could accept them

When I wanted to get Pete noise-blocking earphones so he could listen to music while drumming along

When PayPal blocked me for life because someone else tried to hack into my account (Luckily this happened after I joined MeFi, because PayPal is the only way to join, and I still haven't solved this problem!)

When, just last week, I despaired of ever finding jeans that fit me right (I am now the happy owner of both blue and black Style & Co. jeans, which were on sale at Macy's for $15 each!)

The MeFi folks do not judge, they just answer. I've been happy to provide my own two cents' worth to quite a few questions, and it feels great to be a part of the "hive mind."

What Happened Last Week

This is something that happened over a week ago, but it's been weighing heavily on me, so I'm hoping that the act of writing about it will help me manage the many emotions swirling around inside.

It was a week ago Friday, just after 5pm; I was working, Andy was on the stationary bike, and the kids were here and there. Suddenly Andy shouted to me to come down immediately. He had gotten off the bike and was stretching, and just happened to look out the window and saw our elderly neighbor across the street lying by the curb. We both raced out the door and ran to her. She seemed unhurt, and had apparently just slipped on the ice. It couldn't have been long that she was lying there, because she wasn't yet shivering even though she was soaked from the icy puddle at the curb's edge. She is about 90 and has dementia, so we had to reintroduce ourselves to her although we've known her for about 13 years now. There was a time when she knew all our kids' birthdays and got them gifts, and we used to go over there on Christmas Eve, but for several years now she hasn't known us, although she's very happy every time she "meets" us.

She was alone and had no coat on, so Andy asked where her husband was (they go everywhere together), and she said, "Oh, he's at work." Well, he's also close to 90 and it was Friday night and the car was in the driveway (yes, he still drives), so Andy feared the worst: that he had died and she had gone outside to get help and then forgot where she was going. I ran inside while Andy was helping her up the walkway to the front door. I called for the husband, and I heard him shouting. I traced his voice out to the back walkway, where he had fallen on a different patch of ice! We decided that what had probably happened was that he fell and called for her, but she went out the front instead of the back and fell there. I have no idea where she was intending to go when she fell.

So Andy sat her down in the kitchen and came out to where I was shouting for him. The husband was lying face down in the snow and had clearly been there 20 or 30 minutes anyhow. (He had been trying to shovel a path to the garage.) He was completely lucid and could thrash around but couldn't get himself up. We managed to hoist him up (and in the process threw out our backs and were lucky to get squeezed in for chiro appointments on Monday), but he couldn't stand. I ran in and got a kitchen chair, wedged it into the snow, and Andy plopped him in it. 

I ran back in and called 911 while Andy waited out back and held the husband upright in the chair. Meanwhile, the wife had vanished, and I panicked but soon found her upstairs trying to get into dry clothing. 

While we waited, we managed to find their kids' phone numbers. We reached the son and left a message for the daughter. Then came all the excitement with the firetrucks and EMTs. They took them both to the ER to check them out, and we knew that the son was on the way, so we closed up the house and went home.

I went over the next day and saw them, and they were both fine, and very grateful. The daughter was there, and she pulled me aside to say that she's been trying for 3 years to move them to an assisted living place, but they won't hear of it. She can't legally force them to move, and they simply refuse. She said to them in front of me, "If Karen and Andy hadn't found you, you would have frozen to death overnight!" and she's right, but they do not want to give up their home and their independence. It's an awful situation.

All I keep thinking about is WHAT IF Andy hadn't noticed her lying there? It was getting dark, and we live on a side street that is not very well lit and doesn't get much traffic. WHAT IF she had in fact gone out the back door and slipped right next to her husband? No one would've known they were out there. WHAT IF they were our parents? I have lost so much sleep worrying about them, and there's nothing I can do.

Lotsa Movies

So first we watched Skyfall with Pete. I was shocked and dismayed to see that I had originally dismissed Daniel Craig as the new Bond, because now I think he is teh awesome. (I realize that I was already there last time around, but I'm still not happy that I didn't fully appreciate him the first go-round.) So this is a typically exciting Bondsian romp, which is a good thing, and wow, Craig is just as gritty yet cool and sexy as you could want. <fanning self with Netflix return envelope>

Then it came to light that neither Steph nor Julie had ever seen Back to the Future, which is pretty close to grounds for calling DSS, so we remedied that asap. Oh boy, it is still just as much fun as ever. If you, like me, haven't seen it in a long time, you could do a lot worse than spend a couple of hours with this one.

Next up was The Devil Wears Prada, which Pete claimed to have already seen (when? why?) and was off at a friend's house anyhow, so we watched with the girls. This was a gem. Meryl Streep continues to just be able to do anything she wants, and very well, while Anne Hathaway is as adorable as ever. We also loved Stanley Tucci in this one. (Budding journalist takes job at fashion mag under dragon-lady boss. Maturation ensues.)

And, finally, last night we all ate dinner picnic-style while watching Once, per the recommendation of Twitter pal @hieronymus. It's rated R, but this is solely because of a shitload (whoops) of f-bombs. There is no sex, no nudity, no violence, and no gore, just lots of swearing. It's the story of a guy and a girl (seriously: in the credits they are listed as "Guy" and "Girl") who meet and make some beautiful music together. That's not a euphemism: He is an Irish singer-songwriter waiting for his big break, and she is the Czech who nudges him toward that. I regret to admit that we had to turn on the subtitles because their accents were so tricky to navigate that we were missing out on the dialogue, but otherwise this is a small but lovely, sweet, and just plain charming movie.

And Then I Read...

Two more book reviews for you:

I enjoyed Kathleen Flinn's memoir The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry. The subtitle is Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School, referring, of course, to Le Cordon Bleu. Flinn is a corporate workaholic who suddenly finds herself downsized out of the company, with no plans for her "next step." She decides to take advantage of the work hiatus to chase her lifelong dream of graduating from Le Cordon Bleu. With a smattering of grade-school French and no experience in a "real" kitchen, she takes a leap of faith and enrolls. Each chapter describes a particular cooking lesson, including everything from how to properly "turn" (cut) vegetables to how to butcher a rabbit, as well as descriptions of her explorations of Paris with her new friends, who are attending the school from all over the world. This book won't knock your socks off, but it made for interesting reading and I ended up feeling much more a part of the author's world during that time than I did when I read Service Included, another in the "woman embarks on intense food-related career" genre (see that review here).

Next up was another slim novella from Stewart O'Nan, author of the much-acclaimed Last Night at the Lobster (glowingly reviewed here). This one was The Odds: A Love Story, which tells the story of Art and Marion, a couple in their early fifties who are facing likely divorce and even likelier bankruptcy. With nothing else to lose, they cash in their meager savings, book the honeymoon suite at a resort on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for Valentine's Day weekend, and plan to double their money or go bust at the high-stakes roulette tables. (Art has devised a "system" for betting.) During the days, they do some schlocky sight-seeing, both hyperaware of the difficulties they face and the mistakes they've made but trying to make the best of it. This book was a pretty depressing statement on the stagnation of marriage. I didn't feel that O'Nan presented Art and Marion in a balanced way—I think he meant to have us feel that both deserved equal blame and credit, but I didn't. A weird problem I had was that because of their names, I kept thinking that they were much older than me and Andy. I have probably met a couple of Arthurs younger than 60, but not any I can think of, and I definitely have never met a Marion younger than 70. O'Nan is 51, so I don't know what he was thinking—people our age are named Sue and Mike and Lisa and Dave! So I had to keep reminding myself that this story was about my contemporaries, not my parents' contemporaries. And finally, I thought the ending came too abruptly. All that being said, I did enjoy myself while reading it—O'Nan is a terrific writer—so I think you could do worse than spend a few hours enjoying the dialogue and the prose even though the story is pretty much a downer.

Blizzard Baking

Hey, everyone! It finally stopped snowing! We ended up getting something like 25" here, but we never lost power, so I won't complain (much). While the snow fell, we ate, watched movies, ate, read, ate, played games, ate ... that sort of thing. 

And Julie baked! Years ago I clipped a page from the Sunday Times magazine that listed three variations on chocolate-chip cookies: thin and crisp, flat and chewy, and thick and gooey. We are all about flat and chewy here, so that's what she made. They were delish:

Flat and Chewy Chocolate-Chip Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour
1¼ teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon kosher salt
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups packed light brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups chopped bittersweet chocolate (chunks and shavings)
2 cups chopped toasted walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 325°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

In an electric mixer fitted with a paddle, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla. Add the flour mixture all at once and blend until a dough forms. Fold in the chocolate and walnuts. Chill the dough.

Roll 2½ -tablespoon lumps of dough into balls, then place on the baking sheet and flatten to ½ -inch-thick disks spaced 2 inches apart. Chill the dough between batches. Bake until the edges are golden brown, 14 to 16 minutes. Let cool slightly on the baking sheet, then transfer to a baking rack.

Makes 30 to 35 cookies (we got only 24).

* * * * *

Julie also made yet another winner from Abby Dodge's Desserts 4 Today:

Chocolate-Banana Soufflés

⅓ cup sugar, divided use (plus more for sprinkling)
3 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 medium very ripe banana, peeled
3 egg whites and 1 egg yolk (large eggs) 
1 tablespoon water 

Heat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease six 6-ounce ramekins with cooking spray and sprinkle granulated sugar in the ramekins, tilting to coat completely. Tip out the excess and arrange the ramekins on small jellyroll pan.

Put the chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl and melt in the microwave or over simmering water. Set aside to cool until barely warm, about 5 minutes. Add half of the sugar, the banana, egg yolk, and water. Whisk until smooth and blended.

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form when the beaters are lifted. Continue beating while gradually adding the remaining sugar. Beat until medium-firm peaks form. Whisk about a quarter of the whites into the chocolate-banana mixture until blended. Add the remaining whites and, using a rubber spatula, gently fold in until just blended.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared ramekins. Bake until the soufflés are puffed and jiggle when nudged, about 13 minutes. Serve immediately. We put vanilla ice cream on top, but whipped cream wouldn't be bad, either.

 

General Yum

I used to be the first one to suggest we get Chinese take-out, but in the last year or so I've found that I often feel like crap after I eat it. I don't know whether it's the MSG or the deep-fried-ness or just the fact that I tend to eat more of it than I should, but it's definitely not my first choice these days. For the Super Bowl, Andy and the kids wanted it, so I went along with the idea, but I tried not to go overboard. I didn't have any appetizers, just some veggie lo mein and a few scoops of General Tso's Chicken (or, as it's usually known in the Boston area, General Gau's chicken*). I felt fine afterward, so that makes me think there's hope.

It also made me think that it was a good time to try making my own General's Tso's Chicken, albeit a version that is not heavily breaded and deep-fried. I made it tonight and it was awesome. We ate every last morsel. 

General Tso's Chicken

1½ teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 large egg white
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon soy sauce, divided use
¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons cornstarch, divided use
1 pound skinless boneless chicken thighs, trimmed and cut into 1½-inch pieces (This was a bit more work than I expected—lots of little bits of fat to cut off and tricky to cut into the right size pieces.)
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon Chinese chile-garlic sauce (I used a scant teaspoon of sriracha.)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for frying
2 tablespoons very finely chopped fresh ginger
2 large garlic cloves, minced
4 scallions, thinly sliced
Steamed broccoli and white rice, for serving

In a medium bowl, combine the toasted sesame oil with the egg white, 1 tablespoon of the soy sauce, and ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons of the cornstarch. (This was the weirdest mixture ever—I was sure I had done something wrong! It looked like peanut dipping sauce for satay and had the consistency of Elmer's glue.) Add the chicken, stirring to coat. Let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the chicken broth with the chile-garlic sauce, sugar, and the remaining ¼ cup of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.

In a large saucepan, heat the 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. Add the ginger and garlic and cook over high heat until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir the broth mixture, add it to the pan, and cook until thickened and glossy, about 3 minutes. Keep the sauce warm over low heat.

In a large, deep skillet, heat ½ inch of vegetable oil until shimmering. Carefully add the chicken, one piece at a time, and fry over high heat, turning once or twice, until very browned and crisp, about 4 minutes. (Someone on the F&W website left a comment because they thought it was a pain to cook each piece individually—um, you just add them one at a time, but then you cook them all at once!) Drain the chicken on paper towels and immediately add to the sauce along with the scallions. Cook just until coated, about 30 seconds. Serve right away, with steamed broccoli and rice.

Oh yum, so good.

*This is something I happen to know: Chinese used to be transliterated into English following the Wade-Giles system but was eventually replaced by the Pinyin system, which more closely follows the actual Chinese pronunciation. That's why, for instance, we no longer say Peking, but rather Beijing.)

Meatless Monday Meets Family Movie Night

Last night we spread out beach towels on the basement rug for a picnic dinner and watched Moonrise Kingdom on our big-ass TV. We all enjoyed the movie, although the kids declared it the "weirdest" thing they'd ever seen. Well, that's what you get from Wes Anderson, who in this case brings us the story of Sam and Suzy, 12-year-old misfits who decide to run away together. The setting is a nearly deserted New England island filled with all kinds of quirky people, including two of my favorites—Bill Murray and Frances McDormand as Suzy's parents—as well as a perfectly deadpan Ed Norton, superbly downplayed Bruce Willis, and others. Tilda Swinton plays a character named Social Services, who gets involved when the couple go missing, because Sam is revealed to be an orphan at the Khaki Scouts camp where he was spending the summer. Sam packs all the camping gear they'll need, and Suzy brings along a portable record player, a suitcase full of books, and her kitten (complete with cans of kitten food). 

The movie takes place in 1965 and has just the right feel for that era—I don't know much about filmmaking, but something about the colors and the cinematography itself really captured the time perfectly. There's always a fairy-tale quality to Anderson's films, and this one probably exhibits that more than most. (I think this is what the kids found "weird.") But it's the off-beat-ness and the fantasy qualities that I liked best. All in all, it's a very warm and generous movie, and a good one for the whole family (if they don't mind things a little "weird"). Oh, and as for the PG-13 rating, there's just one scene in which the couple fool around a little—a very little, as the whole things takes just seconds. It was not a problem.

So, what did we eat while watching this quirky movie? A quirky dinner, of course! I was a little nervous about it, but everyone liked it. Even Steph, my least adventurous eater, said several times that she really liked it! The kids are not happy eating legumes ("too powdery" according to Julie), but these lentils went over fine. I made a box of Goya's Arroz Amarillo (yellow rice) to go alongside.

Lentil Tacos

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
3 garlic cloves minced
1 cup dry lentils, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 (14-ounce) can reduced-sodium vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 cup chunky salsa
taco shells and/or tortillas
Garnishes: shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, chopped olives, shredded cheese, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, etc. etc. 

Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet. Sauté the onion until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute. Add the lentils, chili powder, cumin, and oregano; cook and stir for 1 minute to toast spices.

Add the broth and water; bring to a boil. Stir and reduce the heat; cover and simmer for 35 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Uncover; if the mixture is too soupy, cook for another 5 minutes or until it is thickened. Stir in the salsa.

Spoon some lentil mixture into each taco shell/tortilla and top with your favorite garnishes. 

 

Triple-Decker Book Review

I cleared my desk for a project that was supposed to start on January 4 ... and it's still not here yet. I have very little other work going on, so I've been taking advantage of this lull to have the whole family get sick catch up on my reading. I recently plowed through a huge backlog of New Yorkers and New York Times Sunday Magazines, and I read three books.

1. Our book group met last night to discuss Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. We all loved it. It takes place in Manhattan in 1938 and tells the story of Katey Kontent (her name was the only thing I didn't like about the book!), a young woman from a very ordinary background who finds herself hobnobbing with a group of very wealthy and connected socialites. The writing was terrific—from a debut novelist, no less!—with many beautiful descriptions and spot-on observations throughout. And the dialogue was just as snappy as you'd want for that era—think of all those noir movies where everyone's always drinking martinis and engaging in clever banter. We found that there wasn't a huge amount to discuss, since it's mostly a plot- and character-driven book, with no great overarching themes, but we would all recommend it enthusiastically. You won't want to put this one down.

2. Last summer, Steph's high school's pick for the "One School/One Book" reading assignment was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. She love-love-loved it (and her friend claims to have read it 26 times already), so I figured I'd better get on the bandwagon. Wow. I don't normally read YA novels, but I am so glad I read this one. By some miracle of great writing, Green gives us a novel about teenagers with cancer that somehow manages to be neither sappy nor manipulative. Yes, it's sad, but not all the way through, and it's not the kind of sad where you're pissed off to have been made so sad. It's also really, really funny. I mean it. Green nails the voice of Hazel, our 17-year-old narrator, and all of the dialogue—whether with other teens or with her parents—is realistic. It's really quite a feat. Steph has since gone and read all of Green's other books, and if the giggling from her room is any indication, she is a regular viewer of the hilarious and engaging videos he creates with his brother Hank, known as the Vlog Brothers. Big thumbs up on this one.

3. Then I read Service Included by Phoebe Damrosch, a brief memoir subtitled Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter. This one was a dud. Damrosch writes about being a "captain" at Per Se, Thomas Keller's way-fancy New York restaurant. I was interested enough in learning about the goings-on of a high-end restaurant to keep reading, but all in all I found the story boring and the writing lackluster—and in need of a good editor! I liked the descriptions of the food and the precise instructions the waitstaff had for serving it and for behaving around customers, but I couldn't have cared less about her love affair with the sommelier or her anecdotes about various famous customers (none named except for restaurant reviewers Frank Bruni, William Grimes, etc.). Give this one a pass.

Next up for book group is The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafó. Anyone out there read it yet? 

Me-Oh-My-Oh*

This recipe for jambalaya comes from Leite's Culinaria, and I want to express right off the bat my apologies for not following the recipe to the letter. In the headnote, David Leite says flat out, "There’s nothing, not a thing, that we’d change," and all of the comments echo that sentiment. But change I did. First, I did not have (take?) the time to make my own chicken stock, so I used the stuff in the box. Second, in order to not offend the tender taste buds of my wussy family members, I omitted the jalapeños. I also used smoked turkey sausage instead of what would have been the more appropriate pork andouille. And I don't like green bell peppers, so I used two red instead of one of each. There you go. 

As a gift to you, if you're following the recipe as written on the website and you don't want to make the entire cup or so of spice mix, here's what you need to yield (about) 1 tablespoon for this recipe: 1 teaspoon chili powder, ½ teaspoon cayenne, ½ teaspoon paprika, ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper, ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper, and ¼ teaspoon garlic powder. In order to protect the afore-mentioned tender taste buds, I used only ¼ teaspoon cayenne, used ½ teaspoon black pepper instead of the mixture of black and white, and omitted the garlic powder entirely (there's already 4 real garlic cloves in there, guys!).

What can I say, it came out awesome, and everyone ate a lot of it. With tortillas. There's nothing tricky about the recipe, but there is a fair amount of prep work and sautéing, so just crank up the tunes and get cooking.

Cajun Jambalaya

1 tablespoon canola oil
1 pound smoked sausage, diced
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth, divided use
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, diced small
2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded, and diced
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced
3 celery stalks, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
5 bay leaves
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Meat from one 3- to 4-pound rotisserie chicken, shredded
2 cups long-grain rice 

Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and sear until it starts to color, turning as necessary. Parts of the sausage will begin to stick to the pan. When there is a goodly sausage-y coating stuck to the pan, pour in ¼ cup of the chicken stock and cook, stirring and scraping the skillet, until it comes loose. Let this simmer gently until all of the liquid has evaporated. Transfer the sausage to a plate.

Return the skillet to medium-high heat, add the butter, and heat until it melts. Add the onion and cook until it starts to stick to the pan, about 5 minutes. Deglaze the pan with another ¼ cup of the chicken stock and let this reduce until the skillet is dry. Continue to cook until the onion turns a nice, deep, brown color, about 5 more minutes.

At this point the onion will start to stick to the pan again. Add ½ cup of the chicken stock and simmer. When this is almost gone, add the bell peppers, scallions, celery, garlic, salt, spices, bay leaves, and tomato paste. Cook, stirring often, for 10 more minutes, until things start to stick to the darn skillet again. Deglaze with another ¼ cup stock and reduce again until the skillet runs dry. Add the shredded chicken and 1 cup stock and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.

Transfer the mixture to a large, heavy-bottomed pot and add the sausage, rice, and the remaining 3¾ cups stock to the pot and stir well. You want the mixture to have plenty of room so the rice will cook evenly. Heat, covered, over low heat for 40 minutes.

Remove the pot from the stovetop and keep covered for 10 minutes while it rests. If the rice seems a little unevenly cooked, leave the lid on a little longer and it will even out. When the jambalaya is done, transfer it to a casserole dish and serve. (If you leave it in the pot it cooked in, the jambalaya will continue to cook and become dry.)

*You get extra points if you sing along with Lucinda Williams (or, better yet, I suppose, Hank Williams!) while making jambalaya. Son of a gun, we're gonna have big fun on the bayou....

Movies Etc.

Pete is the last one who is still sick around here, and even he appears to finally be on the mend. He'd been having fevers off and on for a week, and enough was enough, so on Friday I took him to the doctor's office. I was more than half hoping they'd find evidence of a bacterial infection so he could get some antibiotics and get better already. They pricked his finger to check his white blood count, which was normal, so it was the dreaded "just a virus" diagnosis. A few minutes later, however, he had a vasovagal syncope (fun to say! terrifying to witness!), which means that he turned gray, twitched, and fainted. While he and I were alone in the examining room. You can only imagine the extent of my freakout. Everyone came running and quickly assured me that they see this all the time (particularly with guys). Pete has fainted twice before (though not after finger pricks), so this appears to be one of his "things." If I continue to lose 10 years off my life each time ... well, you do the math.

But anyhow, back home, I was just wanting to be next to him (breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out), so I agreed to watch the god-awful remake of Total Recall. I don't recall (haha) too much about the original version with Ahnold and Sharon Stone, but I do remember wondering throughout what was the truth and what was the manipulated memory in the main character's brain chip. In this remake, though, you know that the whole thing is going on in real time, and that the main character is just confused. Also, it would be interesting to try to find a worse actor than Kate Beckinsale. But I got to spend 2 hours on the couch with Pete, so there's that. 

Then, over the weekend, we all (sans Steph) watched Invincible, which is a terrific feel-good flick about Vince Papale, the 30-year-old bartender who tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles with no more experience than a weekly neighborhood game in a mud lot—and ended up playing three seasons for the NFL. Mark Wahlberg does a great job playing Papale, and the folks at Disney got all of the 1970s-era haircuts etc. right. Underdog stories are a dime a dozen, but this one is based on real events (albeit enhanced a bit). I don't even like or understand football, but I recommend this for a family movie night. 

Meanwhile, Steph finally got to have her Sweet Sixteen party, which had been postponed when she was sick. First she and four of her friends had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory (with the rest of us at a nearby table). We'd never been, and although it was fine, I won't be in any hurry to go back. (Overly ambitious menu, ridiculously huge portions, nothing bad but nothing special about the food, pricey.) They had a blast, which is what matters. Then they came back here, watched Mean Girls for the bazillionth time, and had a sleepover, followed by doughnuts in the morning. Perfect.

Sickos

Sorry for the blogging hiatus—I had all the best intentions for 2013!—but we have been sick, sick, sick. Not the flu, thankfully (yes, we got our shots!), but the nastiest cold you can imagine. Steph started us off, then as soon as she got better Julie fell prey. She's ready to go back to school tomorrow, and now Pete has 102°. Oh, and I had it last week, at the tail end of Steph and the beginning of Julie. Andy is the only one who has not succumbed yet, but he says he can tell he's been actively fighting it off, so it's probably just a matter of time. 

In the meantime, Andy and I finally finished watching the fourth season of Breaking Bad, and we didn't know how we could get to watch Season 5, since it's not on DVD yet and doesn't seem to be playing in reruns on AMC (or, as far as I can tell, from the lame-ass schedule on their website). Then a friend pointed me to Amazon Instant Video—ba-boom! We will back in the meth-cooking business soon, my friends. There's nothing like watching a bunch of druggies walking around in a stupor when you are sick and, well, walking around in a stupor.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

At some point last week, I think my family slipped me a mickey, because the next thing I knew I was accepting delivery from Best Buy of a 51-freaking-inch plasma TV. To give you an idea of how crazy that seems to me, suffice it to say that it was replacing a 27-inch Sony Trinitron—and I think the 27 inches indicates how far the tube stuck out in back. 

This TV went straight down the basement—we still have a modest (32-inch) flat screen that lives in a cabinet in the living room, since I'm not one to have a big TV be the center of attention in our main upstairs room. Pete, especially, is in heaven, because now his Xbox games are in HD and I guess all the blood shows up even better! (Nah, you know me—I'm still pretty strict about what games he's allowed to get, specifically no uber-realistic war games. The people who work at GameStop are very helpful when it comes to explaining why a particular game gets an M—for Mature Audiences—rating. Sometimes it's horrific combat violence and sometimes it's just sci-fi violence but with plenty of cartoony gore.) Anyhow, the plan already sort of paid off, because yesterday he had several friends over after school, which was a first—he pretty much always goes to someone else's house because they have a better TV. I wanted to create a basement playroom that the kids would want to invite their friends to. We even got a few beanbag chairs. Woo-hoo, are we fun or what?

Anyhow, the Comcast rep at Best Buy had said that we wouldn't need to pay extra for this TV's HD box since we already have HD upstairs, and we have Comcast for cable, phone, and Internet. But when Andy got to the Comcast store to pick up the HD box, they said it would be another $10/month. I guess the guy felt Andy's pain, though, because he said that he'd throw in a DVR and give us all of the channels. All of them. Yes, HBO, Starz, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. etc.—all those channels that we've lived without for all these years. That, plus the On-Demand thing that we already have, and Netflix ... well, let's just say that if I hear anyone in this house complain that "there's nothing on," I'll scream. 

Over the weekend Andy, Pete, and I watched The Bourne Legacy, which stars Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, the newest super-spy. It was as good as these movies usually are—exciting and fast-paced but not exactly something you'd think about for too much longer afterward. Oh, and big. It was really big.

Movies and Muffins

Happy New Year to everyone out there in Verbatim-Land! I am thankful (and, even after all these years, still frankly surprised) every time someone stops by here, and I especially cherish the comments, whether in the Comments section below, via email, or on Facebook/Twitter. Here's to peace and happiness in 2013!

So, what did we do over Christmas and New Year's? Not a heck of a lot. We celebrated Christmas day in traditional Jewish fashion, by feasting on Chinese food and going to the movies. There was very little playing that everyone wanted to see, or that everyone could see at roughly the same time, so Steph and Julie ended up seeing Parental Guidance, which they enjoyed, while Pete, Andy, and I saw Jack Reacher. Here's the thing: Andy has read all 17 Lee Child books about Jack Reacher, and the main characteristic of Jack Reacher is that he is not only tough and smart and all that, but he is a mountain of a man—6'5" and 250 pounds of solid muscle. He is intimidating just by his sheer presence, let alone his awesome fighting skills etc. So, naturally, the part was given to Tom Cruise. Huh? 5'7" Tom Cruise? Yup, that one. So for Andy, the whole thing was a bust right off the bat. Tom Cruise just flat out can't be Jack Reacher. However, for me and Pete, Jack Reacher is simply a tough and smart guy who has awesome fighting skills, and as much as I loathe Tom Cruise, he sure does know how to play that kind of character (cf. Mission Impossible, etc.). So we enjoyed the movie more than Andy did, although when he was able to step away from this enormous discrepancy, he did agree that it was good.

And for New Year's, Julie baked these awesomely yummy doughnut muffins—yes, that's right, muffins that taste like doughnuts! You know that King Arthur would never steer you wrong. Julie also inadvertently conducted an experiment and determined that you can triple the amount of baking powder called for in this recipe and no one will even notice.

Doughnut Muffins

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1½ teaspoons baking powder (Whoops! Julie used 1½ tablespoons!)
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 to 1¼ teaspoons ground nutmeg (This is what gives the muffins a doughnut-y flavor. We had just a scant teaspoon left, but it was fine.)
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2⅔ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup milk

3 tablespoons melted butter
3 tablespoons cinnamon-sugar (I keep a tub of cinnamon-sugar in the cupboard at all times in case the cinnamon toast urge strikes. I mix about 6 parts sugar to 1 part cinnamon.)

Preheat the oven to 425°. Lightly grease a standard muffin tin, or line with 12 paper muffin cups, and grease the cups with nonstick vegetable oil spray.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, cream together the butter, vegetable oil, and sugars till smooth.

Add the eggs, beating to combine.

Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla.

Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined.

Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared pan, filling the cups nearly full.

Bake the muffins until they're a pale golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the middle of one of the center muffins comes out clean, 15 to 17 minutes.

Remove them from the oven and let them cool for a couple of minutes, just until you can handle them. While they're cooling, melt the butter for the topping in the microwave.

Dip the tops of muffins into the melted butter, then roll in the cinnamon-sugar.

Serve warm. Store any leftovers (ha!) in an airtight container for a day or so at room temperature. 

 

Having Survived the Mall

I've pretty much recovered from my marathon mall episode yesterday, and I realize I left out two important points in my brief summary: 

1. Mark my words: I will never again set foot in Abercrombie & Fitch, not even for 10 seconds. I went in for less than 2 minutes yesterday to see whether it would be a good place for Pete to shop (he's recently discovered a world of clothing options outside of basketball shorts and Nike T-shirts) and left nearly ill. The pitch-darkness is one thing, the deafening music another. But the overpowering cologne that hangs like a cloud is positively toxic. I had to sit on a bench outside the store for several minutes until the nausea and threat of fainting passed. I honestly thought I was going to pass out. It's hard enough to imagine people shopping there, but how about working there? I would think OSHA would need to get involved. (For the record, Pete did pretty well at The Gap.)

2. The food court has quite a few decent options, surprisingly. I always make a beeline for Gourmet India, and it is always excellent. Yes, really, Indian food in a mall food court! Yesterday I got chicken tikki masala and Mugal-style cauliflower and potatoes. Steph and Julie are fond of the Thai mandarin chicken and rice, and Pete can always be counted on to polish off a Turkey Gobbler at D'Angelo. There is a newish place that serves nothing but different types of grilled cheese sandwiches, which is right in my wheelhouse, but I can never pull myself away from the Indian food. (No one else in the family eats Indian, so I don't get many opportunities to have it. Although the Whole Foods on the way home from my chiro's office nearly always has their excellent veggie korma in the prepared food section, so I get that every other week or so.) We are always surprised at how many people wait in line for the McDonald's in the food court when they could be eating what we're eating, or Sbarro pizza, or one of the other options.

Reminder for Next Year

Next year, when Hanukkah is approaching (and, as I've mentioned before, it begins the night before Thanksgiving next year!) and I'm busy thinking about other things and wondering how I can get off easy, please remind me that giving the kids mostly cash and gift cards amounts to a death sentence for me, because then I will be obliged to take them to the mall. Like I did today.

OK, so we spent 7 HOURS at the mall today. Oh, and you know how I'd rather get a root canal than go to the mall? Yeah, that.

By the end of the day, I was so worn out that the kids barely had to touch an item and I'd say, "Buy it. Buy two. I don't care. Just please let me go home...." They totally cleaned up.

Steph loves Forever 21, so that's where she did the most damage. She is also still owed a personal makeup session at Sephora, complete with a $50 purchase. (This is actually a win-win, and that's all I'll say about that—some of you know what I'm talking about here.)

Pete went to three different shoe stores three different times each before he chose his Nikes. The right shoes are a big deal to him. He is also still entitled to order a soccer jersey online that does not cost a million dollars. Which we have not yet found.

Julie is done. She is still (relatively) easy, easy, easy. Although I do want to say that she is at that in-between age for fitting into jeans, and we finally found them at Delia's, but for $50! As I hemmed and hawed, the sales clerk pointed to the  "Jeans: Buy 1, get 1 free!" sign and there was much rejoicing.

Then we came home, and Andy poured the vodka before I could utter a sound, and I will sleep well tonight.

Just Another Friday

You might have heard that the world was supposed to end today. As far as I'm concerned, last Friday seemed much more like the end of the world. I can't tell you how many times in the past week I started a blog post and then deleted it, too heavy of heart and too angry and too despairing to finish. Through tears I wrote about children and parents and teachers; with rage I wrote about guns and gunmen; each time I hit the delete button instead of the save button. 

So instead, today I will wish Steph the happiest of happy birthdays—Sweet Sixteen, if you can believe it! And I will celebrate the solstice, knowing that the days are getting longer again. And, beyond that, I will just hope that this "new cycle" on the Mayan calendar will be one of peace.

Schmaltz!

Remember earlier in the year when Michael Ruhlman (yes, the real Michael Ruhlman!) asked if I would copyedit a small project for him? And then it was a total secret and I couldn't tell even my blog readers about it? Well, the schmaltz is finally out of the bag.

Yes, that's right, the schmaltz. Never one to shy away from controversial topics—in fact, dare I say, always one drawn to controversial topics—Michael had heard of schmaltz before, but it wasn't until his neighbor Lois was talking about all the cooking she had to do for Rosh Hashanah and all the schmaltz she had to make that Michael's ears really perked up.

Wait, schmaltz? What the heck is schmaltz? Well, if you're like me (by which I mean a Jewish American who grew up a few decades ago), schmaltz was something your mom kept in a little glass jar in the fridge so that she could make chopped liver and other goodies. It's rendered chicken fat cooked with onions, and it's the base of many traditional Jewish foods, from the aforementioned chopped liver to kishke, knishes, kreplach, and more.

I have to admit, I had thought that schmaltz was just the rendered chicken fat itself (go here to see where I say as much); I somehow didn't know about the onions! When I started working on this project, I said to Mom, "Did you ever make schmaltz without onions?" She looked at me as if I were crazy and said, "Of course not. That's not schmaltz."

So now, thanks to Michael, we have Schmaltz: A Love Song to a Forgotten Fat, an iPad app (and soon to be available on all platforms). It consists of an introduction to the whole idea of schmaltz, historically and culinarily, from the most frugal and practical aspects about using every part of everything one purchases, to the most decadent—oh, the flavor! Included are two dozen recipes, including both the traditional (see above) and some contemporary applications (chicken confit, pâté de foie gras en terrine, and more).

Accompanying every recipe are the most spectacular photos from Michael's wife, Donna Turner Ruhlman. I nearly ruined my keyboard drooling over these pix. Her process shots are just amazing—you can practically smell the onions sautéing. Here's a little preview:

For me, this project was a thrill—working with Michael and Donna, of course, but also getting in on the iPad app thing, which was all new to me. I mean, I have an iPad, but I'd never helped create a cookbook for one! It's pure genius, and I can definitely see myself plunking my iPad into a gallon-size zip-lock bag when cooking from now on. Tap, tap, swipe—dinner's ready!

Many thanks to Michael for the opportunity to work on this exciting project! You can still see my work behind the scenes on his popular blog, in this Kindle single he did recently on how his career kind of happened to him, and on some future cookbooks to come. Stay tuned—and get cooking with schmaltz already!

Book Group

Last night our book group met to discuss The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. This very slim novel—readable in just a few hours—packs in a lot to think about but, as we discovered, not a huge amount to talk about as a group. The story is narrated by an unnamed housekeeper who is assigned to work at the home of "the Professor" (we never learn his name either), an elderly, formerly well-known mathematician who suffered brain damage in a car accident many years before. He is still sharp as a tack, mathematically and otherwise, but the injury has caused him to be able to remember back only 80 minutes. As soon as 80 minutes are up, he can recall only what occurred up to 1975 (when the accident occurred). 

So, every morning, the housekeeper has to introduce herself to him. His way of getting to know people is to ask them questions about numbers, like "How much did you weigh at birth?" or "What is your shoe size?" Then he talks about why that particular number is special or interesting or related to some other number. To remind himself of important things, he scribbles notes on scraps of paper and attaches them to his suit with mini binder clips. But even when he reads these notes, he doesn't have any memory of having written them, just the sense that they must have been of some importance to him when he wrote them.

At the urging of the Professor, the housekeeper starts bringing her young son along with her to his house, and the three strike up a curious but very warm friendship based initially on an appreciation of and enthusiasm for the inherent beauty of numbers—and a mutual love of baseball. 

It's a sweet and simple book, but the writing/translation is elegant, the plot interesting and thought-provoking, and the characters charming. So while I don't think it was an ideal choice for sparking a lively discussion, we were all happy to have read it—and we did talk about it some, just not as much as we do with some other books. 

Our January pick is Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.

Pressing

So it's time that I come clean about why I haven't been blogging much lately. Yes, I'm slammed with work; yes, the family and home responsibilities keep me busy; yes, I try to find time to do "me" things like read a book or finish the NYT crossword puzzle once in a while. But, really? I've become totally and hopelessly addicted to Letter Press. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I still play Scrabble, Words With Friends, Hanging With Friends, and Scramble With Friends (oh yeah, and even Dice With Buddies) nearly 24/7, but this ... this? This is something else entirely.

Imagine you have a Boggle board but no time limit, and every time you make a word (that isn't a shortened version of a word already played) you steal your opponent's tiles. How awesome is that? It took me a while to get the hang of it, and I lost to a lot of strangers before I figured out what I was doing, but now I'm hooked. 

Unfortunately, Letter Press goes through the dreaded iOS Game Center, but no matter: Once you're in, you can pretend that part never happened.

I go by "wisekaren" in all of these games, and I invite you to challenge me to a game. Of anything. But especially Letter Press. (Although I should tell you that if you're all about winning, I've recently lost my mojo in Hanging With Friends, and it's showing no signs of returning, so you're more likely to win there.)

Baked Goods

I've been meaning to show you some of the books in the teetering-tottering stack next to my desk. Today I'll do just the ones for the bakers out there.

Here are two I edited, both by Dede Wilson. First is another in her stellar Baker's Field Guide series: A Baker's Field Guide to Doughnuts:

OK, so I've never actually made doughnuts, but this book has me thinking it's totally doable. Did you know that in addition to potato latkes, it's also traditional to make jelly-filled doughnuts on Hanukkah? In Israel they're called sufganiyot. It all has to do with the miracle of the oil that kept the Eternal Flame lit in the Holy Temple for 8 days instead of just 1. We don't have an eternal flame here in our house, but we sure do like to fry foods, so maybe I will give it a whirl. (Did you also know that Hanukkah starts on December 8 this year? And were you aware that I haven't even given a single thought to buying presents for my kids yet? I am too busy being freaked out by the knowledge—thanks, Internet!—that next year Hanukkah begins on the night before Thanksgiving! Really! I officially give up now.)

The second is Cake Balls:

This is filled with recipes for all those, well, cake balls, that you see at bakeries and coffee shops nowadays. The subtitle is "More than 60 delectable and whimsical sweet spheres of goodness," and that's eactly what you get. There are cute cake balls, elegant cake balls, holiday-themed cake balls, you name it. I am not much of a decorator, but I know an 11-year-old named Julie who is dying to try making some of these, so maybe she will be the cake ball queen of this house. 

These next two I did not edit. First, Abby Dodge sent me a copy of her latest gem, Mini Treats and Hand-Held Sweets:

As suggested by the title, this book is for things like cookies and candies rather than cakes and pies, so the recipes would be ideal for parties, bake sales, picnics, and so on, where you don't want to have to cut slices or use a fork to eat. (Or if you just want to eat them all yourself, one by one.) The book is already completely clogged with post-it notes from Julie, who is obviously eager to get started. She learned early on that every recipe Abby's ever come up with has been a winner.

And finally, this last one is a huge door-stop-sized masterpiece, Bouchon Bakery:

Michael Ruhlman sent me this one—he ghost-wrote the whole thing, the latest in the Thomas Keller cookbook series. It's quite a major work, complete with recipes for every imaginable cookie, scone, muffin, etc., as well as all manner of fancy-shmancy pastries and breads. It is also a simply gorgeous book just to flip through. Andy already made the Pecan Sandies, the same day the book arrived.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I still can't believe it's already Thanksgiving—seems about a week too early this year, doesn't it? But here it is. I am up early, getting ready to pop Turkey #2 into the oven and wondering where I'll stow all the clutter that seems to accumulate every day (and magically overnight). We're going to lock the kitties in the basement for the party because they have already demonstrated an appalling lack of respect for such things as smooth tablecloths and sticks of butter left out to soften.

As always, I am looking forward to a house filled with many family members laughing and schmoozing and hugging, and more delicious food than anyone could possibly eat (well, until the weekend, that is). I am thankful for Thanksgiving—both the holiday itself and the opportunity to stop for a moment and remind myself of all I'm blessed with. 

And to you, my "Internet community" of friends (both the kind I've met and the virtual sort), I wish many reasons of your own to be thankful. 

A Post on Not Posting

A loyal Verbatim reader complained that lately he hasn't been getting his money's worth from this blog, and he's right. So I'm willing to offer a pro-rated discount to anyone who likewise feels that I haven't been posting frequently enough to justify the high subscription rate.

And you won't be hearing much from me this week, either, I'm afraid. What will I be doing?

I will be busy making 2 turkeys with lots of gravy, 6 pans of stuffing, 4 trays of roasted root veggies, and so on.

I will be working, working, working. I just finished editing a low blood sugar cookbook, I'm nearly done with a vegan cookbook, I'm about to start on a bread baking cookbook, I'm waiting on a panini cookbook, and I'm supposed to be proofreading a novel any day now (well, that's what they've been saying for the last couple of weeks, anyhow). I'm also helping put the finishing touches on Michael Ruhlman's Kindle project, which I can't wait to share with you! 

I will be watching as the plumber makes a hole in the kitchen ceiling in an attempt to tackle the horror show that is an ancient toilet in the girls' bathroom directly above, leaking into our pantry. "And it's not the good water," quoth the plumber. He did some exploratory surgery this morning and came away shaking his head.

I will be driving my kids all over the place! Soccer season is over, so now Pete is all about basketball and indoor track. But at long last, Bar Mitzvah year is over—he had two more these past two Saturdays, and now I am done with the 11pm Saturday night party picking up routine (until Julie's turn in a couple of years, that is!). Speaking of Julie, to our delight (and some amazement), she made the All-City Band for clarinet, which is a really big deal. I had told her what an honor it was just to be invited to audition, and then she was accepted! It's for grades 5–8 citywide, and she said there were only about 10 fifth graders at the first rehearsal—that's out of 15 elementary schools in the city! Steph is still volunteering at the hospital, which is convenient because she can walk there, but she also got a real job! She's assisting with weekend birthday parties at Create a Cook, the wonderful cooking school run by Jo Horner. So far she's mostly washed a lot of dishes, but she loves earning her own shopping money, and I don't blame her. (She also managed to make Honor Roll this term, even with this new item on her schedule!) Oh, and she's now taking driver's ed. Gulp.

I will be playing with Violet and Luna, if I can get them out of this box (this is in response to another loyal Verbatim reader's complaint that I haven't been sharing enough kitten photos):

What will you be doing this week?

We Interrupt This Blog Silence

Well, I've been pretty scarce around these parts lately, haven't I? Let's see if I can catch you up on some of the more interesting things that have been going on besides the overly ambitious work schedule I managed to arrange for myself this month. 

I won a Twitter contest! And that meant that Andy and I got to have dinner out at Lumière. It was lovely—and extra-special because it was a midweek treat. I went for the special local/in-season menu: Roasted Local Carrots with Cranberry-Maple Chutney for a starter, followed by Tagine of Vermont Veal, Local Root Vegetables, and Maine Golden Eye Beans with Dried Local Apricots and Lumière Preserved Lemons. Delish. For dessert it was a Lanni Orchards Apple Crumble with Maple Sugar Ice Cream and Molasses Caramel, which was right up Andy's alley—just as well, as I was stuffed. 

Then, for our (24th!) anniversary, we went as usual to Mistral, which never ever disappoints. I started with the Butternut Squash Tortellini with Brown Butter and Sage, which was heavenly. And, as I so often do there, I followed up with the Roasted Duck with Wild Mushroom Risotto and Wisconsin Dried Cherry Gastrique. It's perfect, and Andy likes when I order that, because I can never finish, and he gets the rest for lunch the next day. I could barely see straight after that, but Andy persuaded me that we should share a Warm Chocolate Torte with Vanilla Ice Cream and Sauce Anglaise. OhMyWord

Let's see, what else.... Oh, I don't think I told you about our last book group. We read The Submission by Amy Waldman, which we all enjoyed, although some more than others. This is a novel that imagines a contest being held in NYC after 9/11 for artists and architects to submit designs for a memorial to be erected at Ground Zero. The submissions are anonymous and the winner is chosen by a panel of artists, civic leaders, and so on. And what if the design that was chosen just happened to have been submitted by an American Muslim? You'll have to read to find out. The characters were really believable, and all sides were presented so well that I found myself quite unsure where I stood on the various issues. Very thought-provoking. Next months we're doing The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. Anyone read either of these?

I do have other things to talk about, but I'd better hit PUBLISH now before I get side-tracked. Maybe I'll post yet again this week—wouldn't that be something?

Hurricane Cookies

Hi, remember me? I used to blog here?

I hope everyone out there survived Hurricane Sandy without too much damage or inconvenience. No trees fell on my house and we didn't lose power at all, although our Comcast service (phone, TV, and Internet) went out for Tuesday and half of Wednesday, and then again for half of Friday. I hear that New York is going to get hit with a nor'easter later this week, and I can't even imagine how much worse things will get there. Stay safe, everyone!

Julie and Andy made yummy vanilla cookies just before the worst of the storm hit here, so these will forever be known in our house as Hurricane Cookies. They were chewy and delicious while still warm, but I didn't like them as much once they had cooled and crisped up, so my advice is to eat them all at once. They would also be splendid sandwiching raspberry jam or Nutella, neither of which we had on hand.

Vanilla "Hurricane" Cookies

1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1¼ cups sugar
Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean (or 1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract)
2 large eggs

Heat the oven to 375°F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment or silpats.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. In another medium bowl, beat the butter on medium-high speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and vanilla bean seeds (or extract) and continue beating until well combined, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and beat until well blended, about 1 minute longer. Add the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just blended, about 30 seconds.

Place heaping tablespoonfuls of the dough in mounds about 3 inches apart on the cookie sheets. Bake two sheets at a time, swapping the sheets’ positions halfway through baking, until the edges are golden brown, 10 to 14  minutes.

Set the sheets on racks and let cool for 5 minutes before transferring the cookies to the racks to cool completely. Using cooled cookie sheets, bake the remaining cookie dough.

Two Dinners

Here are two recipes I made a while back that were well received in this house.

For this first one, the original recipe called for boneless country-style pork ribs, but all I could find that day was tenderloin, which worked out fine. I served it with white rice and broccoli.

Hoisin-Glazed Pork Tenderloin

3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1½ pounds pork tenderloin (See note above; I cut it into a few big chunks.)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Whisk together the soy sauce, hoisin, ketchup, vinegar, garlic, and ginger and set aside.

Pat the pork dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Cook the pork until browned on both sides, about 3 minutes per side.

Add the hoisin mixture and cook, turning the meat a few times, until the sauce is thickened and the meat is done, 3–5 minutes.

*  *  *

This chicken recipe worked out well except that I wished I'd made the bread cubes smaller and let them crisp up more. I don't keep poultry seasoning in the house, so I used a mixture of dried sage, thyme, marjoram, and rosemary.

Stuffing-Topped Chicken

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided use
¾ cup chopped celery
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
5 slices country bread, cut into ¼-inch cubes 
½ teaspoon poultry seasoning (See note above.)
1½ cups reduced-sodium chicken broth, divided use
1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch piece
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour, divided use
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2½ cups quartered mushrooms (6 ounces)
⅓ cup dry white wine

Position rack in upper third of oven; preheat broiler.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Add celery and shallot; cook, stirring, until the shallot begins to brown, about 2 minutes. Add bread and poultry seasoning; cook, stirring, until the celery has softened and the bread begins to crisp, 2–3 minutes. Transfer the stuffing to a medium bowl and toss with ¼ cup broth; set aside. Wipe out the pan.

Toss chicken with 2 tablespoons flour, pepper, and salt in a large bowl. Whisk the remaining 1¼ cups broth with the remaining 2 tablespoons flour in a small bowl and set aside.

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the pan and heat over medium heat. Add the chicken (shaking off any excess flour) and mushrooms; cook, stirring, until the chicken is cooked through, about 8 minutes.

Increase heat to medium-high; add wine and cook, scraping up any browned bits with a wooden spoon, until almost evaporated, about 2 minutes. Stir in the reserved broth-flour mixture and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 2 minutes more. Spoon the reserved stuffing over the chicken mixture. Transfer the pan to the oven and broil until the stuffing begins to crisp, about 4 minutes.

Tofu Again

This week for Meatless Monday I did a tofu stir-fry. The recipe below could be varied in dozens of different ways, depending on the veggies you choose, and you could even include meat (instead of the tofu, use 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken, beef, or pork, sliced into matchsticks) if it happens to not be Meatless Monday when you make it. I used tofu, broccoli, and bok choy. Just remember that you need to have everything ready before you get started, because it all happens fast.

Tofu Stir-Fry

1 pound extra-firm tofu, pressed and cubed
5 tablespoons soy sauce, divided use
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine or dry sherry, divided use (I used white wine, because I had an open bottle in the fridge.)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons dark sesame oil
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ cup vegetable or chicken broth
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons peanut or canola oil, divided use
1 onion, halved and cut into slivers
4 cups chopped or diced firm vegetables (asparagus, broccoli, carrots, snow peas, etc.)
8 cups slivered greens (cabbage, bok choy, chard, kale, etc.)
1 piece fresh ginger (1 inch long), peeled and minced
3–4 garlic cloves, minced
Hot cooked white rice (I used brown rice.)

Combine the tofu, 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce, the oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon of the wine, and the sugar, sesame oil, and pepper in a medium bowl and set aside to marinate.

To make the sauce, combine the broth, 1 tablespoon of the soy sauce, the remaining 1 tablespoon wine, and the cornstarch. Whisk until thoroughly combined and set aside. 

Heat a large wok or skillet over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the peanut or canola oil and heat until very hot. Add the tofu and marinade and stir-fry, stirring constantly, until well browned, 4–8 minutes. With a heatproof rubber spatula, scrape out the contents of the wok into a medium bowl and keep warm. Return the wok to high heat.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the remaining oil in the wok over high heat until very hot. Add the onion and firm vegetables and stir-fry until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon of the remaining soy sauce, cover, and let the vegetables steam until soft, 3–4 minutes. Remove from the wok and add to the tofu mixture.

Return the wok to high heat and add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Add the slivered green vegetables and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add the last 1 tablespoon soy sauce and continue to stir-fry until limp, about 2 minutes longer. Push the vegetables to the sides of the pan and add the ginger and garlic. Cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Stir into the vegetables.

Return the tofu mixture with the vegetables to the wok and toss to combine. Whisk the sauce and pour into the wok. Stir-fry until the sauce is thickened and evenly coats the vegetables, 1–2 minutes.

Serve immediately with the hot rice.

A Lifetime Ago

As I've said numerous times on this blog, the friends I made at summer camp, as both a camper and a counselor, are like no other friends from any other part of my life. If I run into someone from camp—even someone I wasn't terribly close with!—we embrace as if we were long-lost siblings. Whenever there's a camp "alumni" party, I don't care who I'm seated next to on someone's couch or patio, because I feel at home with nearly everyone from that place and time in my life. There was, and remains, a magical quality to every relationship that started at camp.

At age 15 I was in the oldest group of campers, and we got to be the Color War captains, spend Trip Day in Ogunquit (while everyone else went to Canobie Lake Park—how juvenile!), go out to the movies at night once or twice, and so on. The next summer (1978), when I was 16, I went on the camp trip to Israel, which was just as amazing as you can imagine. This weekend some friends were posting photos from that trip, and I dug up a few of my own. They're mostly very faded and damaged from poor storage, but I just had to share this one:

Yup, that's me on the far left, with a few of my camp friends and an awful lot of delighted Israeli soldiers. We had just visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, where we wrote little notes of prayer and thanks on tiny slips of paper and wedged them between the ancient stones. That's why we were wearing long skirts and long-sleeved blouses in the blistering heat—women are requested to dress respectfully when visiting sacred sites in the Old City. You can just barely see that I'm wearing the typical sandals one buys at the souk (or suq, for you Scrabble lovers!), which is the Arab market in Jerusalem, where you have to haggle over everything just like in "Life of Brian."

Steph goes to that same camp, and many of her friends are the children of my old friends! She was in the oldest group this past summer, which she declared the best summer of her life. She's still thinking about whether she wants to go on the Israel trip next summer, at least some of which depends on who else is going. The decision will be completely up to her—we will be thrilled to send her, and at least a little relieved if she chooses not to go, I have to admit.

Doorbells and Sleighbells and Schnitzel with Noodles

Hmm, it's been a while since I've shared a few of my favorite things, so here goes:

1. I know I'm a basket case, but I loved these photos of grooms seeing their brides for the first time.

2. Watch John Corvino destroy every pathetic argument against marriage equality ever.

3. I can't stop watching this video of the title sequence from "The Simpsons" done with real actors.

4. Stories from The Onion as interpreted by Facebook.

5. Dad of the year, right here.

6. New emoticons—yes, I LOL'd at these!

Whoopie!

Julie turned 11 on Friday! Hardly seems possible, right?

In keeping with family tradition (read: whatever I did for Steph at age 11 I had to do for Pete at age 11 and thus for Julie at age 11), for her gift she got an iPod, which she's been dying for. I can't believe how tiny they are now! It's maybe half the size of a credit card. 

Julie chose carnitas for dinner, which is how you know she was definitely not swapped at birth. In lieu of a cake, she (with a little help from Andy) made Abby Dodge's whoopie pies, which came out great.

Whoopie Pies 

Chocolate Wafers:
2 cups all-purpose flour
⅔ cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder, sifted if lumpy
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk 

Vanilla Filling:
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1⅓ cups Marhmallow Fluff (not crème)
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar
2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt 

To make the chocolate wafers:

Position an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F. Line 3 cookie sheets with parchment or Silpats.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Whisk until well blended. In a large bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until well blended. Pour in about two-thirds of the dry ingredients and mix on low speed just until blended. The mixture will look sandy, with small pebbles of dough. Add the buttermilk and continue mixing just until blended. Pour in the remaining flour mixture and mix just until blended.

Using a small ice-cream scoop or 2 tablespoons, drop 2-tablespoon mounds of the dough onto the prepared cookie sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake until the mounds are puffed and a toothpick inserted in the center of 1 mound comes out clean, about 10–11 minutes. Transfer the cookie sheets to racks and let cool for 5 minutes. Using a spatula, lift the cookie cakes from the sheets onto the racks and let cool completely.

To make the filling:

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, combine all of the filling ingredients. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until well blended and smooth.

To assemble the whoopie pies:

Arrange half of the cooled chocolate wafers, flat side up, on a work surface. Mound about 1½ tablespoons filling in the center of each. Top with the remaining wafers, rounded side up, and press gently on top until the filling spreads just to the edges. Refrigerate until the filling is firm, about 1 hour, or up to a week until ready to serve. (And, if you are Julie, you will want to roll the sides of each whoopie pie in sprinkles.)

Good Book, Bad Book

I read two light, fluffy books recently—one I loved and one ... not so much

I had so enjoyed my first Penelope Lively book, Family Album, that I was eager to read her latest, How It All Began, and it didn't disappoint. "How it all begins" is when Charlotte, a retired English teacher, is mugged. She falls and breaks her hip, which sets off a chain of events—she goes to stay with her daughter and son-in-law, which causes her daughter to rearrange her work schedule, which causes her boss's niece to offer to help him out, and so on. Nothing earth-shattering happens to anyone, but I was captivated by each story line. Lively writes in a very gentle, engaging style, and I found all the characters to be believable and fully fleshed out. I really liked this.

I regret that I can't say the same for Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon. This is the story of Alice, who is having a bit of a mid-life crisis. Of course she loves her job, her husband, her kids, her dog, her friends, and so on, but she wonders if that's all there is. She receives an email asking if she'd be willing to participate in a long-term survey on marriage, and she agrees. She is given the identity "Wife 22" and is assigned randomly to "Researcher 101," who will evaluate her responses to the various questionnaires. They end up emailing quite a bit beyond the scope of the survey, revealing much more to one another than required (or even allowed). I liked Alice well enough, and some of the other characters were interesting, but I found most of the dialog to be flat or just not believable. The author repeatedly hits us over the head with the message that we are letting Facebook and texting and email and the rest of our online/smartphone habits take over our lives. But worst of all is that I guessed the "surprise ending" almost immediately (I'll bet you're guessing it right now, just from my description) and was furious that I had to read the whole thing just to get to the most obvious "plot twist" ever. If you're staying at a beach house next summer and this book is the only thing there, by all means read it—parts of it are fun—but please don't run out and buy it.

Miscellany

I have a half-dozen posts waiting to be finished and uploaded, but this, that, and the other thing have gotten in the way. To wit:

THIS = Taking care of a family of 5 humans and 3 felines, along with the house and all that goes with that. And "all that goes with that" has happened to mean, lately, scheduling more than our share of repairs and maintenance work, from resealing the garage roof to cutting back some dangerously overhanging tree branches to having our oil burner replaced with a gas burner, which also requires a liner being dropped down the chimney, etc. Then there are all the soccer games/practices and school volunteer obligations and Hebrew school and on and on and on.... But meanwhile, I'm loving my new Honda Pilot, although I haven't had a chance to figure out most of the cool things it can do! I have three months free of XM Radio, and I haven't even once pressed that XM button. One thing I've noticed is that I'm just a teensy bit too short to get in and out of it without giving myself a little boost. I decided not to spring for the optional step, which means that I keep whacking my left leg in the exact same spot every time I hop in. I have a big bruise there and am working on an alternative means of getting up into the seat. Otherwise everything seems dandy. 

THAT = Work. Which, you know, takes up a fair amount of time. I'm not doing anything particularly interesting right now but will let you know when something fun comes up.

THE OTHER THING = Mom fell and broke her hip last week! It was a freak accident, as accidents often are—one minute she was hurrying home from a neighbor's house and the next she was trying to get up off the ground with what she thought was just a terribly banged-up hip. She ended up having a "hemi" hip replacement and was transferred from the hospital to rehab on Friday. She is in great shape and also a very cooperative patient, so hopefully she can go home at the end of this week. Dad, meanwhile, is "batching it" for the first time in, like, 59 years.

And that is what is going on here, but stay tuned for at least two book reviews, two recipes, and various other fascinating bits and pieces of life Chez Verbatim.

*A New Car!

*Cue Don Pardo voice, or reasonable facsimile.

It's true, after all these years, I finally have a new car! The last time I had a new car, Julie was still in my tummy, so yeah, it's been a while.

We ended up with a 2012 Honda Pilot, an SUV that is in fact a bit smaller than the Honda Odyssey minivan that I traded in (for a paltry $1000—if only I'd thought to do this a week before the transmission went kaplooey!). It is very fancy-shmancy and has lots of features I've yet to figure out in the 24 hours or so that I've had it. What I have figured out is that I can "pair" my iPhone to it and make hands-free calls or listen to my iTunes via Bluetooth or USB (without the plug-in radio doohickey). Way cool. There's a built-in GPS, which will reduce both the number of times I get lost and the number of amusing blog posts I write about getting lost (hey, technology is a double-edged sword).

The only problem is that the passenger-side window goes all the way down when you press AUTO, but then when you press AUTO again, it goes all the way up—and then back down a few inches. They couldn't figure out why this was happening, so I'm bringing it back in this week and they'll replace the whole thing. 

I feel much higher up in the Pilot than I did in the Odyssey, but it's a foot shorter and almost an inch narrower, so parallel parking ought to be a bit easier. A near deal-breaker was that there's nowhere to put coins! What were they thinking?

I will not miss all the scratches and dings and ground-in Goldfish cracker crumbs in my old Odyssey, but I will miss the sliding doors and the best bumper sticker ever.

Crisp Apple Strudels

A belated compendium of my most recent favorite things:

- Check out these awe-inspiring photos from the 2012 Paralymics.

- If I ever drop my camera into a body of water, I sure hope Andy Ihnatko is the one who finds it two years later!

- Read Philip Roth's open letter to Wikipedia about his own book.

- My editorial pal Copy Curmudgeon has launched a blog in which she answers your questions on grammar.

- No, I'm not getting the new iPhone. I'm thinking of one of these instead.

Sweetness

A sweet and happy New Year to all of those on the Interwebs who are celebrating Rosh Hashanah today! As usual, we went to Lauren's house for a mid-day feast. I brought the apple cake and cookies, both of which Julie helped with. For the former, we tried again with this recipe from a few years back, this time reversing the order of the ingredients. It came out fine, except that some of the apples and cinnamon stuck to the inside of the Bundt pan, which ended up being the top of the cake. The flavor and texture were fine, though, so everyone just ignored the patched-together top. I think the only solution would be to buy a regular tube pan that isn't meant to be inverted. The cookies were from a Jim Lahey recipe; they came out thin and chewy:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup (packed) light brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Arrange racks in upper and lower thirds of oven; preheat to 425°. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats. Whisk flour, salt, and baking powder in a small bowl. Using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and both sugars in a large bowl until well combined, 2–3 minutes. Add egg and vanilla; beat on medium-high speed until mixture is light and fluffy, 2–3 minutes. Add dry ingredients, reduce speed to low, and mix just to blend. Fold in chocolate chips.

Spoon heaping tablespoonfuls of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing 1½" apart. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until edges are golden brown, 6–8 minutes. Transfer to wire racks and let cool.