Mad teens and crazy parents

The Good Lie
by Robin Brande

She channeled a lot of rage in this one. Imagine you're a sixteen-year-old girl whose mother just up and left one day, without explanation, to live with some man you didn't know existed. And your father is a complete nutcase who expects you to take over the housework and cooking that she used to do. And your little brother looks up to you but is totally miserable now she's gone. Then things get worse.

At the same time everyone around you seems obsessed with sex even if they're not having any. Or possibly it's just  you who are obsessed and projecting it on everyone else, probably because you and your father are both bible-thumping nuthouses who justify everything they do with King James Version citations.

I can't say I fully enjoyed this one of Robin Brande's books, and at this point I'll probably not read any more of the older ones. If a new one comes out, we'll see. Mind you, it's impossible to this book put down and would be highly recommended reading for any teenager who is dealing with rage. Maybe they would recognize themselves in Ms. Brande's heroine, every time she loses her temper and destroys some of her best chances for making things better.

Recipe Reduction 17-16

Vegetable Biryani
Sasha Martin, Global Table Adventure

I took so many shortcuts on this it's almost embarrassing to pretend I made it. Almost.

But I liked it, so doesn't that count for something?  The recipe is described as a big deal, all day endeavor and it very well could have come down to that.  You soak rice, then parboil it, then let it cool while you fry onions and then fry a mixture of vegetables. You remove them all and fry your masala, a mixture of onion and spices. Then you return the vegetables to the pan, sprinkle with raisins (I skipped, apologies), and cover with rice.  You sprinkle a couple of teaspoons of rose water over the rice. Then you put a tight lid on the pan and cook at low heat until the rice is done.

I was sure the rice would be crunchy and inedible, but it wasn't. I forgot to add the onions at the end and instead mixed them in with the rest, but that didn't change the flavor. And--this is important--I forgot the spices that were supposed to go into the rice cooking water.   Cardomom, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and salt.  I wish I hadn't.  While it wasn't at all bland, it missed the spicy aroma these additions would have given.

So the recipe would be a keeper, but I'm thinking of gradually inventing my own recipe for a mixed vegetable masala dish.  The particulars of cooking for this one were too complicated, with too many steps. However, these were points to remember:
1. Don't let your ghee go rancid (I had to use butter)
2. Cooking sliced onion until it caramelizes is a plus for most any dish
3. Brown the vegetables over medium-high heat for 20 minutes, then finish cooking at low heat.
4. Try adding a little yogurt into the masala after it cooks. It makes it rich.

 

Broiled Shrimp and Broccoli with Cashew Sauce
by Amy Stafford

If you're in a hurry for a 20-minute, impressive looking entree, this would be it. I would have swore you'd couldn't get broccoli tender under a broiler.  I left it a little longer than she suggested, with a rest in the middle as I got the other part ready.

The shrimp, as you'll see from the picture, turned out to be catfish nuggets cut bite-size. They made a good substitute, just not as photogenic.  The sauce--cashew butter, honey, lime, soy sauce, sriracha, vinegar, sesame oil--wasn't all that great. I don't think too many ingredients were lugged in that didn't add to the flavor, in particular the sesame oil and vinegar.

But I'll enjoy eating it!  Won't bother making it again since I'm the only one who likes roasted broccoli and I actually prefer steamed.  Strange, but true.

Recipe Reduction #18

Tofu and Lobster Mushrooms in Ginger Broth
from fat-free vegan

Excellent!  It should be called, Swamp Owl's comfort soup. All the things I love--tofu, mushrooms (had to use shitake), noodles, ginger, garlic and miso. If I'd not been too lazy to chop up some green onion to go on top, I'd be in nirvana.

I've dissed a lot of fat-free vegan's recipes, but this one is worth the wait.

Sorry no picture. It looks like soup. Use your imagination.

Got great at the end

Navigations: One Man Explores The Americas And Discovers Himself

Ted Kerasote's Navigations starts off weak--in my opinion, only--but ends very, very strong. Masterly strong. My issue with the first few essays--travels, really--is that they skimmed the surface. My surface. I have to keep pointing out that an opinion of a book like this is highly personal. A different person could have opposite and equally valid feelings.

But even when I didn't feel the connection with the author, I much enjoyed reading his adventures. His quest for A Record Snook is simply a fishing tale--hooking the fish, crashing through the surf, feeling his fish's indecision and then realizing with a hopeless determination it had decided to swim into the river where following it would require wading through a log jam and climbing the roots of a huge snag. Sometimes, when you're reading such adventure, you get a better feel for the countryside than if the author was simply describing it, from a high vantage point. It's a whole lot different thing to see a massive tree fallen in the river, gnarly roots exposed in a hideous snarl, than it is to climb over such an obstacle. Kerasote takes you with him.

Later on he described some years spent with his wife--a time when two people were greatly in love with each other but eternally pulled apart by their passions--dancing and climbing, for her; travel and writing, for him.  I could see a lot of guys being turned off by this section--where's the sport?  Where's the record fish, the sub-three-hour marathon, the search for the perfect, trophy Line?  (that's a skiing route, best I can understand.)  What's with all this emotional crap?

I didn't mind. But I have to say my favorite stories are ones like "Neva Hurry" where he confronts the contrast between his schedule as a working author of short stories, which involves deadlines, airline schedules, endless meetings, and his need to slow down and feel life...to dabble in a river for trout, get a hit at the eleventh hour, slowly release his catch, a breeding-sized female, then hold his hands in the freezing water until they ache.

It was a  dark pool, dark as the bridge shadow over which I had stood the evening before, dark as a slow brown smile of Carib Billy Joe and as smooth, glossy, and continually moving as one's life in retrospect--when all the mindless hurry, inscrutable hurry, and senseless ambition have passed into what we kindly call wisdom. Into this pool, with a delicate plop, I dropped my hare's ear nymph.

[skipped a bit here, sorry...the nymph stopped moving.]

I gave a tremendous whoop, which stampeded the contentedly grazing cows, and of course I also immediately fell into the fiver, shipping water over my starboard hip wader.
"Man, neva hurry."
Yes, Billy Joe, yes.

Recipe Countdown #19

Sister Virginia's Daily Loaf

I tossed the pecan pie recipe and instead made bread. Made mistakes, too. During the first rising I pronounced that "if this comes out, then I hereby declare myself as someone who can make bread."

So I skimped on the yeast--it was the last package and I'd taken 1/4 teaspoon out of it for another recipe.  I turned my back on the milk, water and lard heating on the stove and let it boil over. I added a little milk back in to make up for the loss. Then I failed to properly measure the flour I was adding and had to decide--by eyeball--when it was stiff enough.

It turned out very beautiful but not nearly as flavorful as the recipe promised. The cookbook called it a "fine white bread", and it was. But not a "flavorful white bread."

And guess what?  I can make bread!

Okay but not overly excited

Southern Discomfort
by Margaret Maron

I enjoyed The Bootlegger's Daughter series #1 just enough to risk a second. It wasn't disappointing--complex plot and real world crimes, and you get to see a judge hand down the kind of unbiased, compassionate sentences that you wish you could pronounce yourself. The courtroom scenes are my favorite part.

Beyond that I don't have any helpful comments to offer. Just a good, exceptionally solid, light mystery. Maybe I shouldn't say "just". Good mysteries are not all that common. Objection sustained--strike the "just".

Whoever said Mississippi is not a state but a scar, said it.

Mississippi: An American Journey
by Anthony Walton


I don't think it's possible to understand how much hate builds up when a person is enslaved. We see it in movies, read it in books, but how can we understand it? How can we possibly feel it?

It's not something we as white people sit around trying to understand. Slavery is over--at least in America--and it's never coming back. My attitude has always been, it's ancient history--let it go already! But we need to understand that slavery didn't end in 1862--it only went underground. For years to come, for generations of people--people who are still alive today--black people lived knowing they could be fired without cause, killed without retribution, and worked without hope of saving a dime over what they owed at the company store. They had to put up with whatever the white man dished out or risk being jailed. Or killed. And those people really hate white people.

In Mississippi, the only hope was in escape to the big cities in the north. But even when people successfully escaped the Jim Crow south, like Mr. Walton's father, they were still feeling the rage for years to come. Who wouldn't?

"At school we would get our books and in the cover there would be this person's name; our schoolbooks were always used books. I remember this was like the second or third grade. There would be a person's name in there, and grade, and race, and it would always be 'white'.

    [Me: Can you imagine that? Having to write your race in your schoolbooks?]

"We always got the old books, the white kids got 'em first. And there's always be pages missing, where if you read two chapters relative to something, you couldn't finish. if the third chapter completed the subject matter, then that chapter would be deliberately cut out, or the pages torn up, and you'd never know how it finished. I didn't understand it, why it was happening, but I talked to my parents and teachers and they said there was this school superintendent, a white woman, and she did this on purpose. She also never gave us enough books, or all the units on a particular subject. I think it was to keep us from doing enough work to get a high school diploma. She succeeded in my case.

His father spoke of walking to school and having insults yelled from white kids passing in the school bus; of taking verbal abuse and threats from bosses; of digging ditches in hundred degree temperatures for a man who wrote his paycheck, threw it on the ground, and told him he was never coming back.

This book is not just a recitation of wrongs--nothing like it. It's a deep, thoughtful journey of a man trying to understand his history, especially the one big puzzle of why his mother and father worked so hard and denied themselves simple luxuries. Their kids grew up in the north, getting a good education and going on to college--and taking equal opportunity for granted, as children should. But--at some point--children should ask questions. Mr. Walton did.

Good questions. Painful answers.