The endless failure of me to appreciate some of these "classics"

The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig...a young girl's story of her family's arrest and deportation to Siberia in 1941 and the years until their return after the end of the war.  I won't make the obvious comparison--it doesn't compare.  It is interesting but not engrossing.  Only at the beginning when she has to come to grips with being locked in a cattle car for days; travel to an unknown destination; watered-down cabbage soup; a communal toilet (a slit in the floor); no water for bathing--only then are her memories sharp, painful, and alive.

The rest of the book is educational and full of details--but not told so that you can feel them and hear them and smell them.  (Quote stolen from Christy Marshall.)

Recommended only if you're a teenager needing a good book for a reading assignment.

Traveling with the master

I'm out of order here.  I was supposed to read another kids book in front of this one.  But once I started, I didn't stop--and that says everything.

From The Ocean To The Sky by Edmund Hilary.

Adventure writing at its best--scenery, personalities, and jet  boats; overbearing crowds and scary solitude; beauty and (some rather cool) beasts.  All told with endearing honesty and introspection by a master of storytelling.

The plan was to follow the Ganges River--mata ganga--from her ending in the Bay of Bengal up to her roots in the Himalayan Mountains.  A holy pilgrimage for millions of people but a thumping good adventure for Sir Edmund and his rugged crew.  Did they make it?  Read it yourself and find out.

I was really impressed by his description of puja--the devotional service offered up at the start of the journey and many more times along the way.  So different from the method I grew up with--everyone stares at the ground and the oldest male says a few words starting with Dear Lord and ending with Amen.  The puja touched the spirit.

There's a short essay and Hindu religion and current beliefs at the end...enlightening.  I'm planning to read it again tomorrow.   Also a detailed description of the jet boat design and how to pilot one in tricky water.  I'll pass on that.

Five stars on this one.  And a little cheer.

I made the chicken tacos with salsa fresca

On a weeknight.  Bad idea.  Something like this has got to be done the night before.

The taco meat was very flavorful--it's a keeper.  Note to self:  two pounds of free-range leg quarters equals four quarters--once dissected, it's barely enough to feed two normal people.  (Not counting Callie.)

Salsa fresca is pretty but I'm scared to eat it.  My lips still sting from my tasting the jalapeno to see how hot it was.

Sunday cooking stunk

Did I mention the Chicken and Dumplings with Leeks yesterday?  Not so bad, but not photo-worthy. 

This was.  The worst failure of my cobbler career.  All that juice--very little thickener--and only a dab of crust to soak up the sweetness.  It was like a bowl of peach juice with garnish.

I was so annoyed that I got an ID on allrecipes.com to complain about it.

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

I'm five books ahead of schedule, but once I'd picked up Homecoming I couldn't put it down.  It's an adventure, a bit of a mystery, a travel tale and a character piece all at once.  If I'd read it as a kid, I'd have immediately rushed out to buy a copy for myself and start over.  I might even do that now.

(That's a bit of poetic license.  As a kid, I couldn't afford to rush out and buy anything.  But I'd check it out of the library over and over again, reading until the edges were fuzzing, pages were falling out, and I had huge swathes memorized.)




Four kids, abandoned in a mall parking lot with eleven dollars and fifty cents, set out to find their Aunt Cilla.  There's no planes, trains, and automobiles here--there's footpower, determination and courage.  It was like a 1970s remake of The Boxcar Children. 

The ending was what turned this from 4 to 5 stars--there was no sugar-coated Disney "let's all have a big dance party" ending.  But there was an ending.  And six other books in the series which I must now read.  Other than that, I'm scared to tell you anything.  I started the book knowing nothing, absolutely nothing, about it.  And I recommend you do, too.
~

Getting the hang of Thursdays

Yesterday I proved it was possible to cook real food on a weekday...provided you made the bread crumbs the day before.  It was done by 7:45, too.  Not bad?

Not great.  The fried okra is impossible to mess up.  But the pork chops were a bit off...the meat was okay but the breading pointless.  I don't know why--it sure smelled good cooking.  I didn't taste it yet.

Cooking. Failure.

There will be no Sunday's Adventure in Cooking posted this week.  I made meatballs and spaghetti from a Smitten Kitchen recipe.  She raved about it--as she does most recipes that make it through her stringent selection, careful kitchen trial, and eater's approval before they can be be posted on her blog.  So...

Apparently I didn't read it through.  Or else I trusted her to make magic gold coins from scrap shards of lead.  The ingredients were onions and garlic, of course, red wine,  tomato puree and diced tomatoes.  For the spices, pepper, salt, and parsley.  Yeah--you read right.

So guess what?  It was as sour as cheap dill pickles and as bland as unsalted tomato sauce.  After adding basil, oregano, a teaspoon of extra salt (maybe more) and four tablespoons of sugar, I came up with something I could swallow without running to the sink for a glass of water.

What was she thinking?  Is her variety of tomato puree really different from mine?  Does she not believe in the magical powers of tomatoes+basil?  Was she really, really hungry?

The meatballs were okay.

Travel books make the best summer reading

I savored this one--Great Plains by Ian Frazier.

It's a like Blue Highways (second greatest travel book of all time) with a theme.  Ian Frazier crossed and criss-crossed the "American desert" both geographically and historically, creating a symphony of time and place.  Past and present lie close to the surface, there--Crazy Horse, He Dog, and Little Big Man seem only a generation away.  MX missiles sit at eternal alert in their carefully-tended silos.  Founder's day in Nicodemus, the town that was supposed to be utopia for freed slaves stuck in ex-plantation poverty.  The drought of 1934, when dust clouds from the great plains darkened cities on the eastern seaboard.  The doomed expeditions of John Ledyard, who was supposed to be the first man to cross the continent.  And more, much more.

Great book to carry on a road trip, but even better to read at home and take a road trip of the mind....
Just keep a map handy.

Good eats, bad pic

Okay, finally back to Sunday dinner...Chicken and Mushrooms Marsala.  Good stuff.  Nobody but me went back for seconds...which proves I'm the only one with good taste in this family.

Book #56, ahead of schedule

 

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.




I definitely couldn't put it down.  It went by too quickly--you have to applaud an author who researched her time and place so well, and then kept the dry details to herself.  I happen to like dry details--if well written--but I liked this, too.


If I'd read it as a kid and was now re-reading it, it would have been a prime candidate for The Suck Fairy .   I would have "...dreamed in extra details the book never mentioned."   Because the fascinating characters--especially the "witch" and the young sailor, Nat--are just the sort to escape the covers of the book and sail off into new adventures.