Beautiful and sad and almost (not quite) great family story

As Bright as Heaven
by Susan Meissner

I can see how this book might be a bestseller. Very touching--very sad--very Christian but not so much so that a non-believer can't enjoy it. Terrible things happen but no one's really mean--the closest thing to cruelty is when a pair of emotionally introverted people are unable to get over their anger at their daughter leaving. It's refreshing to read about a world peopled with individuals who love each other and care for them.

Of course all that loving and caring doesn't stop the war or the Spanish influenza. That dragged on for far too long. Poor folks.

It's as if the body is a candle and the soul is its flame. When the flame is snuffed out, all that is left to proved that there had been a flame is the candle, and even that we only have for a little while. Even the candle is not ours to keep. 

And yet how we care for that candle for that stretch of time that it is still ours! How we want to remember the shape and fragrance of the little flame it held.

So clearly I recommend this. My only complaints are about the piling up of agony toward the end and the totally flat male characters. There were four female characters with fully exposed interior lives interacting with five males who were as shallow as shells. I wish she'd taken a stab at giving the men feelings or at least thoughts--I think she could have done a good job of it.

Smashing way to set a story--hope they go on

Splintered Silence
by Susan Furlong

Pile on the pain!  Ex-Marine Brynn returns from her tour of duty as one severely screwed up soldier with only two things going for her--a corpse-sniffing dog and an ever-loving grandmother. Her flashbacks and panic attacks and habit of mixing prescription painkillers with liquor has kept her from holding down a civilian job, so she goes to visit her Gram in Bone Gap, Tennessee.

I spent the first part of the book cringing at her flashbacks and wondering if the "Irish Travelers" were a real thing or something the author had made up. But no--they're real. According to Slate magazine,

Irish Travelers, also known as "White Gypsies," are members of a nomadic ethnic group of uncertain origin. Scholars often speculate that they are descended from a race of pre-Celtic minstrels and that their ranks were swelled by displaced farmers during Oliver Cromwell's bloody campaigns of the mid-1600s. Travelers once roamed from town to town in horse-drawn carts, earning their keep by busking and tinsmithing; because of the latter vocation, they were nicknamed "Tinkers," a word that's now considered something of a slur.
A few Irish Travelers emigrated to America during the Potato Famine of the mid-19th century. Their 7,000-10,000 descendants still speak the secret Traveler language, a dialect alternately known as Shelta, Gammon, or Cant, which includes elements of Irish Gaelic, English, Greek, and Hebrew. They are also devout Roman Catholics who rarely marry outside the group.

Just when you thought you knew it all, huh?  I finished the book before I looked this up, but if I'd known it beforehand I'd have liked the book even more than I did. Which is saying a lot, because I loved this book. She's populated her imaginary world well--a priest who used to be Brynn's love interest, a hot next-door neighbor ex-con, and the only honest, nonjudgemental cop she's ever met, Sherriff Pusser--

His eyes were dark, deep set, almost hidden under his fat, pockmarked cheeks.

She doesn't like him and doesn't trust him, or any member of the outside world-- 'muskers'--but it's just possible she's going to end up working with him on another case. I'll be there to see.

Gardening in my Roots, hot dry end of summer edition

Okay, consider this okra plant. Get me right--this is ONE okra plant. You expect okra to get tall, and I've seen many taller than this, but the circumference!  It's wider than Scarlett O'Hara's hoop skirt. And it's branched like an oak tree!  I'm getting as many as four pods off it a day. Those large pods you see are the ones I'm saving for seed.

The other strange thing about this okra is that I didn't plant it. It's wild. Or should I say, feral. It's an escape.

Maybe it has genes from Audrey II.



So this is the state of the garden at the end of a long, hot August with only one unexpected rainy spell: okra, peppers, cucumbers, and some broccoli I'm punishing by leaving out in the hot sun all summer. The late frost this spring made it 'button'--produce flowering heads smaller than your thumb.  So I thought it deserved a little torture...plus a chance to do better in the fall. If I can keep it alive.



The cucumbers below are an oddity--I tried a variety adapted for hot climates and it seemed to be thriving. The vines were enormous and the leaves even more so. But no fruit!  Or so I thought. It seems that the fruit is exceptionally good at hiding behind the leaves until it yellows. But that's okay, because they're still very mild and juicy, and not the slightest hint of bitter.  Now that I know its secrets, I might grow this again.

Potential to get better but...

Bootlegger's Daughter
by Margaret Maron

Loads of potential in this series...but  I didn't close the cover thinking I needed to run out and get the next book right away. Everything I'd expect to love--gutsy heroine lawyer who decides to run for judge despite her unfortunate family history. She's pulled into amateur detective work by a woman who wants to know who killed her mother and left her, as a baby, lying beside her dead mother on a barn floor.  A large number of interesting suspects but not so many I got overwhelmed.

So I don't know how it missed the mark for me. There wasn't much detail, for one.  Authors are advised to "show" the story and not "tell" the story, but too much show and not enough tell makes you feel like you're watching actors move around on a screen. Sometimes Hamlet needs to stop the action, to hold up a skull and recite the Alas, poor Yorick soliloquy.

While she hinted about an traumatic estrangement from her father, at one point he just started talking to her and she answered back and all of a sudden they were friends, with no explanation of what had gone down between them in the past. Their issues never seemed to go deeper than "he's a criminal and I'm an honest lawyer." There was a whole lot of missing backstory, there--I didn't want to have to make it up myself.

Other people liked the book; I'll try one more.

The other side of the story, and the other other.

My Name is Mahtob:
The Story That
Began the Global Phenomenon Not Without My Daughter Continues

by Mahtob Mahmoody

Those who read Not Without My Daughter should be forewarned--the first 10 chapters of this are the same story told from the perspective of an adult remembering experiences from her childhood. I got the impression from something she said that she did not read that book before writing her own memories of the time, but I'd like to know for sure. I don't doubt her own memories of events, but it seems odd that it so closely parallels her mother's. The writing style, too, seems very similar.

But all of that is not important. Those chapters were just the prologue--the meat of the book comes next--how in the world can a person go on living after such a traumatic childhood, and it's not over! For many years both she and her mother are constantly afraid that the father will come to American and haul her away...or has he hired someone to stalk her?  The last few chapters, when she corresponds with a family friend who managed to open a dialog with her father, are especially disturbing. But her survival in spite of everything makes a story so uplifting you might want to cry.

Now I'm wondering if I should read her mother's book For the Love of a Child. it tells her mother's continuing story plus those of other victims of parental abduction.

Recipe Reduction 60-59

Smoky Pepper and White Bean Quesadillas
from A Modern Way To Cook

Apparently a modern way to cook results in a stupid way to write recipes.  I like the empowering feeling of phrases like "a handful of cherry tomatoes," until it's mixed with exactly one-half of a lemon's juice, 1/2 bunch parsley, and 1/3c roasted red peppers.  What would it hurt to specify how many cherry tomatoes fit into her hand?

Why call for 1 unwaxed lemon when you're only going to use half of it?  Say I read this recipe and remembered I had 1/2 of a lemon saved in the fridge. Most times I'd be stupid enough to go buy more lemons. And why unwaxed, when you're not going to use the peel?  Is the juice inside a waxed lemon less flavorful than the juice inside an unwaxed?

I didn't time it. As written, 10 minutes is not an unreasonable estimate. I had to cook my own beans and roast my own peppers. If you start with cans and bottles--or a well-stocked freezer--you can make a lot of dishes in 10 minutes.

Enough growsing. White beans and roasted red peppers are a delightful combination, and it's always lovely to throw together a fresh salsa to accompany quesadillas. I'd have called for cilantro instead of parsely in the salsa, but that's me.

Nonetheless I should never have saved this dish. Smoky anything--paprika, chili powder, or liquid smoke are all non-starters for me.  I'll replace it with a little cumin and call it close enough.

Creamy Vegan Wild Rice Soup
Author unknown

She seemed to think that wild rice will cook in 15 minutes, but it was still crunchy for me. And the whole point seemed to be that you can replace cream by using raw cashews + cooked cauliflower + white beans purreed in a blender.  What's the point?  It's not going to taste like cream with those ingredients, so why make it look like cream?

Adding miso stirred in vinegar helped the flavor and the result was very eatable, extremely stick-to-the-guttable. But still bland and rather boring.

Short jaunt into the bad old days

Lolly Willowes
by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Laura looked at the bottled fruits, the sliced pears in syrup, the glistening red plums, the greengages. She though of the woman who had filled those jars and fastened on the bladders. Perhaps the greengrocer's mother lived in the country. A solitary old woman picking fruit in a darkening orchard, rubbing her rough fingertips over the smooth-skinned plums, a lean wiry old woman, standing with upstretched arms among her fruit trees as though she were a tree herself, growing out of the long grass, with arms stretched up like branches. It grew darker and darker; still she worked on, methodically stripping the quivery taut boughs one after the other.

Such a delightful little book! In a time and place when women were helpmates, useful to the world only in the domestic functions they could perform for husband and family, what chance does a woman have to escape? And what does she do if she does manage to escape for a bit and then the family comes back to live with her and expects her to fall graciously back into the motherly role?

I'm lucky to live in a place and time where women are allowed to live by themselves and for themselves, but it still seems a little unnatural. How often do we see an old lady alone and feel pity for her rather than envy? Consider my great aunt Callie, who lived alone for most of her adult life. She wasn't a hermit or a recluse; she complained long and loud that "no one comes to visit"; but would she have given up her independence for a spare room in some relative's busy household? No way, sucker!

There's more in this book than woman's independence, but as usual, I probably missed the literary symbolism.  Satan was a hoot.

Mid-August mini-break, Days 3 and 4

I always admired the powers of X-Woman Storm, and now I know why. I've acquired them. At age 50, along with hot flashes and an allergy to poison ivy, I've suddenly acquired the ability to make rain. Plus thunder, lightning and wind. I can't control the powers yet but there's definitely something going on. They don't work at home--maybe I'm too grounded there--but when traveling, they let loose.

Not so early a start, but we made it to Jimmy's Egg in time for huge breakfasts. Me: 3-egg veggie omelette, canteloupe, and thick-sliced raisin-cinammon toast. Ed: sausage, eggs over easy, hashbrowns, biscuits and gravy.

Loaded down with all that goodness, we went fishing. Storm clouds lurked, loomed and gathered, all on top of us and everywhere we wanted to go. I planned to take the Flint Hills Scenic Byway up from Wichita to Cottonwood Falls, so in order to easily route that on the map I told Google Maps to take us to Cassoday, a small town mid-way. And that's exactly what it did--it took us to "downtown Cassoday." A grocery store.  I had to get off the highway to get to a grocery store. To get back on, the maps told me to follow a dirt road triangle for three or four minutes--incredibly stupid. I could have popped a U-turn and made it in 30 seconds.

No big deal, but I've learned my lesson about takine the time to choose the route correctly. In a bit we arrived at the Cottonwood Falls Courthouse, quite a cutie, and then went on to Chase State Fishing Lake.


Lovely!  I'd have fished there in a minute if I'd had a license or any bait. But the legal limits were shocking--the smallest Channel Cat you can keep was as long as any I've ever caught. 

The loveliest thing about the  lake is that it was nearly deserted--only one single camping RV--and gloriously quiet. We have got to get an RV!

On to the Tallgrass Prairie National Monument. We tried to take their little nature trail but it was boring.  All the other trails were too long for the time we had remaining--we were still hoping to fish in Council Grove lake--so I asked Ed if he minded hiking up to the buffalo pasture in hopes of getting a glimpse of them.  He was game, so off we went.

We walked on a gravel road across the prairie and up a hill.  Wind at our back, hot but not overbearing, overcast skies, no problem, right?  Yes, problem. Distances are deceiving out there--not so much as they were in Yellowstone, but bad enough. We walked a long way and still hadn't found a sign of buffalo. Also no birds or wildlife of any kind.  At one point I heard a bird call in the grasses and headed cross-country to try to flush it out.  I walked and walked and walked and the call never got closer--until it did!  But he wouldn't flush!  I finally gave up and wrote this note:

Never try to flush a bird in the weeds when the bird is upwind of you. Distances are deceiving to the ear.

I discovered tha tthe "tall" grass prairie that looked short was actually knee-high when you waded through it. Not so tall as our fields of Johnsongrass back home, but tall enough.  Funny thing--on the way out, I never noticed the roundish spots of bare dirt spotted all over the place. Buffalo wallows!

After a short forever which turned out to be about a half mile, we reached the buffalo enclosure and went through the gate. It wasn't much farther until we saw a lone buffalo, way out in the grass to the right. So at least we saw some wildlife this trip.

Go on or go back?  We'd already invested a good bit of walking in the endeavor--it seemed a shame to go back without seeing more. I had these mental images of a huge herd of buffalo thundering across the plains, right over the next ridge. But we were beginning to understand something about this grassy prairie, this place where trees were bushes and only found in the low land between ridges. The prairie goes on.

You walk and walk to get to the top of a ridge, and what do you see on the other side? More ridges. Higher than the one you're on, too--you just couldn't see them from back there. And the tops of the ridges frequently aren't. Aren't tops, I mean. They're gateways to more of the same of the same.

We set a stopping point at the (arbitrary) top of the ridge we were currently climbing, although there wasn't any vegetation visible that would distinguish the point of our turnaround.  It turned out to be a good choice, because there, we saw the buffalo.  A sweet little herd of some 30 adults and calves, grazing and resting way off at the limit of our vision. With binoculars, we could seem them only fuzzily. You could say we chose to remain at a "safe" distance or you could say we were just lazy. They couldn't catch our scent--or us theirs!--and so they were blessedly ignorant of our intrusion. Just hanging out doing their bisonly thing.

That was pretty much the end of the trip. We drove on the Council Grove reservoir. It would have been a nice place to camp and I could see likely spots for fishing off the bank, but the rain was coming on and there wasn't much point in getting out of the car. I proposed we go back and look at the farm buildings at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. We had no sooner parked and got out of the car than thunder groaned its warning--three steps away and we could tell we were about to be drenched and our umbrellas reversed. We reversed our steps instead and cowered back into the car.

I'm not a sissy about rain. Last year we went to a botanical garden in a drizzle. But this one was hard, fast and nearly horizontal. The misery-inducing kind. It followed us back to Wichita, let up, came back, and nearly killed us as we tried to head out next day. When I'm going 40mph in a 70, with wipers on high and fingers white-knuckled over the steering wheel, it's not a good drive no matter how much I might enjoy driving.

We learned something from it all, and like most deep truths, it's obvious when it comes to mind. We're not city people. A day in San Antonio can be a hoot, and a walk through the Waikiki beach outdoor shopping mall is entertaining. But the trips that count--the trips that stick in our gut and make us hunger for more--are the outdoors ones.

For this trip, part of the problem was lack of execution of the plan--I let us linger in historic sites too long and that truncated our outdoors time. On Monday I lingered in bed too long. Wetland birds are best observed with a spotting scope, not binoculars. Animals and birds--and reptiles and insects--are seen when they feel like being seen, not when you go look for them. Any wildlife viewing trip is a crap shoot, but the more time you spend outside, the higher your odds of twenty-one. Remember Yellowstone and the seven o'clock wake-up-fox, running through the campground? The wood thrush calls at Land Between the Lakes? Every hike in the woods thrilled with them. The otherworldly beauty of Hermit Thrush song, at the Grand Canyon North Rim campground? The prairie dog town at the entrance to Wind Cave? We didn't go looking for these things, we just went. And there they were.

Lesson learned. Go where they are, and stay there. They'll come to you.

Mid-August mini-break Day 2

Sunday

Continued story of too early/too late. I got up extremely early, 5 am, Ed at 6. I ate my free breakfast and then we walked across the street to the Boothill Museum.

I wasn't expecting much and so I was surprised that there was so much to see. (Except for money in the bank vault)

There appeared to have only been about 30 recorded graves there (maybe less--check me before you believe that).

We lingered in the museum until time to check out of the hotel, then headed east for the first stop of the journey, the Fort Larned National Historic Site.  It was almost deserted except for a few interpreters, dressed in character. It was big, mostly original buildings that had been restored, crammed full of old stuff, and dressed out with historically accurate displays. They were absolutely excellent!  A little more explanation might have been nice, but the people were willing to explain all we wanted whenever we asked.


Forgetting that we had a significant drive to Wichita and two waterfowl refuges I wanted to visit, we spent way too much time there. When we finally left and got to the first of the refuges, it was afternoon and I was ready for a snack. We picnicked briefly, watched a horrible, ancient film about the Cheyenne Bottoms Nature Preserve, then started driving out to see the birds. It was a long, slow drive on gravel roads and my contact lenses were driving me wild. When we finally got around where the birds were, the idea of a 2-1/2 hour drive onto Wichita was getting me down.

There were a lot of birds--too many birds, too far away and no time to name them all. The only one I got for sure was the White-faced Ibis, although of course I recognized Great Blue Heron, Great Egret and Snowy Egret. Possibly Black-necked Stilt. ID'ing anything else would have taken too darn long, and soon we left.

But not before going out of our way to see a prairie dog town where burrowing owls had recently been spotted. It turned out to be another long drive on gravel rods and the actual dog town was on private property and far enough from the road that we could only see them clearly with binoculars.

Note to all: no more prairie dog towns on private property!

It wasn't a bad drive--Ed had done the morning shift so I took over the the afternoon.  We got to the hotel well before dark. It was nice -- a Marriot -- but had a couple of weird issues. Plus I'd been misinformed that all of the rooms had balconies, but they didn't. The desk clerk kindly changed our room to one that did. The balcony was tiny, overlooked the freeway, and had no chairs. No problem, that--we brought our own.

The room wan't that bad, it's just that we expected more.  The really bad thing that happened was that it was 7:45 on a Sunday evening and most of the restaurants I'd chosen closed at 8:00. The Mexican restaurant was open, but I was tired and didn't want to dress up and go out at that hour.

We should have done it. Instead we got fast food--that is, Ed got faast food but I wanted Chipotle until I saw that the line was long and there were only two people working in front. I chose to eat my leftovers from lunch--which were excellent--and snack on bugles. Fresh bugles out of the bag--awesome. Better than Chipotle and defnitely better than Popeyes. That's the problem with learning how to cook--at some point you get to where you like your own cooking better than 95% of restarurant food.

The day wasn't a loss, but it seemed like one. Too many things went wrong, but on balance, a few things went right. We kept our good humor and (at least I can testify) didn't get on each others nerves too much.

Mid-August mini break, Day 1

Early up; long drive; imaginary food trucks; longer drive. Dodge City stinks like a feedlot. You couldn't pay me to live there. But the fried catfish at Central Station Bar and Grill is excellent. And that sums up the day.

We were only twenty minutes late getting started--I'd shot for 7am, 7:10 would have been fine, but then I decided to go back inside and make sure none of our four cats had gotten locked in the bedroom.  You'd be suprised how long it takes to locate four cats in one tiny house.  Finally I did the kitty-kitty call--like magic, they all appeared.

We had to stop at two rest areas on the three-hour drive to Oklahoma City, but, not being in a hurry, we didn't fight the urge. It was dripping rain when we dropped off the dogs, and by the time we got on I-35, it was drizzing--but not that you could tell. There were so many cars throwing up so much water I had to keep the wipers on constantly, sometimes on high. At one point we hit construction and the three lanes narrowed down to two and lucky for us the other people knew what they were doing, because if I'd been in the lane that ended, I'd have smashed into the barrier and caused a backup for fifty miles.

In the best of weather I-35 stinks, but this was exceptionally stinky. After three-quarters of an hour of torture, the rain ceased to fall and slowly, finally we came out of it.  For the rest of the day, even though blue clouds loomed to the west and to the south, we hit no more rain. Oklahoma welcomed us with cats.

The National Cowboy and Western Museum isn't a huge museum, but it had a lot of stuff to look at. We went through the paintings pretty quickly, then circled back to see saddles, boots, clothes, barbed wire, soldiers, snuffboxes, tobacco tins, guns, guns and more guns. Eventually we ended up in an old west city--all indoors and all so dimly lit it's a wonder we didn't knock our brains out on the door frames. Yes, I understand "atmosphere", and I understand that if you see a figure in shadow it looks almost real, but some of the stuff needed a little light on the subject, if you know what I mean.  A lot of the exhibits suffered the same lack of lighting--it was so dim I couldn't read the informative signs.

Then we hit a rodeo exhibit and finally a cool display that anyone our age would love--cowboys of the big and small screens.  Could have spent a lot more time there, but time was a-wasting.

In a final western art gallery, we were cornered by a bored security guard who first complained about the traffic in Dallas and San Francisco, then chatted very interestingly about the paintings. He relayed an odd story about one of the huge paintings--when it was on loan at the museum but not open for  the public viewing yet, an old guy in a wheelchair asked especially to see it. He turned out to be the grandson of the painting's creator. After sitting in front of it for over an hour, just gazing at it, he thanked them, left, and donated it to the museum.

I could see a person sitting for an hour in front of it. It was a huge, detailed portayal of wagons coming around a bend in a canyon. So much imagination, so little time.

Which was a-wasting, so we headed to downtown Oklahoma where there was supposed to be a big, new, trendy food truck park that everyone had raved about. I even had a list of some of the best trucks in it.

I can't describe it, though--it didn't exist. We went all around everywhere where it was supposed to be and even walked around the farmer's market it was supposed to be adjacent to. We should have asked someone, but it had become clear that it wasn't there, so we hit the road.

Ed drove and I played with my phone until I finally found out how to make it show me restaurants ahead of where we were, not where we were.  (As you know, at Interstate Highway speeds, "right here" is too late.) I learned to put in "barbecue restaurants" on the map and scroll rapidly to the west. It soon located Swadley's Bar-B-Q--convenient, close to the highway, not too crowded and very good. Best fried okra Ed's ever had in a restaurant (but not as good as my mother's.)  I had a bowl of spicy beans--very good and I wished it were twice as large; coleslaw--how I wish coleslaw was good for you, I love it so; and cowboy potatoes.  Ed's barbecue was good but the sauce wasn't sufficient or very tasty--too bad. I'm not sure Oklahoma knows how to make BBQ sauce.

The trip to Dodge City took us off the interstate and down long, straight roads with almost no cars anywhere. Wind turbines in spotty masses turned listlessly.  The road went through occasional small towns, but other than a stoplight or two, we weren't delayed.  When we stopped for gas I resumed driving over some of the most abused and beautiful country I've ever seen.

Flat but never level, horizons that defy imagination, tumbleweeds and brushy weeds that spoke of a land which had once been plowed but never should have been.  Copper-colored gullies where the thin prairie soil had washed out in the 1940s. Beautiful, sad, and lonesome as a moonscape--land of the lost--a garden of the native Americans, dug up and despoiled. And yet so beautiful.

If I'd known more of the plants were were speeding past, I might could have told you if the flat fields of sagebrush, cactus and thistle were once plowed up. Are they fields of the turkey red wheat that bloomed so beautifully for a couple of years, then failed and blew dry in the dust storms of the depression?  Or are they simply overgrazed--run with so much cattle that they'd no longer support a good-sized jackrabbit?

How long--if ever--would it take a destroyed prairie to regenerate? Probably not ever--the thin soil was a loess deposit dropped by retreating glaciers, so only when the next ice age comes and goes would these lands have a hope of restoring their fertility. Of course man could do it--by careful rotation of alfalfa, buckwheat, and clover, with application of grazing animals to crop the leaves and fertilize the plains with their droppings. Would it take a lifetime? Two?

Maybe I'll find out someday.

We made it to Dodge City and paused while I reprogrammed the phone to take us to the Santa Fe Trail Tracks monument, about 10 miles west of Dodge City. There was a billboard, a parking area, a short trail, and lots of informative plaques--but no trail tracks.  Wrong time of year, we decided. Although pictures at the site showed them clearly, those pictures were at least fifty years old.

 That was then.

This is now.


I wasn't all that disappointed. We were in the same place where once, not too long ago, covered wagons had traveled. I stepped on a clump of grass that was once watered by the pee of a trader's mule. And I heard Western Meadowlarks!  Was that a first for me?  I don't remember! My bird list is at home in an old field guide.

And then this one bird flew over and made such a twitter, I know it was something I'd listened to on the Cornell All About Birds site--a Bob-o-link! Here's their picture of it:

The prairie was rich out there. Not tall, but lush--flowers, prickle-bushes, lots and lots of grass that resembled the silver bluestem we have in occasional places back home. And there was the wind, gentle today, the glorious, singing prairie wind!  Left to myself, I could sit on the ground for hours, just listening to crickets, birds, and that softly caressing wind.

Sigh.

We returned to town and, did I mention Dodge City stinks? It still stunk. We quickly dediced on Central Station Bar And Grill instead of my first choise, Prime on the Nine, because Ed pointed out that a golf course restaurant would probably require a collared shirt.  Not something I would think of. Besides, I was tired. Central Station was just fine--a pleasant little place full of families and vacationers, with kids playing on pool tables in the back. Great service and decent food.  House salad was iceberg lettuce covered with American cheese--note to self--stop wasting money on salads!  In Hawaii, I never got a bad salad; outside Hawaii I've never gotten a good one. The fried catfish very good and sweet potato fries more than adequate. I had to quit with food on my plate and was sorry to leave it behind. But my stomach's plenty big enough already.

It was late. Bedtime.

So-so story of a truly blessed event--sort of

Seven from Heaven: The Miracle of the McCaughey Septuplets
by Kenny McCaughey, Bobbi McCaughey, Gregg Lewis

The parents take turns telling this tale of fertility treatments gone wild.

It's funny how that people may not want something, but once they get it they cling to it as fiercely as if they needed it in the first place. I certainly didn't want four cats--I don't know that I wanted any cats--but after they came in the house then I couldn't turn them out.

Apparently it's the same way with babies. Very interesting.

Not as great a book as I'd hoped; I kind of got the impression that everyone was telling them "Oh, you got to write a book about that" and so they did. But it wasn't one of Cheryl Strayed's "Beating heart that you have to rip out of your chest" kind of books.

Recipe Reduction 63-61

Tina's Award Winning Hummus

I don't know about award winning, but it's not bad hummus. I like her idea of replacing part of the tahini with olive oil. Tahini is a paste made out of sesame seeds, so it's high in omega-6 fatty acids. Olive oil has a more even ratio of omega-3 to omega-6.

She called for way too much salt--is it possible her canned chickpeas were unsalted? Normally I'd cook my own chickpeas for something like this, but I took the convenience of buying canned ones.

(sorry, no pictures. Traveling when I ate these)

Eggplant Salad Pitas

I used the Award Winning Hummus on eggplant salad pitas. But I played fast and loose with the recipe--mine was more accurately Eggplant Salad Wraps. Still very good.

Peel, slice and roast eggplant with olive oil and salt. Meanwhile, chop up tomato, cucumber, jalapeno, garlic and parsley; dress with a little olive oil, yogurt, lemon juice and cumin. When the eggplant is done, stuff your pita/aka wrap with hummus, eggplant and salad. Delightful!


Ridiculously Easy Jalapeño Pickles
by Susan Voisin, FatFree Vegan Kitchen

They were. And they're good enough that I'll never need to find another recipe for pickled Jalapeños.

But what, oh what was she thinking when she told hold to seal the jars, then said to keep them in the refrigerator?  The whole point of pickles--aka preserved foods in acid--is that you don't have to keep them in the refrigerator. Strange.

Absolutely horrid mystery...or whatever

Save Me
by Lisa Scottoline

I won't say much, because I really like the author's books of humorous essays. I don't hate Ms. Scottoline, but I hated this. I finished it only because it seemed to be getting better and I wanted to know how it ended. Waste of time.

I absolutely despise the cliche of the cute little female, with no physical training, who runs off to confront danger without letting anyone now where she's gone. I think she texted her husband but didn't leave specific details. With no thought of weapons, no plan, no training, and no brains, she's going to fight off a big, brawny guy determined to kill her? Well of course.

Needless to say I didn't bond with the heroine in the least. I suspect the author went out of her way to make her weak, wimpy, and kind of stupid, in hopes that we'd cheer all the louder when we finally saw her take charge of her life. It didn't work.

Isn't it her editor's fault that almost every chapter--and there were a lot of chapters--started with the words 'Rose' + a verb? "Rose looked..." "Rose picked up the phone..." "Rose chirped the locks..."  It reads like a first draft--was it rushed out without any editorial review?

Historical fiction at its finest

Sorry for not posting; out of town for a couple of days.  Which puts me even further behind on the recipes. Anyway, here's a book I read two weeks ago.

Love and other Consolation Prizes
by Jamie Ford

How does Jamie Ford make you love his imaginary people so darn much? I practically bawled at the end. If I were to get to vote on the book most deserving of being made into a movie, this would be mine.

It starts in 1962, when the narrator is an old man and his wife is ill, out of her head with late-stage syphilis which the doctor kindly describes as "a rare type of viral meningitis" to their daughters. But the next chapter takes him back to China in 1902,
when he and his mother were starving to death and his father, a white missionary, is no where in the picture. That chapter is titled "Raining Stars" and it's almost as heartbreaking as anything that follows.

As to what follows, I'm not saying. His life is an awesome adventure that takes place, for the most part, in a small area of Seattle. Mr. Ford continues to alternating between past and present but, oddly, it didn't annoy me. I got so caught up in the past--the main plot--that I hated to wrench away and return to the present. But the present-day events are important, too, and as I grew to love the narrator and wish him what he deserved, I was happy to come back to the here-and-now. Or at least, 1962.

The women in his life are superb. I wish I were Jamie Ford's mother so I could hug him for creating them. Strong or weak, ambitious or caring, sensible and (in one case) totally whack job, they're survivors. Maybe that's the ultimate difference between men and women: the drive to carry on, no matter what the cost.

Recipe Reduction 66-64

Lime-Cumin Dressing

It's a win!  Lime juice, cumin, garlic and olive oil.  Whisk it together and it beats three-quarters of the bottled dressings on the market.

Fried Cucumber with Purple Perilla 
from the revolutionary chinese cookbook

My purple perilla had to be Thai sweet basil, a substitute. It turned out good, and definitely something to add to the permanent recipe file and make when cucumbers are in season and coming out your gills.  But--MAJOR NOTE--peel them first.  They come out crunchy, not mushy like you'd think a vegetable made primarily of water would become, but the peeling doesn't soften at all.

The technique is simple: slice them thinly (and peel first according to me!). Stir fry for a few minutes, then add a chopped red chile, garlic, soy sauce and rice vinegar.  And the parilla leaves. I chopped them but the recipe didn't say that was necessary. When it's all hot and good smelling, remove the heat and splash on a bit of sesame oil.

Sadly, I think my sesame oil has gone bad. And my toasted sesame oil as well. They don't smell right and they have an aftertaste. But I use so little of the stuff that a bottle lasts me years. I guess it's going to have to go in the refrigerator beside the olive oil. Sigh...because now before I can make a recipe, I have to get the oil out and and let it re-liquify.




Stay-In Vegetable Fried Rice 
from Vegan Without Borders

No. Just, no. She made this vegan by substituting tofu for the egg, and that made it not fried rice in my book. If I didn't eat eggs, this might be an acceptable alternative, but it still wouldn't be good.

The other issues are that (a) she didn't fry the rice, and (b) used too much soy sauce in lieu of other flavors.  Seriously, how can you call it fried rice if you don't fry the rice?  And the sauce was just soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and a little toasted sesame oil. All good things, but the proportions were off, or something.

And one more grumble--why call it "vegetable" when the only vegetables are onion, peas, and carrots?  I added mushrooms and wish I'd thrown in some chopped squash, too.

I didn't go back and check, but I think I'm batting about 33% in favor of Vegan Without Borders recipes. Some are good, some hideous; but all can be improved.

On Aging

Forget catchy phrases like "You don't stop running because you get old--you get old because you stop running." (Walking, exercising, whatever....)

I say they've all missed the point: you get old because you stop going outside.

When I do my Thursday afternoon jog in the park, I frequently pass a couple of old guys sitting on a bench. They have a fluffy white dog underneath, and they're chatting and smoking a furtive cigarette or two. I see them in the 95-degree days of summer--they move to a shady bench--and the brisk chill of autumn.  And I suspect that the act of walking out, in sunshine and shade, to sit on that bench and talk, is doing them more good than the whiff of smoke could be doing harm.

It's sad when people are forced to stay inside, but sadder still when they choose to do so. I can understand being afraid to walk outside--you might trip, fall, break a hip and be confined to the hospital for weeks. That's a scary proposition...but consider the alternative.

Never feeling the wind in your face or the sunlight on your shoulders. Never seeing a star--or the horizon--or anything past your inner vision. Forgetting the moon's many faces. Smelling only chlorine-scenting bathwater, never rain on green grass. No longer forced to endure winter's crisp ache of ice-cold air in your nose.

Dear, sweet old people, do you ever stop to stare out your locked windows in summer, wondering why you ever dared to venture outside? Other than the grocery and the yearly doctor's visit, what's there to risk going outside for?

Just everything.

Biking the bricks...and the asphalt, gravel, river crossings...

The Road Headed West:
A 6,1000 Mile Cycling Odyssey Through North America
by Leon McCarron

Spinningly good adventure told by an Irishman cycling across America. Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out things the natives overlook or ignore out of habit, and Mr. Mccaron was just outsider enough to do the job. Great job!

Other than an oddness about the ending, which I'll be considerate and not reveal to you here, I enjoyed every single page. Personalities abound--old friends, trail friends, traveling and stationary friends--they all make their appearances and enliven the journey. It's occasionally hilarious.  I highly recommend it for anyone who loves to travel and happens to be stuck in place for a while.

Is biking really the best way to experience a country?  He thinks so--or at least he thought so at the time. But his rather excellent blog https://www.leonmccarron.com/journal talks about walking a lot, so maybe he changed his mind. In this book he's comparing biking to driving, and biking, of course, wins. He gets to experience the rolling hills, the rain, the heat, the look and feel of the country in a way that an automobile traveler never can. There's a lot of difference between cruising with rolled-up windows at seventy miles per hour and pedaling all day over broken terrain. Seventy miles is a whole day--and a fast day at that. But what about walking? Or running, or horseback riding?

On a bike you're restricted to paved roads or at least have a strong preference for them. (Excepting the occasional river crossing when the bridge is out--exciting scene!) On a bike you spend a lot of time looking straight ahead or down at the road, watching for rocks, gravel, and misplaced curbs. When you're breezing along at ten miles per hour, are you going to freeze in place when a fox is glimpsed in the forest edge? Are you even going to glimpse of the fox? What about the bugs and lizards and odd arrangements of limbs of a dead oak tree in the field?

Don't get me wrong--I'd love to bike across the country. But there's a lot to be said for walking.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day reading his blog. But I might take a walk first.

Sadness--joy--sadness--love that cannot be lost

The Hour of Land:
A Personal Topography of America's National Parks

by Terry Tempest Williams

If you have a wanderlust and liking for natural places, don't read this. It will scratch the itch and make you cry. Effigy Mounds National Monument--previously unknown to me--has now been added to my 'places to go' list. But I don't think I'll be lucky enough to get from the experience what she describes,

Suddenly, with a white oak as my witness, the energy of the woods shifts.  In the clearing--is the bird. I stopped to see the winged effigy in its entirety. Falcon enters my mind--swift and stealth. What if the wind I have been hearing is the memory of flight? This bird, made of earth, glimmers as light dances on the leaves, and I want to touch her body, a garden. But I don't. Restraint is its own prayer. 

The fact that a red-headed woodpecker, now iridescent in sunshine, flies down  from an oak branch to where the raptor's heart would be, only makes the moment more miraculous. 

For the rest of the afternoon, I walk the effigy's wings into motion.  They say her wingspan is more than two hundred feet. For me, her wings span time, where the whispering of holy wisdom can be heard. 

Great Bird, above the great river, what would you have us know?

If I were writing the shortlist for greatest author of all time, she'd be on it without question. But so much of this book is very hard to read, so hard, so painfully gut-wretchingly hard, I cringe every time I have to turn it on (audiobook, read by the author). She writes of America's National Parks and such, and she writes from the hearts. From the soul, even--but not her soul, the soul of the great places themselves.

And it's a soul that has been badly stressed. I read a book about sustainable agriculture one, and it implied that long-term sustainable agriculture was never going to happen. People get old, people retire and die, and the farm goes to another one with a slightly different vision from the original. Sooner or later--he argues--it will end up in the direction of a person who decides to make it produce "just a little more." Greed is inevitable; all efforts to preserve a way of life are inevitably doomed.

I refuse to believe that is true and continually search out examples to the contrary, Amazon.com's purchase of Whole Foods nonwithstanding. I know there are farmers in Europe who hold onto a way of life so zealously that they would boycott anyone selling cheese with the preferred brand but an altered method. Probably stone him. For farming, the picture may not be as bleak as it seems.

But for the National Parks, I'm not so sure. Once a scenic vista is interrupted by oil rigs, eroded strip mines, or wind farms, how long will it be before mankind gets tired of looking at his own ugly shit and tears them down?  The government changes every eight years, or even sooner, and eventually one will be elected who allows federal land--our land--to be used for development even though it's immediately adjacent to a national treasure.  All it takes is a well-placed campaign contribution from Big Oil, and our national heritage, our beauty, our soul, is tarnished. When traveling those parks we must learn to look inward, not outward. We must deny  our eyes from looking over the edges, for fear we might see what our National Greed has done.

None of this is directly taken from her book, but the feeling is there. If your heart is tender, read the book anyway and skip the painful parts. Read it for the walks through Teddy Roosevelt Grasslands with her father, for her venture to Big Bend in winter, for her travels to Gettysburg and Effigy Mounds and Alcatraz Island, and for her family's adventure in Yosemite during a massive wildfire.

Recipe Reduction Time Again, 67-66.

Vegan Pumpkin Bread Pudding
by Susan Hoisin

Wow, oh wow. My bread was too soft and I didn't have apple cider for the sauce, but still this was gorgeous. And rich, too, with no more fat that that found in a cup of almond-coconut milk. I think the little bit of cooked pumpkin fooled my taste buds into thinking it was full of eggs and cream.

Find it here: https://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2013/11/vegan-pumpkin-bread-pudding.html  and you, too, can join Team Pudding!

Broiled Lemon-Honey Arctic Char with Citrus Sauce
By Alexandra Stafford

If it's okay to substitute ingredients and still say you made a recipe, then I made this recipe. I didn't actually have any Arctic Char, but I substituted farmed white fish and it was really good, so shoot me.  I'm going to add her citrus topping to my ongoing list of things you can put on top of fish before baking it into awesomeness. Or broiling it, as she did.  Since the fish didn't actually brown, and neither did the topping, I don't see much difference between baking versus broiling, except baking is easier.  I'd have to try it to be sure, and I will.

Sadly, despite spending hours Sunday afternoon in the kitchen, I only made three recipes. easy ones, too. To finish on time I need to do four recipes each week.

Recipe Reduction #68

Roasted Vegetable Avocado Garden Wraps

I think I've hit a winner AND a do-over. The idea of roasting veggies, glueing them together with mashed avocado, and rolling them in wraps, well, that's not all that original, right?  I should have been able to think of that for myself. But her clever idea is to slow-roast the veggies in a glass dish, so they take on the sweetness of roasted vegetables but not the crisp, browned edges. And they're softer, too.

I'll definitely do this again and substitute more interesting vegetables than the onion+bell pepper+cauliflower she uses. Squash, for instance, or carrots or mushrooms. I've nothing against cauliflower, but it's bland and doesn't roll up very well.

Her take on spices is dreadful--paprika, garlic powder, and oregano. Paprika doesn't do anything for vegetables. Why not cumin and fresh cilantro, or basil? Doesn't she know that in addition to improving any vegetable it comes in contact with, basil can be chewed and applied to an insect sting to draw out the venom and ease the pain? It is reputed to help with rattlesnake bites, too. 
Eat More Basil!

Almost Great YA except for the violence

A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

[spoiler alert here, but since no one who reads this would ever read that, I'll go ahead]

Unsettling, upsetting, and magnificent. I wish I hadn't read it, but I wish a lot of other people would. It's all about the saving power of friendship--shoot, call it love. It's not an easy thing to be a friend, says the cliche, and I dare to repeat it. When you have a happy home, plenty to eat, and a gang of buddies who have your back, why would you need to reach out to someone who has none of these? Why waste time, risk boredom, and being bummed out by a kid with obvious problems? It's so much easier just to look down at your phone and pass him by.

Her Adam character is especially heroic--I want to hug him. I want to hug almost everybody. Good writing, Ms. Roe!

By the way, has anyone ever written a "social work success story"? Some one has to have, but lately everything I've been reading about foster care or social work has been a lot more bad than good. I need to seek out some success stories because this stuff is getting me down.

I was griping lately about Content Warnings. In general, they're stupid. I would never expect a teacher in a classroom to warn people that he was going to discuss disagreeable material. If he's a grade-school teacher he should keep it age appropriate, that's all--it's his job. For announcers on the radio, content warnings might make sense, because you never know who might be listening. Movies have warnings--ratings and keywords like 'fantasy violence'; music has 'Parental advisory' labels. But what should we have for books?

Nothing, I think. I don't know. But parts of the bad stuff here were pretty graphic, and I wonder if she could have told the story equally well with a little less detail. If the book had gone on another twenty or so chapters to describe the healing process, then the detail might have been helpful in understanding what the rescuers had to deal with. On its own, it was voyeristic, almost sensational. Maybe she was trying to get kids' attention--look! If you see a kid who might have problems at home, it may not be something as simple as a parent who gets drunk and slaps them around from time to time. It might be a whole lot worse.