Smaug is my new Sherlock

 

Long awaited, soon over.  How long till the next one?





I've not been doing very well with my "food of the week" post.  I've not exactly...uh...done any.  Unless you count processed foods--

When I first tried the fake provolone, it was on pita bread with finely chopped veggies.  It was okay but a little weird.  After a week in the cooler (during the refrigerator strike), I tried it warmed up as a topping on refried beans and quinoa, and it was downright nasty.  Note to self:  eat fresh and cold or not at all.

The Tofutti sour cream is excellent.  I like it better than real sour cream.  Lovely!

I'll miss my Middlemarch

After more than two months of listening to the novel, at a rate of about a chapter a day, it feels weird to have it finally end.  I'm going to miss it.

What a story.  What a masterpiece.  And what a reader--each chapter started off with a quote, and the quotes were usually in English--but sometimes German, Italian, Latin...I don't even know.  She sailed through them all.  And the various speakers with their varying tones, diction and dialects--she did 'em beautifully.   You could usually tell who was talking by the narrative voice alone.

The book was set in a place and time where people's lives were extremely different from ours, yet it was written with such skill and feeling that I actually cared about the people.  They pained me, poor dears, and I sadly wished I could help them.  Some things are truly universal--youthful idealism, disappointment, jealousy, gossip.  Crying all night and waking up determined to be a better person than the one who wronged you.

George Eliot was a woman but you can't tell that in her characterizations.  Both men and women are gently ridiculed and an occasional gentle joke at the expense of each is allowed--

"....And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better."

Is Celia being sarcastic?  In her own mind, not at all, as she goes on to explain.  But she makes her sister--who clearly feels differently--laugh and cheer up.

I find it interesting that she doesn't explicitly make the point that the regulation of womans' role to hearth and home is what almost caused the intelligent and ambitious Dorothea to throw away her life.  Dorothea was never able to imagine her life's path being more than a helper in a man's great work.  We all feel the phrase "what a waste!" in the back of our minds.  On the other hand, George Eliot doesn't denigrate the lifework of wife and mother; it was certainly suitable for Celia and Mary Garth and her mother.  I think she believes the chief evil in the world is to fail to be true to our chosen path.

I even enjoyed the author's periodic interruptions to moralize or instruct, which is one of the hardest things to endure in 17th and 18th century novels.

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!

>Nowadays, writing a novel doesn't give you permission to preach.

I have this one warning.  Don't--halfway through--get confused about who's related to whom and look up a family tree on the Internet.  It will be a spoiler.

Big Saturday planned

One thing I am going to do for sure tomorrow.  Make one of the 5 vegan ranch dressings I've saved.  And comment on it.  All 5 are different, significantly IMHO, and I can't believe they're all equally good.

I'll be the judge!

Finished an audiobook--does that count?

Over Sea, Under Stone (Book #1 in The Dark Is Rising Sequence)
by Susan Cooper


Aha!  No wonder this seemed so familiar.   I'd read the second book in the sequence, five years ago (or so.) 

I didn't like the second book all that much, but I did like this one.  Was the difference listening to it instead of reading it?  Possibly.

The action sequences are good, almost thrilling.  And the adventure of the three kids is well told and pretty much fun.  Only their personalities seemed a little flat--I didn't know them like I wanted to.   If I were the target audience, which I presume is 10 to 12-year-olds, I'd be panting to read the rest of the five books that seem to make a complete subset of a series that might go on forever.  But I'm not the target audience, and while I "kind of" want to finish it, I can wait.  Someday, if nothing else turns up, I might.

It's the little things that make us happy

Okay, it's the great big things too.

Yesterday I was jogging and staring at the IPod in my hand when a car passed by.  What he saw--the unseen driver of the unknown car--wouldn't have struck him as anything unusual.  We've all seen it; we see it every day.  The grocery shopper with a phone in one hand, yakking away as he loads up his cart.  The theatergoer with bowed head, doing a last scan of email before the curtain rises.  The table of teenagers in the food court, sharing time and space but each holding their own little world in their palm.

I never expected to be one of them, yet there I was.  In defense of myself, I have to explain that I was trying to figure out why my book was seeming to jump chapters--had it gotten accidentally set on "shuffle"?   Listening to a book with the Ipod in shuffle mode can be unusually challenging.   But whatever my excuse, I was choosing to look down instead of up.  Fixing my eyes on a 2x5-inch screen instead of sun and trees and clouds.  Keeping my brain firmly enclosed in the man-made world while my feet pounded pavement...and even the feet were wrapped up in plastic and nylon.  I was insulated--bound up in my bubble.

I read the other day about how vitamin B-12 deficiency was rare in vegetarians of the old days, possibly because poorer food washing procedures left traces of soil which contains the microorganisms that produce B-12.   It's also true that plants grown in healthy soil will absorb B-12, but I prefer to think that it's the dirt in the eyes of my home-grown potatoes that is bestowing a gift from Mother Nature.  We often treat Mother Nature like the fallen star in Stardust and apply the curse the witch put on--you will neither hear her nor feel her; you will not see her even if she is standing right in front of you.

Not that I want to see dirt.  I can't abide dirt on my food.  I wouldn't buy potatoes with clumps of sticky mud.  I wash spinach in three changes of water to eliminate any clinging sand.  When I bring in a bunch of bean pods carrying cute little "green loper" caterpillars, I banish the livestock to the compost bucket.  I'd rather pop a pill than eat a worm.

But I'm going off-topic here.  The point is, I am just as likely as the next person to banish Mother Nature from my daily existence. I'll turn on a book while driving on a limited-access freeway; text silly messages to my kids when I'm stuck in line at the grocery store; surf the web in my palm when I'm waiting at the movie theater.  But when I'm outdoors, in her world, I ought to be there.  To be looking up and out and around; hearing birds instead of words; seeing the litter at the sides of the road (otherwise how would I think to pick it up?) I should be thinking about the wind blowing against my cheeks and the uneven tilt of rocks under my feet; the funny scuffling noise my shoes make on gravel. 

And maybe if I didn't have the man-made world in my palm I'd spend less time driving on freeways, standing in line, or waiting for the movie to start.  Maybe I'd spend less time killing time.

First book of the new year, finally

I'm not sure if it's legal to mark down Forever Rose by Hilary McKay in the book challenge.   It's not on the list and not on the plan, not by the slightest stretch of imagination.

But I read it, so there!

Hilary McKay continues her sweet saga of the Casson family with this one, nominally about 11-year-old Permanent Rose but really about Caddy, Indigo, Saffron, Sarah, Mother, Daddy, David, Tom and Michael...and introducing Buttercup.
No guinea pigs were harmed in the making of this book.  Or tigers, I think.

Re Middlemarch:  there is nothing like an ah-ha moment three-quarters of the way into a long, sprawling story...oh, my gosh, I know what's going to happen!  He's going to do it--or is he--please no--

The new fridge...

may be coming Sunday.  I doubt if it will be hooked up for at least a week, but man can dream.

I just had scathingly brilliant idea for a blog-worthy project!  Once each week I could choose a new food that I've never eaten/cooked before, and try it out!  I say "eaten/cooked" to include both things I've eaten but not cooked as well as things I've never eaten.  And by "cooked" I mean prepared.  Like kumquats--I don't think you cook them, but I can include them if I cut them up and include them in a salad.   And I'll include things like collard greens, which I've eaten in a mixture but not as a main ingredient.

Maybe I'll call it the "ingredient of the week" post.  So here are a few things for the list.

celeriac, collard greens, fennel, kale, mustard greens, yams
crimini mushrooms, shitake
apricots, figs
lentils, flaxseeds, barley, buckwheat, millet, rye, spelt
nutritional yeast, seitan

Not sure about the seitan.   Here's anotherscary article about wheat.  How will I ever regain faith in my yummy whole wheat bread?