Sometimes Food Feeds More Than Your Stomach

“…there is no such thing as wasted time in the kitchen—rather that is where we are able to recover lost time.”  —Laura Esquivel

“Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.” —Julia Child

I love food and I love to cook, especially when I have the time to really ponder and concentrate on each slice, each stir, each taste and smell.  I have not yet seen Julie and Julia, but I happened to see the movie trailer a few weeks ago, just before I headed to the library.  Inspired, perhaps, by the preview, I came home with these three books.  

Between Two Fires: Intimate Writings on Life, Love, Food, and Flavor by Laura Esquivel

Esquivel’s little book reflects some of the values and conflict recognizable from Like Water for Chocolate.  This small volume collects a handful of speeches and book prefaces written by Esquivel at different times and purposes that nevertheless cohere around themes of the kitchen and of food and love.  Feminism and cultural identity figure prominently.  She even throws in a few recipes written for Vogue Mexico.  I read it quickly but the flavors of the book stayed with me, gently prodding my own internal conflict between the love of my ‘woman’s work’ and the potential oppressiveness of that work.  Esquivel’s tidbits evoke a cozy kitchen where anything can happen, good or bad, and yet we always feel at home.  

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking by Julia Child

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, a cookbook, is the odd-book-out here.  I admit to not spending much time over this book.  I browsed through the recipes, hoping something would jump out at me, begging to be made.  As I turned each page, I realized that I could make many of the dishes without a recipe.  In that way it was affirming of my knowledge in the kitchen, but also disappointing because I wanted something new and inspiring.  It felt like Mastering the Art-Lite.  I do love that even in providing the description of a dish or a suggestion on technique, Julia Child’s particular idiom shines through.  So though I did not cook anything from the little book, I did feel good about the art of cooking and of savoring every bite.  

My Life in France by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’Homme

Created with her nephew, Alex Prud’Homme, Julia Child died before this book was finished.  My Life in France represents Julia Child’s final reflections on how she became an icon without the sense that she herself changed along the way.  This book begins the day Julia and Paul Child, newlyweds, move to France for a diplomatic assignment, and ends when Julia closes up their seasonal house in Provence many years later, when Paul is unable to travel there anymore.  The Childs did not live continuously in France during that entire period, but their life in the United States and elsewhere is glossed over in favor of providing detail about the settings, friendships, and experiences of France.  Child seems to want to communicate to us just exactly why and how she loved France in spite of attitudes toward the French in America at the time.  Her own father provides the (oft-painful) counterpoint to her love of France at many turns.  This book tells part of the story of the Paul and Julia’s life together, the story of how Julia came to cooking, and the story of how Mastering the Art of French Cooking was created.  Child is neither boastful nor self-deprecating, and readily points out differences in the way she was viewed in the United States and elsewhere as she experienced it.  

Julia Child changed the way Americans viewed the kitchen and paved the way for many television chefs to come.  She had many opportunities and made the best of each one while they lasted, then let them go when they were done.  She is often blunt in her assessments of people and situations, but the book is without bitterness or complaint, and communicates a sense of strident pragmatism characteristic of Child.  

Book Response: Heat Wave by Richard Castle

Heat Wave by Richard Castle

Hyperion, September ‘09

Partial Galley

Puzzle this one out.  This is a novel by a fictional character in a TV series.  Richard Castle (portrayed in the show by real-life person Nathan Fillion) of ABC’s hit show Castle.  Richard Castle (not a real-life person) plans to write a series of novels which fictionalize his relationship with his co-character Kate Beckett (portrayed in the show by Stana Katic).   What results is the novel-character, Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, Jameson Rook, and the sexy New York homicide detective that is teaching him all about ‘real’ crime, Nikki Heat.  

Still with me?

Heat is an NYPD homicide detective motivated to catch the bad buys by a tragedy in her past.  Rook pulls a favor from his buddy the police commissioner to shadow Heat for research about police work.  Snarky, flirty, arrogant Rook irritates Heat, and the sexual tension flies.  

The mystery at hand involves a businessman’s dive off his sixth floor balcony.  The suspects begin to line up quickly, including the deceased’s Eliza-Doolittle widow and her lover(s), his straight-and-narrow business manager, and a beefy bookie’s goon with a disgusting sense of entitlement about women.  

Heat is an interestingly complicated, tough, and relateable main character.  Jameson Rook comes across as less nuanced and more clichéd, but I suppose you expect a few clichés in a splashy detective novel.  The rest of the characters make up a plausible cast that will serve well in a series, if that’s the intention.  My favorite minor characters are the side-kick homicide detectives, named Raley and Ochoa, respectively, but referenced collectively as Roach. 

While reading, I was reminded several times of Janet Evanovich’s very fun Stephanie Plum novels.  Perhaps Nikki Heat is what Steph would be like with a little more realism and a little less of that delicious silliness.  

I have one criticism so far.  I don’t buy the scene where Heat is walking around her apartment, bubbly, wet, and naked, with the windows open and the blinds drawn.  I’ve never been in a heat wave in New York City—maybe I’d feel differently if I had.  I get the distinct impression that the book’s heat-wave-in-a-New-York-summer conceit is built just to make this scene remotely plausible.  That, and, you know, to pun on the main character’s name. 

I’m not crazy about crime novels, but I had fun reading this preview and I will read the full-version when it comes out.  I’ve only seen part of the pilot episode of Castle, though I really like Nathan Fillion (He can be my Captain Mal any day).  This novelization has done its marketing job as well, making me want to check out more of the series.  

What are you reading? 

Book Review: The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The terror came to the United State in an airplane. It landed in New York. It erupted from the World Trade Center. Or, more accurately, from the tunnels beneath the WTC site. This isn’t the real-life terror that spawned more than one war, but the terror of The Strain. A collaboration between filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and author Chuck Hogan, this terror isn’t jihadi extremism, but a vampire plague. 

These aren’t the sexy kind of vampires that sparkle and seduce, though there is something sexual (in a grotesque way) about their pulsing white blood. These are a cross between zombies and giant viral mosquitoes (sans flying), who behave like a pack of rats. I would not want to kiss one.

In this vampire rendering, a plane lands in New York. Everyone on board is dead. For a little while. Unfortunately, they all get up and go home and eat their families and their neighbors. Combining fantasy myth and forensic mystery, this book imagines how we might react to an invasion of vampires.

The story has one foot in the Old World and one in the New. Some common vampire tropes pop up. The vamps can’t cross moving water without an assist, and the Master is closely associated with a large wooden box full of dirt. The monsters aren’t fond of light (especially UVC) or silver, and, of course, they drink blood. Garlic and Holy Water, though, are out. Abraham Setrakian, a Holocaust survivor, disgraced university professor, and pawn broker is an obvious van Helsing. Abraham’s old world roots, at the table with his Bubbeh and her moralizing/terrifying fairy tale, juxtapose with the flashing lights of the air traffic control tower.

The airplane from Germany injects the vampirism squarely into the jugular of the United States. The writers pull the story into the 21st century New World with a scientific explanation for vampirism. The condition is caused by a blood parasite that takes over a host body, and can be transmitted without a bite if the parasite can wiggle relentlessly into a new host—or into the dirt to await the arrival of a suitable host. The hero is a hot shot doctor at the Centers for Disease control, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, called Eph for most of the story. He is rebuilding a broken personal life, damaged by alcoholism and workaholism. He comes complete with a smart kid, sympathetic ex-wife and her loser boyfriend. Except for the -isms, Eph is portrayed as a morally sound do-gooder out to protect people and do the right thing. He is an attractive not-hero, smart, full of real emotion, willing to be a good doctor, but reluctant to face a new role as warrior/killer. (Note: I imagined him more like Grant Imahara of Mythbusters than the actor who portrays him in the book trailers. Yes, that is a good thing.)

My scary-book-(and movie)-reviewing credibility died when I became a parent. Sometime around childbirth I lost the ability to stomach any pretend gore. I came to this book in the interest of adventure after seeing a few positive references to it online and seeing a totally creepy book trailer. (Incidentally, this was also the first time I’d heard of a book trailer. Some kind of weird hybrid of commercial and music video.) I was looking for a good scare in this book.

In that sense, the book was successful. I was thoroughly creeped out to the point that I skipped my 5:30 a.m. run one day, and for a couple of days after that, ran tense, spooking at ever twitchy shadow and leaf rustle. I imagined a nasty zombie-like vamp lurking around every corner, and ran a little faster.

The dead plane on the tarmac of a major metropolitan airport is a great opening conceit. It is creepy and suspenseful all by itself, and the tension builds as the bureaucracy and confusion unwinds around it. The fear generated is both personal (in the individuals who must figure out what is happening) and public (in the potential threat to millions of people from this mysterious plane). Guillermo del Toro’s skill as a filmmaker comes through in the careful, back-and-forth cutting between the growing list of players, building tensions through the positioning. I could imagine the cuts between close-ups of Eph donning his hazard gear, and long shots of the dead plane sitting dark on the landing strip. An effective sense of dread builds throughout the first half of the book, short bursts of scary intercut among the puzzled wonderings of the investigators.  The thoughtful dismantling of the safe and familiar into monstrous and alien works very well in some of the tightly focused scenes.  For instance, when the child-vamp jumps off the kitchen counter to attack his neighbor.

Unfortunately, the book becomes less and less scary as it progresses. Once the vampires were out en masse, I was less bothered by them. An insistence on a metaphysical evil to accompany the scientific explanation of the vampires feels clumsy. And one particular pun about child custody is a real groaner. The careful explication of their rat-like nesting and rustling and sneaking and twitching is not quite as effective as the building sense of dread from the early sections of the book. And though the story starts off with a promising set of both male and female characters (good and not-so-much) the story reverts to form when things get grisly, and the women end up (un)dead, bait, or tending the children back at the safe-house.

There is nothing new about monsters as cultural/political metaphor. I’m not yet certain of the metaphoric referent of The Strain. Does the title refer to the virus-like quality of the spread of the vampires? Perhaps to the stress caused by the new (old) danger? Likely some ambiguity is intentional. This book is the first in a trilogy. I was disappointed with the lack of meaningful resolution to any of the storylines in this one. I think readers are meant to be left on the edge of our seats, waiting for the next installment. But the presentation of new characters in the final pages feels somehow awkward and predictable, and I was left a little flat as I closed the book.

One hook, one character got to me. I will likely read the sequel, if only to find out just what is going to happen to Gus and his commando-vamp kidnappers in the asbestos mine near Philadelphia. I kid you not.

The Official Site (have fun finding out what’s there; I found it too creepy to look)

The Amazon Site (the Shed Scene Book Trailer with Eph, Nora and Abraham, and an introduction by Guillermo del Toro)

The Jail Scene Book Trailer (with Gus and Abraham, ge-ross)

Review: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray: 

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Rebel Angels

The Sweet Far Thing

Sometime over the summer, during some webby wandering, I came across a list of books to read post-Twilight.  It was something like this one, though there are many floating around.   

Full-disclosure on my opinions of the Twilight series — I read the first two books in the Stephenie Meyer series at an astonishing pace (for me), swallowing them up in a couple of days.  I think The Yummy Mummy called them crack, once upon a time.  If I’d been able to put my hands on the last two right away, I’d have swallowed them too.  Something—life probably—intervened.  During the time when I could not procure the last two books, I woke from a daze and realized that I didn’t like them (I know, shoot me now, aim low so I can still knit).  I still have no clear explanation for what sucked me in.  I do recall that there were some really rather hot NOT-SEX scenes.  Anyway, the books left me empty and hoping for something better.  

Back to the what-to-read-after-Twilight list.  I skimmed down said list, and checked a few titles for availability at my library.  I jotted down a list on the back of a plumber’s business card (is that significant?).  This list said,

     F Bray

     JF Klause

     F Gray

I tucked this note into my wallet beside my library card.  (Note, I’ve since added, ‘F Jin,’ but that’s another story).  

I picked up Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause, but couldn’t get into it.  So I tried Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty next.  I was nearly turned off by the corseted cover, but the author’s blurb suggested a woman with a brain and a wry wit, so I brought it home.  

The story begins with a teenage girl—our heroine, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle—thrust into a bewildering and horrifying situation, her life turned upside down. Gemma and her British family live in Victorian India, but the mysterious and controversial death of her mother sends Gemma back to England and then off to Spence Academy, a girls’ finishing school.  But I’ve left out the best parts: the otherworld creatures, the visions, and the discovery of magic.  And, of course, there’s the increasingly delicious Kartik, of the dark eyes and full lips.  

In Gemma, Bray has created a character on the edge of many things.  She is a young woman teetering in the liminal spaces between childhood and debut as an adult, wealthy but not noble, British but having grown up in India.  The time is also liminal, a period in which women’s roles are as constrained as ever (literally, don’t forget those corsets) but about to burst out into new directions (think job opportunities outside the family, voting, choices that didn’t have to involve men).  Spence Academy also provides a setting on the edge of the mundane world and the supernatural.  Spence is to Gemma what the Hellmouth is to Buffy.  Indeed Gemma’s circle of friends is poised on the edge of hope for something outside the roles traditionally stamped out for them, and Bray bravely walks right through questions of class, race, gender, and sexuality that feels refreshingly honest in a period adventure.

There is a joy of surprise and discovery and suspense in these books that I don’t want to betray, so I won’t give too much detail here.  But here are the things I liked best about this group of stories.

—A Great and Terrible Beauty is a great first-in-a-trilogy book in that it is both a great story all by itself, even if you don’t read the others, and a great opening for the rest of Gemma’s epic.   

—Gemma is a teenage girl with power.  Honest-to-goodness, it’s hers for better or worse.  She is a character who feels like a genuine teenager.  Bray delivers a young woman who is complicated, hopeful to please, but rebellious, wanting to be loved by father and others, but also wanting to be her own person, not controlled.  She is foolish and wise and petty and serious, curious and afraid.  Bray honestly portrays the alienation of the approach of maturity and of the first major decisions of a young adult life.  Gemma’s choices ring true with or without magic.  Likewise, there is honesty in the fractured emotion and confused reactions and choices in the face of extreme stress and grief.  

—Bray has created a young adult fiction that does not condescend, that has frightening moments (Will I fall on my butt when I curtsy before the queen?  Will that monster GET me?), hilarious moments (more than one proud girl falls into the lake), titillating moments that might make you wish the book took a dive into trashy romance (but don’t), joyful moments (not giving those away), and heart-aching moments (you’ll have to find those too).

—But best of all, Bray creates strong female characters.  Gemma does not sit idly, waiting to be filled up by someone else.  Gemma makes her own choices right to the end, a character who is able to rely upon her friends and allies and to draw power (magical and non-magical) and strength from those connections, but is no damsel in distress.  Bella can’t even compare.  Gemma’s friends don’t disappoint either. 

I’m just not sure Gemma, Felicity, and Ann could do all that running in corsets.  

I strongly recommend this trilogy for both teens and adults.  Bray’s next novel goes off in a wildly different direction—one that I heartily look forward to following.  

Run! Write! Make!

Growing up, I was not an athletic kid.  I was a tiny, scrawny, little white girl.  I could not hit a ball, I could not run very far, I never lasted very long in dodgeball.  I played no sports.  My closest brush with athleticism was in high school marching band, where I learned to march backwards while holding crash cymbals steady for a snare drummer to play.  (Don’t laugh.  Those cymbals are heavy and we did it in the New Mexico heat.  In hideous cream and brown polyester uniforms and plastic egg-shell hats.)

I will be 36 later this year and the desire to keep my body fit and healthy presses on me.  Simultaneously, the effort to keep my body fit and healthy seems to rise exponentially.  I’m not interested in joining any sports, and my options are limited there anyway.  I’m not interested in anything that requires an investment of equipment or a membership pressure.  I have found, however, that I really love to run.  I feel good when I run.  Unfortunately, the first thing to go when my schedule gets busy is my daily run.  So I tend to run in fits and starts.  Running regularly for a few weeks or months, and then not at all for months.  Sometimes I’m derailed by the general mayhem of family life.  Once I was knocked off track by the flu.  

A few weeks ago at the library, I found a copy of Haruki Murakami’s memoir-ish book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.  I’d not read any of his work before, but was led to him in my quest to read through some magical realism this summer.  I haven’t read any more magical realism since I suffered through Love in the Time of Cholera (I’ll save my ennui with that one for another post perhaps), but Murakami’s personal tale of writing and running gave me a swift kick in the butt on two counts.  

For Murakami, running and writing work together.  He does not write when he runs or even particularly think about ideas.  But it seems that running gives him an absence of thought and an ability to focus that increases his ability to focus on writing.  By training to run (and he is a serious runner of marathons and triathalons) he is a more focused writer when he is writing.

In spite of the particularly harsh and dry summer we are experiencing here in the Coastal Bend of Texas, I have been running five or six days a week for the past two weeks.  Since I haven’t run for months, I’m back to doing interval work to build up my stamina.  I’m up to half-running, half-walking a little more than two miles a day and it feels great.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever build up to a marathon, but if I could continuously run a few miles a day, without being sidetracked for months at a time, I’d feel very proud. 

Running is hard and it is hot and I get sweaty and dirty and funky.  But I’ve been injury-free so far, and working my body just feels so good.  I am more physically tired, but it is a satisfying tired.  Now that I’ve settled into a running rhythm, and my body is getting stronger and I am less worried about injuring myself, my mind is free to wander as I run.  Mostly it wanders into empty spaces.  Thoughts do come to me as I go, worries sometimes plague me.  But in running, I find that I can embrace meditative thought more effectively than I’ve ever been able to in other ways.  The thoughts and worries don’t linger.  They float by me like clouds, and I am able to consider them dispassionately, letting them pass without clinging to them.  At other times my mind wanders to the beat, counting the steps, predicting my tempo, comparing the beat of my heart to the thump of my shoes.  

And I’m learning (or rather reminded), slowly, that I need balance in my life.  Everything feels better when I’m running.  Everything feels better when I’m writing.  Everything feels better when I’m crafting.  But all three of those things have to work together somehow.  When one of those things drops out of my life for a while, the other two tend to disappear as well.  

Besides blogging a little bit more often again, I can’t say that I’m actually writing again.  But I’m getting closer.  I’m working the balance.  The writing notebook is on the desk again.  A few ideas have been scribbled in it, and the more I run, the more the ideas come to me.  The more ideas for writing I get, the more crafty ideas I get and the more enthusiastic I get about running each morning.  

I’m chasing my activities around in a circle.  I just have to keep them all moving in a positive direction, moving with balance in mind.