The History of Food - again.

This week's post is a repeat. I don't have time to write a new post, because tomorrow my friend and I and her two daughters are leaving for a week and a half long camping road trip. We start in San Diego and go straight to Monterey, and then will pretty much be driving the coast all the way up to Redwoods National Park near the Oregon border - with a stop for my brother's wedding in San Francisco this weekend.

Yes, we are insane. But I'm completely excited, especially since my sister and her daughter are joining us after San Francisco. It's Girl Power Camping 2014!  (Subtitle: how much does Sabrina really like small children? Let's test by putting her in a car with them for many, many hours on end!)

Just kidding - I've known these kids their whole lives. I'm really, really looking forward to it.

So while I go freak out about how much I have to do before I leave, please enjoy this post from November 2011.

************************

I have a new favorite website.

I was mining through the fabulous list of articles over at the SFWA website, and I came across this website regarding the history of food.

The main feature of a site is a timeline with the most basic origins of food and recipes, with articles giving the details of each. Who knew, for example, that mozzarella sticks have been around since the 14^th Century? Or that chocolate covered potato chips pre-date chocolate covered pretzels? Or that it took humanity until the 16^th century to figure out that you could use eggs as a raising agent (such as meringue)?

The very first thing on the timeline is water, which cracks me up. This addition of water seems to hint that there was some point in human history in which water was not consumed. But I suppose that the creators of the site just wanted another excuse to link to the articles on food at the Cambridge site.

The good folks of Cambridge have written a large number of articles for a book called The Cambridge World History of Food. I'm sure that all of them are extremely fascinating, if they weren't clogged with the worst use of jargon I've encountered in a long time (and I read a lot of scientific journal articles). For example, the following passage on rice: "The origin of rice was long shrouded by disparate postulates because of the pantropical but disjunct distribution of zzzzzzzzzzzz"

That, of course, being the point where my eyes glazed over. The article on water is even worse:

"Even earlier ideas of water as one of the four (or five) elements will mislead us, for in many such schemes elements were less fundamental substances than dynamic principles (e.g., in the case of water, the dynamic tendency is to wet things, cool them, and dissolve them) or generic labels for regular combinations of qualities. In one strand of Aristotelianism, for example, water can be understood as matter possessing the qualities of being cold and wet…."

Uh, right. As my lawyer friend commented, "This article can be understood as possessing the qualities of being obvious and stupid." That’s right, folks, this passage makes even her brain hurt.

But I digress. I was particularly fascinated by some examples, like the fact that ketchup has its origins in Asia. My lawyer friend tells me that I should spell it as "catsup," because "ketchup" is a trademarked brand that has fallen into general usage, and I told her to stop reading over my shoulder. Anyway, ketchup at its origins could really be made with any vegetables, and apparently, it was at one time a close race between tomato and eggplant ketchup. I, for one, am relieved.

Seriously though, there's a lot of really great information there. It is in no way a complete or thorough guide to food history, but it's a good starting point, and as all good websites will be, lots and lots of fun. It's certainly inspired me to look more into the topic.Or to try my own vegetable ketchup recipe. Brussel sprouts, your day has come at last.

Let us close with another passage from the Cambridge water chapter:

"It is probably right to see this linkage of macrocosm and microcosm as something more than analogical; such linkages would remain a part of popular understanding even after the rise of a mechanistic cosmology in the seventeenth century."

For the rest of this holiday season, may both your microcosm and macrocosm continue to be so much more than analogical.

Summer Eats

Out for this post? Blogging about writing.
In for this post? Blogging about food.

My husband and I recently ran away. Okay, so we ran away to a business conference, but still. Someone else cleaned my room and made my bed and gave me fresh towels. And someone else cooked my meals.

To be honest, it really woke up my taste buds. I think I'd fallen into a rut of, "Oh, look, there's a freezer burned chimichanga, and a couple turkey hot dogs, and some three day old mac and cheese - looks like I won't have to cook! It's leftover night, everyone!" - Again.

So, since coming back, I've been at least somewhat trying to recapture a smidgen of the spirit of cooking. (My family has been overwhelmingly grateful). I thought today I'd share a few of the summer recipes that have gotten the thumbs up. Oh, and in case you don't notice, allrecipes.com is my friend.

Summer Salads

Asian Chicken Salad - Okay, so this is really just Asian Salad. When we were trying to come up with a mock Applebees Asian Chicken Salad, this was the only recipe with lots of good reviews. It doesn't really taste like Applebees, but my family rates it delicious on its own merits. To add the 'chicken' to the Asian Salad, we use whatever is on hand, leftover grilled chicken (great), canned chicken (a little soggy), or even cut up chicken nuggets (surprisingly alright). Oh, and sometimes we use less oil and more soy sauce, otherwise it can be a little greasy.


Mandarin Chicken Pasta Salad - A new favorite along the lines of the one above, but a little more refined. I added more sugar than it calls for because - sugar addict, yeah.

Strawberry Spinach Salad - You really can't have summer without this one, can you?

Main Dishes

Carne Asada Tacos - Oh, yes. Let the meat marinate a nice, long time. Why not try some of these, while you're at it.

Spicy Garlic Lime Chicken - YUM.

Low Country Boil - if you haven't tried this yet, then you're missing out on one of my favorite Southern traditions. Make sure you invite a crowd. Good times, good times.

Desserts

Buster Bar Ice Cream Dessert - Not for the faint of heart, calorie-wise, this really does taste just like the Dairy Queen treat.

Microwave Carmel Popcorn - Everything you're supposed to avoid - sugar, corn syrup and margarine! This is a great treat any time of year. It's made in a brown paper bag, of all things, so clean up is a snap. Make sure you use margarine, even if you're a butter purist, because butter just won't work as well.

Anything you love in the summertime?

~Susan

Food as Symbolism

Amazing Discovery of the Week!

3-2-1 Cake

Yes, you can make a cupcake in the microwave!
My friend showed me this great after school snack that's as easy as 1-2-3, I mean, 3-2-1.

No, it doesn't look like this when it comes out of the microwave.

First, purchase any flavor cake mix you like. Also purchase an angel food cake mix.

Combine the two dry cake mixes (no other ingredients added) and store in a container in the pantry or cupboard.

When you (or your munchkin) want a treat, merely mix, in an ungreased cup or cereal bowl:

3 Tbs of the combined cake mix
2 Tbs of water
And
1 minute in the microwave later, you can have your cake and eat it, too.


So, I'm not sure why all my Amazing Discoveries in recent weeks revolve around food instead of writing, but I figured for today’s post, why let a good fixation go to waste (waist?).

My friend recently admitted to me that she has a guilty pleasure in reading. She loves stories with descriptions of food. To be honest, never in my life have I really thought about food in literature. It even took a minute to think back to a time when reading about food really impacted my life. Here it is:

In my church on the first Sunday of the month we fast (don’t eat or drink) for two meals and donate the money we would have spent on food to the needy. As a kid, I was not nearly as altruistic as I am now (cough cough) and it felt fairly excruciating to ‘starve, literally starve!’ – or so I told my mom. (this wasn’t forced on us at all, I could have eaten, but the expectation was there in my family, and it was stronger than my desire for food). Anyway, my favorite pastime to while away the hours till dinnertime was reading cookbooks. I know, I know, like pouring salt on a wound. But I still remember devouring those pages with my eyes, especially the pictures of desserts until I could almost taste them.

In real life, food is hardly ever just fuel for our bodies. It can be a reward, a threat, a friend, an enemy, a gift, solace or dozens of other things. In literature, food can also be a powerful tool in a writer’s arsenal. A character’s relationship to food can explain so much of how he or she sees the world, can give so much background, in so few words. The following are a few examples that came to mind.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

In Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta attend a victor’s banquet in the Capitol. It’s described this way:

“But the real star of the evening was the food…Whole roasted cows and pigs and goats still turning on spits. Huge platters of fowl stuffed with savory fruits and nuts. Ocean creatures drizzled in sauces or begging to be dipped in spicy concoctions. Countless cheese, breads, vegetables, sweets, waterfalls of wine, and streams of spirits that flicker with flames.”

Katniss is stuffed to the gills when her prep team demand to know why she’s not eating. When she admits she’s full, they explain how ‘everybody’ goes to the toilets to puke so they can keep eating more. Peeta’s response and Katniss’s reaction tell us everything we need to know about their situation.

“’You go along, thinking you can deal with it, thinking maybe they’re not so bad, and then you -‘ he  cuts himself off.

“All I can think of is the emaciated bodies of the children on our kitchen table as my mother prescribes what parents can’t give. More food.” (Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins, pp79-80)

Suddenly Peeta and Katniss are thrown out of the glamorous world of the Capitol and realize that they will never be able to forget or leave behind who they are and where they came from. The symbolism of food as decadence is a turning point in their attitude about the rebellion.

Austenland by Shannon Hale

Let me just say, I adore this book about a thirty-something girl, Jane, obsessed with Jane Austen’s works (especially the Colin Firth BBC version of Pride and Prejudice). When Jane is gifted a stay at an Austenland resort for the wealthy promising period dresses, romance, and men in snug britches she accepts, convinced that if she lives Regency England she can overcome her obsession.

Throughout the novel, a great deal is made of the procession of people into dinner. In regency times the order of precedence was quite strict with the most important members of the dinner party going in first. Jane is continually shunted to the end of the line and made to walk alone, in large part because she was not their ‘usual customer’ (someone wealthy enough to be a repeat client to Austenland).

“Glum, glum, glum. That was the sound her feet made as she descended to the drawing room that evening. Glum, glum, as she walked alone at the back of the line of precedence into the dining room. It sure felt cold back there. She sniffed and rubbed her arms…

“Jane click-clacked her fork on her plate, pushing her food around. Her mother would’ve been shocked. It was not often that Jane was truly and absolutely despondent, and tonight she felt enslaved by the word. It shouldn’t matter what they thought of her, she reminded herself. This was her game, and when she won it would be her victory. She just had to dig in her heels and keep playing. But the reality of the men being bored by her, paid to pretend to like her, intruded too much on her fun tonight, coupled with the dread that she wouldn’t be able to conquer her obsession before her time in Austenland was up.” (Austenland, by Shannon Hale, p149)

Her discontent is so perfectly mirrored in the dinner arrangements that when a certain snug-britched fellow (who shall remain nameless in case you haven’t read the book), breaks precedence just to be with her, it’s huge, and awesome and ahhh. You know?

Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

This book is one of the most perfect examples of using food to help a reader truly understand a character. In fact, it was this book (along with my friend’s confession) that set this whole blog post in motion.

Princess Elisa’s story begins:

“…Today is the day of my wedding. It is also my sixteen birthday.

“I usually avoid mirrors, but the day is momentous enough that I risk a look. I can’t see very well; the lead glass ripples, my head aches, and I am dizzy from hunger. But even blurred, the wedding terno is beautiful, made of silk like water with tiny glass beads that shimmer when I move. Embroidered roses circle the hem and the flared cuffs of my sleeves. It’s a masterpiece, given its rushed stitching.

“But I know the terno’s beauty will be much diminished when buttoned…

"‘Done!' (her attendants) announce together, and step back, one on each side to admire their handiwork…

“I shake my head. ‘I am a sausage,’ I gasp. ‘A big, bloated sausage in a white silk casing.’ I want to cry. Or laugh. It’s hard to decide.” (Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson, p1-2)

If you hadn’t guessed, Elisa’s refuge from the pressures of palace life is in the kitchens. The kindly kitchen master always has a pastry or two for her and a comfortable seat where she won’t be judged. Throughout the novel, her descriptions of food and her changing relationship with it mirror so acutely her own transformation into someone confident, powerful and whole that it is really a masterpiece of symbolism.

In what ways have you noticed food used in literature, or better yet, incorporated it into your own stories?

Happy writing!

~ Susan

Cooking up Stories

Once in a long while, I read a book that doesn’t just stay with me, but changes how I see the world in some fundamental way. This week I read one of those books: An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, by Tamar Adler. 

I hate to be bossy, but I will: Buy it. You’ll want it in hardback. You’ll want to read it over and over again. You’ll want to underline passages—some for wisdom, some for practicality, and some for sheer beauty. You’ll find yourself looking forward to grocery shopping, without a list, eager to buy whatever vegetables look fresh and trusting you will find a way to enjoy them.

I must confess that I am not a foodie. I don’t watch cooking shows. I have never tasted truffles and I don’t drink wine because I don’t like it. I also don’t like very spicy foods or anything that tastes like the sea. I had foie gras once, in the south of France, and it took all my willpower to swallow without gagging. I have never learned how to cut up a whole chicken and I have an unabashed love of ranch dressing.

With Ms. Adler’s guidance, I may still make friends with a raw chicken.

An Everlasting Meal is not a cookbook, or even a book about food. It is about reclaiming a relationship many of us have lost or never had between buying food and nourishing ourselves with it. The subtitle, Cooking with Economy and Grace, is apt, but could as easily be reworded Living with Economy and Grace. For me, this is a book about living. And, for me, a book about living is necessarily also a book about writing.

I’ve been working on my first novel for about two years. When I started, the experience was as all-consuming as any budding romance. I was swept away with the act of creation, with guiding characters through my twists and turns, with the unexplored corners of my own imagination. 

It turned out to be a bit of a turd.

So, I began a second draft, and then a third, learning more about story structure each time. The more I analyzed and reworked, the more my writing time started to evoke the same emotions as scrounging for dinner when I haven’t made it to the store, the kids are hungry, and it’s already 6:00. I get enough of that feeling when it actually is 6:00 and I haven’t made it to the store and the kids are hungry. The honeymoon was over.

I studied scene and sequel, pacing, inciting incidents, four-act structure, 8-sequence structure, plot points and pinch points, and the dreaded info-dump. I’ve learned a lot, but the problem is that good stories don’t come from recipes. 

In An Everlasting Meal, Ms. Adler includes recipes sparingly, explaining in the introduction:

But cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page. There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what’s left; there should be looking at meals' remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become.

Isn’t it the same with stories? You begin from wherever you find yourself. You begin with a character, or a scene, or a situation. You follow your imagination through all the loose ends and wind up with ideas that can’t be used but get thrown into the hearty stock of creative juices to season another meal. You write today’s pages and then let them marinate as you go about your day.

The opening essay, “How to Boil Water,” graces the act of boiling vegetables or pasta or chicken with a spiritual simplicity:

There is a prevailing theory that we need to know much more than we do in order to feed ourselves well. It isn’t true. Most of us already have water, a pot to put it in, and a way to light a fire. This gives us boiling water, in which we can do more good cooking than we know.

This, too, is how to build a story: put water (or characters) in a pot and light a fire.

People have told stories as long as they have had language, which is somewhere on the same scale of ancientness as starting fires. Yet, when my son asks for a story, I seize up the same way I do when it’s dinner time and I haven’t planned a recipe. What if I get it wrong? What if I leave something out? What if I don’t know what I’m doing?

The other night, I surveyed my refrigerator and found only a few odds and ends hastily purchased without a plan. I had ground turkey, a bunch of kale, half an onion, garlic, and sliced baby bella mushrooms. In the meat drawer I discovered a forgotten but unopened tube of cooked polenta.

I scoured the Internet for a recipe that didn’t require canned tomatoes, and came up with zilch. 

So I started where I was, browning turkey with onion and garlic and mushrooms. I smelled all the spices in my cabinet until I came to garam masala, bought long ago for one recipe, and my nose perked up. I added a little, tasted, found out it’s freaking delicious, and added more, plus kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, tension on the tongue. I added the kale, steaming to emerald green. I dug in the pantry and threw  in a handful of raisins for sweetness. I cut cubes of polenta and browned them in butter, then called it all dinner. It wasn’t pretty, but the kids cleaned their plates, even the kale. When John got home, they couldn’t wait to tell him how good dinner was. Even the kale!  

The next night’s bean stew didn’t go as well, but I know I can still save it. I have bacon up my sleeve.

Ms. Adler gives the moral of this tale in “How to Paint Without Brushes”:

If we were taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged first to feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses, and a little faith.

I picture ancient people around the hearth, telling stories of gods and monsters and romance and adventure as they break bread together, and I think: I have stories to tell as surely as I have water and fire and the wisdom to add an onion.

I have countless teachers, authors, and friends to thank for guidance. I have human nature to thank for senses. And I have An Everlasting Meal and a well-used pot to thank for faith.

No, it Wasn't Ratatouille

Strap on your seatbelts, everyone. Today's post is a long one, has nothing to do with writing, and shouldn't be read while eating.

Thanks to an overpopulation problem of local skunks and an overly inquisitive cat, I found myself with an entire cupboard full of 48-oz cans of store-brand tomato juice. This week I made the one recipe I know that uses tomato juice: SWEET POTATO, PEANUT BUTTER, and CABBAGE STEW.

This stew is tastier than it sounds, and is one of three ways that I will eat sweet potatoes. Not as good as the pie, but darn close.

It is not, however, kid-friendly.

Last Tuesday: Stew Day
While I snarf down a huge bowlful, Kid #1 cries, gags, regurgitates, and cries some more. Kid #2 starts sympathy crying, but then realizes this is his chance to be Golden Child. So he eats every last drop, repeatedly thanking me for our delicious dinner, and casting sly, superior glances at Kid #1. John threatens snot-and-tear-covered Kid #1 with stew for breakfast, and I fill up another bowl because this is comfort food and feeding it to my children stresses me out.

While John coaches Kid #1 through his second bite (“Use your milk! Swallow it fast!”), I clean. Dishes in the dishwasher, a few more by hand, and some stacked in the sink for after the first by-hand batch is dry.

I look at the tomato juice can, which I opened with a church key opener. The recipe used 32 oz from the 48-oz can.

(True story: My novel's MC uses a church-key (punch) opener in a scene. John read it and said, “She only punched one hole.” I gave him a blank look. He said: “It won’t pour with one. You need two.” At 36, with an engineering degree, I’d never figured out the physics of the punch opener. The next time I opened a can of liquid, I couldn’t wait to make TWO holes and see how it worked. This tomato juice was my first opportunity.)

Churchkey, a.k.a. punch opener.
Yes, this is an important detail.

Back to the leftover juice: Should I save it? In what? Freeze it? I don’t drink tomato juice. Pouring it out seems wasteful, but saving it seems like a pain.

Bath and bedtime. I leave the can on the counter to deal with the kids.

Wednesday: Lunch menu? Leftover stew (for me).
I see the can in the morning. Dammit. Can’t save it now. I never finished cleaning the kitchen last night, instead crashing after the kids were in bed. Now we’re late for school, as usual. Then comes errands, and more errands... Home for lunch. Ah, leftovers.

Thursday: More leftovers for me
Chock-full of vitamins. I’m the queen.

The can has become part of the scenery. My eyes work like that. Leave something on a surface for more than 24 hours and it becomes a built-in feature. For instance, don’t all coffee tables come with three remotes, two markers, a cut-up piece of construction paper,and a pile of mail? John’s the same way, which is why I live in constant fear of drop-in friends and/or child protective services.

Friday: I ♥ Leftovers
I can’t believe I haven’t gotten rid of that can yet. But I don’t feel like opening it up and scrubbing it out right now. The juice is dried on by now and I can’t put a dirty can in the recycling. See recycling rules posted to fridge.

More leftovers for lunch. Healthy and delicious and filling, too. Proud of myself.

Saturday: Last day of leftovers...
... As good as the first!

The only thing left from that recipe is this abandoned can. Today I'll deal with it. Really.

Except, somehow, I don’t.

Sunday
Can? What can?

Monday:
While I take the kids to a playdate, John gets the rare urge to thoroughly clean the kitchen. The forgotten can magically re-appears in his field of vision.

He doesn’t worry over recycling. A quick rinse will do. John is relaxed about this stuff in a way I am not. I will leave a peanut butter jar in the sink for days until I finally wash it out, because I do not put dirty peanut butter jars in the recycling. I am a rule-follower: No food residue. No cardboard boxes from frozen items. No pizza boxes. John gleefully ignores these city-issued guidelines, while I religiously follow them.

We are two different kinds of messy. He’s nah-its-fine messy. I’m it-has-to-be-perfect-or-don't-do-it messy. John doesn’t really care. I care too much. We end up in the same place.

But enough analysis.

I come home with the kids, an hour to spare before dinner and nary a grocery in the house. “I’m running out for groceries,” I say.

He’s at the sink, scrubbing with uncharacteristic vigor. “Oh. Are you planning to make anything with tomato juice?”

“No, why?”

“No reason. We’re just out, is all. So if you needed some, you’d have to buy more.”

“OUT? There were, like, six cans in there.”

“Yeah, well, the whole batch was bad. I had to get rid of them.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

He’s giving me this look, this mouse trapped in a cage with a weasel look—I know that look because I’ve seen a mouse trapped with a weasel before—and I can tell he really does want to say something but he’s also hoping against all rational hope that I’ll take his word for it and just go shopping.

That is so not happening.

I drop my keys back in the jar by the door. Stare at him. He stares back. I’m assessing him. He’s backing into the corner, the way the mouse does. Eyes wide. The only way a weasel can attack a mouse in that position is head-on. And the weasel doesn’t want to, because he’ll get bitten, but ultimately this game has to end.

Hang up my purse. Hands on my hips. “Spill it. Now.”

He sighs.

The Confession
He rinsed the can. Rinsing it with just the two punch holes was slow, but he didn’t feel like getting out the big can opener. Until the water stopped flowing and he saw something blocking a hole. Something like... FUR.

There was no way around it. He had to open the can all the way.

What he found was the headless, tailless, but still recognizable form of a RAT. Possibly a very large mouse. But most likely a rat.

I’m laughing a little, in a completely insincere way that’s utterly out of my control. “You’re making this up.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Honey,” I say, “this really isn’t funny. Stop joking. I’m begging you.”

“I didn’t want to tell you, but then what if you needed tomato juice? I couldn’t keep the other cans, not after.... I just had to throw it all away.” I see the green undertones in his face.

“But... But I used that to make the stew. We all ate the stew.”

“I know.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple the only movement between us.

“So then it crawled in one of the holes,” I say. My stomach clenches. “A rat came in the house. Did you leave the door open? Someone left the door open.” My eyes are starting to water. I’m getting that trembly lip. “Shit, I’m the worst housekeeper in the world.” Hyperventilation. Dizzy. Need to breathe slowly. Heart hurts.

Rattus norvegicus, or common sewer rat

“No way it crawled in,” he says. “It was only parts... No head or tail. Mostly skin and fur. Had to have been there all along.”

“But we ate the stew.”

“I know.”

“We made the kids eat the stew.”

“I know.”

“Kid #1 cried.”

“I know.”

“I ate leftovers all week.”

Silence. He goes back to scrubbing the sink, powerless to make this better.

I kick off my shoes. “I can’t enter a store right now.” (My mind is flooded with images of rats crawling all over the canned goods section. My semi-dormant rat phobia is  awakening like a great and terrible beast in my psyche.) “I’m going to the bedroom to lie down and cry. Will you order a pizza?”

His shoulders slump. “Yeah,” he says.

They can never, ever know.
(But we can tell copyright-free
kid from Microsoft Images.)

We don’t even have to discuss the fact that the kids can never, ever, ever know about this. We will lose all clean-your-plate credibility if they know we force-fed them rat stew. So it is our secret, our shared burden as parents.

Facebook friends insist we notify the FDA. The tomato juice should be recalled. We have to take the carcass to the store. Someone should be testing it. We have to FOLLOW UP.

The next night, John and I are drowning in guilt. The rat is in the outside garbage now, and tomorrow is trash day. We have agreed that I must never, ever see this bit of flesh because I am not strong enough. Sometimes you just have to accept your limitations. So our next action will be up to John.

I convince him that it's our civic duty to report the rat. He drinks three glasses of wine, dons some latex gloves, and opens up the sealed trash that contained the carcass. He seals it in layers of foil and plastic, then puts it in the freezer.

Neither one of us wants this anywhere near our food. But where else do you store a dead body? It’s Southern California. We can’t rely on outdoor temperatures to keep the thing fresh. It’s in an isolated corner, tucked behind a long-expired bin of blue cornmeal. I have no idea why I ever bought that blue cornmeal, but it will go when the rat goes.

We still haven’t made the call. John doesn’t want to have the rat conversation in his work cubicle. I can’t call because I’m still convinced it's karmically my fault. Plus, the body is not in good shape. John had tossed it on top of uneaten oatmeal, and then had to perform some sort of surgery to separate the “clean” part from the oatmeal-crusted part. I think that may have been where the third glass of wine came in.

At least my husband makes a happy drunk. He was great company when it was done.

Because everyone loves a hopeful ending
Once upon a time, I read seven Black Dagger Brotherhood J.R. Ward romances in the space of a week. John seemed to resent my obsession, saying it portrayed men as an absurdly unrealistic and unhealthy ideal. I figured he was insecure about the ginormous muscled heroes who were all ass-kicking and alpha maleness. I told him I was smart enough to know the difference between fantasy and reality.

And I am. Real-life romance is the guy who will take care of the rat. The guy who won’t let you see it, who really doesn’t want to tell you, who’ll go back into the trash even if he can’t do it sober. The guy who’ll listen to you cry about how this is fate’s punishment for your horrible housekeeping, and hug you and say don’t be silly, and look at our beautiful children, they’re fine. Books and fantasies are fun, but I can’t imagine giving a rat’s ass about a monosyllabic lump of muscle in real life.

Nope. Real world heroes don’t need life-or-death drama to spring to action. A rat in a can of tomato juice will do. And I’m swept off my feet all over again.

Christmas by the Bay

This post comes to you through several distractions: I'm writing on my sister's Mac (why is there no right click button? WHYYYY?); my niece is running around in her adorable lady bug outfit making bee noises, and the Big Red Chicken needs our help saying the magic word so he can perform his magic show for Dora the Explorer and her friends.

I'm up here for the week to celebrate Christmas with the family.  I've been enjoying everyone elses' posts about Christmas traditions, so I'll share some of our family's.

Mostly, our traditions revolve around food.  My family is of Armenian descent, and Christmas is our time to spend days cooking traditional dishes.  Armenian food is something of a mix between Greek and middle eastern cuisines.  We'll do cheese boereg (cheese wrapped in filo dough and baked until cripsy), paklava (similar to baklava), and kefta, which is (wait for it), lamb and bulghar stuffed with more lamb and spices, molded into a small football shape, and then deep fried. They're amazing, and completely worth all the effort they take.  I'll be spending several hours on Christmas Eve shaping them.

(Oh god, the map is singing again. Who came up with this show anyway? And why do they have to go through the castle instead of just walking around it? And why is Dora's monkey so creepy?)

Other assorted traditions include going out to look at nights on Christmas Eve with cups of hot cranberry cider (imagine boiling cranberry juice until its almost syrupy, and so tart that it'll practically take skin off the back of your throat. Good stuff).  And the reading of "A Night Before Christmas" on Christmas eve, by just the light of the Christmas tree.

(By the way, this post is going to be pictureless, unfortunately, because I honestly don't know how to download a picture if I can't right-click on it and hit 'save picture as'. Stupid Apple.)

 Again, none of that has much to do with writing.  But I've been frustrated with how little time I've spent writing lately.  I suppose I'm in one of those periods again where I try to get myself in the "mood" to write, and just end up spending an hour playing minesweeper. I have to remember that the best way to get me in the writing mood is to, you know, actually start writing. For something so obvious, it's amazing how hard it is for me to remember.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Language, Metaphor, and 2nd Grade

Today I present, for your consideration, three seemingly unrelated incidents:

Nerdology 

Perusing the AbsoluteWrite message boards for a chance to offer one of my brilliant, life-changing opinions, I came across a person who asked if he had been justified in correcting a friend’s grammar on her website, where she claimed “over 20 years experience.” He believed an excess over a numerical value should be expressed with "more than."

Cranky responders pointed out that good grammar never makes you as popular as you think it will. I can vouch for this. I didn’t end a single sentence (written OR spoken) with a preposition in all of high school, but the boys never came a-knocking.

The friendlier replies were along the lines of, “Technically, you’re right, but it really doesn't matter.”

Somehow the answer seemed incomplete. I love rules, I love grammar, I love precision, and yet... And yet. I could only think about how fluid language is, how much awesomesauce you can miss by trying to put every word in its proper place.

Oh, the Humanity

My recipe guru, Aviva Goldfarb of The Six O’Clock Scramble (www.thescramble.com), has a recipe for savory sweet potato pie that is sublime. I have never liked sweet potatoes, but I can barely stop myself from eating this entire pie in one sitting.

Earlier this week, dinnertime crept up on me and I had nothing in the house except baking ingredients - flour, butter, sugar, eggs - and 3 sweet potatoes. It was the perfect excuse to serve savory sweet potato pie for dinner, along with a side of boxed macaroni and cheese I found at the very back of the pantry, which may or may not have been past its expiration date; I wasn't going to ruin everything by checking. I declared this, “Orange Night.” I presented Orange Night with great fanfare, despite the fact that the oven sprang a gas leak halfway through cooking the pie and it was a miracle we neither exploded nor passed out from the fumes.

In retrospect, I should have turned the oven off and ordered in. But that's not my point here.

THIS, I would have understood

Kid #1 is my picky eater. He's getting better, but this was a bad day. He was in a sour mood, and that sweet potato pie was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. EVER. When he finally tasted it, the gagging started immediately. After a few false alarms, he managed to swallow the first bite, but not the second. He regurgitated that and subsequent bites into little piles of masticated sweet potato, amply seasoned with salty tears. We gave up and sent him to bed.


No One Understands Genius

Yesterday was my volunteer day in my older son's second grade class, where I helped out by correcting papers. One worksheet was a simple vocabulary test, in which the children were told to fill in the bubble with the correct definition for each word.

Now, an aside for shameless braggery: Kid #1 is my literary kid. He would rather read than do anything else, including eat, sleep, go outside, or interact with people. He's currently on his second run-through of the Harry Potter series because we failed to provide him with new books fast enough.
Sometimes he’ll ask me what a word means and I’ll have to look it up, because vocabulary has never been my strong suit. I've been figuring when he gets to the pesky analogies on the SATs, he'll do just fine.

The words were really basic. For example, "to taste." What 2nd grader doesn't know the meaning of taste? That's hardly a vocabulary challenge.

Except... The possible answers were:

1. to feel 
2. to wait for
3. to take a bite of 

I bet you see where this is going. My brilliant, literary, vocabulary-master kid got the definition of “taste” wrong. He chose #1, “to feel.”

When I was a kid, other kids used to try to convince each other that trees scream when you cut them down, and humans just can’t hear it. I sometimes tried to imagine what a tree’s terrified scream would sound like. Well, now I know. It’s the sound my heart made when I marked this problem wrong.

Every word has a meaning, or a range of meanings, that we try to encapsulate in definitions. It is always thrilling to find just the right word for what you want to say. Precision is everything in communication; "navy blue 2000 Honda Civic hatchback" gives a much clearer image than "car." What's magical about language, though, is that you don't have to be literal to be precise. Words have associations, images, and metaphor built right into them. When I say that after my second baby was born I looked like an old mattress tied around the middle, isn't that a more precise image than saying I had thirty pounds to lose?

For my son, taste is a feeling. That sweet potato pie felt like a nightmare in his mouth. The texture made him gag more than the sweetness or any individual reaction of a taste bud. Certainly for him, “taking a bite of” something doesn’t convey the horror of tasting it when it’s sweet potato pie. The bite isn’t the problem, it’s the chewing and the swallowing - and all the feeling that goes on during that terrible ordeal between teeth and throat.

Did I write more than two thousand words of my novel yesterday, or did I write over two thousand words? If I want grammatical precision, I wrote "more than." But what if the joy of creation was like flying away on a magic carpet into storyland, and what if paragraphs and chapters were the foothills and mountains in a fertile landscape of words? In that case, “over two thousand words” isn’t just an acceptable mistake. It’s exactly, precisely right.

Unless you’re in second grade.

~Sarah

P.S. I edited this post from the original when my husband vetoed "The Beav" as a nickname for our son. He doesn't veto much, so I try to be accommodating when I can. That's what makes me such a GREAT WIFE. Just saying, honey. Christmas is coming...