Saturday Beans & Sunday Suppers

Saturday Beans & Sunday Suppers: Kitchen Stories from Mary's Farm by Edie Clark
Nonfiction - Essays
2007 Powersbridge Press
Finished on December 7, 2015
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)




It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it... and then the richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied... and it is all one. ~ M.F.K. Fisher

Publisher's Blurb:

Life-saving iced tea, Indian pudding "as it should be," dandelion wine made in the days when flowers mean peace, roast lamb on an Icelandic farm, baked beans from those who know best, cod cheeks and ale. Take this journey from the early 1960s all the way to the present and visit all kinds of kitchens on the way through the decades. In Saturday Beans & Sunday Suppers, you'll discover a delicious collection of thoughts, memories and recipes, all about food, written by one of New England's most treasured writers. Here, food is not just sustenance but life and spirit and communion all in one. Guaranteed to inspire an appetite, for life and for good food, happily prepared.

What a delightful book! I enjoyed each and every chapter. My dear friend, Nan, gave me this book several years ago and I decided to give it a try, starting on the day before Thanksgiving. It was the perfect sort of book to read during the busy holiday season and I read one or two chapters each night. Each chapter includes a recipe and I marked all but one or two to try. Here's a list, just for fun:

Not Aunt Peg's Fish Chowder
Aunt Peg's Iced Tea (with lemons and oranges)
French Onion Soup
Vinegar Cake (chocolate cake, from The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken)
Indian Pudding (cornmeal, molasses, milk & eggs)
Mushrooms Provencale
Vermont Baked Beans
Chicken and Dumplings (I already have a wonderful recipe, but I'd like to try this one since it's meant to be cooked in a crockpot)
Beef Stew
Cold Cucumber Soup
Orange Couscous

Nothing fancy or elaborate, but her remarks about these recipes made me eager to try them. 

On food and memory:

When I sat down to write this book, I believed I was going to write about some favorite New England foods and include the recipes for each. But as the book progressed, I realized that food cannot be separated from place and memory, family and events from the past. In a way, then, there is no more powerful memoir than the food itself, a sensory cue strong enough to conjure the past as present, the present as past.  Aromas and touch can bring back the pageant of what came before.

and

Food, made by our own hands or passed to us from loved ones, is, without parallel and without guise, our lifeblood. It is what creates us, mind and body and spirit. Some food is simply nourishment, passed to us through a window of a fast-food chain and eaten from our laps as we navigate traffic. This is hardly food, only fuel, and even that is questionable nourishment. Food created by us and for us is our substance, the essence of love and reminiscence.

Final Thoughts:

I knew nothing about Edie Clark before reading this culinary delight and now I'm curious about The Place He Made, her memoir about her husband's death from cancer, as well as The View from Mary's Farm, an earlier collection of her essays. She has that writing style of familiarity, reminding me of a cozy afternoon spent with a good friend, sharing a cup of hot tea and meaningful conversation. Highly recommend!

Food is an adventure, food is communion, food is comfort, food is love. Food is a very big way that we live our lives. We might as well make it good. ~ Edie Clark

Please visit Beth Fish Reads for Weekend Cooking.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend.

Looking Back - The Winter of Our Discontent

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Fiction
1996 Penguin Classics (Originally published in 1961)
Finished in February 1996
Rating: 3/5 (Good)




Publisher's Blurb:

Ethan Allen Hawley, a descendant of proud New England sea captains, works as a clerk in the grocery store owned by an Italian immigrant. His wife is restless; his teenaged children are troubled and discontented, hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards.

The Nobel Committee, in awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature, stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent he had "resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American."

My Original Notes:

Pretty good. It certainly held my interest and I read it in five days. I'm sure I missed some of the underlying themes and wish I had CliffsNotes to help clarify some of the confusing spots. I haven't read Steinbeck since 9th grade! Recommended to me by a friend who said it was his favorite book.

My Current Thoughts:

Since 1996, I've read a few more novels by Steinbeck. I prefer his longer sagas, such as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden (reviewed here). The Winter of Our Discontent didn't leave much of an impression on me.

The Winter of Our Discontent was Steinbeck's last completed novel before his death in 1968. 

What is your favorite Steinbeck novel? Mine is The Grapes of Wrath, although I did love East of Eden, as well.

A Day in the Life Blogger Event

Trish, of Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity is hosting today's 2nd Annual "A Day in the Life" blogger event. I missed it last year, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading posts from fellow bloggers, so this year I made sure to start early! Several people worried that their days would look dull or boring to those of us with full-time jobs or large families, but that wasn't the case. The creative effort of some of these bloggers made the posts fun to read and a nice way to get to know them a little bit more. 

Just a little bit about me before I begin. My husband and I are empty-nesters, living in Lincoln, Nebraska. We've been married for 27 years and have a grown daughter who lives in Dallas, working for JC Penney corporate. (She also has an amazing fashion blog called Fashion Jackson.) We share our cozy home with our 12-year-old Annie-dog, a stray we rescued over 8 years ago. I work full-time as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, which has been my dream job for 9 years. When I'm not at work, I enjoy reading, biking, traveling and cooking. So, here's an example of a typical weekday:

5:00 Rise and shine! Stumble to the shower.

5:20 Brew a cup of coffee, chat with Rod and try to coax Annie to eat her breakfast. 

5:30 Head back upstairs to enjoy my coffee as I check the weather, email, Twitter and Google News.

6:00 Step away from the computer! Get dressed, make a green smoothie, grab my lunch and head out the door.

6:45 Off to work, which is only a 3.5 mile drive. Sometimes I get lucky and see a beautiful sunrise. I either listen to NPR or my current audio book. Have I mentioned how much I love Audible.com?! I use my library a lot for audio books, but they don't always have what I want.

7:00 Clock in, grab my PDT, a cart of books and start setting displays. Tuesdays are my busiest mornings since this is when the Bestsellers change over, as well as several other displays. I'm able to listen to an audio book on my Nano or phone during those first two hours when we don't have any customers in the store. Best time of my work day.

9:00 Breaktime. Breakfast and a quick peek at social media for 15 minutes.

9:15 More of the usual. Bring out new books from receiving, set promotional displays, relieve the cashier for breaks, etc. Oh, and answering questions like, "Where is your nonfiction section?" or locating a book that was in the newspaper two months ago. You know the one. "It's got a red cover and it's about that guy on that show." Sigh. But then there's always one of my favorite customers, asking for a recommendation for their book club. This is when I think to myself, "I love my job."
 
11:30 Lunchtime. I either read in the break room or head out for a brisk 20-30 minute walk.

12:00 Work, work, work. I can usually log about 10,000 steps during work.

1:30 Another 15 minute break. So tempted to get a scone or a mocha from the cafe! Or a piece of cheesecake. Or a cookie. Sigh. Oh, wait. Didn't I just walk 10,000 steps?!

3:00 Quitting time. Out of the store by 3:15ish.

3:20 Grocery shopping. Don't you love the local murals?

3:50 Quick stop for gas. Ours has crept up again. I get regular (no ethanol), so it's $2.299/gallon. Today's cost a total of $31.96. That usually lasts about 3-4 weeks, so I'm not complaining!

4:15 Home! Unload the groceries and put the perishables in the refrigerator. The rest can wait.

4:20 Annie's walk. When the weather's as nice as it was today, the park is full of children. Annie gets a lot of attention from the little ones.

We've cut way back on the cookies, but she always gets one after her walks. 

4:40 Check the snail mail. I sort and toss/shred every day so it doesn't pile up.

4:45 Change out of work clothes. Nothing feels better than taking my shoes off and slipping into my ancient (Privo) flip-flops! Ahhhh.

4:50 Toss a load of laundry in the washing machine.

5:00 Feed Annie, pour a glass of wine and head upstairs. Write a quick note to our granddaughter for Easter. Now that she's older (13!), she loves Starbucks! Easier to mail than chocolate bunnies. :)

5:10 Relax and read emails and a quick scan of social media (Bloglovin' Facebook, Twitter and Instagram).

5:30 Rod's home. We always spend a few minutes catching up (Annie joins us, of course!) before I start dinner.

5:45 Quick phone call to American Express to sort out my new text alert program. They notified me of a $100 charge at the gas station. Apparently, that's what the gas station automatically charges before reversing the charge to the actual amount. Phew!

5:55 Throw clothes in the dryer. 

6:00 Porchtime with Rod. He's enjoying a beer while I finish my wine. Annie really wants to chase squirrels. Or just roll in the grass.

 

6:30 Dinnertime. Depending on the night (Rod teaches two nights a week) we either eat at the table or in the living room, watching something on Netflix. We just finished House of Cards, so tonight we decided to watch the second half of History of the Eagles. Man, they were an incredible band. We had leftovers, so no photos.

8:00 Dishes and lunch prep.

8:20 Quick look at email/Facebook/Twitter/Bloglovin' and work on this blog post.

8:45 Heading to bed. Yep. 5 a.m. comes far too early and I want to read for a little while.

8:50 Remembered there are clothes in the dryer. Run downstairs and get them out. Hang up the ones that I don't want to wrinkle and leave the rest for tomorrow.

8:55 Say goodnight to Annie-Dog

  

9:00 Read! 

10:00 Lights out!

Thank you, Trish! This was so much fun and I look forward to doing it again, maybe in the winter... and when we're retired and living in Oregon!

Mailbox Monday

Britt-Marie Was Here

by Fredrik Backman

On sale May 3, 2016

The New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry returns with an irresistible novel about a reluctant outsider who transforms a tiny village--and in turn finds love and second chances in the unlikeliest places.

At sixty-three, Britt-Marie's orderly life is upended when she leaves her philandering husband and takes a job in the small derelict town of Borg. There, against her better nature, she finds herself being pulled into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, and layabouts--and a handsome local policeman whose romantic attentions to Britt-Marie are as unmistakable as they are unwanted. In this town of misfits, can Britt-Marie finally find a place where she belongs?

With charm and wit, Britt-Marie Was Here celebrates the ways in which even the gentlest of spirits can change the world for the better.

Yay!!! I loved Backman's debut novel,  A Man Called Ove, which I read last May and reviewed here. I can't wait to read this new novel and I still want to get a copy of his second book. How about you? Have you read any of this beloved author's books? If you're planning to attend BEA, you'll be happy to know that Fredrik will be appearing! I wish I could be there.

What arrived in your mailbox this week?

Click on the title for more information.

Find more Mailbox Monday posts here.

The Language of Flowers

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Fiction
2011 Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read by Tara Sands
Finished on November 4, 2015
Rating: 3/5 (So-so)




Publisher’s Blurb:

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.

The Language of Flowers has been extremely popular with readers and book clubs, so I decided to wait a while and let all the hype die down a bit before reading it myself. I wound up listening to the audio, which was ok, but I don't know what all the excitement was about. I didn't think it was anything special and wonder why so many readers loved it. It held my interest, but it didn't wow me. It’s been four months since I finished and if pressed, I wouldn’t be able to tell you a single fact about the story. Not a one!

Final Thoughts:

Meh. Maybe it was better in print.

Looking Back - The Rainmaker

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

The Rainmaker by John Grisham
Fiction
1995 Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Finished in February 1996
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)





Publisher's Blurb:

In his first courtroom thriller since A Time to Kill, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America-- and exposing a complex, multibillion dollar insurance scam.

In his final semester of law school Rudy Baylor is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first "clients", Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments. While Rudy is skeptical, he soon realizes the Blacks really have been shocking mistreated by the huge company, and that he just may have stumbled upon one of the largest insurance frauds anyone's ever seen-- and one of the most lucrative and important cases in the history of civil litigation. The problem is, Rudy's flat broke, has no job, hasn't even passed the bar, and is about to go head-to-head with one of the best defense attorneys-- and powerful industries-- in America.

My Original Notes:

Excellent! What a page-turner. I couldn't put it down. I think I read it in 3-4 days. Different style from his previous books. First person narrative. I highly recommend this for light reading.

My Current Thoughts:

There was a time when all I read was Stephen King, John Grisham and (shhhh, don't tell anyone), Danielle Steel. I loved Grisham's courtroom dramas and the suspense of the good guys beating the big bad guys. I only had a vague recollection of The Rainmaker's plot, but as soon as I pulled up the description on Goodreads, it came right back to me. Then I clicked over to IMDB to see who starred in the film version. My husband was sure it was Matthew McConaughey, but I knew that wasn't right, but was surprised to see that it was Matt Damon. I know we watched the movie when it came out on video, but I still only have a vague recollection of the details. This probably isn't a book I'll read a second time, but I sure would like to see that movie again.

Looking back, I see that I read almost every book Grisham published between 1989 and 2001:

A Time to Kill
The Firm
Pelican Brief
The Client
The Chamber
The Rainmaker
The Runaway Jury
The Testament
The Painted House
Skipping Christmas

So, basically, 10 of his 28 novels for adults. I tried to read one of his more recent books, but couldn't get interested and felt that the writing structure was too simplistic. Are there any that you would recommend? How many have you read?

Find the Good

Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer by Heather Lende
Nonfiction/Essays
Finished on October 29, 2015
Rating: 3/5 (So-so)




Publisher’s Blurb:

As the obituary writer in a spectacularly beautiful but often dangerous spit of land in Alaska, Heather Lende knows something about last words and lives well lived. Now she’s distilled what she’s learned about how to live a more exhilarating and meaningful life into three words: find the good. It’s that simple--and that hard.

Quirky and profound, individual and universal, Find the Good offers up short chapters that help us unlearn the habit--and it is a habit--of seeing only the negatives. Lende reminds us that we can choose to see any event--starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting married or getting divorced--as an opportunity to find the good. As she says, “We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live. The best news is that there’s still time for additions and revisions before it goes to press.”

Ever since Algonquin published her first book, the New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Heather Lende has been praised for her storytelling talent and her plainspoken wisdom. The Los Angeles Times called her “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott,” and that comparison has never been more apt as she gives us a fresh, positive perspective from which to view our relationships, our obligations, our priorities, our community, and our world.

An antidote to the cynicism and self-centeredness that we are bombarded with every day in the news, in our politics, and even at times in ourselves, Find the Good helps us rediscover what’s right with the world.

I read Heather Lende’s previous book, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, in the summer of 2012 and wrote about it here. I was thrilled to see her new book on the shelving cart at work and quickly snatched up a copy for a quick peek. I wish I could say I loved it as well as her previous book, but this one fell flat and left me wishing for something a bit more substantial. I love essays and thought this collection might be similar to Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things, but alas not. I didn’t even find any passages to mark and share. However, I haven’t given up on Lende and still plan to read If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name.

Final Thoughts:

Start with Lende's earlier books and then grab a copy of this one from your library. You can also find her blog here.

Wordless Wednesday

Potty Humor

Wertheim, Germany

October 2015

Tuesday's First Chapter, First Paragraph - City of Thieves

Each Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea shares the first part of a book that she is reading or thinking about reading. This week I'm sharing the first paragraph from the book I recently finished (and loved).

 City of Thieves 

by David Benioff

You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold. When we slept, if we slept, we dreamed of the feasts we had carelessly eaten seven months earlier--all that buttered bread, the potato dumplings, the sausages--eaten with disregard, swallowing without tasting, leaving great crumbs on our plates, scraps of fat. In June of 1941, before the Germans came, we thought we were poor. But June seemed like paradise by winter.

At night the wind blew so loud and long it startled you when it stopped; the shutter hinges of the burned-out cafe on the corner would quit creaking for a few ominous seconds, as if a predator neared and the smaller animals hushed in terror. The shutters themselves had been torn down for firewood in November. There was no more scrap wood in Leningrad. Every wood sign, the slats of the park benches, the floorboards of shattered buildings--all gone and burning in someone's stove[...]

I finished this book last week and the characters continue to haunt my dreams. This is my first 5-star book for 2016 and I can't wait to share my review with you.

Happy Tuesday, friends! Visit Bibliophile By the Sea for more introductions.

A Window Opens

A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan
Fiction
2015 Simon & Schuster
Finished on September 23, 2015
Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)





Publisher’s Blurb:

For fans of I Don’t Know How She Does It and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?.

In A Window Opens, beloved books editor at Glamour magazine, Elisabeth Egan, brings us Alice Pearse, a compulsively honest, longing-to-have-it-all, sandwich generation heroine for our social-media-obsessed, lean in (or opt out) age.

Like her fictional forebears Kate Reddy and Bridget Jones, Alice plays many roles (which she never refers to as “wearing many hats” and wishes you wouldn’t, either). She is a mostly-happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. She is not: a cook, a craftswoman, a decorator, an active PTA member, a natural caretaker or the breadwinner. But when her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in—and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up which promises to be the future of reading, with its chain of chic literary lounges and dedication to beloved classics. The Holy Grail of working mothers―an intellectually satisfying job and a happy personal life―seems suddenly within reach.

Despite the disapproval of her best friend, who owns the local bookstore, Alice is proud of her new “balancing act” (which is more like a three-ring circus) until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up and her work takes an unexpected turn. Readers will cheer as Alice realizes the question is not whether it’s possible to have it all, but what does she―Alice Pearse―really want?


A Window Opens is another one of those books with eye-catching cover art that I simply could not resist. Egan’s debut novel is a fairly quick read and one which book lovers (and those working in the book biz) will enjoy. I laughed out loud and I may have shed a tear or two. As Marysue Rucci (Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Simon & Schuster, Inc.) says, “…reading A Window Opens is akin to reading the work of Anna Quindlen—like spending precious time with your brilliant, brutally honest, funniest, and most observant best friend. You never want the evening to end.”

As with all bookish-type of books, I loved the bookseller chatter about current recommendations:

Susanna: How are you guys holding up? Thinking of you constantly.
Me: The cousins are skim-board phenoms, taking the island by storm. Adults are more subdued; nice to all be together. You?
Susanna: The usual. College kids quitting for a better offer, so basically on my feet all day, ringing up Fifty Shades of Grey. What is it with that book?
Me: Ya got me. I’m halfway through The Light Between Oceans and LOVING IT.
Susanna: That one’s selling like hotcakes, too, thankfully.

And the joy of working in a bookstore:

When I arrived for my first day of work, visible rays of light crisscrossed through the store, turning the shelves into a rainbow of spines: thick, thin, shiny, matte, striped, printed with small pictures and designs, lettered in gold. The effect was dazzling. I already knew the bustle of the Blue Owl on a weekend afternoon, or after closing with customers in work clothes lingering over platters of Triscuits and cubed cheese. But, I realized, this was my first time in the store before it opened and, instantly, I knew it was the best time to be there—the bookseller’s equivalent of watching your kids sleep. I could feel the peace in my bones.

In addition to the book chatter, the novel also deals with the loss of a family member, which I found to be spot-on. I found myself nodding my head in agreement on more than one occasion.

On platitudes:

One by one, the guests left my mom’s house. They promised to check in soon and made us promise to let them know if there was anything they could do.

News flash: nobody is going to give you an assignment. Just do something.

Amy, the daughter of one of my mom’s tennis friends, worked quietly in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, brewing pot after pot of strong coffee and stowing Mass cards and sympathy cards in a straw basket so my mom could read them later. Even though our mothers had been friends for decades, we weren’t friends; she’d been a few years ahead of me in school. Up until this point, most of our contact had been through families she’d babysat for, whom she passed along to me when she lost interest watching 227 alone on Saturday nights. I knew Amy was a teacher now, and the mother of toddlers, which meant that she’d lined up both a sub and a babysitter of her own so she could take coats and arrange crudité platters for our family. Her kindness was mind-boggling.

Final Thoughts:

I wasn’t planning to keep my ARC of A Window Opens, but after thumbing through it while composing this review, I realized that it was really an enjoyable read and that I’d like to at least attempt to find time to read it again someday. I enjoyed the smooth conversational style of Egan’s writing and anxiously await her next novel. Fans of Jojo Moyes, Liane Moriarty, and of course, Anna Quindlen, are sure to enjoy this smart and humorous novel.

From the New York Times Book Review:

Egan has an eye for the absurdities of the corporate workplace and an ear for its preposterous jargon: “drilling down,” “onboarding,” “action item,” “noodle that over.” And she’s very funny on the cultural chasm separating Alice, who is in her late 30s from her savvy younger colleagues in their “statement glasses.” As Alice puts it, “Sometimes I felt like one of the Danish au pairs I made plans with on the front lawn of the school – understanding but not understanding.” These workaday passages are further enhanced by the presence of two delightfully loathsome villains.

About the Author:

Elisabeth Egan is the books editor at Glamour. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Self, Glamour, O, People, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Huffington Post, The New York Times Book Review, LA Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times; and Newark Star-Ledger. She lives in New Jersey with her family.