Monthly Archives: November 2009

Powerful Flavors and Memories

family, food and cooking, history, , ,

This afternoon Mr. Glad and I shopped for a pewter cup for our newest grandchild. My in-laws gave each of our children one when they were babies, and we’ve carried on the tradition with our grandchildren. After we made our choice of cup style and engraved letters, we wandered around the fancy stationery/gift store browsing expensive Christmas ornaments, multiple versions of Carl Larsson calendars, and ball-point pens.

Then back to the parking garage, through balmy evening air, so odd and dreamy. We were reluctant to go home to our wintry house, and briefly considered buying food downtown. Passing an outdoor cafe, my husband said, “Nice dog,” and I looked at the greyhound sitting there by a table and smiled behind me at him while I kept walking. Then, “Gretchen?” I heard, from the dining area, and I saw a woman getting up and coming toward me. I had already recognized her voice, though I hadn’t heard it for almost 20 years. E. is mother to two children who were among my day-care clients way back, my children’s friends, decorators of my walls and place-holders in my heart.

I have often wanted to get together to talk about those old times, and find out how the now-grown-up children are, and send them my love. Just this week I was thinking of one time when the mom needed to talk privately to me. We had to take chairs to a back bedroom and sit there in the middle of what looked like a hurricane disaster zone. Probably all the children were outdoors at the time finding polliwogs or on some other neighborhood adventure such as you can see in this photo. Her two children are among the ones pictured.

It turns out she has moved to another state, and is only visiting here briefly. Thank you, Lord, for arranging this meeting! We exchanged our info, so I hope we can talk later.

As we drove toward home and came near this market, we agreed to stop in. I took the picture in the daylight once, but tonight in the dark I could see it was still open. We went in and were greeted by a pervading fish sauce smell. I like it well in my Thai dishes, but filling the store–not much. I was trying to just pick up one item and get out of there, get home to cook, but it is another place that keeps you looking at all the many fascinating things you don’t end up buying.

I saw the bags of MSG, giant rice papers, rice crackers and twenty types of noodles in cellophane packages. But I snatched up my tapioca flour and we skipped over the other inviting aisles to the produce section. There are usually some very nice vegetable offerings, and we carried a couple of them up front and waited meekly behind the person checking out.

“If you drink Red Bull, you have got to know this is the original stuff!” A tall man with long pale kinky hair had come up behind and was waving some brown bottles.  “Whenever I can, I come in here and buy this–it’s way better than Red Bull! Much more powerful, and cheaper, too!” He smiled broadly in his excitement to share his discovery with us, revealing black holes where teeth must once have been.

So thrilled, he didn’t notice our laden arms, and stepped forward to put his brown tonic bottles on the counter and pay. It didn’t take long before he was striding out. As the cashier tallied our purchases I said, “I don’t think he needs any Red Bull, Asian or otherwise.”

Today I went through my back stock of spices and herbs, sorting and consolidating and putting many little bottles and bags aside for my daughters. Another thing of my past, after the day care business, was the food co-op business, and in the years when I had hundreds of pounds of rice, flour, yogurt and teabags piled in my garage every month or two, I found that I could buy a pound of spice for the same cost as 2 2-oz bottles.

Most of the time these flavorings came in foil bags that preserve the freshness very well. Often four or eight of us would split a pound. If, as the experts would tell me, the potency was diminished over time, why, I could just throw in a bit more of the oregano or whatever. Today, though, I threw quite a bit out, into the garden. I don’t make 20-quart pots of soup anymore, and some of the herbs, especially, had lost all their savor.

Soon I’ll share a recipe that helps me use many different spices, and a lot of them, at one time. This is a sneak preview.

Categories of First Lines

books, church, quotes, the language

Many of my favorite books do not have particularly memorable first lines. Some books that I will never read have clever, captivating, even brilliant openers, and among those are quite a few that are well known. If you want to test your knowledge of famous first lines, you can do so here. Thanks to my friend E. for that link.

In 2002 Jay Nordlinger on National Review‘s website mentioned a couple of his favorite first lines–not necessarily from favorite books–which led readers to send in nominations for Great First Lines. Many of those were also Famous, overlapping with a few in the quiz linked above, but often they were obscure. Warning to nit-pickers: Some of these are actually more than one sentence.

What makes a first line “great”?  Does it have to hint at what the whole book is about, or only hook you in? For me, I do like a good sentence (and I liked this article exploring the field), and if the first one in a book is well-crafted, it would make me want to keep reading, for pleasure. If it is curiosity-piquing as well, all the better.

One boring or poor opening sentence would not discourage me from reading on, but if the whole first paragraph or page is confusing or muddy I might lose patience. I am getting too old to fool around with the gazillions of pages by authors who need to practice more.

Whether one can search the archives of NR for Nordlinger’s blog posts I don’t have to know, because back then I saved all of the nominations in a document. Unlike much of my document collection, I am making use of this one, to bring a number of good first lines into this small light. Whether they are Great, I won’t judge; I will just give you a few that I liked. These are from books that aren’t my favorites, so I won’t be tempted to put them into the next List of Five. And I hope I haven’t put too many below and spoiled it for a blogger who wanted to use one of these in her own quiz-list.

Nordlinger includes this fact out front: “We have already decided — we, the great collective ‘we’: my readers and I — that ‘In the beginning . . .’ is the all-time champion. Everything else is competing for second place.” I’m glad they got that straight.

Now, a few of the competitors:

“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” — Orwell, “England Your England” (an essay)

“‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” — Charlotte’s Web

“For forty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.” — George Burns, Gracie: A Love Story

“I am a sick man. . . . I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out.” — Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Southern Mail

“She stood on the fox until it died.” — Mitchell Smith, Due North

A good sentence is a thing of beauty. This afternoon Mr. Glad and I started taking books off the shelves, turning pages to the first line, perusing those words we had long neglected, but not wanted to get rid of. (“Get rid of” suddenly sounds so crude and unfitting.) So many good phrases and clauses, and some excellent ones.

This is not the end of the matter; what is a blog, after all, but words and sentences, and the will to keep spitting them out? Annie Dillard wrote in The Writing Life, “It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick.”

The way I see it, I might as well write sentences in a recipe.


My Ode

food and cooking, poetry,

Ten or so years ago our home school was engaging in a poetry study, more focused and meaty than the usual informal enjoyment and memorization. I gave an assignment to the children to write their own “poem of direct address,” and in the spirit of Education is Lifelong and Something You Do to Yourself, I wrote one, too.

Last night B. and I went to a Music and Poetry Night, and I read my poem, along with others not my own, which were more serious and poetic. I will share those later. But for now, here is my

Ode to a Rice Cake

I can’t resist you, rice cake,
Your crunch and subtle flavor.
I cannot see you in your bag
And say “I’ll eat one later.”

My hands reach out compulsively
And stuff you right on in.
My teeth sink into your crispness;
The crumbs drift down my chin.

Others mock and call you sparse,
They say you’re lean and thin.
I alone will sing your praise
For the feast that you have been.

Fluffy, tasty pockets of air,
Plain yet savory food.
You’re a technological wonder:
Complex, simple, and good.

I still feel the same way about these snacks, which is why I don’t normally keep any in the house. Besides, they make an awful mess, and the cat doesn’t care to eat the crumbles off the floor.