Overground Railroad by Candacy Taylor

I enjoyed this book immensely, and think it should be part of a high school curriculum for students learning American history. The subtitle is The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, and it chronicles four decades of the role of the Green Book for black Americans traveling throughout the Jim Crow era South, as well as the nation as a whole. In my lifetime African Americans were not welcome many many places, and the Green Book allowed them to pick and choose where they ate, where they stayed, and to a great extent, where they could go. It unyoked them from the terror and humiliation that would otherwise be a part of travel away from home. The book is equal parts harrowing tales and positive stories about how the Green Book was successful. They got advertisers who welcomed black travelers, which was a win win that helped keep the Green Book financially viable and afloat. It is equal parts educational and horrifying, and well worth the read.

Mint Cucumber Salad

This has been the summer of endless cucumbers, where we could almost just turn around and the cucumber would go from too small for pickling to almost too big to eat--but not bitter, that was the one saving grace. So we had cucumber salad 3-4 times a week the whole time. This is a new one for me, so easy and very refreshing. 2 deseeded cucumbers 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup chopped red onions 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint Cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise. Use a teaspoon to scrape out the seeds, then cut into thin slices. Toss the cucumbers with the salt in a colander. Let drain in the sink for at least 30 minutes, then tap the colander on the base of the sink to release any remaining water. Lay a clean dish towel flat on the counter, and then dump the cucumbers over top. Use the edges of the towel to blot the cucumbers dry. Meanwhile, soak the red onions in a small bowl of ice water for at least 10 minutes, then drain in a fine mesh strainer. In a medium bowl, combine the cucumbers, onions, white wine vinegar, olive oil, vegetable oil, sugar, pepper and mint. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Cover and let stand in refrigerator for at least 20 minutes. Serve cold.

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro

This is a short, poweful, and compelling novel that chronicles several hours in the life of Elena, a frail old lady, on a quest through Buenos Aires. We meet her at home at the start of her day as she composes herself in readiness for a trip she’s planning to make. It merely involves a short walk, a train ride and a taxi trip, but as we’re to learn, Elena has a condition, severe Parkinson's disease, which makes even the simplest of actions a major endeavour. She is searching for the reason that her daughter, Rita, is dead. She was found hanging in a bell tower in a church, but Elena is sure that she did not do this to herself, and not in this place, so she is in search of answers. Elena knows that she hasn’t been told the whole truth, and her journey has as its goal a visit to someone she believes can help her reveal what really happened. The whole day builds towards this encounter, and we get ever closer to the moment when Elena will have her world turned upside down. The novella has many thoughts and questions about women's role in society, in the church, about autonomy and independence, and on family relations, illness, and death. It packs quite a punch into it's pages.

Riga Art Nouveau District, Latvia

Art Nouveau arrived in Riga at the very end of the 19th century but became a real force in the city from about 1901. The design movement was sweeping across Europe at exactly the same time that Riga was going through an economic boom, as industrialisation led much of the Latvian population to move into the city. During the late 19th-century, Riga experienced rapid economic development. It grew by 88% between 1897 and 1913. Between 1910 and 1913, almost 500 new buildings were built in Riga annually.

If there is one street you absolutely have to visit in Riga, is Alberta Street. Named after Bishop Albert who founded Riga more than 800 years ago, the street is a trademark thanks to its Eclectic Art Nouveau buildings. Most of them were designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, and some by Konstantīns Pēkšēns and Eižens Laube, a teacher, and his pupil. The buildings are decorated with sculptures, ornamented balconies, columns, and other Art Nouveau elements.

There are three general styles of art nouveau architecture to be found. Alberta Street harbors some of the finest samples of the Eclectic Art Nouveau Style in Riga, but there are three other styles you can uncover in the city: the Perpendicular Art Nouveau, National Romantic Art Nouveau, and the Neo-Classical Art Nouveau. For exploring the Perpendicular Art Nouveau category, which is commonly referred to as “department store style” or Warenhausstil (in German), head over to Krišjāņa Valdemāra iela (Krišjānis Valdemārs Street) number 37, which is home to a multi-story building designed by Eižens Laube. A good Neo-Classical example is the former Commercial Bank of Riga, which sits in the very center of the Old Riga, right opposite the Doms Cathedral.

Walking the Kiso Road by William Scott Wilson

The subtitle of this book was what intrigued me about it when I read a review of a few travel books that the author of the article thought might be under appreciated, or even unknown. It is a modern day exploration of Old Japan--which is what I would aspire to do when I get there myself. The author, who has had an academic career translating traditional Japanese texts on samurai culture into English, travels the ancient Kiso Road, a legendary route that remains much the same today as it was hundreds of years ago, and tells stories about what happens to him, as well as the significance of the places he stops. The Kisoji, which runs through the Kiso Valley in the Japanese Alps, has been in use since at least 701 C.E. In the seventeenth century, it was the route that the daimyo (warlords) used for their biennial trips—along with their samurai and porters—to the new capital of Edo (now Tokyo). The natural beauty of the route is renowned—and famously inspired the landscapes of Hiroshige, as well as the work of many other artists and writers. Wilson, esteemed translator of samurai philosophy, has walked the road several times and is an expert guide to this popular tourist destination; he shares its rich history and lore, literary and artistic significance, cuisine and architecture, as well as his own experiences.

Asian Cole Slaw

It has been another produce intensivce summer, and at a BBQ we were giving for a work event we oipted for the potato salad to be vegetarian (no bacon, but eggs and mayonaise) but needed the rest of the vegetable sides to be vegan friendly (it is always complicated, it turns out, to cook for relative strangfers). This used both cabbage and carrots, and was surprisingly delicious. 1/4 cup honey or agave syrup 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar 1 tablespoon soy sauce or fish sauce 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil 1 tablespoon peanut butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon sriracha sauce 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger 1 large garlic clove, minced For the Slaw: 1 small head shredded green or white cabbage (about 1 quart) 2 large carrots, peeled and grated on the large holes of a box grater (about 2 cups) 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced 1 cup cooked and shelled edamame 2 medium scallions, finely sliced on a sharp bias 1/2 cup chopped or whole salted peanuts 1/2 cup loosely packed chopped fresh cilantro Combine all of the dressing ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir until the peanut butter is dissolved. Set aside. Combine all of the slaw ingredients in a large bowl. Add the dressing and toss well. Let sit at least ten minutes so the vegetables have a chance to soak up the dressing. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt or Sriracha sauce if necessary. Serve cold.

The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas

This is an action adventure revenge novel, written in 1844 by the prolific and incomparable Alexandre Dumas. The book creates a fantastic whirl-wind of unforgettable characters and interweaving story-lines that found me a bit dazzled, and also yearning for more, an even deeper glimpse into this world of treachery, romance, adventure, and mystery. It is deceptively witty and maybe a bit too much of the over-flowing charisma, but suffice it to say that there is every reason why it is on so many peoples Best Novels list. The novel starts out with a scenic over-look of an Italian waterway in Marseilles as it carries along a lofty ship named Pharaon with one passenger in particular who is unlike any other named Edmond Dantès. A dashing young and honest man with great potential who has just returned with news that will change the course of his life, and the lives of many others, forever. He is falsely accused of traitorous activity and is sentenced to life on a prison located on an island off the coasts of Marseilles forcing him to leave behind his family, his friends, and the love of his life Mercédès. This marvelous tale unfolds within the walls of this prison and among its outer-walls as Dantès attempts to make a dashing escape with a kind mannered Abbe, who teaches him quite a bit about life and leaves him a fortune when he dies. The rest of the novel follows not only the life of Edmond Dantès, but also the lives of his lover, best friend, family, and even his partners from his shipping company. Filled to the brim with treacherous plots, revenge, heartache, mystery, and pirating; it also contains young love, faith that knows no bounds, and families filled with the knowledge that blood truly is thicker than water.

Potter, Nebraska

We continue our search for the perfect overnight town in Nebraska for us to overnight in on our travels to and from the west. Spoiler alert, we have yet to find it, but this was a very pleasant stop for us on a recent return drive from the Tetons. The Village of Potter was established as the railroad progressing westward. The town was named after General Joseph S. Potter, a Union Pacific Railroad Director. In 1870, Union Pacific built a station house and it served as the post office, the schoolhouse and the land development office. It was the only building build for several years. Progress towards advancement began in 1885, when a hotel was built and shortly after stores began popping up, a newspaper called the Potter Review was created, and a church was built. In 1892 due to a big crop, grain bins were built to hold the oats and wheat the local farmers were growing. The railroad still runs through Potter, to the tune of one train an hour it seemed,but they have a branch of the Flyover Brewery, which has good beer and bar food. The Potter Sundry was a great early morning stop for breakfast--they open at 5 AM and have fresh baked items available.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I really liked this book and there were moments when I wanted very much to love it, but never quite got there. As a mental health professional, it deals with depression head on, and there are no false notes in the book in that respect. The book is part what-if, and part the ghost of Christmas past, present, and future, but with more choices and a multiverse of possibilities. Nora is a young woman who decides she isn’t cut out for life. She just lost her job and cat, has fallen out with her brother and best friend and generally assumes she’s a giant disappointment. So she decides to die. After attempting to end her life, instead of waking up dead, Nora wakes up in the Midnight Library: an immense space filled with shelves of books that stretch endlessly. She’s greeted by her school librarian, Mrs. Elm, who was always kind to her. While she’s in the Midnight Library, Mrs. Elm tells her, she’s preserved from death; this is an opportunity to decide how — and if — she wants to live. Everyone’s life could have gone an infinite number of ways, and each book in the library contains the story of that life. Nora can visit as many as she wants to find out what her life would have been like if she had made different decisions. There are a dizzying array of possibilities, and while all of this is fantastical, the ending is very much a reality.

Nearly Naked, Almost Famous

Loved this! I cannot believe it took me this long to really embrace Aperol, but I have! 3/4 oz Mezcal 3/4 oz Tequila 1 1/2 oz Yellow Chartreuse 1 1/2 oz Aperol 1 1/2 oz lime juice Shake and strain into chilled coupe Smoky, herbal, sweet and sour. Perfect summer even sipper.

The Colony by Audrey Magee

This book was long listed for the Booker Prize, and I read it within that context, and very much enjoyed it. The setting is traditionally remote, an Atlantic island off Ireland’s west coast, three miles long, with its 1979 population now down to double figures. Trouble is set in motion when two outsiders, an artist trying to give his career a jolt and a French linguist--they are both seeking to use the islanders for their own advancement. This story portrays the Irish islanders as cornered by the dead weight of tradition, and outsiders who interfere with them for reasons of their own. All the characters do very little very slowly and discontents are expressed sardonically or obliquely, if at all. There’s also an equally traditional smattering of merciless killing and colonizing foreigners, intermixed with short retellings of senseless and anonymous killings during The Troubles. This depiction of a neocolonial rivalry between a painter and an academic staying in an island off the west coast of Ireland and disrupting all in their path is at once dispassionate and luminous.

Breath of a Wok by Grace Young

This is part cookbook and part history, both of the wok and of Chinese cooking in general, and an introduction to the regional differences in China in terms of not just food, but also the equipment used. Grace Young has been on a vocal quest to save America's Chinatowns since the pandemic began. She has called out the racism that was employed in the beginning that further marginalized Asian Americans, and made them even more vulnerable to physical and verbal attacks. The Breath of a Wok is a cookbook to keep not just because of the recipes, but for the how to instructions for buying, using and maintaining a wok, the quintessential tool for making stir fried food. Read about the workings of a traditional Chinese kitchen, techniques passed down from masters (and favorite uncles), and feast your eyes on the sumptuous photography. Learn about wok hay, the magic that happens in your wok when you learn how to stir-fry properly, as will hopefully happen after reading this book and also being able to recognize it. Then following the chapters about the care and feeding of your wok, there are chapters filled with recipes for how to season your wok, with oil, or in the oven, and how to clean a wok properly. Then dive into the food recipes and try your hand at it.

Either/Or by Elif Bautman

I remain a fan of the coming-of-age novel, which is ironic because on the one hand I am way closer to the end of my life than the beginning of it--my kids are no longer coming of age either--and on the other because on some levels I am still grappling with what I want to do with my life. At least at this moment I am close enough to retirement age that it can be seen as a planning for that life transition, but truly, I have always been searching. Selin Karadağ is a teenage would-be writer who arrives at Harvard in 1995 ready to meet challenging, meaningful people, and fairly unprepared for what that entails. She is from an immigrant family, the first of them to be born on American soil, and there is an undercurrent of that and how it shaped her world view that underlies the book. Over the course of her freshman year, she is greeted by a constant fluctuation of banalities and revelations, and the odd and sometimes intense relationships that she forms. I found her to be a dryly funny and observant character; even her powerful, confusing attraction to one of her professors is described with a kind of matter-of-factness that expresses her mystification well. Being a freshman in college is like this: Too much random stuff happens for anything to accrue meaning — yet. The book is breezy, deceptively light in tone, and leaving you with things to think about.

Lost City (2022)

This is not a good movie, but it is a pleasant fluff of a romance, with a predictable plot and ending, with some star power to carry a script that is only fair, a little wooden in spots, and is largely inoffensive. Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) is a burnt-out romance writer whose grief after the loss of her husband threatens to derail her career. Her disdain for her books is only matched by her dislike of their cover model, Alan (Channing Tatum), a seemingly dim beefcake who indulges her readers at signing events. After an event promoting her latest book, Loretta is abducted by explorer/rich guy Abigail Fairfax, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fairfax knows that the lost city from Loretta’s book is real, and he wants her to translate some ancient writing that leads to a treasure before a volcano erupts and covers the whole thing. Alan mounts an ill-advised expedition to save Loretta, with help from his meditation guru, Jack (Brad Pitt), and Loretta’s beleaguered editor Beth (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Whatever can go wrong does go wrong, but you can see the ending from a million miles away, but that is probably not a bad thing.

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

First off, this book won the Pulitzer Prize this past year, and from a number of reviews I have read, book critics think this is a masterly work and that the author is a genius. This is a story steeped in irony, sarcasm, and comic relief, and it is very likely that about half of it went unappreciated by me. This sort of humor is just not my jam. The subtitle gives you a hint about this book: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. It stems from a conversation that the author had with Harold Bloom, and the book is dedicated to him. It fills out, in a fantastical imagining, the details of a story that the critic told Cohen about playing chaperone to Benzion Netanyahu, a Polish-born, Israel-based academic better known as Benjamin’s father, during a visit to Cornell. Bloom, defender of the western canon, becomes Ruben Blum, a specialist in American economic history at Corbin college in New York state. He is chosen, as the only Jewish faculty member, to host an obscure historian of late-medieval Spain – Netanyahu’s real speciality – who is coming for an interview. The prospective faculty member brings his wife and their three sons with him to the interview and they are wildly arrogant, inappropriate, and tone deaf to social niceties. The visit is a bit of a disaster, but the devil is in the details of course, and this is well worth reading.

Buttery Crab Pasta

This recipe is from Melissa Clark, who's cookbook Dinner in French came out early in the pandemic. Unfortunately, at that point we were mostly perfecting our homemade pizza, and having troulbe sourcing simple things like flour and yeast, so bucatini and crab were definitely not on offer. This is an excellent use of high quality crab, and stretches it to feed a crowd. It also comes together in under 30 minutes, to the point where you can do the prep work while the water is boiling and the pasta is cooking. Fine sea salt, as needed 8 ounces bucatini or linguine 4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving 2 cups halved golden or red cherry tomatoes 1 scallion (white and green parts), thinly sliced 1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes, plus more to taste ½ cup fresh chervil leaves, divided Finely grated zest of 1 lemon Juice of ½ lemon Freshly ground black pepper, to taste 8 ounces lump crabmeat, picked over to remove any stray shells Extra-virgin olive oil, for serving Flaky sea salt, for serving Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente (usually a minute or two less than the package directs). Reserve 1 cup of the pasta water and drain the pasta. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Whisk in ½ cup of the pasta water and the Parmesan. Then stir in the tomatoes, scallion, red pepper flakes and a large pinch of salt and simmer for 1 minute. Stir in the pasta, ¼ cup of the chervil, the lemon zest and juice, and black pepper to taste; toss until warmed through. Gently fold in the crabmeat. Remove the skillet from the heat and serve the crab pasta sprinkled with Parmesan, the remaining ¼ cup chervil, a drizzle of olive oil and flaky sea salt to taste.

Palmares by Gayl Jones

This is the first book that I have read by this author, but in reading reviews of this book I discovered that she is well known for reimagining the lives of Black women across North, South and Central America, living in different centuries, and in a way no other writer has done. That assessment certainly holds true for this book. Palmares begins in the 1670s when its narrator, Almeyda, is a child. Almeyda lives on a Brazilian plantation with her enslaved mother, as well as a grandmother who still speaks Arabic and is called a witch, reviled and feared in equal parts. Young Almeyda observes the world around her keenly, and notices that women are enslaved and used for sexual purposes, even by the village priest. Palmares is named for the largest and best known of Brazil’s quilombos, communities established by Africans who had escaped slavery. First documented around the 1580s, it was home to between 6,000 and 20,000 people and was a more or less autonomous state located in the north-east of Brazil. The scale of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil is often underestimated: of the nearly 11 million Africans taken by force to the Americas, 5 million disembarked in Brazil, over 10 times more than in North America. Almeyda's journey to a nd from Palmares in a winding one, and she encounters every immigrant to Brazil at the time, Black Muslims, Black witches, women with “wives”, Christians, Jews, Tupis, Guaranís, miners, female English journalists, voyeuristic Dutch painters, mercenaries and free Black men and women. She also finds Palmares, which had a governance structure based on that of contemporary west African states, to be complicated and not altogether free of democratic. There were still slaves, and women had few choices. The story meanders, and is rich in both details and it will definitely make you think. It is a reinvention of 17th-century Black Brazil in all its multiplicity, beauty, humanity and chaos.

Mesa 503, Iowa City, Iowa

There are several Salvadoran restaurants in the Iowa City-Coralville area, but this one, the newest on the scene, is my favorite of the bunch. They have a wide selection of pupusas, which are about the size of a corn tortilla, made with masa harina, and are stuffed with cheese and/or a variety of meats and vegetables. My favorites are cheese and jalapeno or cheese and refried beans, but here I also enjoyed the cheese and chorizo pupusa. These are kind of the lynch pin of Salvadorean food, and here they are very good. However, they are not the reason that I am returning--it is the other menu items that will bring us back. The Chicken enchildadas (which are more like a Mexican tostada) and the pounded meats that are topped with carmelized onions are divine, and also affordably priced.

Adtiatic by Robert Kaplan

I really enjoyed this book, so much so that I would seek out books he has written in the past. The subtitle is: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age and it is part travelogue and memoir, with a sprinkling of geopolitical perspective, and while if you are a purist you might find it annoying, for me the travelogue sucked me in and the geopolitical importance aspect made me think. The author's approach in this book is to travel to a key city or town of the region and read about its history and culture with books that he has brought with him on his travels. Sometimes he meets up with political and cultural leaders. He frequently compares and contrasts a city’s or town’s appearance today with what he saw decades ago. The journey begins in Rimini, Ravenna, Venice, and Trieste on the Italian shore of the Adriatic; thence to Piran, Koper, and Ljubljana in Slovenia; Rijeka, Zagreb, Split, Korcula, and Dubrovnik in Croatia; Kotor and Podgorica in Montenegro; Durres and Tirana in Albania; and finally to Corfu in Greece. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and his blatant disregard for world order, this book both enlightened me and frightened me a bit.

Luxardo Derby

The pandemic saw a lot of making things at home that we might otherwise gone out for, and one of the things that has continued to be a lot of fun is the cocktail menu! This is a cross between the Aviation and a Paper Plane, and every bit as delicious as it looks. 2 oz bourbon 1 oz Aperol 1/2 oz Luxardo Maraschino 1/2 oz lemon juice two splashes of orange bitters Get yourself a fancy shaker, put this in with ice, shake and serve.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

The short review would be this: with friends like these, who needs enemies? I think that on the one hand this is a well written book populated by (for me) unlikable people, but that alone is not enough to summarize my distaste, because there are a number of books for which that is true that I have really enjoyed and loved. The story is set in the post-crash era, among a Dublin elite. Every one works in the arts and denounce the evils of capitalism while most of them are living off inherited wealth. Frances is the exception to that generalization, and she is the main focus. She is hard to categorize, I think purposely so. She is bisexual, and unhindered by things like gender, friendship, or marital status when entering and exiting affairs. She over shares and under communicates, and there is an annoying lack of introspection that runs through her and other characters in the novel. Everyone seems vague, and possibly drugged, which does not prevent them from doing hurtful things to each other. I definitely wanted to finish it to see who lands where, but I am equally definite in taking a break from reading more by this author.

Atis Kronvalds and Latvian

We saw this monument on the lawn of the New Sigulda Castle. It is of Kronvaldu Atis, made by Teodors Zalkalns in 1938, and was unveiled at the front of the New Castle. He was a teacher and a publicist who helped initiate the second wave of the New Latvian movement and is remembered for his contributions to keeping, preserving, and expanding the Latvian language. He was born in 1837, the son of a village craftsman. He audited lectures at the University of Berlin (1859), and in 1867 graduated from the teachers training courses at the University of Tartu (EDstonia). As a member of the bourgeois liberal Young Latvian movement, Kronvalds opposed the policy of Germanization. He believed that the path to national rebirth lay in perfecting the Latvian language and ridding it of Germanisms, in expanding the network of national schools, and in establishing various progressive public organizations. Kronvalds popularized pedagogical science among Latvian teachers. In articles on the national language, he demonstrated the enormous significance of the Russian language for Latvian culture. He played an important role in the development of the Latvian literary language, particularly as the originator of many new words. His best-known book is National Aspirations. He was removed from the lawn during the Soviet occupation, and returned with Latvian independence.

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

This book is really historical fiction, loosely based on some ides of what might have happened long ago, told in two time periods. The first is modern-day London, where a cache of mid-17th-century papers is found, apparently untouched for three centuries, in a house under renovation. The Hebrew and Portuguese writings bring in Jewish-history expert and ailing academic Helen Watt to assess their provenance. Pressed to assist her is stalled American Ph.D. candidate Aaron Levy. Temperamentally mismatched, they nonetheless begin to uncover the mystery of an anonymous and learned scribe working for a blind rabbi in pre-plague London. The true central character here is Ester Velasquez, a brilliant young Jewish woman whose family took refuge in Holland to escape Inquisition-wracked Portugal; she later finds herself in 1650s London serving as secretary to Rabbi HaCoen Mendes. Education for women was considered unseemly, and Ester’s work as a scribe renders her unmarriageable—a state she prefers. Ester’s wide-ranging intellect pushes her to read voraciously and ask questions, in particular about the nature of God, man, and the universe; those questions are extraordinarily dangerous. Helen knows this is her last opportunity to redeem the choices that she’s made, and she and Aaron work against another academic team and her own worsening illness in a race to find and fit the last pieces of the puzzle in order to understand Ester’s true identity. The book ties together complex concepts of metaphysics and theology from the days of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, along with a mid-20th-century love story set in Israel, and a modern-day academic treasure hunt. The book offers a surprisingly taut and gripping storyline.

Calibacitas

This is an amazing way to have summer squash! 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 small onion, diced 1 poblano pepper, diced 1 jalapeno pepper, diced (seeds removed if you don't want it spicy) 2 cups of corn 2 plum tomatoes, diced 1 large summer squash 3 cloves garlic, minced 1-2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt to taste 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 1/4 cup water 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese 1/4 cup milk optional garnishes: crumbled cotija cheese, chopped cilantro Heat olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions, poblanos, and jalapenos. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to soften. Add corn and tomatoes. Cook for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add zucchini, yellow squash, garlic, salt, black pepper, oregano and ground cumin. Stir to combine and cook for 5 minutes, stirring every minute or so. Add water to skillet, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Uncover the skillet, add the shredded cheese and milk, and stir together until the cheese has fully melted. Remove from heat, garnish with chopped cilantro and cotija cheese, and serve.

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

I am not quite sure what to make of this book. I have not read his opus magnum, My Struggle, is a series of six autobiographical novels totaling 3600 pages that were published between 2009 and 2011 and caused quite a stir. So I do not have a measuring stick against which to judge this. On the one hand, at times the book seems more like unlinked contemporaneous stories. The action takes place over two late-summer days around Bergen, Norway. There is an element of climate change woven in. All is going poorly and catastrophe feels imminent. Arne’s artist wife Tove is having a psychotic break; Kathrine, a priest, is questioning her tepid marriage; Turid, a nurse, works nights on a psychiatric ward while her unfaithful husband, Jostein, drinks and rails against an unfair world. Everyone is working through something: alcoholism, career disappointment, crises of faith and despair, and in the midst of it bad things are happening.. Meanwhile, a giant new star has appeared in the sky. Is it a supernova? A biblical portent? Or something else entirely? The last chapter does attempt to tie it all together, but I am not sure what it all means--and perhaps it is in fact the first installment in a series, which might explain that. In any case, this is a thoughtful, highly readable novel, packed with ideas and exciting flourishes, with interspersed scenes of domesticity and horror, in equal parts.

Zivju Lete, Riga, Latvia

If you are interested in seafood, and shellfish in particular, this is a great restaurant. In addition, it has the added bonus of being continually open all afternoon. We have fallen into a routine of eating late in the afternoon, rather than at lunch time of a more traditional dinner time. We like the approach of a light or non-existent breakfast, followed by a late afternoon meal, and then an evening meal of cheese and fruit, or skipping it altogether, but the options for this sometimes are limited. We will take the latest lunch available, but a place like this, with very solid seafood and fish, can be a real plus. I loved the fish dish we had, and the fried calamari was spectacular, especially for me, who loves it and rarely gets it in my land-locked home. The highlight however was the seafood boil, with a rich and delicious garlicy sauce and toasted bread to dip in the sauce, but you pick the content, 100 grams at a minimum and an overall minimum of 500 gms. My only regret is that I didn't order more of the tiny clams that I love, can even dream about, and never ever get enough of, even when I have them every day.

Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh

I read this after Roe vs. Wade was overturned, and I am sure that influenced how much I liked this book, but I loved it. This book explores the precarious status of safe, legal abortion in a country where disapproval comes in a thick mixture of class snobbery, theological absolutism and misogynist fanaticism. It is amazing how little there is out there about abortion in fiction, and that may be a mistake. Those books in the future will likely focus on the ease of finding such an abortion if they are set in the United States, which is a shame that we never got a chance to normalize it, much the way other once controversial elements of real life, like extramarital sex, divorce, and interracial marriage have had that in the fictional world. Claudia, an experienced counselor at a reproductive health clinic in downtown Boston, is at the center of the novel. The protocols of working in a building surrounded by potentially violent activists have grown routine for Claudia. Same for the bomb threats, suspicious callers and active shooter drills. Of course, it’s all impossibly stressful, but Claudia’s only concern is giving women the care they need. She’s long beyond arguing about the essential services that she and her colleagues provide. Much of the novel is devoted to demystifying this quotidian work. There is a bit of a scary insight into the flawed thinking of misogynists who feel that women, once pregnant, have no rights, which will soon actually be the case in many states.

Turaida Castle, Latvia

This is the most visited of the castles between Riga and the Estonian border--this view is taken from the Sigulda Medeival Castle with my simple iPhone camera, so you can see just how close they really are to each other. Turaida Castle was the third castle. I have fond memories of it not for the crowds inside the grounds, but for the artisanal shawl I bought for my mother from a vendor outside. It is beautiful and unique, and left me with warm feelings about this place.

The oldest part of the story of Turaida is related to the history of another indigenous nation of Latvia – the Livs. Until the early 13th century, Turaida had been a significant centre of the Gauja Livs. The Livonians are a Balto-Finnic people indigenous to northern and northwestern Latvia. Livonians historically spoke Livonian, a Uralic language closely related to Estonian and related to Finnish. There are vanishingly few who still speak this today. Construction of the Turaida stone castle was started in 1214. Until the end of the 16th century, it served as a residence of Archbishops of Riga who that ruled lands. Over the centuries the castle had been rebuilt and improved until a fire damaged it in 1776, after which it was no longer inhabited and gradually turned into ruins.

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman

This is a very unusual style of writing and I never would have picked it up at all if not for the fact that it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. At that time my local library did not have a copy, but I often circle back later and at the end, I am happy I did. When you look at the reviews of this book, they are almost evenly divided between 5 star reviews and 1 star reviews--so you either love this book or you hate it, and I suspect a goodly number of the one star reviews are people who did not finish the book. Why do I think that? The book is a thousand pages long, and consists of about eight endless sentences, spooling out at a stream of conscious pace. Seriously, at the beginning I thought 'Well, I read Finnegan's Wake, I can read this" and then in reading a review of the book, I found out that the author is the daughter of the James Joyce scholar Richard Ellmann, so she may understand better than most and certainly better than me what the underlying structure and message of this sort of book can be. Apparently she had trouble getting it published and I understand that entirely, but also feel some gratitude that it made it onto the printed page. At base, is the story of a middle-aged woman in Ohio. She was once a college teacher, but after recovering from cancer has retreated to her kitchen, where she bakes pies and mulls over her life, her children, her regrets. As i got through the first 100 pages, the first sentence really, I realized that while I couldn't read much written in this style, I agreed with about 80% of the ruminations, and all of the craziness of the past decade in the United States is being rehashed in this book, and it made me think, in a way maybe more so because it is so untethered to the usual narrative. If you only read a handful of books a year, I wouldn't add this to your reading list, but if you read 100 or more books a year, or you yourself are a middle aged woman, this is well worth a read.

Cucumber Salad with Lime

After last year, which was a lack luster cucumber crop, my husband doubled down on the number of plants and abandoned the climbing fence for devoting a quadrant of the garden to them, and that has been massively successful, to the point where not an opportunity goes by to serve a cucumber salad to large numbers of people. We were doing a Mexican meal (we were gifted 6 dozen tortillas from a local tortilleria and wanted to take advantage of the windfall), and so did this salad as something that wouldn't clash with the calabacitas and the marninated chicken for tacos. 2 large English Cucumbers (or whatever you have, in our case)--sliced 1/4 of a red onion, very thinly sliced (or sub pickled red onion, or scallions) 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely diced 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice 2 tablespoons olive oil 1/2 teaspoon salt, or more to taste 1/2 teaspoon Aleppo Chili flakes 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander 1/2 bunch cilantro, or Italian parsley, or dill (1/2 cup chopped, more to taste) Place all ingredients in a bowl, and gently toss. Taste, adjust salt and acid. You want this to taste flavorful!

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

This author, and therefore this book, are not for everyone, and I struggle to explain exactly why I love her work, but the fact is that I do. The author herself has described her central theme as the duality between dull, enervating safety and flamboyant, enervating danger. I loved her last book, A Little Life, even though there are no likeable characters in it and everyone is damaged and in pain. The major theme is the tension between safety and danger, and this book takes those two elements from the level of the individual to the level of society. It is made up of three sections: one novella, one set of paired short stories, and one final novel. All take place in the same townhouse in New York’s Washington Square at hundred-year intervals, and all concern a cast of characters with the same names, all in various configurations. At the center of each section are David, Edward, and Charles/Charlie. Generally speaking the Charles' represent safety and the Edward's are danger. In 1893, David is a wealthy young man of society in a world where gay marriage is legal, in love with poor and charming Edward but betrothed to rich and respectable Charles. In 1993, there are two Davids: one a young man in New York, living with his wealthy older lover Charles, and that David’s father, living in Hawaii, in an abusive relationship with impoverished Edward. In 2093, the protagonist is a young woman named Charlie who lives in a dystopian New York ravished by pandemics, in a loveless marriage with Edward, fascinated by a mysterious stranger named David. This is a simplification, of course, and there are elements of Margaret Atwood's dystopian view of what the future holds for all of us who are not white straight men in the last and longest section, but it is deeper, wider, and no less glorious and painful to read than both Atwood's work and the author's previous book. Simply the best.