Vegan Whiskey Sour

The pace of new cocktails at my house has slowed down considerably from the peak in the summer of 2020, but it is still pretty great. We had a Korean inspired dinner with crisped chickpeas, and used the left over liquid to substitute for an egg white in this drink. Delish! (Makes 3 drinks ) 3 T aquafaba (drained chickpea liquid); shake vigorously 30 seconds. Add ice and: Bourbon 5 oz Simple syrup 4 oz Lemon juice 5 oz Reshake and strain into cocktail glasses

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf

One review I read called this bleak yet oddly comforting, and I have to agree with that mixed emotion. To me, an avowed avoider of all things related to economics, politics, and money, this is the sequel to Thomas Picketty's Capital In The Twenty First Century. In other words: 1) I know nothing about this subject and 2) these are books that make cogent and understandable presentations of what the problem is with the flow of money and power today. The book's review of recent history is sobering. Governments of all sorts have become less accountable to the public. Authoritarian states have grown more oppressive; some strong democracies have wobbled; weaker ones have crumbled. And the opportunism of strongmen is far from the only cause. Data published in 2020 show that, among the roughly 1.9bn residents of democracies, less than a quarter live in countries where most voters are satisfied with that system of government. This loss of faith—and the accompanying retreat from democracy—are rooted in decades of economic failure. On its face, that seems a very reasonable argument. Since the early 1980s, income and wealth inequality have risen dramatically in many countries; in America, for instance, the share of pre-tax income earned by the top 1% has nearly doubled by some counts, from about 10% to 19%. In rich economies growth in productivity and in the inflation-adjusted incomes of the typical household has been disappointing. Deindustrialization has left many working-class cities permanently depressed. We have seen all of this in the United States, where we are hurdling toward La Belle Epoque, with the rich getting much richer and the middle class sliding downward into near poverty. The glimmers of hope are that when women's rights were stripped away from them in the Dodd decision, essentially making them unequal citizens who no longer have autonomy over their own bodies, the ground shifted. Despite a dismal economy, Democrats out performed Republicans in the 2022 election, and the trend is continuing in early 2023. Vote, keep voting, urge others to vote and support voters world wide.

Sesame Cookies

I started baking out of the Cookie Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum with my long term baking companion (she has all the talent, I just follow directions, more or less), and these were quite good, not too sweet, and pretty. ¼ cup firmly packed (54 grams) light brown sugar, preferably Muscovado 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar 4 tablespoons (57 grams) unsalted butter (½ stick), softened ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon (143 grams) tahini, preferably Soom brand, at room temperature ½ lightly beaten large egg (25 grams) ¼ teaspoon (1.25 ml) pure vanilla extract ½ cup plus 1½ tablespoons (71 grams) bleached all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon (2.7 grams) baking soda A pinch of fine sea salt ¼ cup (42 grams) hulled sesame seeds, for coating Make the dough: In a food processor, process sugars for several minutes, until very fine. With the motor running, add butter one tablespoon at a time and process until smooth and creamy. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed. Add tahini and process until smooth and creamy. In a small bowl, whisk together beaten egg and vanilla extract. Add egg mixture to food processor and process until incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt. Add flour mixture to food processor and pulse just until incorporated. Scrape dough into a bowl. Cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour and up to overnight, to firm for shaping. When ready to bake, set an oven rack in middle position. Set oven to 375 degrees. Roll the dough into balls: Place sesame seeds in a small bowl or ramekin. Measure out 10 pieces of dough, 1 level tablespoon (18 grams) each. Roll each piece of dough between the palms of your hands to form a 1-inch ball, then roll ball in sesame seeds to coat. Place balls 1½ inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 6 minutes. Rotate cookie sheet a half turn. Continue baking until cookies lightly brown and centers, when lightly pressed, have barely any give, 6-9 minutes.

One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank

I found this in an unusual way--I am not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal, though I know that it is a much esteemed paper, just not my cup of tea. This year, the third year in a row that I have been reading at an accelerated rate, I decided to read their Best Books of 2022 and this (and several other unusual choices) was on it. It is a memoir written not by the person herself, but rather someone who met her and became fascinated by her story. The book is about Stella Levi, a 99-year-old Jewish woman living in New York City. He met her by chance when he rushed in late to attend a lecture, and the elegant older woman in the chair next to him struck up a conversation. The following Saturday, he found himself in Levi’s Greenwich Village apartment, the first of 100 Saturdays that he would spend with her over the following six years. Stella lived in Juderia, the main Jewish quarter on the island of Rhodes, where Levi was born in 1923, and where he ancestors had lived since 1492 when they were exiled from Spain during the Inquisition. She was a teenager when the Holocaust reached the Juderia in the last months of World War II and scattered Levi’s parents, family, friends and community. She ended up in Auschwitz, and her stories about what it took to survive, how easy it was to die, and what she learned are at once fascinating and horrifying, but also different than other WWII memoirs that I have read. It is the story of that time and place, but it is also much more: a story of friendship, survival, reinvention and courage.

Tea Time

I bought this ceramic tea set at an estate sale for a price so reasonable that I wasn't concerned if the kids were to break it, and it turns out the magic of pouring imaginary tea is a constant across generations. As far back as the 1500s, the Dutch were making Delft earthenware (a soft, easily chipped ware). Then, in 1602, the Dutch East India Company was founded, bringing Chinese tea—and porcelain, to European shores. With tea being pretty much an instant hit, the first tea sets designed for children came out of Germany as early as 1687. Finally, a mathematician and alchemist team hit upon the formula for porcelain, and the Meissen factory opened near Dresden in 1710 (Malone 1976). Unsurprisingly, much of their ware imitated Chinese motifs. The one that I purchased came from Colonial Williamsburg and so has those rather than more traditional themes, but is just as popular in my home as in American homes 300 yearas ago.

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree

This book, winner of the Booker International Prize, is about an 80 year old woman with depression. She is small, so small she might disappear, drift away, go up in smoke. She leaves her house and crosses with her daughter into Pakistan. She travels to Lahore, where she lived as a girl, and then to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where she goes looking for her ex-husband, Anwar. The invisibility of women in modern India is one of many themes in this book that is both rambling and poetic. There are multiple scenes of men who are full of themselves and the many ways that women have to ignore them. There are cultural commentaries on modern India and the partition, many of which I am sure I missed, because there is so much allegory and I do not know enough to follow the subtext. Sometimes even the text goes over my head. Here is the thing--Tomb of Sand is not for everyone. I am not even sure it is for me, although I enjoyed reading it. The reason if my put some readers off is it abandons many of the narrative conventions of time, space, even character. It requires attention, a willingness to be immersed in a pseudo-magical world for long periods of time, and an openness to digression.

The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, JMW Turner

Yesterday was JMW Turner's 248th birthday, and he (for me) is still the master of depicting light. This one is the portrayal of an actual event, and he painted two versions, one of which is at the Cleveland Museumof Art. Fire consumed London’s famous Houses of Parliament on the night of October 16, 1834, and people gathered along the banks of the river Thames to gaze in awe at the horrifying spectacle. Initially, a low tide made it difficult to pump water to land and hampered steamers towing firefighting equipment along the river. The blaze burned uncontrollably for hours. J. M. W. Turner records the struggle as the boats in the lower-right corner head toward the flames. Although Turner based the painting on an actual event, he magnified the height of the flames, using the disaster as the starting point to express man’s helplessness when confronted with the destructive powers of nature. Brilliant swathes of color and variable atmospheric effects border on abstraction.

The Myth of Closure by Pauline Boss

The subtitle of this is Ambiguous Loss in the Time of Pandemic, which is really just a recent framework around which to look at and contextualize grief and loss. This was the Ethics Book Club book of the month at my workplace this month, and since it was available without even a wait at my local library, I read it. As stated above, this book is and isn't centered on the pandemic, even though that is in the title. It is true that The years of 2020 and 2021 have been times of great loss. COVID-19 death tolls exceed 5 million worldwide, climate change threatens our ways of life, and political unrest and racial injustice are daily in the headlines. These are ambiguous losses, which the author describes as a loss that remains unclear, without official verification or immediate resolution, and for which resolution may never be achieved. The book guides us through six principles for developing the resilience to live with and thrive despite these ambiguous losses. She makes it clear that these are not steps to be achieved sequentially, but to be used as needed as we navigate these times. Finding meaning and discovering new hope are key, supported by adjusting mastery, reconstructing identity, normalizing ambivalence, and revising attachment. Finding meaning in our loss makes tragedy easier to bear. Adjusting mastery allows us to control what we can control. We may need to reconstruct our identity, changing how we define ourselves. We learn to accept that ambivalence and conflicting emotions and feelings are normal and move forward despite this. We revise our attachment to the way things were and accept change to find a new steady state. Ultimately, we learn to hope for something new and move forward rather than living in a state of suspended animation. It is a useful framework to think about coping with loss that is different from the more widely known stages of grief described by Kubler-Ross.

Earth Beautiful

This is a view I have seen dozens of times--it is on the road between our house in the Tetons and town, and yet every single time I pass it, I am struck by it's beauty, it's simplicity, and it's link between the present and the past in the American West. Today is Earth Day, created in 1970 as a day for environmental education, stemming directing from the publicationin 1962 of Rachel Carson's SIlent Spring, an indictment on man's assault on the earth, using DDT as the index poison. Here is a paragraph from that thin volume: "Who has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings, this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of the birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal poisons? Who has decided—who has the right to decide— for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight?"

Chloe and the Kaishao Boys by Mae Coyiuto

I enjoyed this YA book about Chloe, a Filipino-Chinese girl who is turning 18, about to graduate from high school, and is getting ready to go to university after she gets into USC's animation program off the wait list. Part of turning 18 in the Philippines is having a debut (pronounced deh-BOO), which is a big celebration for a Filipino girl’s 18th birthday similar to a quinceañera. On top of all that, she’s also struggling with communication problems with her mom (who lives in America) and her dad, her burgeoning feelings for her best friend’s older brother, and a massive case of imposter syndrome regarding her skills and talent in animation. This is all layered onto Chloe's Filipino-Chinese community. Like most countries in Southeast Asia, there has always been a thriving Chinese community in the Philippines. In fact, Binondo, Chloe's neighborhood in Manila, is the oldest Chinatown in the world. And like most Chinese communities that exist in Southeast Asian countries, the blend between ethnicity and nationality can sometimes be challenging to navigate. They are Filipino, but there are also aspects to being Chinese that the community has retained. The prime example in this novel is the kaishao, a Hokkien word meaning “to introduce”. But there’s also the fact that a lot of Filipino-Chinese families also expect their children to speak Hokkien or Mandarin. There’s also what is called the “Great Wall”, a.k.a. Filipino-Chinese families who refuse to let their children date non-Chinese. All that and more is found in this fun coming of age novel.

The Longest Portico, Bologna, Italy

Bologna is a city of porticos and arcades, each of them lovely unto themselves, and collectively it is stunning to see. The word on the street is that there was encouragement to build an addition over the sidewalk to provide housing for the voluminous number of students in town. It also has the longest portico in the world, an UNESCO World Heritage site. The Portico di San Luca stretches from the city to the sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca- more than 3.5 kilometers from end to end. Constructed in the early 1700s, this amazing architectural feat is a beautiful accomplishment that provides a lovely walkway where you can enjoy the views of the surrounding countryside, and be protected in any weather. There are 666 arches in all, some chapels, and lots of steps along the way. But the rewards of a brisk walk, nice scenery and a quiet country retreat at the end make up for it. The pathway starts at the city gate known as Porta Saragozza and leads up to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, a beautiful Baroque church that houses an iconic image of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, attributed to St. Luke, the apostle (though others say it dates to the Byzantine period). The arcade was built to protect the holy icon from weather during the annual procession that transports it from its home in the church above down to the city center for veneration by the faithful. Many walk it both ways, but we took a little tourist train up the hill and walked down.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)

Flaubert is credited with changing the course of fiction forever and this book is the one cited as an example of his ability to summon up the mundane aspects of everyday life and render them entertaining and believable. He labored over every sentence, often writing only a page a day, but making it as close to perfect as possible. The consummate editor. This quote from him I cannot argue with (nor can I emulate): “A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable.” Tolstoy created Anna Karenina in the image of Emma Bovary--they are both tragic heroines, to be sure, but where we root for Anna against all odds, we watch Emma with voyeuristic distaste. Emma is of humble beginnings, and she will never escape the tyranny of her desires, never avoid the anguish that her romantic exploits leave her with, never claim the life she sought. Emma is a covetous, small-minded woman who we do not care for, and would not voluntarily take up a conversation with at a party. It is her propensity to consistently make the wrong choice that keeps us reading, like watching a disaster unfold, slowly and surely. Her husband adores her, but she is not capable of loving him, and maybe not anyone. She is fatally self-absorbed, insensible to the suffering of others, and she can’t see beyond the romantic stereotypes she serves. She is eternally looking for what she expects will be happiness, and that is the cautionary tale here. She looks for love in all the wrong places.

My Puppy Year

A little over a year ago I rather impuslively adopted a puppy. She had good genes. Her mother is an Australian Shepherd and her dad a lab. She favors her father in coloring and shape, but she is is a true mix of the two, with strong herding and retreiving instincts. She is my twelfth dog, but only my third puppy and very soon after bringing her home I realized two things: I had no recollection of any of the raising of the previous two, and I had sorely underestimated the burden it was on my child care providers. I am now silently begging their forgiveness. The year has been filled with lots of joy, many antics, and overall the entertainment has been top notch. The thing I didn't realize would happen that I love and have started doing again is being outside with her. In the winter it wasn't good for me, and it wasn't good for her either. It was so hard to have very short fur and a love of fresh air. I got her a coat to help some, but she would come in, throw herself on the heating vent, thaw out, and start the cycle all over again. Now we are back to spending time together soaking in the songs, sounds, and smells of spring.

The Lords of Eay Money by Christopher Leonard

This is one of the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2022, and while I found it terrifying, I am sure it would have been even scarier if I actually knew anything about the subject before I started. Here's what I got. The Federal Reserve is an entity that was created under the auspices of J.P. Morgan in 1910 after he basically held people hostage on Jeckyl Island until they came to an agreement on how to regulate banks. The Fed and most mainstream academic economists believe that a deft manipulation of monetary levers can increase employment or control inflation. But this implies a direct connection between the Fed and Main Street. The truth is that any monetary-policy intervention must be mediated through the financial system, a complex organism made up of millions of individual bankers, pension savers, fund managers, private-equity investors, day traders and others, all with their own incentives. The author contends that the Fed understands startlingly little about how this financial system transmits its policies to Main Street, and the same could be said of me. In comes Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Kansas City Fed from 1991 to 2011 and, in the post-2008 era of ultralow rates and quantitative easing, a dissident at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). As a regional bank regulator starting in the 1970s, Mr. Hoenig had a front-row seat to the financial-system excesses stirred up by monetary easing and the destabilizing crashes that followed. Mr. Hoenig was often portrayed in the media as a monetary hawk for his ornery votes against expanded Fed interventions. Mr. Leonard offers a more nuanced view. Starting in the Alan Greenspan era of 1987 to 2006, the Fed became preoccupied with containing consumer-price inflation. But Mr. Hoenig understood, as had Paul Volcker in the early 1980s, that asset-price inflation could be just as dangerous. The debate within the FOMC after 2008 concerned not whether the absence of consumer-price inflation gave the Fed permission to continue with its quantitative-easing program but whether, despite that absence, financial risks were storing up within the economy, as Mr. Hoenig warned. One wishes Mr. Hoenig’s efforts to stir this debate had succeeded within a pathologically consensus-oriented FOMC. There is so much more to this spinning out and why it is concerning, but suffice it to say that reading this in the wake of the recent bank failure was not reassuring.

Prince Harry Cocktail

Ok not a royal fan, but this cocktail was delicious! Ice. 3/4 ounce dark rum. 3/4 ounce King's Ginger. 1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice. Dash Angostura bitters. 1 ounce ginger beer, or more to taste. Lime twist for garnish.

Seek and Hide by Amy Gajda

I studied the right to privacy a teeny tiny bit when I was an undergraduate, starting with cases that granted that the government did not have a right to know what happened in your bedroom, but we have come a long way from there--and the concept was much older than I even knew. The battle between an individual's right to privacy and the public's right to know has been fought for centuries. The founders demanded privacy for all the wrong press-quashing reasons. They wanted their dirty secrets kept just that--secret. I did not realize that Hamilton and Jefferson had it out in the public press of their time, and that Jefferson's relationship with his wife's sister, the slave Sally Hemmings, was known in his time. The Supreme Court jus­tice Louis Brandeis famously promoted First Amend­ment freedoms but argued strongly for privacy too; and presidents from the founders through Don­ald Trump confidently hid behind privacy despite intense public interest in their lives. Today privacy seems simultaneously under siege and surging and that's doubly dangerous. Too little privacy leaves ordinary people vulnerable to those who deal in and publish secrets. Too much means the famous and infamous can cloak themselves in secrecy and dodge accountability. This very readable account takes us from the very start, when privacy concepts first entered American law and society, to now, when the law al­lows a Silicon Valley titan to destroy a media site like Gawker out of spite. Muckraker Upton Sinclair, like Nellie Bly before him, pushed the envelope of privacy and propriety and then became a privacy advocate when journalists used the same techniques against him. By the early 2000s we were on our way to today's full-blown crisis in the digital age, worrying that smartphones, webcams, basement publishers, and the forever internet has the ability to erase the right to privacy completely. Take the time to read and think about this.

Chocolate Orange Sablés

These may be a cookie with more moisture in them than the traditional cookie, but they are really good and not impossible to make. 1 cup [227 g] unsalted butter at room temperature 1 cup [200 g] granulated sugar 1 tablespoon [3 g] orange zest 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 large egg yolk at room temperature 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 2 cups [284 g] all-purpose flour 1/4 cup [32 g] finely chopped candied orange peel 1/4 cup [43 g] semisweet mini chocolate chips 1 cup [200 g] turbinado sugar or sanding sugar In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the granulated sugar, orange zest, and salt, and beat again on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add the egg yolk and vanilla, and mix on low speed until incorporated. Add the flour and mix on low speed until just combined. Add the candied orange peel and chocolate chips and mix again until combined. Transfer the dough to a workspace and form the dough into a 12 inch [30.5 cm] long log. Place the log on a large piece of plastic, a few inches longer than the log. Sprinkle the turbinado sugar over each side of the log, covering the outside of the dough. Gently press the sugar into the dough with your hands. Wrap the log in plastic and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours. Position the oven rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350F [180C]. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a serrated knife, slice the dough log into ¼ inch [6mm], and place the rounds about 2 inches [5 cm] apart on the prepared pans. Bake, one batch at a time, until the edges are very light golden brown and the centers are still pale, 14 to 16 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking. Move the pans to wire racks and let cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Seven Steeples by Sara Baume

This was on the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2022, which had only four works of fiction. It is an unusual choice, but a quite beautiful one. Bell and Sigh are a couple in Ireland who leave the city with their dogs to rent a cottage by the sea and withdraw steadily from their lives, seeking to live in an atmosphere of continuous temporariness. There is a hint of the trauma that led them to leave their lives behind throughout the novel, but it is never spoken of, and eventually, without even thinking about it or meaning to, they start to accumulate things once again, which I think is a metaphor for healing. At the novel’s end, Bell and Sigh climb up the mountain they live on, a hike that they’ve been meaning to get around to for seven years. Looking back at their house there is a revelation of what is underlying their actions the whole time, but each reader will take something different away from it. That is the magic and the brilliance of this haunting, fathomlessly sad book.

The Quiet Girl (2022)

This is indeed a movie about a very quiet girl. And it is an Irish language film, with 95% of the dialogue in Irish, and English words peppered in only occasionally (there are subtitles for both). "The Quiet Girl" (Irish title “An Cailín Ciúin”) is the first Irish-language film to be nominated for an Academy Award (this year's Best International Feature). It's a milestone for Irish-language film. Cáit, the girl is a wary and watchful figure. She has survived her chaotic neglectful home life—her drunken father, her harried mother, the crushing poverty, too many siblings and one on the way—by making herself as small and still as possible. The cinematograpy is gorgeous. The focus is on the details: the trees whirring by outside the car in a dizzying blur, the high-flung blue sky peeping through, the inky-black darkness of a bar’s interior at midday, the way shafts of sunlight pierce through still pools of water. Adults are seen from below, or the side. They are unknowable mysteries to Cáit. And she blossoms ever so slightly when she goes to stay with childless relatives who cherish her. It is simple and sparse and gorgeous to behold.

The Song Of The Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The author is a gifted story teller who manages to make the complex understandable, and this book is no exception. If you are not already in awe of biology, this book might get you there. It is a masterclass in how cells function and malfunction. Consider a virus replicating inside a cell, invisible to the body’s immune system and therefore able to multiply unchecked. How is it possible that the body’s defenses, living as they do entirely outside the cell, can detect the alien presence within? The explanation is at once wonderous as well as detailed. He is not so much dumbing it down as breaking it apart into digestible pieces, interwoven with the history of how we know what we know. He also uses sometimes salutary and engaging stories to teach both the fundamentals of cell biology, but also to illustrate that no one individual is responsible for the advancements in science. Rather, progress is made in a series of often unwitting collaborations. A story told by a milkmaid about her clear skin might be the reason we have vaccines: the protection offered by cowpox infection against smallpox led Edward Jenner to perform the first inoculation on his non-consenting gardener’s son. The author is an oncologist, and so no small part of the book, which marvels at the cell and it's resulting human, it also seeks to educate on the state of the art of treating cancer. Cancer cells defy the processes that are supposed to keep them in check. Like viruses, they find ways to evade our defenses so that they can multiply out of control. He uses seminal medical cases and others from his personal and working life to illustrate how we have learned to harness the natural talents of the immune system to fight rogue cells. All in all, this is a marvel, and it could be required reading by all high school seniors before they launch into the world as adults prepared for what lays ahead.

Zatar Roast Chicken

This is the best sheet pan chicken I have had--I find chicken a little under flavored much of the time, and that was not the case with this. It was also most and really delicious. Added bonus is that it is forgiving on when it is served. If you need the meal to be left alone after guests start arriving, this is an excellent choice. It calls for cutting up a whole chicken but you could certainly do with the parts you like best. It comes from Falatin, a cookbook I have yet to really explore. ▢3 lemons ▢One (2 3/4-pound) whole chicken cut into legs, thighs, and breasts with the wing-tips left on (or about 2 lb 2 oz | 1kg of bone-in chicken legs or breasts with the wing-tips left on), skin on if you prefer ▢2 medium onions sliced in half, then each half cut into 3 wedges (2 3/4 cups) ▢2 heads garlic skin on, sliced in half, crosswise ▢2 teaspoons sumac ▢3/4 teaspoon ground allspice ▢4 tablespoons za’atar ▢6 tablespoons olive oil ▢3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons store-bought or homemade chicken stock or water (200 ml) ▢Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Cut 2 of the lemons into slices 1/4 inch thick (6 mm) and place in a large bowl or resealable plastic bag. Finely grate the zest of the remaining lemon (you want about 1 1/2 teaspoon of zest) and set it aside for later. Squeeze 1 1/2 tablespoons juice from that same last lemon into the bowl or bag. Add the chicken, onions, garlic, sumac, allspice, 2 tablespoons of za’atar, 2 tablespoons of oil, the stock, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, and a good grind of black pepper to the lemon juice. Mix well to combine and then cover with a large plate or seal the bag, and let marinate in the fridge, turning the chicken pieces occasionally, for at least 2 hours (or up to overnight, if you have the time). About 30 minutes before baking, take the chicken out of the fridge. Preheat the oven to 425°F (218°C). Transfer the chicken to a large rimmed baking sheet, skin side up, and pour on the marinade, including the onion, garlic, and sliced lemon. Drizzle the chicken with 1 tablespoon of oil and roast, giving everything a bit of a stir halfway through, until the chicken is golden and cooked through and the onions have taken on Transfer the chicken to a platter along with the onions and lemon slices and any juices that have collected at the bottom of the pan. Some people will love to eat the lemon slices and others won’t. Either way, serve them up with the chicken—they look great!

Fieldwork by Iliana Regan

I came upon a review of this book in The Week, and was attracted to it because the writer is a chef and the subject was food. That is in fact true and wrong. The author is a chef, but the book is more about her growing up, feeling like a boy trapped in a girl's body, and somehow being out and about made the dysphoria more bearable. The part of her life that entails being a chef is not really covered here. Mushrooms are something she collects for business and pleasure. They also connect her to her forebears. Great-grandmother Busia from a village in northern Poland used boletus to give czarnina, duck blood soup, the flavor of the forest. Regan spent countless childhood hours searching for wild mushrooms among the oak, pine and hemlock of rural Indiana with her father. She watched keenly as her mother cleaned and sliced the day’s find on the counter island in their farmhouse kitchen. Wild mushrooms even made an appearance in the hospital room not long after her birth. Today, she collects them on her land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and serves them to guests at the Milkweed Inn, which she owns and runs with her wife, Anna. I very much enjoyed this, but my spouse, a fellow foodie, was less enthralled. So it may be a matter of taste.

Matza Balls and Musings

I love the first holidays of spring, not because of the religious significance--which is very meaningful for many people, but less so for me--but for the celebration of the season itself. It has been an easy winter for me. The darkness was less of a mood buzz kill (for reasons that escape me--I had three vacations, all to a place that was a little colder and much snowier than where I live) and it wasn't too grey or too cold. None-the-less, I love it when the days get longer, our mint and chives are back in a very tender and fragile state, and there are spring vegetables in the market. So for me, there are two foods that I cannot get enough of this time of year. The first is asparagus. I like it very simply prepared, and I could have it twice a week for the months of April and May. Our home patch is not producing at quite that level, but I like that we have one as well. The other is matza ball soup, which amazingly I do not even make myself, but it is my favorite part of the Passover meal (this year we have our usual homemade chicken stock with traditional matza balls, a vegan soup, a gluten free ball, and various combinations were served), and then I love having them every single day of the week long break from all things wheat that are not matza based. So happy spring and enjoy the bounty.

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett

The title of “Checkout 19” is taken from the narrator’s weekend job as a supermarket checkout girl, where a Russian customer with a staring problem foists a copy of Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil” on her while she stands at the till. This is kind of a roller coaster of a ride to read, more stream of conscious than anything else and so many thoughts! The narrator is a woman consumed with reading, something that I have been most of my life and even more so in the pandemic. All the space that would have been filled up with dinner parties and chats in the hall at work were filled with reading. And like the narrator, I read it all, classic novels, innovative novels, children's books, the occasional book that falls squarely into "chick lit", young adult novels, cookbooks, I read it all, and did so much of it during the pandemic that I realized it wouldn't alone sustain me in retirement, I would need another very time consuming hobby, maybe two, to fill the space that work once did. This book meanders through the narrators mind, veering off into odd directions, without obvious plot of plan, like living inside her head for the duration of the novel. It was one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2022, which is a stretch for me, but I did enjoy it when all is said and done.

Celebrate April

Passover and Easter travel together on the calendar--the last supper was, after all, a seder, it makes a lot of sense--and this year Ramadan, which travels around the calendar, falls in line with these other two major celebrations. The fact is that this overlap is not being celebrated, but rather highlighting the differences. I am not one to be tribal when it comes to religion--I mix with all sorts and enjoy the differences. I see it as a point of learning at best, and at least not something to drive a wedge between people, and I feel like many people share this view. That is unexciting when it comes to filling up a 24 hour news cycle, so instead what I hear and read are stories of violence related to religion. So I am on a bit of a media slow down--I did check on the elections in Wisconisin this week, but otherwise giving the news a hard pass and enjoying the celebration.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Sunday Suppers Cole Slaw

This comes from a now closed restaurant in Los Angeles, but the cookbook remains. Served with traditional BBQ sides, it stands out. 1/2 cup red wine vinegar 2 teaspoons honey 1/2 small head red cabbage, about 1 pound, cored and thinly sliced 1/2 small head green cabbage, about 1 pound, cored and thinly sliced 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced 1 carrot, peeled and grated 1/2 cup mayonnaise, preferably homemade A healthy pinch cayenne pepper 2 tablespoons minced chives 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper In a small saucepan, reduce the vinegar by half over medium heat. Cool 5 minutes, and then stir in the honey until it dissolves. Combine the cabbages, onion, and carrot in a large bowl. Pour the vinegar-honey mixture over the vegetables, and toss well to combine. Season with salt and pepper, and let sit 15 minutes, tossing occasionally. Add the mayonnaise, cayenne, and herbs, and toss well. Taste for balance and seasoning.

The Slowworms Song by Andrew Miller

This is another of the books of fiction on the Wall Street Journal's list of the 10 Best Books of 2022. Set in 2011, this is more a lengthy confessional letter than a novel. The narrator, Stephen, is writing to his 26-year-old daughter Maggie. He is a 51-year-old recovering alcoholic who has been summoned to Belfast from his home in Somerset by a body known as the Commission. The letter assures Stephen that this is not about bringing anyone to trial, but giving those involved in an incident that took place 30 years ago an opportunity to tell their side of the story. In short, the past is being dragged into the light. We know something terrible happened during Stephen’s service with the British army in Northern Ireland as a young man; the promise of learning what happened is the carrot that entices us through this somber examination of shame, guilt and the long aftershocks of trauma. While inching up to the tragic event that has blackened his life and led him to ruinous drinking, we hear about Stephen’s past and present. He works at a garden store named Plant World and fitfully studies English literature on an Open University course. He comes from a family of Quakers and is semi-estranged from Maggie and her mother Evie. At the tail-end of an adolescence marked by alienation and aggression, he enlisted for the army, with devastating consequences. It is a book that reminds us that trauma has a long memory for both the victims and the perpetrators.

An Irish Goodbye (2022)

Oh my goodness, do not miss this short film from Northern Ireland that took home the prize at the Oscars in the category of Short Live Action. It is a real gem, and while I have only seen it once, I could foresee watching it time and again. Why? It is an absolute charmer. James Martin, who has Down syndrome, and Seamus O’Hara, a burly befuddled presence, star as two brothers who argue their way to a reluctant understanding after the death of their mother. O’Hara’s character wants to sell the family farm, but his brother is having none of it. The inspiration came from an observation Berkeley, who is originally from Gloucestershire, made while at a football game with his dad of two adult brothers, one with Downs Syndrome, arguing it up in classic Irish fashion, all the while their enormous love for each other palpable. That is exactly captured in this suscinct movie that you wish wouldn't end quite so quickly, and leaves you wanting, but not needing, more.

This Is The Portrait Of A Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

This is my third work of non-fiction that I have read by the author, and I like her more as a fiction writer, but not by a mile. This is a collection of essays that don't quite amount to a memoir but do reveal a lot about her personally through the stories that hone quite closely to the intimate details of her life--her family, her marriage, her dog, to name a few. She doesn't come off exceptionally well, nor does she back away from things that are too personal or where she doesn't come off looking the greatest. She basically lied to a child to get her dog and she had a rocky courtship with her husband that lasted 11 years and she only agreed to marry him when she thought he was going to die, for example. She doesn't spare family member's feelings and she admits to some bad behavior on her part --like not leaving the relationship with her first husband before they married even though she knew she should and then having a marriage-ending affair rather than leaving him without first cheating on him both emotionally and physically. On reflection, none of this sounds great, but trust me on this, she is a great story teller and she makes these things all sound regrettable, but oh-so-human. Mistakes were made, and repeated, then made again, and yet, we all survive these missteps and she does too, and is able to poke fun at them as well. I highly recommend this collection, and would read it after Truth and Beauty and before These Precious Days, if you are asking for my opinion.