Golden Glow by Benjamin Flouw

While I read a small number of children's books each year for personal edification and pleaser, I read to small children for their edification and pleasure, and this book works for both of those endeavors. The book is aimed at a slightly higher reader than is sometimes targeted in picture books. There is no counting to be had, and while things have color, to be sure, that is not something it would be convenient to highlight. It is a book about camping, being in nature, and enjoying it. In addition to identifiable leaves and canopies of various trees, and some common flowere that can be found in the woods, the senter section of the book is devoted to the euqipment that Mr. Fox needs for his mountain adventure in search of the Golden Glow flower, something so rare that he has to be prepared to sleep and eat outside for days in order to find it. I think it gives a thorough and realistic equipment list and for parents who want to prepare their children for just such an adventure, this would be an excellent book.

Ammonite (2020)

While watching this movie, my youngest son said (and I quote): “This movie is really boring…and kind of depressing. … To be honest, Mom, it’s really right up your alley!” He was not wrong on several counts. I read Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, a story loosely based on the life of Mary Anning, and thought this movie might tell me more about this remarkable woman. She grew up in extreme poverty in Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast. She and her brother were the only children to survive out of eight children born. Her father took them both fossil hunting on the beach and they sold what they found to visiting tourists. At the age of eleven she found an entire icthyosaurus skeleton, and had the dinosaur named after her--she went to see it once on display in the British Museum. She got little to no credit for her self-taught skills as a scientist while she was alive, having left school at a young age to help support her family. This is a speculative story about how Mary Anning, a woman who never married, might have had a romantic relationship with a woman that she was definitely friends with and corresponded with over many years. Anning is portrayed as bitter, silent, and less interestying than her real life accomplishments would lead you to beleive.

Black and White Cookies

My youngest insisted that we make these, a signature New York City confection, after we held an event at our house that he always associates with these cookies. That is because the woman who usually hosts it, and co-hosted with us this year because of the need to have an outdoor space because of COVID and the rising number of cases amongst the vaccinated. Parenthetically, the only unvaccinated people we would consider dining with are those that are under twelve--the risk is just too high to be more flexible. Thses are a very good version of this classic cookie--even though I myself do not much care for them! Vanilla Fondant Icing Ingredients: 200 g confectioners sugar, sifted 1 tsp vanilla extract 30 g light corn syrup As needed water Chocolate Fondant Icing Ingredients: 200 g confectioners sugar, sifted ½ tsp vanilla extract 35 g light corn syrup 30 g black onyx cocoa powder As needed water Black and White Cookie Ingredients: 125 g all-purpose flour 125 g cake flour ½ tsp baking soda ¾ tsp baking powder 1 tsp kosher salt 60 g sour cream 60 g whole milk ½ tsp lemon extract 1 tsp vanilla extract 30 g honey 113 g (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened 130 g brown sugar 2 eggs, room temperature Reserved vanilla icing Reserved chocolate icing Method Serves: 6-8 Vanilla Fondant Icing Method: Combine the sugar, vanilla, and corn syrup in a medium bowl. Add just enough water to make a thick but pourable icing. Whisk well until the icing is smooth. Place a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the icing to prevent it from drying out. Reserve until ready to use. Chocolate Fondant Icing Method: Combine the sugar, vanilla, corn syrup, and cocoa powder in a medium bowl. Add just enough water to make a thick but pourable icing. Whisk well until the icing is smooth. Place a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the icing to prevent it from drying out. Reserve until ready to use. Black and White Cookie Method: Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Prepare two sheet trays with silicone baking mats. Sift together the flours, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the sour cream, milk, lemon extract, vanilla extract, and honey. Whisk well to combine. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter and sugar. Using a paddle attachment, cream the mixture together until well combined, light, and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes. Add one egg and mix until incorporated. Add the other egg and once again, mix until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Alternate adding about ⅓ of the dry ingredients and wet ingredients, mixing well in between additions. Using a 4 oz ice cream scoop, add the batter to the prepared baking sheets. Make sure to leave 2 inches of space between each mound of batter. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until fully baked and lightly golden brown. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the sheet tray until completely cooled, about 30 minutes. Using a long offset spatula, add icing to one side of the cookies with the vanilla icing. Allow the icing to set, about 30 minutes. Make sure to ice the flat-side of each cookie. Using another offset spatula, ice the remaining half of the cookies with the chocolate icing. Allow the cookies to set completely, about 1-2 hours.

Things We Lost To The Water by Eric Nyugen

Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed this book, which I found because it was on Obama's summer reading list that came out a couple of months ago. I had mostly finished reading the one that came out six months earlier (I am just not a sci-fi fan and skipped that one book), and largely enjoyed it. This is the first book by this young author, and has the feel of a series of short stories that may be anchored in personal experience and that have been loosely strung. pretty successfully, together into a novel. The book is about a Vietnamese family in New Orleans and the story that the mother, Huong, tells herself about how she came to arrive in the United States with her two sons and without her husband. She tells them that he died, but the truth is that he stayed behind and built a different life for himself in Vietnam after the Americans left. Tuan, the older brother, chooses to keep his Vietnamese name and follows a path that included dropping out of school and finding fringe ways to make money, and the younger son changes his name to Ben, and while he finds America to be just as hard to navigate as Tuan, he gets a benefactor and an education. The paths of both boys are complicated and interesting, and I would read his next book.

Black Or White (2014)

Even granted that this movie is several years old, it is really a terrible movie vis-s-vis addressing race, and it is certainly painful to watch. Having just had my whole at home family watch a movie that none of us liked much, I was thankful that at least I watched it on my own. This is a largely simple story about who should raise a child when their parents are unavailable. Eloise is the child, a well adjusted mixed race girl being raised by her white mother's parents after their daughter's death. Seemingly that apple cart wasn't upset until her grandmother is killed in an accident and she is left in the care of her clearly alcoholic grandfather, played convincingly by Kevin Costner. That causes her other grandmother, played by Octavia Spencer, to step in and seek custody and that is at the center of the bulk of the movie. There are so many stereotypes at work and being reinforced here that make the movie difficult to both watch and defend on every level, and causes you to question how two people with so much star power got involved. The only truth is that very often there is not a single great answer as to what is best for the child, and both options are flawed. This will make you sympathetic to the family court judge's dilemma, but not much else.

Spiced Nuts

There are quite a few options out there for spiced nut mixes. This one comes from David Lebovitz' web site, and is a bit on the spicy side--to tone that aspect down for a mortal crowd, consider a less spicy pepper, going with smoke paprika as a sub, or halving or quartering the cayenne. 2 cups (200g) mixed raw nuts (untoasted); any combination of cashews, whole almonds, peanuts, pecan halves, and hazelnuts 1 tablespoon (15g) unsalted butter, melted 3 tablespoons (45g) dark brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 3/4 teaspoon cayenne or red pepper powder 1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup 1 teaspoon flaky sea salt or kosher salt 2 cups (100g) small pretzel twists 1. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and roast in a 350ºF (180ºC) oven for 10 minutes, stirring once for even toasting. 2. In a medium bowl, mix together the melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, cayenne, and maple syrup. 3. Add the warm nuts, stirring until coated. Then mix in the salt and pretzels, and stir until the nuts and pretzels are completely coated. 4. Spread the mixture back on the baking sheet and return to the oven for 12-18 minutes, stirring twice during cooking. Remove from oven and cool completely, separating the nuts and pretzels as they cool. Once cool, this mixture can be stored in an airtight container.

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

This is a brilliant book that takes an impossibly complicated situation, the Israeli-Palestinian war/conflict. His two main characters are taken from the headlines. They are two figures from real life, Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian scholar and onetime political prisoner. Each of the men has lost a daughter — in Rami’s case, Smadar, the victim of suicide bombers, in Bassam’s, Abir, killed by a rubber bullet fired from the back of an Israeli jeep by an 18-year-old. Improbably, the fathers become close friends, supporting each other’s protests and speaking across the world. The book captures aspects of the impossibility of a solution that does not involve both sides wanting it to work, and the two tier society that the Israelis have built, where every citizen is a soldier and every soldier has the authority over the borders and denigates the Palestineans that cross it. The dye is caste, so to speak. Yet this description doesn’t capture the experience of reading “Apeirogon”, which is defined as an object with an infinite number of sides. Its short, digestible sections are about everything and nothing, the vast and the narrow aspects of building a nation with these pieces that don't fit together. Maybe an Irishman, a citizen of another divided nation, is the ideal person to show us how hard this will be to fix.

Hampstead (2017)

I am a fan of Diane Keaton, who I think often plays the same character with different life circumstances. So I am predisposed to enjoying this movie, and frankly even Poms and The Book Club did not set me off of her, and this movie predates both of them. I read that this movie has a small but recent fan club in England, where it is set, and they may explain why it has been shuffled up to the top of the Netflix algorhythm. Keaton plays Emily, a widower of American extraction who runs, with little success, a vintage clothing shop for charity. She has a bunch of snooty semi-civic-minded friends who live in her building and try to manipulate her, but seem anything but warm, even by British standards. And she has dwindling resources since her newly discovered to be cheating husband has died and left her with debts. Her adult son, of Grantchester fame, is both worried about her and planning to move away. She doesn’t avoid talking about her situation in order to tie the apron strings tighter; it’s just that she doesn't even know where to start. She meets Donald, a long time squatter on an abandoned property near her after saving his life. Having observed him, through binoculars, from her back window, bathing in the nearby river, she then sees him being assaulted outside of his makeshift (but, we learn, cozy and utilitarian) shack. They converse in the local graveyard. He’s gruff but smart and an unlikely romance takes hold. Supposedly based on a true story it is mostly in the romantic framework of storytelling.

Michael's On The Hill, Waterbury, VT

This past trip to Vermont was all about going where we had not gone before, and this place is no exception. It's proximity to one of our absolute favorite places means that we will be unlikely to go back if we are on top of it and get a reservation at our preferred place, but this is a nice place, in a beautiful setting.

There were two dishes that we had that I thought were exceptionally good, and both of them are things that I would not sttempt at home if I could avoid it. The first was a calamari salad. The calamari were thin, tender, fried perfectly and the frissee salad was a nice texture and bitterness to foil the sweet squid. The other was a small lobster poached in an herb butter sauce. It was simple, but well prepared and easy to pick the meat out of the shell. A nice fancy dinner location.

Triple Lemon Bundt Cake

We served this at an outdoor party recently, and were wowed by it--even without the finishing lemon glaze! 270 grams or 19 tablespoons (2 sticks plus 3 tablespoons) unsalted butter 130 grams or ½ cup (118 ml) 7 (to 11) egg yolks (see Baking Pearls, page 110 in Rose’s Baking Basics) 18 grams or 3 tablespoons, loosely packed lemon zest, finely grated (5 to 6 lemons) 242 grams or 1 cup, divided full-fat sour cream 2½ teaspoons (12.5 ml) pure vanilla extract 312 grams or 3 cups plus 2 tablespoons (sifted into the cup and leveled off) bleached cake flour OR 312 grams or 2¾ cups (sifted into the cup and leveled off) bleached all-purpose flour 312 grams or 1½ cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar, preferably superfine 10.1 grams or 2¼ teaspoons baking powder 2.7 grams or ½ teaspoon baking soda 3.7 grams or ½ plus ⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt FOR THE LEMON SYRUP Makes 200 grams/2⅔ cup/158 ml 95 grams or 6 tablespoons (89 ml) lemon juice, freshly squeezed and strained (about 2 lemons) 113 grams or ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar FOR THE LEMON GLAZE Makes 141 grams/7 tablespoons/100 ml 115 grams or 1 cup (lightly spooned into the cup and leveled off) powdered sugar 21 grams or 4 teaspoons (20 ml) lemon juice, freshly squeezed and strained (1 lemon) 5 grams or 1 teaspoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled PREHEAT THE OVEN Twenty minutes or longer before baking, set an oven rack in the lower third of the oven. Set the oven at 350ºF/175ºC. MISE EN PLACE Thirty minutes to 1 hour ahead, set the butter and eggs on the counter at room temperature (65º to 75ºF/19º to 24ºC). With dish washing liquid, wash the lemons. Rinse, dry, and zest them. MAKE THE BATTER Into a 2 cup measure with a spout, weigh or measure the egg yolks. Add 60 grams/¼ cup of the sour cream and the vanilla, and whisk lightly until combined. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the flat beater, add the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest and mix on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter and the remaining 182 grams/¾ cup sour cream. Mix on low speed until the flour mixture is moistened. Raise the speed to medium and beat for 1½ minutes to aerate and develop the cake’s structure. The mixture will lighten in color and texture. Scrape down the sides. Starting on low speed, gradually add the egg mixture in two parts, beating on medium speed for 30 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients smoothly. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface evenly. (If using a 12 cup Bundt pan, first fill four cupcake liners two-thirds full (50 grams each) and then scrape the remaining batter into the pan.) BAKE THE CAKE Bake for 45 to 55 minutes (15 to 20 minutes for the cupcakes), or until a wire cake tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed. The cake should start to shrink from the sides of the pan only after removal from the oven. Shortly before the cake is finished baking, make the lemon syrup. MAKE THE LEMON SYRUP In a small pan over medium heat, stir the lemon juice and sugar until dissolved. Cover it and set it aside. APPLY THE SYRUP AND COOL THE CAKE As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, place the pan on a rack, poke the cake all over with a wire cake tester, and brush it with about one-third (66 grams/50 ml) of the syrup. Cool the cake in the pan for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto a serving plate. Brush the top and sides of the cake with the remaining syrup. Cool completely and then cover with plastic wrap. At least 1 hour before serving, apply the lemon glaze. MAKE THE GLAZE Into a small bowl, sift the powdered sugar. Add the lemon juice and stir until all the sugar is moistened. Stir in the butter. Whisk the glaze until completely smooth. When you lift the whisk, the mixture should drop thickly and pool for a few seconds before disappearing smoothly into the surface. If necessary, add more lemon juice by the drop to thin the glaze. If the glaze is too thin, whisk in more powdered sugar. Cover if not using at once. APPLY THE GLAZE Use a teaspoon to drizzle the glaze onto the cake. You can also pipe the glaze, or even pour it over the top, allowing it to cascade down the sides.