The Library Book by Susan Orleans

This is a masterful tribute to libraries, and, even better than that, it has a plot and a story line.  On April 29, 1986, a fire consumed or damaged more than a million books in the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.   It was an inferno that burned for seven hours.  As you can imagine, there was a lot of flammable material held within.
The fire that nearly destroys a collection, leads Orlean to histories of libraries and Los Angeles and to an exploration of the physics of how a book burns.  There’s a suspected arsonist at the center of the story, but the hero is the library along with its collections of books, maps, menus, autographs and marionettes.
She goes on to explore the role of libraries in contemporary American life, which has gone well beyond the boundaries of books, or even things that are printed.  It includes multi-media, it has a social role, it is a place of safety and learning.  All that is beautifully laid out within this book.

Spicy Chinese Noodles

This comes right out of Ruth Riechl's new memoir about her time working as the editor of Gourmet magazine.

½ pound Chinese noodles, dried egg noodles, or spaghetti
Peanut oil
½-inch-long piece of fresh ginger
2 scallions
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons Chinese black bean paste with garlic
1 tablespoon Chinese bean paste with chili
1/4 pound ground pork
Sesame oil

1. Cook the noodles in boiling water until al dente (the time will vary with the type of noodle). Drain, toss with a half tablespoon of peanut oil, and set aside.
2. Peel and mince the ginger (you should have about two tablespoons).
3. Chop the white parts and slice the green parts of the scallions.
4. Mix the sugar and the two kinds of hot bean paste, and set aside.
5. Heat a wok until a drop of water skitters across the surface. Add a tablespoon of peanut oil, toss in the ginger, and stir fry for about half a minute, until the fragrance is hovering over the wok.
6. Add the pork and white scallions and stir-fry until all traces of pink have disappeared. Add the bean sauce mixture and cook and stir for about 2 minutes.
7. Stir in the green scallions and noodles, and quickly toss. Add a drop of sesame oil and turn into two small bowls. This makes a perfect snack for two.

Boundaries (2018)

After a bit of a hiatus in watching movies at home, we are back to having our youngest son pick out the movies the three of us watch, and this is a recent one.  I wouldn't have gotten it out myself, based on poor IMDB reviews and not watching enough trailers to be encouraged to get movies that I would otherwise not have heard of.
This is kind of wacky, unless you put it in the road trip movie category alongside such gems as Nebraska and Little Miss Sunshine, and then it has a home.  If you like either of those, you will be glad you watched this.  The characters are few but they are well fleshed out in a movie that is well under two hours.  They include Christopher Plummer, who is well over 80 years old,  as Jack, a ne’er-do-well barb-tongued weed dealer who reaches out to his estranged Seattle-based adult daughter, Laura (Vera Farmiga), fabulously flustered in pique angst-ridden mode after his outlaw ways get him kicked out of his senior living accommodations. Laura's son, who definitely did not fall far from the tree joins them as they wend their way to a better relationship all around.

Simple Cake by Odette Williams

This was the Food 52 Baking Club cookbook for October, and i wish that I had had something like this when my children were younger.  It is written by a good home baker, and the approach is to make easy cakes that look beautiful and can be brought to a birthday party or serve as dessert for a family dinner.
The book is a repertoire of tinkered and fine-tuned recipes that reflect the author's nurturing, easy-going sensibilities: unfussy, not overly sweet, endlessly flexible, and straightforward.   Their genius lies in how they are organized: 10 classic base cakes (Very Vanilla, Tangy Olive Oil, Cinnamon Spice) and 15 toppings (Nana’s Simple Glaze, Toblerone Ganache, Beautiful Buttercream), followed by 30 “Cake-worthy Moments” where the author illustrates the infinite creative possibilities for assembling these elements to suit any situation.  So you can mix and match cakes and frostings, do variations of each, or simply follow the basic instructions.  If you never want to make something that requires more tools than a handful of cake pans and a frosting kit, this is a great choice.

Roasted Peppers Stuffed with Ricotta and Herbs

I made this because at the end of the fall my CSA still had lots of peppers and I wanted to do a side dish that highlighted them.
I used a recipe from Diana Henry's new cookbook, From the Oven to the Table, but there are literally so many ways to make this you certainly do not need to seek that one out.
I start by cutting the peppers in half and seeding them.
I toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and start to roast them in a 400 degree oven until they are just getting soft.
This allows for the peppers to have a developed richness of flavor, regardless of how long the filling needs to cook.
The filling starts with whole milk ricotta, and for every 6 oz. of ricotta add an egg to it.  Then add other cheeses for flavor.  Options include goat cheese, Parmesan, grated Gruyere, the list goes on.  I used a flavored fresh sheep milk cheese in mine, which allowed for the pepper flavor to dominate.
Then add salt and pepper, a minced clove of garlic, chiffoned fresh herbs, even some steamed spinach if you like that.
Then stuff the peppers, top with panko or chopped nuts, and bake for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

The Tillman Story (2010)

 I watched this documentary on Veteran’s Day.

I work with Veterans in my every day life at work, and so Veteran’s Day is a time that I reflect on what service, country, heroism, respect and bravery.  This movie fit the bill for that.  This is a recap of a high profile enlistment post-September 11^th, and how things went from bad to worse after his death.

The filmmaker, Bar-Lev, who previously made the documentary My Kid Could Paint That, employs the conventional documentary format of talking heads, file footage, and insert shots, but he assembles it skillfully, presenting the Tillman The Patriot narrative first, then going back to show a more complicated man, whose real reasons for abandoning his lucrative football career to enlist in the military have never been fully revealed. Along the way, Bar-Lev blasts the media for merely parroting what the authorities tell them, and effectively accuses a succession of investigative bodies of entering outright, obvious lies into the public record. Most of the material in this movie has been seen, heard, or read before, but never with this level of useful illustration. 

Tillman’s death was warped into a message about recruitment into the military, but through extreme persistence his family uncovered the truth about his death, and worse yet, the cover up, which went well up the chain of command.

The anger at the disservice to veterans through the lying is palpable and made understandable.

Mastering Pizza by Mark Vetri

This was the October selection for the Food 52 Cookbook Club, along with his book on mastering pasta.  One thing that I really like about this club is that the cookbooks are not always ones that are current or that I have even heard of.  Not that I have my finger on the pulse of cookbooks, but I am a very respectable home cook, and I give a few cookbooks as gifts during the holiday season.
This is a master class on different types of pizza dough.  The book is set up for total customization. Among the pages are almost twenty different pizza and focaccia dough recipes with dozens of variations and over forty different toppings and fillings. Vetri states, “My promise in this book is that I will help you make better pizza in whatever oven you have with whatever dough you want.” The dough is explained every step of the way, ingredient by ingredient and cooking method by cooking method, so you learn the complete process.  There are detailed explanations related to each type of dough, and the take away message from the group was that everyone made their best home pizza after reading this, regardless of what their level of experience was.  It made me want to get a home pizza oven.

Cheese Danish Slab Pie

My husband made this recipe out of Pie Squared by Cathy Barrow.  If you are looking for a cookbook that has some good technique coaching, this is a good one, and a slab pie is easy to make, less fussy than the round version, and you end up with more to eat, or the ability to serve more portions with the same effort.
This is a great sweet roll that were very popular with my family. You can use store bought puff pastry, but get one with all butter--Trader Joe's is an option.

1 sheet (200-285g) puff pastry, defrosted if frozen, but still cold
8 ounces (226g) cream cheese, at room temperature.  Whole milk ricotta can be substituted
1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons jam
 Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Heat the oven to 400F. Place a baking stone or half sheet pan on the center rack to heat. (The half sheet pan is slightly larger than the quarter sheet pan used for the slab pie. Preheating a baking stone or half sheet pan and then placing the slab pie pan on it when ready to bake helps brown and crisp up the bottom of the crust. You can skip this step if you don’t have either.)

Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the1/4 sheet cake pan (9" x 13"). Dust lightly with flour and use it as a guide to roll out the puff pastry to size. With a sharp knife, score the surface of the pastry nearly all the way through the dough in a tic-tac-toe pattern, to mark off either 8-12 portions. Slide the parchment with the pastry into the slab pie pan and refrigerate.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the sugar, salt, vanilla, and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice and mix on low until completely combined. Taste the filling, and add a little more lemon juice if the flavor is dull. (The filling shouldn’t taste like lemon, but a little bit of lemon juice will add a bright note to the filling. When tasting, look for a bit of a zing in your mouth that doesn’t scream lemon.)
Use a small scoop or two spoons to plop cheese filling on top of each portion, no more than 1 – 1 1/2 tablespoons each. Less is more: Too much cheese will overwhelm the pastry and tamp down the layers, so hold back.
Use the back of a spoon to make a well in each dot of the cheese and spoon in a scant 1/2 teaspoon of jam. Place the slab pie (in its pan) on top of the heated baking stone or the half sheet pan. Bake until the cheese is beginning to brown here and there and the pastry is toasty brown, 21-23 minutes.
Cool the pie for no more than a moment. Dust with the powdered sugar. Ideally, slice and serve this pie barely warm, using a sharp scissors or pizza wheel to cut the portions along the score lines.

Beirut (2018)

This is a rare thing in a spy movie.  It is smartly written, gritty, with a smattering of corruption underlying what you might presume to be an action movie.
John Hamm plays Mason, a career diplomat.  The movie opens at a party at his house, where a friend and colleague of Mason’s named Cal comes to him and gives him terrible news—their 13-year-old ward Karim is the younger brother of a known terrorist, the man responsible for orchestrating the Munich Olympics attack. As Mason is trying to negotiate a peaceful way to extricate Karim safely, Karim’s brother’s people show up and everything goes to hell. Karim is taken; Mason's wife is shot and killed.
Mason leaves the CIA, becomes a raging alcoholic, working labor disputes in Boston.  He is contacted 10 years after leaving Lebannon and told that he’s needed in Beirut. If the city was on the verge of chaos in 1972, it is a ruinous nightmare in the early ‘80s, torn at the seams by everyone in the area who seeks to control it, including both the PLO and the Israelis. Against this backdrop of crisis, Mason is informed that Cal has been kidnapped, and now-grown Karim is the man responsible.Rosamund Pike is his handler, and together they unravel what is really going on.  The tensions and alliances of the time are well laid out and the movie is a good one.

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

If you want the short review, this is hilarious and heartbreaking.
This comic memoir is set in midwest America and centers on the author's father, a man who likes to clean his gun, listen to right wing radio, and drink from inappropriately worded mugs.  He is  married with five children and also a Catholic priest. Father Lockwood, as presented here, is a truly unusual man. Upstairs in the family home, he shreds his electric guitar in a prog-rock frenzy and sips cream liqueurs. He has a habit of yelling for no particular reason, cooks a great deal of meat and dresses either in his full priestly regalia or nothing but his underwear.
The author had left home at a young age, pursued a career as an independent poet, publishing on line and developing a following and living a close to impoverished existence.  The writing of this memoir was prompted by Lockwood’s return home after 12 years away, to live with her parents, poor and drained after a botched operation that her husband had undergone left them penniless.  During their nine-month stay, Lockwood finds herself “jotting down everything everyone says, as fast and free as it comes out of their mouths" and this is the end result.