Sink or Swim: Social Stagnation in Eliot’s Middlemarch

Funny how just when you think your brain might implode from sheer impotency, you finally think of something to write. I was writing a rant about how every topic I tried ended up dying off or stagnating, and I began to think about stagnation in general. Even the word as it rolls off your tongue does so slowly and unpleasantly, drawing itself out like the last algebraic equation in an exam when outside it is a hot, beautiful summer day. Stag-nay-shun. I thought about the term itself, a word which means something which has ceased to change, stuck instead in some dank, pungent plane where there is life but no growth, decay without death. And then something clicked: Hey! Stagnation could be a theme for Middlemarch, the book that has hands down given me the hardest time thus far on this blog. I don’t know if it’s the sheer size of the novel or the fact that I wasn’t that into it, or maybe because I just realized it’ll take me about 80 years at this rate to read and blog about 1,001 books, but this book has been a challenge. But stagnation: what better term to use to talk about a book chock-full of characters unable to reach their potential because of some internal inability to move forward, due either to societal expectations or a kind of self-inflicted immobility. So bear with me, because I’m going to force my brain out of this sluggish mire even if I give myself a hernia.

The thing about big cities is that there is never a lack of “newness.” Many things stay the same, but currents of novelty are constantly changing the city on some level, whether big or small, noticeable or otherwise, which is why small, isolated country towns are such extraordinary things. In 19th century England, in a medium-sized rural township, residents might never venture further than 20 miles away from home, and the isolation was just an accepted part of life. This allowed for close-knit social networks, long-standing familial ties, and a sense of independence from the bigger cities. But a frequent downside to smallness and isolation is stagnation. Like a small pond in a forgotten countryside as compared to a great lake with rivers emptying into it, sometimes the lack of movement, of new mingling with old that occurs so seamlessly in cities, leads to a sort of social miring, both on the collective and individual level. Many characters in George Eliot’s Middlemarch suffer from this social stagnation. The genius of Eliot’s telling of this story is that she manages to encompass characters from every level of society in a detailed and enlightening way. Obviously, there are main characters, but there is also a representation of minor characters that is much more in depth than most authors are capable of. However, I am not going to explain how all of these characters are in their own little bubble of swampy immobility, and will instead focus on two: Dorothea and her husband, Mr. Casaubon.

Dorothea Brooke begins the novel as a young idealist with a very definite vision of the world and her place in it. She has great plans for what she sees as her abilities to make life better for others, often eschewing personal luxuries because she finds them unfitting for someone dedicated to such ideals. She rejects her initial suitor, Sir James, a young and handsome man with a large estate, and instead marries Mr. Casaubon, to the horror of most of Middlemarch, because she sees in him the kind of venerable man who would teach her the best ways to think and believe and whom she could assist in all his endeavors. Unfortunately, the reality of married life is something that Dorothea, with her head in the clouds, never expected.

Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy and imperative occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman’s oppressive liberty: it had not even filled her leisure with the ruminant joy of unchecked tenderness. Her blooming full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape… (249)

The wide-open vistas that the young, unmarried Dorothea foresaw as the most precious aspect of marriage very quickly contract around her. She finds that not only is her husband unwilling to share much of himself with her, but that he likewise expects her to be as meek and unobtrusive as possible. Her dreams of assisting him in his academic endeavors are meaningless, as Mr. Casaubon has no interest in Dorothea’s help. This leaves Dorothea in a state of inaction. Unable to go forward in what she sees as her wifely duties, she feels extraneous and without purpose, and yet she can not continue with her own ambitions as they do not fall within what she sees as her wifely duties. Dorothea is stuck in a kind of domestic limbo. Her husband is either unwilling or unable to make her feel useful and appreciated, while Dorothea is reluctant to engage in any activities which might, while they may make her feel accomplished, appear unseemly in a wife.

Mr. Casaubon, on the other hand, the ill-chosen companion to Dorothea’s life, is both victim and perpetrator of his own kind of stagnation, separate from that of his wife. We first see him through Dorothea’s eyes, as a kind of venerable intellectual, just the kind of man a young girl could look up to and shape her life around. The reader is not fooled however, thanks to the opinions of such characters as Mrs. Cadwallader and Cecilia. If the reader should have doubts about the reliability of these opinions (bravo!), once Mr. Casaubon himself has been heard from, it becomes quite plain just how deluded Dorothea is. “Hence he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling, and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was…. Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him…” (55). It is obvious from the start that Mr. Casaubon is not a man of excessive emotional attachment or passion, especially towards his young wife. Instead, we find that the only area in which Mr. Casaubon shows anything more than a perfunctory interest is in his work on what he terms the Key to All Mythologies, an enormous academic piece that endeavors to be an encyclopedia of sorts of every major pantheon in the history of the world. It is as daunting as it sounds.

Although there are many aspects of Mr. Casaubon that could be analyzed for signs of stagnation, it is his impotence in completing, or even making progress, on this work that most obviously shows how he has become so stuck that he no longer knows how to free himself. He spends hours in his library trying to catalog his notes, organizing and reorganizing in a futile attempt to mimic progress, yet he is completely landlocked by his own self-doubt and his apprehensions about what the outside world thinks of his work, though the reader is quite sure that no one is thinking about it at all. “Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying” (254). There are many examples of thwarted potential in Middlemarch, but Mr. Casaubon’s failure to not only complete his work, but also his inability to understand how completely Dorothea was willing to share his one passion with him, even to the extent of sacrificing her own ideals for his.

There is no human who has not at some point or another in their life experienced a sense of stagnation, of half-floating in the doldrums of experience, neither sinking nor swimming. This is not to say that stagnation is a safe place to exist, as at some point one has to choose to extricate oneself or to go under. Dorothea is able to do the former, finally ignoring the “advice” of others, instead finding happiness in her independence as a widow and in her eventual marriage to Will Ladislaw. Poor Mr. Casaubon, however, is of the latter group. His stagnation, his sense of never moving forward is halted only by his death. And so with the end of this blog, I hope I am emulating Dorothea in having slogged through my own cerebral stagnation and Casaubon-like inability to write this entry. It is not my best but thank you for continuing with me, if you are still reading this. I promise that I am trying to do better, be more consistent, and ultimately break through my writing doldrums, hopefully to find something better (my own literary Ladislaw?) on the other side.

Boats in Champagne Currents, Borne Back into the Roaring Past

Man, it takes a long time to plan a party. As I’m sure Gatsby would agree, if you’re going to have a party, you might as well do it right or else, well, what’s the point? If there’s one thing to say about Jay Gatsby, it is that he never went halfway on anything. If he wanted something to happen, he threw his whole self into its attainment. If some of his dreams didn’t come off as he planned, it was never for lack of trying.

Have you wondered if I’m ever coming back? Well, here I am (I’ve missed you, too) and this month is going to be chock-full of booknerdish indulgence to make up for my long absence. In my last post, I talked about the role of Nick Carraway, the narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and how his role as observer, and the idea of “being observed” in general, helped make the story and the characters into the unforgettable classic they are. And what but the hope of being observed and appreciated is the point of dressing up for a themed party? So sit back, grab a glass of champagne (it doesn’t matter what time of day it is, we are going back to the Roaring 20′s after all), and relive the “Gatsby Glitterati Party” with me.

The reason it took so long for me to actually have this party was that I had a hard time finding somewhere to throw it. I love my apartment in the Outer Sunset district of San Francisco, but it is tiny, and I would imagine could probably fit in one of the closets of Gatsby’s mansion, with room to spare. I played with the idea of having the party at a bar that was kind of speakeasy-esque, like Comstock Saloon or Bourbon + Branch, but as it was a costume party, I wanted people to feel comfortable and, since most of us had to buy costumes, to not have to fork over 10 bucks a pop, not including tip, for the costly (but delicious) cocktails these places sling. Instead I appealed to several friends, but for one reason or another, I just kept finding myself at dead ends. Finally, my friend Adri, whose apartment is slightly bigger than mine and might fit into one of Gatsby’s bathrooms, agreed to host, and just like that, it was on. Having had the idea for this party in my head for quite a while, I had already been collecting parts of my costume, so I was able to save my money for the other accoutrements of a good party, namely booze.

The menu was simple, as food is not an important part of this novel, although alcohol is. The only food mentioned, in fact, was a quick list of food on display at one of Gatsby’s parties which included spiced ham, turkey, and tea cake, and later on the cold fried chicken lying untouched on the table in the emotionally charged silence between Daisy and Tom the night that Myrtle is killed, when Nick spies on them through the window at Gatsby’s insistence. But since it was a simple party, I thought that the spiced ham or turkey would be overkill, so I stuck with the tea cake, which was based on a recipe from the blog COUKiNE. I ended up making a few last minute changes to the recipe when I realized I hadn’t bought all of the ingredients, but it actually came out really yummy. Other than having to substitute whole-wheat flour for regular, I also changed the apple for unsweetened shredded coconut, which gave it a more subtle sweetness (which is not something that can be said about any of the leading ladies of this story; in fact, there’s very little subtlety to any of the characters, with the exception of Nick, of course). Oh, a warning: most of these pictures are terrible, because I forgot to take them until after I’d already had several mint juleps, and consequently did not feel like messing with trivial things like focus and exposure…

Speaking of mint juleps, a refreshing, bourbon-heavy cocktail I’d never tried before, I borrowed the recipe from the blog Pixelated Crumb. Unlike most cocktails I’ve made for these events in the past, this one required a little more foresight. The night before the party, I went out and bought mint to make the simple syrup. When it was finished, I realized that the recipe must have been for a maximum of three people, and since any one person who attended the party is capable of drinking for three, I figured I should probably make more. To the store for more mint and back again, and I had my simple syrup, which I then bottled in Mason jars and refrigerated. Once the syrup is made, the prep of the drink is very easy: an ounce of syrup, two ounces of bourbon (I went for Bulleit, my current go-to), a few leaves of mint, and ice. Voilá, eat your heart out. Careful though, like the Southern regions this drink comes from, it’s sweet when you first meet, but will knock you on your ass if you’re not careful.

As I’m sure you can imagine, after a few of these the party was in full swing (no pun intended). Actually, it was in full Charleston, which we all learned with the help of a YouTube video which I will attach at the bottom in case you’d like to learn as well. If you’ve ever hosted a costume party, you’ll remember that there are always people that go all out and then there are those who don’t even try. But because I have awesome friends, all the costumes were great. Here are some of my favorite pictures, accompanied by a few choice quotes from the novel:

Daisy was popular in Chicago, as you know. They moved with a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild, but she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation. Perhaps because she doesn’t drink. It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care (75).

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….(154).

Being in Adri’s apartment building, overlooking the quiet Outer Richmond district, reminded me of a scene from the book when Nick goes with Tom to meet Myrtle in the city: “…high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (44). While wrapped up in the sudden excitement and vitality of our own lives, its easy to ignore or forget the fact that uninvolved parties are observing you. What a strange thing it would be to see ourselves from an objective point of view! If only  Gatsby or Myrtle or Daisy had been able to step outside of themselves, even for a moment, and see their actions and their lives from a casual observer’s standpoint, how different a story it might have been, and yet, it wouldn’t have been the same story that takes a firmer hold on my heart each time I read it. That is what it truly means to be a classic work of literature, to be able to bring to light different emotions and insights each time it is read. Great stories do not cease to grow once the final period has been placed, but continue to become larger and more complex versions of themselves each time they are read and enjoyed.

If you’ve read The Great Gatsby before, I hope these last couple entries have caused you to reexamine your feelings about it, maybe even tempted you to pick it up again. It is a story that will never cease to enthrall, especially in the context of the society we live in today.

Now that you’re done reading, throw back the rest of your champagne, get on your feet…and Charleston.

 

Next up: Middlemarch, a daunting read about which I have no idea what to write, and, for the food portion, a tea service! Stay tuned.

The Watcher’s Vigil, or, The Role of the Observer

We live in a world unlike any before it. We have access to more information than people sixty years ago ever dreamed of. With a few key strokes and a click, I could find out the weight of the moon or how many different species of tree frog live in the Amazon. In seconds, I could be chatting with a friend in Kathmandu or Berlin; I could even see them if I wanted to. The possibilities are endless. But as with everything else, there is another side to this utterly accessible fount of knowledge. I could also, with the same minimal effort, find out where you (yes, I mean you, reader) live. I could find out where you went to high school, your phone number, the names of your children. We now find ourselves overexposed. Our secrets, our personal lives, seep through our fingers like sand. I won’t, of course, do any of this, but what I’m trying to emphasize here is the endless opportunity afforded by technology to observe and be observed without anyone being the wiser. What do people see when they steal these glances into our lives? Or, technology aside, what does the common observer see in whatever brief, seemingly meaningless, interaction we share? Even more importantly, what do the people we welcome into our lives as friends, neighbors, lovers, infer about who we are from what they see?

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby is famous for many things, but what interests me most about it is the idea of observation. Daisy and Tom Buchanan consider themselves the focus of other people’s voyeuristic envy because they are rich and beautiful. Gatsby uses other people’s assumptions about him as a tool to build himself up, to make himself exceptional. The ghostly eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg float above the as yet unacknowledged wreckage of the main characters’ champagne-soaked lives, objectively and passively observing it all. But Nick Carraway is the quintessential observer, the self-professed honest man and withholder of judgement, and it is through his eyes that we come to know and understand the fascinating dreamer, Jay Gatsby.

I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me…. [although] the intimate revelations of…men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope (19).

The above is the first thing we learn about our narrator, Nick Carraway. As the reader, this is supposed to soothe our sense of doubt as to the reliability of the narrator but, in this case, whether we trust his relation of Gatsby’s story or no, his is the only point of view we have. Anyhow, as Nick puts it, “life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all” (21). However, other than Nick’s description of himself on the first couple of pages, we learn very little about him throughout the rest of the book. All we know is that he is of a different sort than the drunken glitterati that inhabit East Egg, who only cross the water to take advantage of Gatsby’s wild parties. But though they flock to his mansion and make up wild stories about who Gatsby is and how he came into his money, they have little interest in Gatsby himself. No, it takes Nick Carraway, an unfashionable outsider from the Midwest to reveal Gatsby’s character to us. Slowly, we follow along as Nick pierces through Gatsby’s façade, the debonair man who spends money like its air, only to find a man stuck in the past, who has in fact built up the present solely as a means to reclaim the past.

Imagine being so unable to let things lie, to let go of things that have moved beyond your control, that you assert all your willpower towards ripping that thing, whatever it may be, out of the past in order to bring it into your present reality. This is exactly what Gatsby does with Daisy Buchanan. Through Nick, we learn that every step Gatsby has taken in his life since before World War I, has been with the single goal of getting Daisy back. He buys a house directly across the water from her, so close that he can see the light shining on the edge of her dock.

There must have been moments…when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams–not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart (89-90). 

Nick watches, interfering relatively little, as Gatsby reunites with Daisy, as they reignite their relationship. As the observer, Nick sees the difference between what Gatsby feels for Daisy and what she feels for him. To Daisy, Gatsby is a nostalgic plaything from the past, but nothing with the power to alter her present. Nick tries to understand what it is about Daisy’s voice that is so alluring, so “indiscreet.” It isn’t until that last fateful trip into New York City that he realizes what it is: “her voice is full of money” (108). Perhaps it is because he is not part of Daisy’s wealthy, insulated world that he can see her for what she, and everyone like her, is. It is the same group into which Nick places Gatsby, until he gets to know him better. For the rich and famous of East Egg, wealth and beauty is the end all be all, the highest attainment of society, but for Gatsby, the wealth was only the means, and Daisy was the end who failed him.

After Gatsby’s violent death, the people who came to his parties disappeared, like flies who, after a carcass has been picked clean, fly off in search of another feast. At his funeral, the only people in attendance are his father, who is never mentioned before, as it turns out his father is just a poor, normal man who knows no Gatsby, but only a Jay Gatz who was his son. The other person is Nick Carraway, the faithful watcher. Nick, who had seen Gatsby first as an eccentric neighbor who threw lavish parties for strangers, then as a lovelorn man holding on to the dream of his past with tooth and nail, and finally as a man who lost his grip on the past but who kept his eyes ever on its receding beauty, until the present swept him up in the bitter chaos of a misplaced bullet. Nick is the only one with any sympathy for Jay Gatsby, the man. Although he chooses to go back to the Midwest after Gatsby’s death, it is obvious that he has been changed by the events he was a part of. In the end, if we must be observed, I suppose we can only hope that our observer is like Nick Carraway, someone who is compassionate to our threadbare fantasies and who, once we are gone, takes a memory of us with him, and is changed by it.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past…

A Feast Fit for a Hobbit…and Smeagol Too!

It was a rainy day in San Francisco. It had been raining on and off for days, but the rain still felt fresh and new, like a portent of things soon to be born. And though the skyscrapers and subways of my city are a far cry from the ivory walls of Minas Tirith or the rural pace and comfort of Shire life, there seemed to be a sort of synchronicity in the air between life here on this planet in the 21st century and that of the Third Age of Middle Earth. It may have had something to do with the fact that my roommate and I were at the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building, scouting for things that hobbits like to eat. We found honeycombs and dried fruits, and cheeses with ingredients like apricots, caramelized onions, pistachios and wild mushrooms. I also bought grape leaves to substitute for the mallorn leaves that lembas is wrapped in. For those of you who aren’t quite as nerdy as I am, lembas is a bread-like food made by the Elves of Lothlórien that is known to be extremely filling and nutritious. Samwise and Frodo subsist on it during their entire trek from Rauros Falls to Orodruin, or Mount Doom, in Mordor. That night, I semi-dried the grape leaves and then, the next morning, I wrapped them around some vaguely lembas-shaped crackers. I thought they looked quite authentic:

And then, once they were wrapped and presented on a plate with some pistachio-encrusted goat cheese, the effect was complete.

The next morning, before Frodo Fest started for the elevensies meal, I went to my local bakery and bought a freshly-baked loaf of sourdough. I considered baking my own bread, but then I opted to bake something else instead, and since the sourdough at Devil’s Teeth bakery is sooo good, it wasn’t a loss by any count. 

In addition to the cheeses and honeycomb, I bought some smoked salmon. Unlike everything else, this wasn’t expressly mentioned in The Lord of the Rings but there was a certain character whom I thought would have definitely enjoyed it, though he wouldn’t have touched the lembas. Not sure who it could be? Let me give you a hint:

Alive without breath;

as cold as death;

never thirsting, ever drinking;

clad in mail, never clinking.

Drowns on dry land,

thinks an island

is a mountain;

thinks a fountain

is a puff of air.

So sleek, so fair!

What a joy to meet!

We only wish

to catch a fish,

so juicy-sweet!

Yesss, you gots it, my precious! Gollum! Gollum! I thought that Gollum should have a place at Frodo Fest considering that he was, once, something like a hobbit. Poor Sméagol.

Though for this meal I mostly bought everything, I did make one thing that I thought might very well be found in a hobbit’s pantry or at Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party. It was a blackberry goat cheese tart, and the recipe came from the blog Pastry Affair.

With a little honey drizzled over it and some basil leaves sprinkled on top, this tart was the perfect bit of sweetness to top off our rustic Shire-meal. And, although we stuck to tea as many of us had had rough nights the night before and eleven seemed very early, I had bought a beer called Le Fin du Monde and Barefoot wine. You know, because hobbits are always barefoot so as to be light on their feet. Duh. Unfortunately, the only thing lacking that would be sorely missed at any hobbit repast was Longbottom Leaf. But other than that, I think Frodo Fest was a success, and at least one person recognized the lembas for what it was.

And so, here ends my second, but hardly my last, journey through Middle Earth. That is, until I read The Hobbit. But for the next entry, I’m moving back into our world and the Roaring 20′s with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Thanks for reading!

One Book to Rule Them All: The Speech of the Third Age of Middle Earth

I read recently that the idea for The Hobbit and, subsequently, The Lord of the Rings stemmed from an idea in the form of a sentence that Tolkien had written down on a scrap of paper and then forgotten about, only to come back to later on: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” He didn’t even know what a hobbit was yet, but from that small idea sprang entire worlds and languages, characters and journeys and cultures that would not only become, arguably, the best fantasy saga of all time, but also a story that would become something close to a reality in the imaginations of generations of readers. How that happens is part of what I find so fascinating about the craft of fiction, and also the most utterly daunting. How does one start from an idea and shape it into a whole world?

But what can be said, really, about J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that hasn’t been said before? So far, most of the books I’ve done for this blog have been classics, but none can boast the cult following of this one. I could try to come up with some original idea. I could try to analyze it, perhaps from a racial perspective (as a dear friend said from the wrong side of a glass of Maker’s Mark, “but the only dark-skinned characters are Orks!) or a feminist one (Eowyn is a freakin’ valkyrie) or a postmodern neoclassical one, but I think that would show a presumption of wisdom rivaled only by Saruman. No, this time I will forego all attempts to explain. I’d rather simply  talk about why I think this trilogy has such an unshakeable hold on the hearts and minds of millions of LOTR-lovers, and why it has me spouting Elf-lore and hobbit wisdom at the slightest provocation from whatever unfortunate soul innocently alludes to these books.

In a time where trilogies and sagas and series are an epidemic, where people are constantly chattering about direwolves, fifty shades of something or other, or horcruxes, what is it about this trilogy that makes it more than a book, more than an epic, but a part of most readers’ consciousness? There are a multitude of possible reasons. But for me, on this second time through, the thing that stuck out most was as simple as this:

Dialogue.

As someone who is constantly thinking about words, about what people say and how they say it, I can recognize the challenge presented by creating characters who are believable, who capture the imagination of the reader. You’d think dialogue would be easy. Communication, mostly in the form of speech, is one of the most vital connections between any two sentient beings, so it would seem like a writer would be able to imitate that effortlessly. Unfortunately, it’s anything but simple. As daunting a task as it may be to lesser mortals, Tolkien didn’t just make his characters’ dialogues believable, he gave them a life of their own. In The Return of the King, after the battle at Minas Tirith, Pippin says “Dear me! We Tooks and Brandybucks, we can’t live long on the heights.” Merry replies:

But at least, Pippin, we can now see them, and honour them. It is best to love first what you are fitted to love, I suppose: you must start somewhere and have some roots, and the soil of the Shire is deep. Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not. I am glad that I know about them, a little (179).

The dialogue of the hobbits is my favorite. Their simple, earthy wisdom, childlike nonchalance, and yet incorruptible goodness is just so, well… hobbit-like. There is something about their speech that makes it indistinguishable from the hobbit himself. Faulkner writes dialogue that brings to mind poor, white people, Fitzgerald writes words that ooze the smooth confidence of the moneyed, but Tolkien creates speech that seems to fit perfectly with races that exist only in Middle Earth. If you took that quote out of context but still within the story, it would be fairly easy to guess who, or at least which species, said it. The same goes for Gandalf’s dialogues, or Legolas’, or most notably, Gollum’s:

Let’s be good, good as fish, sweet one, but to ourselfs…. Then we shall be master, gollum! Make the other hobbit, the nasty suspicious hobbit, make him crawl, yes, gollum!…. See, my precious: if we has it, then we can escape, even from Him, eh? Perhaps we grows very strong, stronger than Wraiths. Lord Sméagol? Gollum the Great? The Gollum! Eat fish every day, three times a day, fresh from the Sea. Most Precious Gollum! Must have it. We wants it, we wants it, we wants it! (Two Towers, 304).

Tolkien obviously had a penchant for creation. The scope of his imagination enabled him to create worlds, to play God. From nothing more than his own mind, he created Elvish, Entish, and Dwarvish. He composed songs that told of histories outside of the bounds of the trilogy, forged the bedrock of lands beyond imagination, and then breathed life into characters as unforgettable as they are unique to inhabit them. But what truly speaks to his promethean abilities was his ability to give his characters a voice. The dialogue doesn’t seem to come from the third-party author, the invisible God, but directly from the characters themselves, as though they were living, breathing beings capable of their own invention. Tolkien so adeptly adapts different nuances of speech to different characters that they seamlessly become inseparable from them. He didn’t just mimic the nuances of speech in our world, he created his own, and it is their voices that bind the hearts of Tolkien-lovers the world over to these books.

After All, an African Safari is Not Irio and Ugali

In lieu of the fact that I was actually in Kenya after having read Ngugi wa Thiong’o's Petals of Blood, I’ve decided to mix it up this time. Instead of the usual food entry, I’m just going to talk a little about my experience in Kenya, and the food I had there. Let me just make one thing clear here, as I don’t know if I did so in the review part. I am insanely grateful that I was given the chance to go to Kenya and Tanzania. I am also hyper-aware of the fact that the majority of the population of the world will never get that chance and that I was afforded a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness wild animals in their natural habitat. I do not in any way want to seem jaded or unappreciative. However, part of traveling is observing the world around you. Not just the pretty, heartwarming, jaw-dropping parts, but also the sad, ugly parts that you may wish weren’t there. The fact that I may be critical about the tourist industry in Kenya doesn’t mean that I think it is wholly a bad thing. There is no black and white, bad or good. I am just being observant.

So, with that out of the way, my main disappointment of the trip was the food. I was hoping for some authentic Kenyan and Tanzanian food, and what I got was a vaguely American, vaguely African (for some faux-authentic spice) mediocre stream of never-ending buffets. And though I was able to try some of the food mentioned in the novel, I feel as though I tried a diluted form of it. It was part of the buffet so that tourists could say oooh, look! African food! and then move on to the french fries and duck l’orange (no joke). Nevertheless, here is what I was able to try:

Irio and ugali:

Irio is the one in the front, which consists of mashed peas, corn, and potatoes, which is exactly what it tastes like.

Ugali is the white cake-like thing in the back with gravy on it. I had so given up on finding any authentic food at these buffets that I stopped taking my camera. Of course, that’s when they turned up so I was forced to use an iPhone camera. Ugali is a dish made of maize flour cooked with water until it has a doughy consistency. It’s the most common starch staple in the Kenyan diet, and is usually eaten with gravy. It doesn’t have much taste on its own, which I guess is why gravy is necessary. The reason I grouped these together is because in Petals of Blood, when the police come to take Munira in for questioning they say, “Are you Mr Munira?….Ah, yes. We try to be very sure. Murder, after all, is not irio or ugali” (2), meaning, since these two foods are probably the most commonplace of all Kenyan cuisine, that murder in Ilmorog is no common thing.

Tusker Beer:

Ah, Tusker. After a long, hot day of bumping around in a Land Rover from dawn till dusk, there is nothing better. A crisp and refreshing lager, it is probably the most popular beer in Kenya and gets its name from, you guessed it, this guy:

Serengeti Beer:

This one isn’t mentioned in the book, but I thought I should include it since it’s also a popular beer in Kenya, and because then I could add this picture:

Millet Porridge:

Millet is an essential grain in Kenya as shown in Petals of Blood, when, while drinking Theng’eta, a powerful semi-hallucinogenic homemade alcohol which, as far as I can tell, is purely fictional, the drinkers say “Millet, power of God!” This porridge tasted pretty much exactly the same as Cream of Wheat, which I happen to like.

Roast Goat Meat and Githeri:

Goat meat is the most common meat among the Masai people, at least, and tastes similar to lamb, but with a stronger flavor. Githeri is simply a mix of maize and kidney beans.

Yum, goat! This was taken in a small Masai village outside of the Ngorogoro Crater.

And that is the extent of what I was able to eat in Kenya. If you had asked me before my trip if I could ever possibly get sick of buffets, I would have laughed in your face. But after two straight weeks of exclusively five-course meals and buffets, I almost (note: almost) hope I never see another buffet again.

One day, I hope to be able to return to Kenya and travel around it in the way I like best: by meeting people, seeing how they actually live, eating authentic food, and simply observing their daily life. Watching it pass by outside the windows of my truck was not enough. Going to the one Masai village that we did go to, where they are paid to accept tourists, thereby taking away somewhat from the authenticity, was not enough. I want more. But for now, I will be content with the memories that I have of witnessing Nature in her truest form. I’ll close this entry by showing a few more pictures that I took that have something to do with the story.

In Kenya, parents often warn their children that if they don’t behave, hyenas might come and carry them off. Look at those teeth…I’m pretty sure that would have scared me into obedience.

On Munira’s obsession with Wanja:

“I am lost…we are all lost…but she is… She must be… my wild-eyed lioness…. What was done was done… and it was for you, my moonlight lioness…” (251).

And now we come to the end of what, for me at least, has been the most epic entry yet. I traveled to the other side of the world and back, and through it was able to understand a story in a more intense way than ever before. African literature is a canon that commonly gets passed over. I myself have only read one other book by an African author, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, which I will also cover one day in this blog. It’s a grievous oversight. So if you have never read any literature by a Kenyan author, or any African author, Petals of Blood is a good place to start. I promise you’ll be thinking about it long after you finish. Africa has a way of staying with you.

 Oh yea, and just remember… Eat or you are eaten!

*All pictures taken in the Masai Mara game reserve, Kenya, unless otherwise noted.

Petals of Blood: A People Prostituted

Not often do I have to read a book twice in order to attempt to formulate an idea of what I want to talk about. Usually, as I read I think of the topics or themes in the novel that most interest me, and by the time I get around to writing this blog, I have a fairly coherent outline of what I want to explore. But I found a new kind of obstacle in Africa, specifically Kenya, and its literature. It’s nothing more than the fact that Kenya baffled me, both in Ngugi wa Thiong’o's Petals of Blood and in my actual brief and highly touristic sojourn there in July.

Now, for a woman my age, I’m fairly well-traveled. I’ve lived in Mexico and Paris, spent some time in places like Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Ireland, and made a considerable dent in exploring my own country. But everywhere I’ve traveled has been indoctrinated in Western culture for decades if not centuries, so although there are differences in language and cuisine and landscape, etc., I’ve never found myself confronted with the stark contrasts of a non-Westernized culture. Things that I’d always heard of and considered myself familiar with, at least theoretically, like post-colonialism, the unequal distribution of wealth, the blatant corruption of political officials, the continuing Western exploitation of African resources, or the inequality of gender roles in society, hit me with all the force of a paradigm shift because here was a place where these things were glaringly apparent. Slums with millions of people living in tin and cardboard houses backed up against mansions with tennis courts and pools. Men bought wives with goats and those wives spent the rest of their lives raising as many children as they could produce. In the less urbanized, smaller villages, female circumcision is still practiced. Well-fed watalii, or tourists, traversed the country, keeping to the game reserves unless absolutely necessary, letting their eyes slide over the squalor and poverty that surrounded them, instead gushing over the lions and elephants and zebras, which are, to give credit where credit is due, truly breathtaking. I was one of those watalii, but I’m infinitely glad that I decided to read Petals of Blood before I went (and then again after), because it gave me an insight into a place that I was not previously prepared to understand, and of which I have only barely scratched the surface.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to write a 10-page entry going into detail on each of the problems I encountered in Kenya, so please, keep reading. I’m just going to talk some about a couple of the themes that most interested me and that are essential components to understanding the conflict in Petals of Blood. It’s also one that is always closest to my heart: the state of women in Kenya. I don’t consider myself a feminist generally. Of course I believe that women should be treated the same as men, that preconceived notions of gender roles hurt rather than help society, and that women’s issues are something that somehow are still under attack after however many centuries humans have walked this earth, contrary to what I see as all common sense and all our faculties for reason. I consider myself a humanist. We are all equal. There should be no sides. Oops, I ranted.

Wanja, who is, in my opinion, the heart of the story, struggles with her womanhood throughout, fighting against the juxtaposition between what she wants to do with her life and what reality more or less forces her to do. A bar wench turned shop assistant turned madame, Wanja often remarks on the perceived inescapability of her domination by men in connection with the transient power of her body over them. When speaking of her relationship with Karega, the young revolutionary, as compared to her past relations with other men she says: “With him it has been different…. For the first time, I feel wanted…a human being…no longer humiliated… degraded… foot-trodden” (251). For this reason, Wanja clings to her relationship with Karega, and when it fails, she makes her final descent into whoredom. “Eat or you are eaten. If you have a cunt…if you are born with this hole, instead of it being a source of pride, you are doomed to either marrying someone or else being a whore. You eat or you are eaten…. what’s the difference whether you are sweating it out on a plantation, in a factory or lying on your back, anyway?” (293). As you can probably see, Wanja is one of the more intriguing characters in the novel for her ability to see the world as it is, in all its hard truths and cruelty. She is even able to use her knowledge to her advantage, though at the cost of her body.

The idea of prostitution, however, extends far beyond Wanja and the feminine condition. It is, in fact, a key component to contemporary Kenya and indeed, modern civilization, as described here:

“We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil, some can send their children to schools and others cannot, in a world where a prince, a monarch, a businessman can sit on billions while people starve or hit their heads against church walls for divine deliverance from hunger, yes, in a world where a man who has never set foot on this land can sit in a New York or London office and determine what I shall eat, read, think, do, only because he sits on a heap of billions taken from the world’s poor, in such a world, we are all prostituted” (240).

It is in part this idea that is symbolized by the images of a flower with petals of blood, of flowering, and of blooming , that are used consistently throughout the book, and give the book its title. Our first encounter with it is innocent enough. Munira, the teacher, takes his pupils into the fields around Ilmorog, a forgotten rural village which contains most of the action in this novel, and one of his students discovers a flower with petals of blood. “No, you are wrong,” said Munira, “this color is not even red…. This is a worm-eaten flower…It cannot bear fruit…A flower can also become this color if it’s prevented from reaching the light” (22). This description in many ways describes Wanja and her fruitless desire to have a child, but as wa Thiong’o further develops his story and strives to encapsulate contemporary Kenya, the reader also sees the similarities between the struggling post-Independence nation and the infertile worm-eaten flower.

On a smaller scale, the “civilization” and “modernization” of Ilmorog can also be seen as a parallel to larger Kenya. “But how can I, a mortal, help my heart’s fluttering, I who was a privileged witness of the growth of Ilmorog from its beginnings in rain and drought to the present flowering in petals of blood?” (45). Contrary to what one might assume, Ilmorog, the drought- and famine-plagued dusty village from whence all the young people flee to the city, is vastly superior to New Ilmorog, in which there is plumbing, industrialization, an economy, and roads. As with Wanja, development and growth in this story is akin to moral decay, as is, once again, personified by the petals of blood. What had the potential for beauty is rotten at the core. But this is the point that wa Thiong’o is making, in my opinion. There is no model, at least as of today, of civil/modernization that does not include its accessories: corruption among officials and positions of authority, exploitation of the poor and working classes, and an ever-widening poverty gap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you might say. Tell me something new. Well, think of it like this (and it’s this connection that really drove this book into my consciousness): what is so different between Kenya and the U.S.? Kenya is in the process of modernization and we in many ways are modernization, but is not the majority of our wealth held by a few? Do not some of the people who supposedly have the responsibility for and the authority over us blatantly flout said responsibility? Do we not, as a people, continually attempt to bury our heads in the sand, to say “I am not responsible for other people’s actions and lives”, to blindly follow where we, as part of a democracy, should be leading? So here I am, back from Kenya to the present, and in the days before the election, this book has unexpectedly reminded me to keep my eyes open and forget about the differences between me and everyone else. The differences matter little, if at all. It’s in thinking of the similarities between us that we remember what is really important, and are thus able to envision, and work towards, a better future.

A Far More Pleasant Repast than Ever Heathcliff Had

One of the things I enjoy most about this whole endeavor is that it brings my friends together to enjoy some (usually) good food, sometimes food that they’re not familiar with, like the venison stew from The Last of the Mohicans dinner, or the court bouillon from The Awakening. When everyone always seems so busy and friendships sometimes fall to the wayside to make way for the less fun aspects of life, a small dinner between good friends is a blessing. And, had it not been for the damn pudding, it would have been an easy dinner to make, as well as a pleasant one. I should have known it was more trouble than it was worth when I found myself halving and de-seeding twelve ounces of cranberries the day before I even tried to make the pudding. I didn’t even know cranberries had seeds. But that’s what I love about cooking. If you try to make something new, you’re almost guaranteed to learn something new. What’s life for if not to continually learn new things and become better?

For the Wuthering Heights dinner, I was forced to use some artistic license, since the book failed to mention many specific foods other than hot applesauce (boring) and goose (a little excessive). So instead, I just imagined what they were eating in Heathcliff’s little hovel of discontent or in the slightly (and I mean slightly) more pleasant Linton household. What I came up with were the following dishes:

Mulled Wine (from Zoom Yummy)

Caramelized Carrots (from What’s For Dinner?)

Roasted Parsnip Puree (from Inspired Taste)

Herb-Roasted Cornish Game Hens (from Le Petit Pierogi)

And, what was supposed to be my pièce de résistance but turned out to be a pièce du merde: Cranberry Christmas Pudding (from A Couple Cooks)

All I can say is, in the end, it mostly worked. Overall, it was probably my most disaster-riddled dinner so far. I burned the carrots (next time I think I’ll either put foil in the pan or olive oil), the food processor I “borrowed” from the cafe started leaking cream everywhere, and my timing was all off. The entree was ready way before the sides were, the wine was done in the middle of dinner, and the pudding…well, I’ll just get to that later. Plus, I’ve never had to stuff anything’s cavity before. It didn’t really help that my veggie roommate was pretending to dry heave as I propped open the hen’s…nether regions…and stuffed them full of lemon and herbs. It’s not a very dignified way to go, is it?

Another slight setback was the fact that I didn’t have nearly as many cooking utensils as I thought I did. That’s one of the problems of moving a lot; things just tend to get lost along the way. So I found myself without a vegetable peeler for the parsnips. Not a huge problem, but I did find myself peeling parsnips with a small knife and imagining that this is what my great-grandmother Gladys must have done. Sometimes you forget that you don’t actually need most of the fancy kitchen gadgets you can get nowadays.

As any cook knows, there’s almost never a big dinner without some setbacks. But when everything was finally ready and we sat down, it was all pretty delicious. The mulled wine was really good, and it would be great for a cold night, especially because cooking the wine actually seems to make it more alcohol-forward. Game hen tastes pretty much exactly like chicken, but it’s kind of fun to have your own little mini-fowl on your plate.

The pureed parsnips were Suzu’s favorite till he realized, due to sudden ominous rumblings in his lacto-sensitive tummy, that there was dairy in them (oops!).  They looked like slightly less solid mashed potatoes, but tasted sweeter, more like carrots.

The carrots themselves were loaded with butter and onions, so even though each carrot sported a charred backside, they still tasted as good as anything covered in butter tastes. I was happy with it, in short. I was happy that I was with a group of friends that hadn’t been all together in too long, and so I probably would have been happy no matter what.

The only damper on the whole night was that damn pudding.

I don’t know what exactly the problem was. Maybe it was simply that it was a different kind of dessert than I had ever tried to make before. I’ve never steamed anything in my life. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t have an actual steamer, but a makeshift one made up of a stock pot and a cake pan. Next time I make it (because I’ll never admit to failure), I think I’ll invest in a steamer. Whatever the problem, however, it was a disaster from start to finish.

So here’s what happened: Like I said, I halved and de-seeded almost a pound of frozen cranberries, which took just as long as you’d think. The next day, I mixed the flour and dark molasses (which took me about 45 minutes to find in Safeway since it wasn’t in baking supplies but next to the syrup…) and everything else, poured it into the pan, set the pan on top of a smaller dish inside of the stock pot that already had water in it, and then tried to pour more water in so that, as the directions instructed, the water reached halfway up the cake pan. So far, so good. And then… the water started boiling… and it submerged the fucking thing. Excuse my French. I burned my hands trying to get it out of the water, decided a little water probably wouldn’t hurt it, and tried again. This time the water didn’t boil over, but I did have to keep adding more. Two and a half hours later, it still wasn’t even close to done, but we had already finished dinner, and were ready to go out for a friend’s birthday. I added a little bit more water…and it boiled over again. So, I threw up my hands and admitted defeat. You can’t always win when you’re experimenting with cooking. And maybe it’s fitting. My pudding was just as unsuccessful as the love story of Heathcliff and Catherine, but at least, unlike Heathcliff, I didn’t force everyone to share in my failure. And at least in my case, the good far outweighed the bad.

Next up: Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiongo, a Kenyan author who was imprisoned for writing this book. I’m hoping to be able to do the food portion while I’m IN Kenya in a few weeks. I really can’t tell you how excited I am. I’ll stop talking now

Passion Without Reason is Only Madness

Two months since my last post. My, how time flies. I’ve been so busy, I hardly ever even know what day it is, only what time my shifts start. I mean, for someone who reads as much and as rapidly as I do, the fact that I’ve been monogamously reading my current off-the-list book for the last two months is pretty unbelievable. Granted, the Game of Thrones series is not known for its brevity, but still. But my trip to Africa is fast approaching and I want to supplement what is sure to be an unforgettable trip with a novel written by an African author, and do my food portion whilst sojourning in the cradle of the world. But in order to do that, I have to get another book out of the way, one that I read two months ago and not only failed to impress me but even more terrible, was so unimpressive that I don’t really have anything interesting to say about it. But, what the hell, I can’t very well consider my blog successful if I only did 1000 of the 1001, can I?

So, Wuthering Heights. Being an English Literature major (and lifelong enthusiast), there are certain books that you are expected to have read, and if you haven’t, people tend to lose confidence in your professed knowledge of the classics. Thus the fact that it took me 23 years to read this book (just f.y.i. I also have yet to read Catcher in the Rye and Great Expectations ((do you realize how many books there are in the world?))) is kind of flabbergasting to some snobs. The ridicule I’ve received from my mother alone for not having read one of her MOST FAVORITE BOOKS EVER! is enough to cause anyone to tuck tail and just read it already. Of course, my mom has nowhere near the penchant for literary ridicule that my dad has, due to how often I get slack for reading all of Ulysses, and then arriving at the last chapter, seeing that there were no punctuation marks for fifty pages, and throwing my hands up and saying “I’m nowhere near mentally fit enough to tackle this mother.” Any conversation my Dad and I have usually includes, “so, did you finish that chapter yet?” But back to Ms. Brontë.  I remember being much younger (probably 7 0r 8) and flipping through my mom’s hardbound, illustrated copy and being entranced by the pictures of a man with chiseled, wild features standing on a hill with his hair blowing back from his face. Unfortunately, I think I should have stuck with the pictures, as they turned out to be much more interesting than the words they accompanied. With all the hype my mom has been spewing over the years, I was hoping for another Pride and Prejudice or at least an Emma (my least favorite Austen), but what I got was a seething mess of overgrown passions and mewling star-crossed lovers. Bleh.

What bothers me about this book, however, aren’t the overreaching and not-so-believable romances or the undiluted inhumanity of Heathcliff, but rather the lack of character and plot development. I mean, who the hell is the protagonist in this book? It couldn’t be Catherine, with her spoiled temper and desire to hurt people just for the fun of it. It sure as hell couldn’t be Heathcliff, whose love for Catherine travels deep into obsession and even toys with necrophilia. The only person who I think could have any chance of being considered the heroine here would be Mrs. Dean, the lackluster housemaid. True, she narrates the majority of the story from her point of view, since she was party to most of it, but her reasonability is lost on Catherine and Heathcliff, which in my opinion makes her nothing short of impotent.

I just didn’t get it. Why were these people the way they were? Was it the isolation of the moors, the lack of external civilization to help keep them in line, the general weakness of the other characters, either through impotence or cruelty? Was the purpose of the novel to expose the monstrosity human beings are capable of? For Heathcliff is nothing short of a monster, and Catherine is at the least some kind of demi-demon. Not just Heathcliff’s behavior but his appearance aids this picture of him:

“The light flashed on his features as I spoke. Oh, Mr. Lockwood, I cannot express what a terrible start I got by the momentary view! Those deep black eyes! That smile, and ghastly paleness! It appeared to me, not Mr. Heathcliff, but a goblin; and, in my terror, I let the candle bend towards the wall, and it left me in darkness” (315).

If I were to to be given the authority to decide exactly what the theme of this book was, I think I would say that it is the consequences of unbridled passions paired with madness, or perhaps the similarities between the two. Maybe the reason I find it hard to sympathize with any of these characters is because I personally don’t feel passions to the extent that these characters do. They allow their passions to be the catalyst for everything they do and think. It becomes the ends and the means for everything. Reason and temperance have no sway over them. For me, passion is better described by Edgar Allan Poe in his story “Berenice”: “In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings, with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind.” That kind of passion has no part in Wuthering Heights.

I just couldn’t get into this book. And I found it hard to find something interesting or intelligent to write about it, so excuse me if this post is more scatterbrained than usual. Hopefully the dinner will be more satisfying than the literature itself. Thanks for keeping with me in these hectic times.

Putting the Lamb in Lambert

And we’re back, after a very extended commercial break, sponsored by Work Yourself to Death! and my personal fave, Homelessness (it’s the new Black). But I’m still here, safe and sound and not yet on the streets, and at home, at the very least, in my writing again. It’s funny how you can have your life almost totally together, but the absence of one thing (in my case, a house) can make you feel like you’re on the edge looking over into realities you’d rather not experience. I imagine this is how Enid Lambert felt in The Corrections. She has her life together, a life that had always been predictable and steady, until she realizes that her husband, Albert, is slowly losing his mental faculties to Parkinson’s, and even though she tries to pretend that everything is fine, beneath the surface she’s cracking. It’s an awful feeling. I can completely understand why it was so important to her to get her children to come home for Christmas. There are moments in life when you find yourself grasping at flotsam in order to keep your head above water.

But enough about that. I’ll get through this, as I always do, for better or worse. In the meantime, I think I’ll just keep reading through my list. Who knows where I’ll be when I finally finish?

So for the dinner on The Corrections I made a dinner that was part New York haute-cuisine, part down-home Midwest, minus the jello mold. My dad was visiting in between ski trips in Tahoe and Mammoth (yea I know, he’s got a hard life, right?) and we decided to make this dinner as a thank you to the girls who have been letting me couch-crash for the past two months. My dad also volunteered to help me pay for the ingredients, which was awesome. So here’s the menu:

Green Bean Salad from pip & ebby

Acorn Squash with Cranberry and Walnut Glaze from live love pasta

Twice-Baked Potatoes from Center Cut Cook

Garlic-Encrusted Rack of Lamb from Amuse Bouche

And finally, Coffee Cake from Baking Glory.

Now, considering that I had to work that day and I hadn’t gone shopping yet and I had to wait for my friend to get home because she had the key and the fact that all my roommates go to bed around 9:30 to 10:00 on weekdays because they wake up early for work, this was a big enterprise. I didn’t end up actually cooking until about 7, so I had my work cut out for me if I was going to make all that before the roommates fell asleep while rubbing their hungry bellies. Having my dad there was a lifesaver. And it didn’t hurt to have Gary Lambert’s go-to drink, a dirty  martini, at hand either.

I’d never worked with lamb before, having only acquired a taste for it in the last couple years when I was bartending next to a Greek restaurant at the Sawdust Art Festival in Laguna Beach. Both their lamb burger and the lamb stew was to die for. Aside from the price, which was a little extravagant, though not as bad as the venison for The Last of the Mohicans dinner and probably made more so by the fact that we were shopping at Whole Foods, the lamb was really easy to prepare. Just toss some ingredients in the food processor, or blender in my case, rub the result all over the rack of lamb, and roast. The only important thing to remember if you’re ever preparing lamb is to have a meat thermometer, because it’s really easy to go from too rare to overcooked in mere minutes.

 Actually, other than the time it took to prepare everything, the menu was really easy. Nothing complicated or overly time-consuming to speak of. And it all came out really good. The acorn squash was tender and juicy, the potatoes were bursting with flavor (probably all the bacon and sour cream), and the lamb wasn’t too rare, but rather the perfect temperature and just the right amount of garlic.

It was all ready by about 9, and I could already tell that the girls were getting tired so I was happy that I finished when I did. They were even able to stay awake for the coffee cake at the end, which was amazing straight out of the oven.

I’m really glad I was able to do something to show my gratitude to them, even though it doesn’t even begin to equal what they’ve given me. But there’s my dinner, overdue maybe, but done nevertheless. Maybe my next book, Wuthering Heights, will remind me just how far I really am from the insanity I feel from not being able to find a place to live. Until then, thanks for staying tuned.