books

Pan Seared Tuna with Mango Radish Coulis – NOT

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment
Fresh ground pepper and an elegant presentation always helps.

Fresh ground pepper and an elegant presentation always helps.

I do enjoy foods that those with sophisticated palates (or a lot of money) eat regularly. Just ask Chef Boy ‘R Mine. I’m his guinea pig. [And it’s about time he comes home and cooks for me again.]

I also like a lot of junk food, pseudo food, comfort food and stuff that is plain fare. I even like stuff, some of it, that involves a can of Cream-of-Something soup.

So sue me.

In the junk food category, I get weak-kneed over Cheez-Its. Ruffles (have ridges) potato chips and Slim Jims are perennial favorites. As for pseudo food, I like Twinkies (though I prefer SnoBalls), but will not abide Cool Whip.

Comfort food and plain fare remind me of my childhood, which was good, and serve, well, to comfort me. Plain fare I regard as further up the haute cuisine ladder than comfort food. Comfort foods are those things that you’re a little embarrassed about liking. Spam is one. Morton beef pot pies are another.

When I was about 10, maybe 11, I read a Beverly Cleary book about a high school girl and her first date. I was beginning to find boys a little interesting, but overall was pretty clueless. For those of you not initiated, Cleary wrote children’s books – Ramona, Beezus, Henry Huggins – which were funny and poignant. While they sometimes had a moral, the heavy-handedness of it was blunted by the comedy. Beverly Cleary could channel all those feelings and ideas and actions of a kid somewhere between 5 and 10 years old. She wrote a few books about teenagers. They weren’t as compelling.

In this book that I’ve forgotten the name of, the protagonist is a bundle of nerves before her first date. She worries about everything including whether or not her mother is going to make Smells to Heaven Tuna Casserole. Cleary, knowing her audience, explained the onion breath problem. Most ten year olds, at least in my day, didn’t worry too much about bad breath.

It’s either a testament to Cleary’s writing or my love of tuna casserole or, perhaps, both that forty years later I remember that detail.

I like tuna casserole. I don’t remember not ever liking it.

My mom made it with Cream of Mushroom Soup, noodles, onions, sometimes celery and tuna. After putting it in a baking dish, she crushed potato chips and spread them on top of the casserole about a 1/2 inch thick.

Now I did and do abhor canned mushrooms. They’re not even as good as pencil erasers (something I chewed on quite a bit as a kid). I hate them, and when we had tuna casserole, I ate around them. They’re chopped up fine and those tiny little suckers could really slow down the eating process.

When I started making my own tuna casserole, I discovered Cream of Celery soup.

Well, well.

I love celery. I toss it in anything I can get away with. Cream of Celery soup and chopped celery became necessities in the production of perfect tuna casserole.

I use the extra-wide noodles. I don’t want any wimpy noodles likely to get limp and pasty. I want them bold and al dente. This is a must.

I’m not sure when or why, but sometime early in my tuna casserole production years, I began substituting French’s French Fried Onions for the potato chips. It’s now a necessity. I could no more enjoy tuna casserole without French fried onions than I could enjoy it without onions or celery or tuna or noodles.

It’s a perfect gestalt of sodium, preservatives, msg, calories and the meager Omega 3s that that the tuna provides.

And I’m having it for dinner tonight.

I haven’t cooked for myself in months. And I haven’t cooked for one person  in months. I was surprised I had to think about how to go about making the casserole. This is not a recipe that’s ever been written down.

I managed to do it, but I could easily feed 12 people. I’m going to be eating tuna casserole all week. I suspect that I will, but it remains to be seen, if I will still like my Smells To Heaven Tuna Casserole next week.

Favorite Quotes No. 1

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

During periods of so-called economic depression, societies suffer for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably discloses that there are plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What is missing is not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called ‘money.’ It is akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she can’t bake a cake because she doesn’t have any ounces. She has butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just doesn’t have any ounces, any pinches, any pints. — Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All is, to my mind, a must read.  It’s a polemic disguised as a hysterically funny novel populated with a bizarre cast of characters not the least of which are a can of beans, a purple sock, and a vibrator.

This quote has been running around my head recently as I try to make sense of the various health reform debates. 

A friend of mine introduced me to this novel and I was amazed at her copy.  Nearly every sentence was highlighted, underlined and/or annotated.  The book is one quotable quote after another and tackles such things as Middle East peace, male/female relationships and whether or not inanimate objects are really inanimate.  It boasts a plot that is impossible to summarize in less than 500 words.

For years I kept the book by my beside and dipped into each morning using it as a source of daily affirmations – an idea stolen from another friend. 

It’s been years since I’ve read the novel from page one all the way through.  I finally finished the novel of Chinese erotica and was trying to select a new book to read when I ran across Skinny Legs and All.  I got side tracked from the new novel pursuit when I elected to look up the above quote.  In looking for it, I ran across some real gems and chuckled again.  I’ve read this novel all the way through at least 20 times (and I almost never re-read anything) and it never fails to provoke out and out guffaws. 

I’ve decided to re-read it beginning at page 1.  Lord knows, I need a good laugh as well as some big ideas to meditate on.

Book Report and Joy of Reading Award

/ wvfurandroot / 5 Comments
The unread books.

The unread books.

Jamie over at the excellent food blog, Life’s a Feast, bestowed upon me the Joy of Reading Award.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been rewarded for reading other than good grades for English skills.

It’s a good day to be me.

Two books, in particular, served as the gateway drug provoking my addiction. The first was Francina Morey’s The Bears of Log Cabin Village which nobody other than me has ever heard of. The other was Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy which is still being read by younguns.

Morey’s book is about several families of bears living in a community of log cabins. For years I thought the book was lost and mourned its absence. I prowled used book stores looking for it only to have it appear in my mother’s attic a few years ago.

Harriet the Spy and The Bears of Log Cabin Village

Harriet the Spy and The Bears of Log Cabin Village

I’m delighted to have it, but have resisted re-reading. I’m afraid it might not be as wonderful as my memory and the memory is a cherished one.

I can’t remember exactly when I first read The Bears of Log Cabin Village, but it spurred the addiction. My mother used to go to the Honolulu Goodwill and buy me grocery bags of books to feed my habit. I was never without a book. When packing for anything, the first thing selected was a book. I read in the car. I read in bed. I read during math class. I read at doctor’s offices and church, on the bus and in the bathtub.

Now I read on comfy furniture.

Now I read on comfy furniture.

I had a thyroid disorder when I was very young which made me hyperactive. I’d read while rolling around the living room floor. The disorder was rare in a child my age and severe enough that the doctors were amazed that I could concentrate long enough to do anything at all much less track the plot of a book. I think this is one of the reasons Harriet the Spy rocked my world. The book was published in 1964 and I probably got my hands on it in 1968 or ’69.

Harriet was roughly my age and different from her peers. In the course of the story, her difference lands her in trouble and in a doctor’s office. While it’s stretching things to represent my problems as a young girl as parallel to Harriet’s, the over-riding theme of Fitzhugh’s book is that it’s okay to be different, but don’t let your difference make you unkind. It’s interesting that Harriet the Spy landed on banned book lists primarily because it, supposedly, encouraged children to question authority and the status quo. It’s even more interesting to note that the author, Louise Fitzhugh, was a lesbian.

Anyway.

The Joy of Reading Award comes with rules.

I’m supposed to:

1. Collect the book that you have most handy

2. Turn to page 161

3. Find the 5th complete sentence

4. Cite the sentence on your blog

5. Pass it on to 5 other bloggers

Books at hand.

Books at hand.

It is with some trepidation that I grab the first book that it is most handy.

I’m currently reading Li Yu’s The Carnal Prayer Mat. This book is a classic piece of Chinese erotica published in the mid-1600s.  I’m not far enough into it yet to know if it’s a read I’d recommend.

On page 161, the fifth complete sentence is:

At first they made out they knew nothing, but at length, under the pressure of his questioning, they took pity on him as an honest man about to die at the hands of an adulterous wife and felt obliged to respond.

[Whew! Dodged a bullet there – no mention of genitalia or descriptions of orgasm.]

The other book (sitting under Li Yu’s) is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. This book is hailed as a masterpiece and I agree. The author began writing it in 1928 in Moscow. While not as powerful as Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicles, it shares some similarities. The required sentence is even more boring than Li Yu’s, so I won’t bother to type it out.

To round things out, my hardback version of Harriet the Spy (sentences 3 through 6) reads:

Harriet rolled round and round the room. It wasn’t bad at all this being an onion. She bumped into her father, who started to laugh. She couldn’t keep her face screwed up and laughed at him.

The, um, more scholarly books with toys.

The, um, more scholarly books with toys.

Though the thyroid disorder re-appeared a decade or so ago(this time in the guise of an underactive one), I no longer need to roll around the floor when I read. Pity that. As a child, reading was a complete experience uniting body and mind.

Not having ever been much of one for rules (and we have Harriet to thank for that), I am not naming 5 other bloggers to pass this award to. If you want it, grab it. I’m always interested in what other people are reading and what books provoked their love of reading. There are several bloggers I read (and who read me) that I’m particularly interested in knowing their reading habits. If they can be troubled to get their noses out of a book and accept the award, I’d be tickled.