Books

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.  ~Charles W. Eliot

 

 

While weeding through my library, I discovered that both public and school libraries generally do not accept donations of books that are more than two or three years old. Really??? When did this happen? The librarian (media specialist as they are called today) at a local school informed me that they end up throwing out many books every year. I was appalled! 

The thought came to me that America seems to be in a fraught historical moment in our relationship with our books. We are in the midst of a huge cultural shift. As reading declines in each successive generation, and as content moves increasingly into digital form, there appears to be two schools of thought toward what to do with old books. Throw them out or alter them. Over the past few years, I have been seeing more and more altered book exhibits that seem to venerate the object of the book rather than the content

At first, I was bothered greatly about the cutting, tearing, painting, gluing and other mixed-media techniques done to the books, that changes  it to make something else.  The immediate response I had against a threat to books was rooted deep within me. When I was a child, if my mother saw me writing in a book, bending the page, or treating it carelessly, she would scold, “Never do that to a book!  But then the artist in me appreciates the creativity infused in these altered books.  What is it about a book that makes it a respected object and not just an information-delivery system?

I grew up in a house filled with books.  My parents, especially my father was an avid and eclectic reader .  My mother wrote poetry, she loved arranging and rearranging words until they rubbed up against each other in beautiful ways. She dabbled in collage using letters.  Her works had a layered symphonic quality to them.  My parents surrounded themselves with a variety of people who would drop in at our home to give me books, talk about ideas found in books, art, popular culture, philosophy, life, the universe and everything in between, and I was always delighted by their eccentricities- it was a kind of poetry in life.

When I was young, every Wednesday after dinner, my father would take me to the Toledo Heights Library,  a beautiful high -gabled English Tudor building where the books nestled in mahogany shelves. We would get lost there for hours and wind up checking out the limit. The library formed a pretty essential part of my family's culture and lore.We were all addicted, flashlight-under-the-covers readers. Getting your own library card--and riding your bike to the library on your own--was a significant rite of passage.(A fair amount of library fines were a predictable part of my allowance too.)

Books were valued for their words and ideas, we did not cut, destroy or paint over books.  They certainly were not sacred, but  they were respected.   It seems that as our culture values and needs books less for what they really are, we fetishize their form even more.  My question is "What is the place of a bound book or an altered book in a reading society?"

A Taste of Heaven

Some foods are comfort foods because they remind us of our childhoods. They remind us of home.
Other foods are comforting because of what they are. I never tasted Tom Kha Gai when I was growing up. The first time I had the pleasure was at Malee's in Scottsdale, AZ, and every time I tasted it, my heart was made at peace, my stomach ecstatic, and I couldn't help but smile, resting in the comfort of the flavors that enveloped my senses. I craved the soup and I've spent the last 6 years trying to re-create the recipe, and the last 3 years trying to located some of the more elusive ingredients in Nashville.  I think that I might have finally struck gold!  (I swear there are some medicinal properties to this soup because it sure clears your sinuses!)

 Tom Kha Gai Soup Recipe

Ingredients

• 3 cups (24 fluid ounces) sodium-free chicken stock
• 1½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces across the grain
• ¾ lb fresh straw mushrooms (you can also use oyster mushrooms)
• Two stalks lemongrass (fresh)
•  3 chopped green onions
• 5-6 fresh bird’s eye chili
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp palm sugar
• 2-inch piece of fresh galanga root, sliced thinly crosswise (this TOTALLY makes the flavor of this dish.  If you can't get this locally, scour the internet, buy a pound, then freeze what you can't use now.  It's a floral flavor that you'll definitely recognize if you've had tom kha gai before, especially at Malee's)
• 4-5 fresh kaffir lime leaves
• 4-5 limes
• ¼ cup fish sauce
• ½ cup fresh cilantro leaves
• 1½ cups (12 fluid ounces) full-fat coconut milk
•  1 can baby corn, drained and chopped to 1/2" chunks (optional) (This is in Malee's)
• Red and green Thai bird chiles, sliced thinly as a garnish

Instructions

1. First, concentrate the stock. Put the chicken stock in a wide and shallow saucepan (to ensure fast evaporation), bring it to a boil, and reduce it over medium-high heat until the liquid measures half its original volume. 
2. Quarter the straw mushrooms into bite-sized pieces; set aside.
3. Cut the lemongrass stalks into 1-inch pieces and smash them with a heavy object, set aside.
4. Do what you just did to the lemongrass to the chilies; set aside.
5. Remove the stems and the tough veins that run through the middle from the kaffir lime leaves, and tear them up into small pieces. You can also bruise them a little to bring out the flavor. Set aside.
6. Juice 2 limes; set aside. (You may need more; you may not. It’s better to have more than you need than not enough.)
7. Put the coconut milk into a 4-quart pot, followed by concentrated chicken stock, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass pieces, garlic, palm sugar and galanga root slices.
8. Bring the mixture slowly to just below a simmer, allowing the herbs to infuse the liquid. (THE SECRET!)
9. Keeping the temperature steady, add the mushrooms and the chicken to the liquid; adjust the heat to maintain the temperature. The liquid should never at any point come to a rapid boil. Don’t worry; at 160°-180°F, your chicken will be thoroughly cooked in about 10 minutes.. (IMPORTANT)
10. Stir gently to ensure that the chicken is evenly cooked.
11. Once the chicken is cooked through, throw in the smashed chilies and baby corn and remove the pot from heat immediately.
12. Add the juice of 2 limes and the fish sauce to the pot, stir, and taste. Add more lime juice and fish sauce, if necessary. I added one additional lime.
13. Stir in the cilantro leaves and garnish with green onion and thai bird chiles
14. Serve your tom kha gai as soup or ladle over a bowl of steamed jasmine rice as an entree.

(You could make a raw version, or a vegan version by substituting tofu for the chicken)

Recipe Boxes are Powerful Things

 “Life is so brief that we should not glance either too far backwards or forwards…therefore study how to fix our happiness in our glass and in our plate.”- Grimod de la Reynière

 There’s a skeleton in my closet—or, more accurately, a recipe box.  A recipe box that I’ve kept unopened in a cabinet since my mom passed away. I moved it from Ohio to Illinois, to Arizona and finally to Tennessee, shuffling it around, unable to sift through the recipes but unwilling to part with it. Finally today, I pulled the box down off the shelf. It's just a plastic index card box, a treasured little box of recipes that my mom had, a fixture of the kitchen counter of my youth.  I finally got to the point where I could open it and run my fingers through the cards. The hand writing, the notes and the food memories were all so overwhelming.

 It holds droves of my mothers life; her handwriting, neat and perfect, my grandmothers severe slanted cursive, on those little recipe cards that reads, "from the kitchen of."  The notes she jotted in the corners, the time worn, tissue thin recipes that I grew up with, faded with time, care-worn and beloved. Memories of years of Sunday dinners, picnics, potluck dinners, the chicken and dumplings she made when the weather was dreary. The "Danny Crisp" chicken that she made every Tuesday when my brothers friend would join us for dinner. Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes that probably belonged to her mother's mother. I also found some mystery recipes and some just plain mysteries. Why is the word “relax” printed on the back of a cookie recipe? It was a wonderful  portal into her world. The love with which she had fed her family all those years was palpable in the recipe box’s greasy, smudged index cards.

Recipes are funny things.  They carry so much with them.  Recipes are so much more than words on a page.  There are some we love not because they are the best, but because they are what we grew up with and fold in memories. 

Autumn Burned Brightly

"Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the hills, a torch flung to the trees."- Faith Baldwin

What a blessing it is to live in Middle Tennessee! Autumn in these hills is quite a spectacle!  Vibrant reds, oranges, yellows and browns, and I've been able to witness it for 3 years!

I love the chorus of color that accompanies the church steeples here as they sing the praises of another glorious fall day.  

After a few days of beautiful weather, it didn't take long before I was doing what I love to do, seeking out the back roads and the countryside.  Every turn brings a new surprise, even for an experienced leaf peeper like me.  

 

The people who work the land here shaped it into a fascinating mix of old and new that is uniquely Middle Tennessee.  Thanks to the abundance of rocks that seems to sprout relentlessly from the land, people built miles and miles of picturesque stone walls.

 

Some of these walls guide you along idyllic country roads, others disappear into the new growth woodlands, croplands and pastures.  

I love how the blazing trees and the red barn vie for attention.  

 

Franklin, Tennessee, a beautiful place to put down roots. 

 

Technology Overload

I'm overloaded with information and electronic technology.  My brain has ceased bubbling up with creativity. I've decided that I'm done sacrificing myself for false immediacy.  I'm needing a direct old fashioned touch from God.  Information is only information after all.  Our epistemology will take us no further than our metaphysics.  

I will start small, almost like an exercise program.  I will start taking my e-mails in limited fashion, like a glass of wine before bedtime, and controlling my access to Facebook to once a day.  

I love these thoughts by T.S. Eliot in "The Rock"  

"Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

The clearest way to see through a culture is to see how it speaks to itself.  

 

 

Learning How To Be a Southern Yankee

 It's taken me almost three years to realize that to Southerners, a Yankee is anyone not from the South, not necessarily someone from the Northeast, as I had always thought. I am also realizing that there is no crash course that teaches you how to be Southern.  Real Southern tradition is taught at birth and passed down from generation to generation.  An "outsider"  just doesn't have a clue. Anyway, certain behavior may be perfectly acceptable in places that I've lived, in the east, midwest, and west, but if you break the "rules" here, you will hear about it, and "true Southerners" will never forget. You will be "discussed."

I've broken several rules so far, and I'm sure that I'm not finished yet. Here are a few rules never to break in the south:

Never stop at Costco to pick something up for a potluck and fail to transfer it to good china.  

Never serve iced tea and call it sweet tea.  (I never imagined there was a difference!)

Make sure you understand the concept that everyone waves, it's called being friendly.  Oh, yes and make sure you acknowledge someone when you pass them on the sidewalk.

Never use Miracle Whip in chicken salad.

In the summer, never serve anything that is big enough to fill you up.

 I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country. The South has a completely different history than the north, east or west, both good and bad that is fascinating for everybody.  It makes people work together who usually don't, and it is really beautiful! I am American by birth and one day hope to be Southern by the grace of God.

Finding the Beauty and Peace in Ordinary Things

I have always loved  cozy, flea market furniture and dumpster finds, even before "Shabby Chic" became "Chic." I have wonderful memories in my Grandmother's kitchen at her distressed wooden dining table where the chairs didn't match. I was fascinated with the narrow rust rivulets on her stove and it's chipped and yellowing enamel. I adored the dried herbs and dried flowers that hung from the beams in her pantry, and the old armchair near the wood stove that had seen better days.  I wanted to sit there forever helping her can, preserve, shuck corn and snap beans.  Most of all I loved that nothing was new and everything had a story and a reason for being in her home.  

I do so appreciate things that are imperfect, primitive and incomplete. My father instilled into me from a young age, a gentle rebellion against globalized mass production.  That must be why I love Franklin, Tennessee. Franklin is gracefully weathered, rusty and exactly matches my own proclivities. Franklin is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not laminate.  Franklin respects age and celebrates humans over invulnerable machines.  It finds beauty in cracks and crevices and all the marks that time, weather and use leave behind.  Franklin finds beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, accepting the cycle of growth, decay and death. It is slow and uncluttered and regards authenticity above all, the glory and the impersonal sadness of age spots, rust and frayed edges and the march of time they represent.