Pizza

One of the most surprising consequences of reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was the new found joy of making food from scratch.

This was my first attempt at homemade pizza, something I was pretty hesitant to try. To make it a little easier on myself the first time out, I divided my home-made pizza into three attempts: On the first round, I only made the dough from scratch and used store-bought tomato sauce and mozzarella. It turned out pretty tasty!








My second pizza had homemade dough and homemade tomato sauce:

My third attempt was even better: homemade everything, including basil from my 5 ft basil plant!

It friggin' rocked. :D

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

Just started rereading this - Laura Hillenbrand did such an amazing job with this book. From the very beginning, the characters reach out and suck you into the time and era of the early 20th Century. It's all the more amazing because these 'characters' are actual people. I think it's hard for most of us to appreciate the life and times of the Depression - we see those black and white photos of the Dustbowl, maybe you watch or read Grapes of Wrath, but I don't think we truly grasp what it was like to live in those times. There was such a huge shift in the way of life that I don't think we're capable of appreciating it from our vantage point that is the 21st Century.
That said, the author does a superb job of recreating the world that was San Francisco circa 1910. She takes her time describing the three men of the book, as well as the world they lived in, and in doing so, they absolutely come to life. It feels like an almost leisurely stroll through the life and times of Charles Howard, Tom Smith and Red Pollard, yet each man had such a compelling history that you could devote an entire book to each man alone.

It's been a couple years since I've read the book, so I've forgotten a lot of the details of the book, but then again, it just means I get to re-experience how much I liked the book the first time 'round.

"Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse" by Jared Diamond

I really enjoyed reading Guns, Germs, and Steel (incidentally, when I was first reading this book a few years ago, a guy who sat next to me on a plane thought I was an archeologist because of this book. Go figure.). I thought the pacing and writing was spot on, the author didn't dumb down his theory or his presentation for 'lay' people, and I found his argument compelling. I appreciated the fact that he made a point to avoid Eurocentrism as a basis for why civilization evolved as it did, something I've actually had to argue about in conversations with members of my own family. I liked that he took a much more holistic approach to his hypothesis, instead of relying on just one example, or one reason, why the civilizations that came out of the Fertile Crescent evolved as they did. So many times, a theory will be based on such a sweeping generalization that it leaves no room for counter points. It's either tabula rasa or predestination... whereas, as with most things, the reality lies somewhere in the middle.

This brief synopsis from wikipedia said it quite succinctly: "The book's title is a reference to the means by which European nations conquered populations of other areas and maintained their dominance, often despite being vastly out-numbered - superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns), European diseases weakened the local populations and thus made it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized governmental systems promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). Hence the book attempts to explain, mainly by geographical factors, why Europeans had such superior military technology and why diseases to which Europeans were immune devastated conquered populations."

Some have argued that Diamond ignored individual cultures' affects on their own development, making his theory too deterministic, however, I think that ignores the macro view he took. Certainly focusing on Rome's political culture can give insight as to how and why Rome ended up such a dominant civilization in the area (as opposed to the actions of the Germanic tribes of the same era, for example), but ultimately I don't think it's necessary information to have in order to grasp Diamond's fundamental theory. It's less about who specifically made these civilizations great, rather than the resources that allowed those people to use the resources to their advantage.

Collapse, on the other hand, deals with societies on the decline. It's a slower read than Guns, Germs and Steel, but it's still quite enjoyable. Diamond details what he views as the same mistakes that most civilizations make time and again, therefore perpetuating the same cycle over and over. In the prologue, he writes, "I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses." Yeah, ok, the rest of the book is not that dry or boring. Really. It's quite fascinating... especially when he walks the reader through numerous examples, such as the case of the Easter Islanders, the Maya, or the Greenland Norse, all vastly different civilizations that still made similar errors that helped lead to their downfall. The book is not a total downer, however, he does list several communities that have recognized their own decline and have acted to slow or stop it, namely, examples of Japan, New Guinea and Tikopia. Diamond ultimately ends the book with a section that tries to impart the lesson that learning about what didn't work for past civilizations can help keep us from making the same mistakes. The question remains, can we be self-aware enough to act on those lessons of the past?

How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

One summer when I was 14 or so, I was watching my aunt iron my uncle's shirts. I think I must have said something about not knowing how to iron, because she remarked that it's high time I learned, since I would need those skills one day when I got married. At that point, I loftily decreed that there was no way in hell I would ever be relegated to cooking and cleaning for a man. I explained that I would work hard enough to be rich enough to afford servants rather than have that be my lot in life. While I loved the food my aunt cooked, I rarely took it upon myself to learn from her HOW to cook. And due in part to that mis-directed sense of feminist liberation (at the time, I doubt I even knew what that word meant), I still didn't know how to cook (or iron, for that matter) well into my mid-twenties. The fact of the matter was that I was afraid of failing at cooking... all the money spent on ingredients, and the pressure to make it look perfect was too much.

But then, I came across Nigella Lawson's "How to Be a Domestic Goddess". I should say up front that I don't actually like many of the recipes in the book. Frankly, some are downright hideous [I'm looking at you, homemade peanut butter chocolate bars]. What made the book such a transformative read was Nigella herself. Her style of writing made cooking and baking seem like such fun. Who cares if it doesn't come out perfectly? The joy is the process of baking, as much as it is in the end result. Her obvious delight in all things culinary made me want to explore the possibilities of cooking. She helped me to overcome my need for instant perfection, the compulsion to view every recipe as a must-be-adhered-to formula. This isn't rocket science, folks. It's food, and it should be fun.

Thanks to that book, I learned to experiment with my dishes. Initially, things didn't turn out quite like I'd hoped. But that was ok. Because I learned about myself, my likes, my dislikes. And learned to adapt and enhance.

I really enjoy cooking now. For my husband. For my family. And for myself, most of all.

Below is the one recipe I DID enjoy: Her Mother In Law's Madeira Cake.

1 cup softened unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
1 1/3 cups self-rising flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream the butter and 1/4 cup sugar, and add the lemon zest. Add the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of the flour for each. Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and, finally, the lemon juice. Pour batter into a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan, buttered and lined w/ parchment or wax paper. Sprinkle with sugar as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in the pan before turning out.

Makes 8-10 slices. (and it's very good with butter and jam)

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

Animal Vegetable Miracle

What an amazing story. Barbara Kingsolver and her family resolved to live one year eating foods that are only organically locally sourced. If they didn't grow it themselves, it had to come from less than a 100 mile radius of their Appalachian farm. The book is the result of the lessons they learned, personal stories and recipes of a way of living, and eating, that has almost disappeared from our collective consciousness.
The book is separated by month and is written as a combination of memoir and research. Kingsolver details what her family is eating, what is currently in season, etc. Her eldest daughter also includes journal entries and recipes based on what she and her family like to eat. Steven Hoppe adds hard data from studies and research that shows the impact of large scale farming on American diets and lifestyles.
Kingsolver is a writer, and she imbues her own personal story with such wit and poise that it's impossible but be swept along with their journey.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to
school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

By the time you reach August, with its crazy harvest of never ending tomatoes and zucchinis, it's hard to imagine that for the most part, we as a society have completely lost touch with the cycle of life - most of us have no idea that the reason you can tomatoes in August is that by October, they are gone until the following spring. Or at least, they should be. The impact of year round availability of fruits and vegetables has caused such a huge phase shift in how we as a country and a society see food that the ripple effects of such a shift are astounding. We eat food that is tasteless, smell-less, picked before its prime, packaged and sprayed and processed so that it can make its long journey from god knows where to our local grocer.
Kingsolver's resolution is for her family to know what they eat intimately, and that can only come from eating locally.