Me and My 80 Room Manor
As befits someone of my social standing, I will travel abroad soon, where I will stay in an 80-room manor.
It is the sort of manor which, should you wish to find it on Wikipedia, nothing is stopping you other than the fact that I’m not going to tell you the name of it.
Just exactly like Gosford Park, except that it won’t be as many people staying there, and we’ve asked them to keep the cameras at bay.
Also, I won’t swan around in one of those dresses, necessarily, and if I do they I will also be sporting marks where my son has grabbed at me with tiny and insistent food-covered fists.
But never fear, we will shed the children at a certain hour, and drink plenty of sherry in the evening.
Why
Why are we going to an 80-room Georgian country house? Is it a hotel? Absolutely not: it is a private residential manor, where we will stay with the occupants. My father-in-law, a researcher by vocation, is also a researcher by avocation, and in years past he has turned his attention to genealogical research. Not the puttering kind, that many people do, but the sort where he translates texts from early German and whatnot, or at least gets his children to translate them for him, and then things are published, etc. etc.
It is not yet clear whether he has ferreted out the relatives in the blood line with 80-room manors by design or not, but suffice it to say that our larger family is not foisting itself on any potato farmers struggling along in slanted and windowless stone huts with cool clear water drizzling down the walls.
Perhaps my husband does not have any relatives like that, aside from by marriage.
In any event, my father-in-law has struck up a true and lasting friendship with the owner and resident of the manor, who is also a genealogical researcher. Consequently my in-laws go to 80-room manors all the time.
What, yours don’t?
Who
In addition to my father-in-law, our party includes my mother-in-law, my husband, and his sister. We are also bringing along our 18 month old son, and his sister is bringing her 16 month old daughter.
Babies and manors: a classic combo! They go together like . . . .peanut butter and lobster?
We will bring two peanut butters.
More on this later, obviously!
Book Week (Life?)
Last week
Me: Should we sing? Do you want to do a song?
Henry: Vigorous nodding
Me: Singing
Henry: Dancing
This week
I don’t even get a chance to ask about songs because I am having so many books shoved at me, book after book after book, and then I am being directed to snuggle and turn the pages and READ.
Hooray! Henry has never been opposed to books, per se. He has never been a book burner, so far as I know, but he has never been as crazy about them as, say, the grownups around here. We forgive him for that, because he is technically still an illiterate baby, which is not a judgment. But everything is getting much more intense and pleasurable in the last few weeks, including reading, with which has has become completely obsessed. He may even be so obsessed with books that he prefers a pre-bed bottle to a pre-bed drink of milk from Mom, since it is difficult to get any READING done when the main thing in your line of vision is someone’s BOOB. This is a huge about-face on his part.
Trashy Town and Yum Yum Dim Sum are Henry’s two real favorites, in addition to Good Egg. Good Egg is a beautiful and crafty looking book but it is so exciting that my child literally cannot rest when it is in the room, because the thought of making an egg spin around by pulling on a tab is so intensely delightful. And the chicken that pops out at you at the end? With the sharp little arms? Who could sleep?
My Own Intense Delight
When I consider how much the right book can raise my baseline level of happiness I often wonder if it’s the sort of thing that could or should be counted as a problem, simply because reading, when it is good, is so escapist. There are periods of time during which all I want to do is climb into the tub or the bed and just read to the exclusion of all else. And if I wanted to get away from everything to, say, go to a casino, or play internet poker, or if I wanted to escape with drugs, we might see this as a problem.
However, not everything strikes that chord. Unfortunately, it’s awfully rare. But I’ve got a book like that this week!
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott is a book that I’ve owned for years and been unable to sustain an interest in. You may know Lamott from Operating Instructions and or Bird by Bird; if not, then you lucky duck, because two of life’s great pleasures lie ahead of you. The first is a book about her son’s first year, but it’s not syrupy. It’s highly reflective and extremely honest and funny in a jagged way. Bird by Bird is her book about writing that will kick you in the ass.
Lamott also wrote a number of quiet novels about living in the Bay Area that I could never really sink my teeth into. I prefer her nonfiction, but I thought that I’d read all of it that was going to move me, because Traveling Mercies is a collection of essays about Lamott’s conversion to serious Christianity: and she wants to tell you all about it.
While I liked hearing about being an alcoholic, and confessions about what terrible thoughts she had when her baby was colicky, I wasn’t sure that I was ready for something so private and potentially preachy as someone else’s faith — extreme faith. Why did one of my favorite writers have to go and get all Jesusy on us, I have wondered.
Ironically, that’s sort of Lamott’s position, as well. She fought this transformation. Raised as a liberal intellectual, becoming born again was approximately the most embarrassing thing she would have to tell her community. But I guess that ultimately, seriously drunkenness is one of the most expedient paths to Jesus, and she took it.
The essays in Traveling Mercies have had me weeping in public during subway rides for the last few days. One evening I couldn’t find a tissue and since it’s summer, I didn’t even have any sleeves. Still, I kept reading, and kept crying. If it bothered me so much, I could stop reading, but the enjoyment of the book outweighed the shame as well as the practical difficulties of being covered in my own mucous. What’s so good about it? Well, when pressed about what is so good about this book, I’d probably say.
What’s So Good About This Book?
1. Relatability: Because of her brutal honesty about her own character, Lamott is incredibly easy to relate to, which is what makes her nonfiction come alive more than her fiction. Why read her made up characters when she is so good at talking about herself and her child and friends and family? It’s the sort of book that you read and you think — that is how I feel. I am terrible and I know it but I don’t want to deal with it, she says, but then she finds a way to forgive herself, and instead of seeming formulaic, it seems like maybe there are ways to forgive one’s own self, as well.
2. Expert pacing: she is skilled at delivery information in excellent order, with a great weave of action and analysis (and asides, which contextualize the whole thing). For more on the pacing and weave, see below.
3. Expert framing of a topic: if Lamott wants to write about redemption, she’ll start with something funny, interesting, sad, or self-deprecating (largely a combo) from her own life, and move from there into some Larger Lesson, as illuminated by friends or any number of priests or rabbis or other faithful individuals she has come across. And she illuminates her own journey from Point A to Point B in real life parables: epiphanies. And if you’re not a blind faith sort of person, seeing an intellectual’s logical leaps to faith, especially in an emotional and accessible and FUNNY voice, has a real poignancy.
4. Good content: The content is fascinating and close to the bone. Also, these are homilies, in a sense: they are the story parts of church that make you want to connect, told by someone with a real gift for story telling.
Read it. Perhaps I will post a delicious little excerpt later but since I’ve been finding blog posts writing next to impossible lately, I’m going to post this now. You can find some excerpts here, on Amazon, though what it will give you is random and not as curated as excerpts should be. Still, if you are searching — for God or for just a good book — read it.
Recyclable Ice Cream Cones of the Sleepy Past
Mmmm, upside-down soft serve
If you are not interested in reading about the FAKE HISTORY AND ORIGIN of ice cream cones, ie, another of my food related dreams, then you might want to take the day off from CAC.
Overnight, in my sleep, I took a trip to the beach with some old good friends.
In the dream, we swam at the beach, and then when it was evening, we realized that it was time for ice cream cones.
But this was a special ice cream trip because during it, THE HISTORY AND ORIGIN of ice cream cones became evident.
We realized that the cones we know and love — the sugars, the wafers, the waffles — were not the original cones, but rather edible facsimiles of what our ancestors long ago did with ice cream.
Edible facsimiles? Huh? Of what?
Of conch shells. You know, those large twisty fancy pinkish shells that Caribbean sea snails create to live in, because they are more aesthetic and industrious than the rest of us. Look at the picture. Those are conch shells.
When they are awake, people use conch shells for many things: honking wind instruments, conduits of oceanic noise, weighting paper.
So, how do conch shells relate to ice cream? Well, while sleep vacationing, my friends and I realized that to eat ice cream in an old-school way, you (or more likely, some ancient ice-cream professional) would take a conch shell and line the inside with a sort of delicious sugary crispy crumb. Then these smart ancestors would add ice cream, and hand you the glorious shell, dripping and cold.
It seems almost royal to eat ice cream this way.
How do you get ice cream in there? I don’t know, how do you get snails in there? Or out of there?
You would eat the ice cream and crumb combo out of the cone / shell item. And so when the cone was gone, it was just the inside that was gone, and the outside would be used again and again.
How environmentally sound!
Excuse me, I must go back in time and also to the Virgin Islands, immediately, to figure the rest of this mystery out.
Thanks to smallislander on flickr for use of the beautiful pic!
Ridiculous Pulled Chicken
I’ve got a policy against ordering barbecued chicken. It’s usually a case of someone having slathered some jarred sauce onto some chicken that seems to have more than the usual allotment of bones and skin.
Don’t get me wrong: I might knock you down charging to get the right sort of piece of chicken skin. However, I would also knock you down to get away from the wrong sort of chicken skin, and barbecued chicken seems to be all about floppy chewy skin.
Also, if there’s barbecued chicken, there’s also often barbecued something else. Like pork. I love pulled pork.
This is a take on pulled pork, rather than a take on bbq chicken. Prepare to freak when you see how easy and delicious it is. This recipe was co-invented by my friend Heather by some friends named Julia and Lynda. I ate some of Heather’s last week and then I made some last night. It’s really my sort of recipe, consisting mostly of pantry staples, with plenty of room for personalizations, though you don’t need them. There are certain blog readers who believe they can’t cook. I suggest they start here!
Pulled Chicken Ingredients
Boneless skinless chicken thighs (some)
Ketchup (some)
Mustard (some)
Apple Cider Vinegar (some)
Brown Sugar (some)
Pulled Chicken Procedure
Get out a Dutch oven or other oven-worthy pot. Preheat the oven to 350. EVOO (Extra virgin olive oil) the outside of the thighs, and add some salt and pepper, and place in the Dutch oven.
Put mostly ketchup, plenty of mustard, a good amount of vinegar, and a tablespoon or so of sugar in the Dutch oven. Stir it around. You could add: onion, garlic, orange juice, tamarind, uh, Coca Cola if you’re so inclined. Allspice, ginger, cinnamon, bourbon, whatever. Dose with cayenne, Sriracha, Frank’s Hot Sauce, or anything else you’d like to make it hot. Or, just leave it with the original four ingredients.
Do not taste for seasoning, since it is covering raw chicken.
Cover and cook for 50 minutes. Remove chicken, shred it using two dueling forks, and boil the liquid on the stovetop to reduce for a supplemental sauce. Adjust seasoning to taste.
Serve with cole slaw (I like to buy a bag of shredded cabbage, and then add a bit of mayo, some vinegar, some salt, some sugar). Add hamburger chips pickles and sliced onions on a soft roll.
Great for a hands-off dinner, or reheated the next day.
Hooray!
Do You Know Alice?
Do you know who Alice Bradley is?
Some friends of mine are devotees of Finslippy, her blog, a blog of which I was ignorant. And several months ago these friends told me that they thought Alice and I would get along well, in part because we are both Brooklyn bloggers with babies named Henry, though her baby is seven, if he isn’t yet eight.
So I looked up Finslippy, and learned that it is largely a parenting blog but what I like is that it’s well-written — and it’s hilarious.
When I first found Finslippy I emailed Alice and said hey, isn’t this funny, I love your blog and we both have kids named Henry, and we both live in this huge city that we both live in. Does this coincidence AMAZE you the way it amazes me?
And unlike Alan Alda, who once snubbed me while eating a plateful of turkey — I was seven, and I had asked him for an autograph — Alice offered me a large bite of turkey. She invited me to a reading she was giving that weekend.
I went and realized that we had a friend in common and we had a grand old time chatting.
Because I want your life to be happy and full, I urge you to read Alice’s words, unless it will put you over your daily word count and you will stop reading my words, in which case, forget I ever mentioned Alice, who is, quite frankly, overrated by the people who give her prizes for being the funniest and the most thoughtful blogger.
And who cares if she is an ectomorph with a great haircut? Our culture is shallow.
I bring this all up because I checked the other day, and when her Henry was about the same age as my Henry, he was as obsessed with many of the same things that my Henry is as Henry is now. Namely, vacuums and blenders and singing.
Church Avenue Chomp 