Sandra Gilbert reviews the marvelous new Hermione Lee biography of Edith Wharton (Don’t even get me started on the many many ways that Edith Wharton outshines Henry James — just go read the Custom of the Country. Do it now.) Bookslut interviews Thomas Mallon Ron Hogan at Beatrice asks Jean Thompson about her favorite short stories. (Why didn’t I study with this woman when I was at the U of I all those years ago? Why, oh why, did I get Rocco Fumento instead?) Meanwhile, I’m currently mesmerized by Thompson’s recent collection: Throw Like a Girl
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From CNN: Eat your Yard From Salon: Why I pick lettuce for the Black Panthers
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… to console themselves after a breakup, and some women buy the complete Tales of Chekhov. Because Katherine asked in the comments below, and because he’s been a semi-regular character here on LivingSmall, it seems only fair to mention that the Mighty Hunter will not be making such regular appearances in the future. We hope that the friendship will continue, and that perhaps there might be some game coming our way in the fall, but alas, it looks like I’m going to have a little more time to catch up on my reading, and my blogging, in the near future.…
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Reading this article in the SF Chronicle this morning has me wondering, is it gender that separates the show-off chefs from the nurturing chefs? Gender seems like both a simplistic and sexist way to separate out these very different approaches to food — (especially when published in the edition of the Sunday paper dedicated to Gay Pride weekend). Myself — I’m what this author calls a “mama cook” — I don’t cook what I think of as “restaurant food” at home. My cooking tends toward braises, marinated things on the grill in the summer, tarts, cakes … home food. I…
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Swamped with work today, but there’s an interesting piece over at the Columbia Journalism Review on the new direction food reporting is taking: “The world of food reporting had been divided,” Severson told me recently. “You’d have an agriculture reporter who didn’t understand how a kitchen worked and a reporter covering hunger who might not understand what it took to put food on the table at night,” plus the restaurant critics and the recipe editors. Newspapers today, she adds, “are really bringing all of that together.”
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I made two skirts today and I made them without patterns! I used this great book — I hate patterns. I hate the tissue paper. I hate the fussiness of the directions. But I’ve also gotten very tired of spending fifty or sixty bucks on skirts that seem to have two seams and an elastic waist. Now, I’m by no means a seamstress, but even I can sew a skirt with two seams, an elastic waist, and a hem. So here’s the deal — I’m short. I’m not skinny. And I like clothes that don’t look like what everyone else…
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This morning, the food section of the San Francisco Chronicle covers the conflict between Carlo Petrini and the Ferry Plaza Market farmers. There’s a really interesting conversation going on in the comments over at Steve Sando’s blog — Sando, who runs Rancho Gordo is one of the farmers who sells his stuff at Ferry Plaza, and he’s on the board for the non-profit market. He also is one of the folks who met with Petrini when he was in town last week promoting the upcoming Slow Food Nation event next Spring. Petrini has a book out, and was supposed to…
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I’ve been seeing reviews all over the place of Barbara Kingsolver’s new book about eating locally — she’s not necessarily one of my favorite writers, but between this interview over at Salon, and this piece she wrote for Mother Jones I might just have to go get a copy. Here’s a quote from the Mother Jones article: Supermarkets only accept properly packaged, coded, and labeled produce that conforms to certain standards of color, size, and shape. Melons can have no stem attached; cucumbers must be no less than six inches long, no more than eight. Crooked eggplants need not apply.…
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The entire day I searched for spring but spring I could not find, In my straw sandals I tramped among the mountain peak clouds. Home again, smiling, I finger a sprig of fragrant plum blossoms; Spring was right here on these branches in all of its glory! Plum Blossom Nun (via the Nebraska Zen Center)
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It’s been a grim spring here weather-wise. Cold. Gray. Snowy. Gray. And yet, it’s been warm enough that these pretty daffodils bloomed. I don’t even remember planting them — they must have been in the batch I bought from one of Nina’s kids as a fundraising thing. At any rate, I was silly enough to plant them right under the dripline from the porch, so they got kind of battered, poor things. I’m always torn about picking flowers from the garden — where will I enjoy them more? Outside? or inside? But since these had broken stems from the water…