Genius Recipes, Quite Possibly

When it is lunch time and I am faced with another wonderful grilled cheese from the lunchroom (they are truly good) I take my compostable  lunch tray and retreat to my desk for 20 minutes of Food52. And when I heard that I could find so much of Food52 in an actual book, which I always prefer, I was giddy.

Genius Recipes appeared early in the summer, a perfect slow morning read, a cup of tea and and the start of a lovely summer day. We got along immediately.

Genius is a big word, not to be tossed around and used lightly. And this one, not only genius but subtitled, 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook, oh my, such lofty aspirations. Not just the smartest child in the class but the most outgoing and well behaved also, you don't say?

One cup of tea turned into two. Ideas for summer tomatoes and holiday parties, notes scratched in my food journal, beautiful pictures and well thought out recipes, all the ingredients for a perfectly lovely summer morning. And later that day, Marcella Hazan's buttery rich tomato sauce, simmering on the stove; from start to finish a culinarily perfect day. Genius? Perhaps, but most certainly at the top of the class.

Through Blogging for Books, I received a copy of this book for review purposes. Delicious.

Under Magnolia (Not Next to BBQ)

It seems that whenever I try to put together the stories from my childhood, those that pile one on another in the ongoing, and sometimes dull, tale of me, there is no cohesive matter to string them together. What I get rather is a random, although heartfelt, journey through the people who conspired to shape my life. Not even my children, who profess to love me deeply, would be interested in making sense of this jumble of tales. It seems I have been forgetting the main character, the very place that gave me roots and home and history, the place where I lived those wonderful childhood years. Thankfully Frances Mayes, a far more gifted and accomplished writer, did not.

Under Magnolia, Mayes' beautiful history of her formative years, gives proper credit to the place that shaped in many ways the person she is today. Her words, paced to a slow southern drawl, create vivid images that are still somewhat murky with the heat of Georgia summers. Racing through the humidity soaked pages I ached for a sweet tea, unheard of in my northern home.

"Nothing about the South stirs me as much as the narcotizing fragrance of the land, jasmine, ginger lilies, gardenia, and honeysuckle blending, fetid and sweet", language that leaves no doubt as to what role Fitzgerald, Georgia played in her upbringing.  And while the South is the binder that holds these stories together, it is the characters, shaped in every possible way by home, that create the lovely story that slowly churns out like a lazy summer day; nothing compelling us to read beyond a curiosity for what might happen the next day. Frances Mayes writes a beautiful story of a childhood that wasn't always happy, and in no way perfect, but was every day very real. The voice, so clear, must harbor a bit of drawl she thought she had packed away years ago.

"In writing a life, you search for the white pebbles you didn't know your dropped to define your way."

Through Blogging for Books I received a review copy of this book.

Quotes from Frances Mayes, Under the Magnolia.

A Nice Little Place Down the Street

Once upon a time, when my day started with a quick run or a dog walk around the neighborhood, and every day was sunny but not too hot, I would occasionally stop at the ticket window to see if they had any of those $15 day of game bleacher tickets. And more often than not, certainly more often than I should have, I would buy one and spend my afternoon, not in my broom closet turned office doing work that I actually hated, but in the beautiful bleachers at Wrigley Field, with 3,000 others who also hated their job or were happily unemployed.*

My mornings no longer start with a run, the dog died, my job is not so bad and bleacher tickets cost over $50; I hardly spend anytime at Wrigley, a very nice place just down the street, my favorite place to be on a summer afternoon.

George Will shares my love of Wrigley, which he writes about in A Nice Little Place on the North Side. Will, conservative columnist and Cubs fan, ambles through the history of Wrigley Field with the pace of a lazy summer day. His anecdotal tour of Wrigley, and the Cubs, is a delightful and engaging read, the past easily building the story of modern day Wrigley.

Will, born a Cubs fan, covers not only the history of the ball park but how that history plays a key part in the Cubs consistently dismal summer standings. Only one other team in Major League Baseball is so closely tied to a stadium, and they seem to have figured out how to win, not so the Cubs. Is it true, that the beauty and experience of Wrigley, the friendly confines, contributes in part to the Cubs consistently lackluster performance? Will's writing is engaging and clever, and full of arcane stories that all come together to create a historical portrait of a beloved team playing in an equally beloved ballpark. Will's story is not just a birthday card, it's a delightful romp through one hundred years of baseball, Wrigley, Cubs and heartache.

Through Blogging for Books, I received a review copy of this book.

*See Elia's infamous tirade, "don't these people have jobs?"