Blogging and the cycle of teaching

I turned in grades today. That means I finished the comments on what felt like a zillion papers and graded exams and figured out grades. It's pretty much always like this, and it's not like I'm unique or anything.

And so I've neglected this blog.

Apparently, I need a lot more uncommitted time to get myself motivated to blog. I feel a certain pressure to be clever even though I can't say I achieve it particularly often, and being clever requires some leisure.

David Hume said that to be a man [sic] of taste, one has to have the breeding, the education, the temperament or sensitivity, and the time--all the marks of an English gentleman. I think this describes something of what it takes to be a blogger of any note--without the breeding part--that's just icky. And education can be defined very broadly.

Andrew Sullivan's blog (he's my favorite gay conservative) turned me on to another blog called Daily Routines that offers glimpses of famous writers' daily schedules that allows them to be productive. All I can say is that I'm not likely to join their ranks any time soon. I am a very lazy person who would much rather read others' blogs than work on my own.

The holiday break has officially begun today (although I'll be going to meetings this week--feh!). I'm thinking about this blog and what purpose it serves for me. Maybe I just like the idea of blogging more than I like the actual production. No, that's not right. I really having blogged, looking back on what I've written. Is that enough to keep me doing this?

What, then, must we do?

I don't know what to do with the rage.

We have to provide a $700 billion dollar bailout for all kinds of financial snafus that I can only just barely begin to comprehend.

There's no real plan for what this bailout is going to involve.

CEO's of the worst institutions are still doing just fine, no real problems for them.

Our investments are--well, I can't even bring myself to look.

I don't know that this country has the intellectual capital to come up with an effective plan for somehow getting our economy to be of a more rational composition.

I'm thinking of Billy Kwan (played by Linda Hunt in the picture on the right) in The Year of Living Dangerously. He is in despair because he sees his country and everything he believes in chaos, run by selfish people. He types over and over, "What, then, must we do?"--a line from Tolstoy I think. Then he performs an ultimately fruitless act of protest and is killed.

OK, I'm not at that point. But I'm still left full of rage at people I don't know and will never have anything to do with but who have profitted greatly and reprehensibly from others' suffering.

I wish I could figure out a meaningful and nonviolent way to express this rage.

Jury duty

I had jury duty this past Monday. While I wasn't eager, I was resigned, but I also figured a liberal college professor wasn't going to be too high on any attorney's idea of the perfect juror.

We had to be at the county court house by 9:30. There were well over 100 of us, milling around on the 3rd floor, fanning ourselves in the unair-conditioned waiting area.

It's funny, but I had sort of dressed up--skirt, shirt, sandals with heels, make-up. Others did not feel that need. Lots of tee-shirts and flip-flops. I was sitting on the stairs, along with about 15 or so others, so I could watch the group as we waited to find out what was going to happen. I laughed aloud when I saw a woman in cropped pants and a tee-shirt that read "I have multiple personalities and none of them likes you." I had to wonder if she has picked that shirt to send a message to the attorneys so she wouldn't get picked or if it just happened to be clean and she didn't think anything about it. She disappeared after a while, so I don't know what her story was.

After about a 45 minute wait, we were herded into an air-conditioned court room where we were told what to expect. We were all selected to go through the voir dire process, and anyone who absolutely couldn't serve had to go up and tell the judge. A lot of folks lined up. Fortunately, I had brought a book (when would I not bring a book?), because this took another hour. Then we were told to come back in just under 2 hours for the voir dire.

When we all came back, there was more waiting, but finally we were told to line up outside another courtroom where our names were called in random order and we were assigned numbers. I was #42.

The voir dire process takes forever as the prosecutor asked every single one of the 106 people there whether or not we could be impartial. It was a sexual assault case. I used to be a rape crisis counselor. I had to say no, I could not be impartial. That guy was guilty, guilty, guilty. How do I know? Because the majority of women who are sexually assaulted don't choose to press charges. If they press charges, they may drop them once they find out what an ordeal the trial is going to be for them. Then the district attorney has to feel like he has a strong chance of winning the case. And then the case has to go before a grand jury for indictment. And there was a detail of the assault that was icky and that no woman would make up. So I knew that man was guilty, without a shadow of a doubt. And there was no way I could be impartial.

I also had to say that I would never agree to a probated sentence should the guy be found guilty. Nope. Jail time for sure.

I was surprised at the number of folks who wanted to be picked for jury duty. I wasn't surprised at the number of folks that were sort of dim. My populist point of view got tested.

What I found interesting was how similar the pedagogy that attorneys have to employ is to what I do as both the prosecution and the defense struggled to frame questions that would elicit good answers without leading the jury pool to the answers they wanted.

We were dismissed at around 5:30, just in time for a powerful thunder storm. I got soaked, but I was very happy not to have to go back the next day for the trial.

However, a couple of nights later I ran into a friend who's a jury selection consultant, and he told me that the prosecutor did such a lousy job that the guy was found not guilty, so now I feel like I should have lied or something so I could have pushed to convict the man anyway. The young woman is, of course, devastated, and her family is beside themselves with grief and anger.

It ain't right.

Fear and trembling and Sarah Palin

I begin with a photo from the great Andre Kertesz to soothe me. It has two things that soothe me: one is that it's set in France, and I love France. The second is that there's someone reading on the other side of the window, and I love reading.

I need to be soothed because I'm anxious about the presidential race. I know, I know. Obama is ahead in the polls. But I don't trust McCain, the Republicans, and I've already described my terror in the face of Sarah Palin. And God help us, now she's resorted to winks and nose wrinkles. Mean girls flourished in high school and never got caught. Why should that change now? Civilization as we know it is doomed.

I watched the debate between Biden and Palin, and certainly Biden won, but this isn't UIL debate competition, now, is it? It's an ideological tug of war, and I don't have the kind of faith that can help me believe that the left will pull as hard as the right. And I know the right will do anything--and I mean anything--to get their side in the White House. I'm afraid that in a couple of weeks we'll be wishing that mud were the only thing flying.

At the end of the last presidential election, M and I escaped into books--the ripping yarns of Patrick O'Brien to be exact, and we read our way through the entire lot of them, sad to see them end.

I escaped a bit early this year into a WWII spy novel (Blood of Victory by Alan Furst--not as ripping a yarn as O'Brien, but plenty absorbing) just because I find Palin so upsetting and because I'm really worried that there's something seriously wrong with McCain. I've read that the older we get, the less our social filters work, and that's why old people can be heard to say things like "How'd you get so fat?" or "Is your friend ever going to go home?" Seeing his public performances lately, I'm thinking his filters are going fast.

I wish he could see that he's not the ideal personality type to be president (dear god, I agree with George Will about something!), but egotistical men in the military and politics are not oddities, and I can sort of understand it. But, for the life of me, I cannot see how Palin can see herself as ready to be president. I didn't even see myself as a good fit to be head of my department! And I've got the experience to do it.

I don't understand anything.

Except a good book. I need to collect a comforting pile.

What weekends could be

This weekend was a good one.

It reminds me of what weekends can be. It reminds me of weekends from my first go-round at college in Denton.

M and I, along with two friends, went to tiny Winnsboro, Texas, a town with two main streets, and not many more traffic lights. There, we were able to enjoy wine at a small winery, have a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant with a wood oven, and go to a small coffeehouse and see Ramblin' Jack Elliott himself. And we could have gone to another place in town to see more music after Ramblin' Jack's final set.

This is exactly what I want to see happen for Teenytown. And the only obstacle that I can see is money--ain't it always the case? Well, money and taste.

A good restaurant and a performance/exhibition space could make a huge difference. And I have to point out that our delicious dinner cost about half of what it would have cost at the mediocre Italian restaurant that's here in Teenytown, so the restaurant is not expensive at all. And it was beautifully appointed.

What I don't want: no more auto parts stores, no more dollar discount stores, no more metal buildings, no more antique malls, no more storage facilities.

What I want: life on the weekend that doesn't center on football, a good meal, a good glass of wine, a comfortable place to sit and talk.

Is that so much?

Calming down

Ike has passed us by. I bought ice, batteries, a couple of gallons of water, and we were ready to hunker down just in case.

Now I'm calming down. First Sarah Palin. Then the weather. I've got to calm my fears and myself. I've got to get in touch with my Big Mind and stop obsession over stuff I have no control over.

As Andrew Sullivan says, "Patience, steel, ... triumph." 'Nuff said.

Namaste.

Egghead intellectuals

As I despair over the level of discourse already evident in the first few days of the 2008 presidential campaign, I'm trying to figure out why intellecuals and ideas are so despised.

The arguments I heard from the Republicans were almost entirely binary--either you're for something or against it, entirely, all the way, no middle ground. Either you love guns in all their glory for everybody, or you hate them and don't want anyone, anywhere, at any time to ever even be near them. And so on. Let's just not mention abortion.

I have always considered myself a populist. I love teaching first-year writing classes where I get students to engage in ideas and surprise themselves by how they can look at an issue from many sides and have lots of smart things to say. I grew up in a working-class family, where for whatever reasons, I found myself to be a passionate reader, and then found myself at a friend's house where her family sat around the dinner table and talked about ideas! Without yelling! Even though they disagreed!! I was truly stunned by the possibility of such a thing. With that same friend, I met kids from other schools who didn't just read books, they talked about them. I loved it. I think I've always wanted to KNOW stuff, all kinds of stuff, and I'm jealous when others know stuff I don't. I want to know it, too.

So why do people hate intellectuals so much? Why is it that I find pleasure from ideas despite my background but others don't? Why do I like asking questions, and others don't? Why do I love to talktalktalk with others, and others see it as so much hot air? Is it something that is hard-wired into us? I have egghead wiring and others don't? I was raised in a church that did not encourage critical thinking, yet I still manage to think critically. Why don't others do that, too?

I'm really worried about the state of our nation. I've read enough history to know that our country has always included a majority of folks who don't value knowledge just for the sake of knowledge. And I know that American pragmatism fuels our collective need for practical solutions to practical problems. But the widespread passion for Sarah Palin makes me sad. I want to have someone in office who knows more than I do, is smarter than I am, is curious about issues, and can change his/her mind when confronted by compelling evidence. When I go to a church, I want there to be a minister who knows more about the Bible and the ways that particular church interprets it than I do but can also listen to my concerns and questions without telling me I'm going straight to hell on the express train. If I hire a plumber, I want him/her to know WAY more about how plumbing functions to make my life mess-free. Why wouldn't folks want a smart president?

I don't want someone just like me. For one thing, that's about the last job I want. And for another, Palin and McCain AREN'T just like us at all. They are both driven and ambitious--as are all politicians who are willing to run seriously for a major office. I want someone smarter than me who wants the job. I want someone who can listen and learn. I want someone who can appreciate the complexity of his/her job and the complexity of the people he/she seeks to serve as well as to lead.

It's going to be a long road to November.

Mean girls run for vice president

A while ago, I wrote about angry guys and tried to figure out what the female equivalent would be. Now I think I've got the beginnings of an answer: it's mean girls.

I still haven't been able to make myself watch the Tina Fey film "Mean Girls" because I remember vividly the mean girls I went to high school with, and even after lo these many years, they still get to me. They were always attractive and knew how to work teachers and boys alike so they always got what they wanted. They never got caught, things always worked out for them, and it drove the rest of us crazy. If we were ever insane enough to say something to some poor unsuspecting boy or to one of their adoring teachers, we were told we were just jealous, that we were being "ugly." A fellow "loser" friend said to me once after we'd been subjected to another demonstration of a mean girl's superiority at our expense, "Don't worry; she'll get her comeuppance some day." I said, "No, she won't."

Angry women don't get very far in our culture, but mean girls do just fine.

So I was trying to figure out why Sarah Palin terrifies me so much, and I realized she is one of those mean girls grown up. The nickname "Sarah Barracuda" says it all. I hope John McCain knows what he's gotten himself into because she ain't no Cindy. She can smile "real sweet" while she's saying things that cut her enemies off at the knees--or worse. She knows how to play it.

Don't turn your back on her, John.

Dining out and small town life

I will admit that I get irritated when I hear folks complaining about a Starbucks on every block or saying that Thai food is everywhere now. I'd love to have one real Starbucks and a Thai restaurant opening here would bring tears to my eyes. I live in Teenytown.

So here on the Upper East Side of Texas (I stole that from a community newspaper), we can eat Mexican food, mediocre Italian, "country cookin', or burgers--or cook at home.

At one point, after our one Italian restaurant added a bar, I had to stop going because people I didn't know were talking about me and my consumption of martinis. Apparently there was just one of me because complete strangers wanted to know how many I'd had the night before. Let me just say, I did NOT drink huge numbers of martinis.

I'm fortunate that M loves to cook and is gifted and creative--a natural talent. I enjoy cooking myself, so it's not the problem it would be if we both hated to cook and were poor cooks to boot. But, still, sometimes I want to have a good dinner, and I don't want to drive an hour or so to get it.

I go into my favorite of the two Mexican restaurants, and by the time I've unwrapped my napkin my Diet Pepsi with lemon is on the table. The waitress sees me and says, "Number 12 with pico and Ranch." I say, "Yes."

Right now, M and I are thinking about a weekend restaurant--a subscription kind of deal where he'd know beforehand how many people would be there. He's been writing menus, and I've been scoping the area for a house to use. I think the house/restaurant idea could fly here a la the East Side Cafe in Austin or the Phoenix in Grinnell, Iowa. Check this one out:

It belongs to a man in town who's trying to do some cool stuff. He boarded up the windows after kids broke them out one night a year or so ago. I think there'd be plenty of parking space, but the neighborhood isn't zoned for business, and I think the neighbors would squawk loudly.

At any rate, we're both dreaming of a place where M could serve appetizers that include duck confit right here in Teenytown.

Angry men

So several weeks ago I whined a wee bit about reading guy lit (AKA dick lit)--specifically Chuck Paluhniuk and Bret Easton Ellis.

I'm sort of baffled by why these guys are so angry. I assume I have a little to do with it, being a feminist and all. I mean, I guess I'm pretty scary when it comes down to it. But why can't I turn my power into something that would bring in big money???? I don't see CEO's of big corporations exactly quaking in their boots at the thought of my awesome power.

So, yeah, Fight Club seems to be about men angry about being removed from an existence that would require them to exert their physical superiority and know how to take a punch then get up and go on about their business. And, yes, I'm sympathetic with the theme that our possessions come to own us and make us put up with great huge amounts of crap to keep them and get even more. (I didn't read Marx for nothing.) But I'm also aware that I depend on civilization to keep me alive. Women used to have shorter life spans than men because they literally worked themselves to death--and looked like hell to boot.

And my next question is where are the angry women's novels? I can't think of any--and I've read a LOT of novels. Years ago, we read Marilyn French's Women's Room and that was angry, but I wouldn't say it's on many people's reading lists these days--even other angry women. Maybe Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" counts, but jeez, it's really old. I can easily think of some angry essays, but that's not what I'm looking for here.

Are angry women too scary to publish? Is there no market? I can sort of imagine guys imagining what they'd do if they were on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but that just doesn't seem to me like something too many women would be contemplating. Most who've read it agree with me that we'd be like the main guy's wife who killed herself rather than deal with dodging cannibals or being kept in a pen to be eaten later or pushing a grocery cart through the rest of her bleak existence.

A colleague suggested that perhaps women channel their anger into satire. Maybe so. This is a question I'm going to keep gnawing.

A new semester

Today was a day of back to school meetings--some good, some tedious, none overtly bad.

Teaching is a great gig, and I'm teaching two courses that I love, but it's still hard to give up summer.

I'm spoiled. I know. And I know that if I worked a "real" job, I'd see myself as a whiner, but still...it's lovely to have time to read and think and tangle with books. Even Martin Amis.

I need to do some cooking.

Pig condo

The new semester is just days away. I'm sorry to see the summer go, but resigned to it.

I haven't been cooking lately but my thoughts turn to pork on a regular basis. We had BLTs with friends who returned from their summer away, and the sandwiches were sublime. It's a good thing that bacon takes so long to prepare well and makes such a mess, or I'd be eating it all day long every day.

Above is a little building I spied in San Antonio. I made M turn around and stop so I could take a picture. I love this pig. I want to live in him in a perfect cartoon world where anvils can fall on you and you still walk away and you don't fall until you realize you've stepped off the cliff and are standing in thin air.

Exploding bitter melon

In the previous post, I mentioned buying a surprise bag of veggies from one of our graduate students. In the bag was a bitter melon, a veggie I've only read about in cooking magazines and cookbooks. I know it's used to make soup, but that's the extent of my knowledge.

So M and I looked at it in amazement and then set it on the counter. Perhaps we were both waiting for it to tell us what to do with it. But then Thursday morning I got up and found this:

It looks like some kind of crazy, scary lily. Disturbing and beautiful at the same time.

And now it's in the compost container waiting for it's burial in the plot that passes for a garden in our yard.

Pickles

I just haven't made any remoulade lately.

But I just made pickles.

I bought some surprise bags of veggies from a graduate student. What I got included tomatoes, bitter melon, cilantro, sun-dried tomatoes, chives, cucumbers, and dill. It was serendipitous because I had just come across a recipe for Claussen-style refrigerator pickles, and we don't grow dill.

So this is my experiment: only two jars to see how it goes.

I went through a canning phase back a few decades ago. (I'm not kidding; it was in the late seventies.) I used a pressure canner and canned tomatoes, soups, and all kinds of stuff. I've started thinking about canning again because I just read a recipe in the latest Saveur about home-canned tuna, canned in olive oil. That would make a heck of a salade nicoise. But, of course, getting tuna here in Teenytown would be the challenge.

Our garden this year is a disaster, and I confess that I did absolutely nothing to contribute to its success. But now, maybe because it actually rained this morning, I'm thinking about being a better garden-doobie and doing some work for next year's garden once it gets cooler.

This is a dull post--but I'm a pretty dull gal these days. Dull but happy.

Remoulade, loosely defined

There was no barbeque in the cards for me in Austin, but there was good food and even better time with our daughter C who is living the good life there.

I'll just say that, as a college professor, if UT called, I would most definitely answer. Austin is one nice place to be.

To the left is a picture of my most delicious main course at the East Side Diner--smoked salmon and shrimp cakes with lemon remoulade. The cakes were buttery and held together with only the barest minimum of nonfish ingredients necessary to hold them together. The remoulade was--well, it was lemony. Very lemony, very sour. Alone it made my mouth pucker, but with the fresh salad greens and the buttery salmon/shrimp cakes, it was mighty fine. We had a dry malbec rose that was so good we had to demand another bottle. And for dessert a buttermilk chess pie served warm in an individual, generous casserole and four spoons. The restaurant itself is in an old house with lots of charm, and the company couldn't have been better--M, C, C's roommate the charming B, and me. I don't think I'm just being a doting mother when I say that the conversation was funny and smart and quick, but if I am, who cares.

Following the dinner was an opening of a video exhibit in another old house. The videos were a couple of years old and not uninteresting. I wasn't swept away, and I am a fan of video, especially following my experience at nerd camp at Ohio State earlier this summer. It's a much different experience now, as I can watch and know something of how it was done and how it was edited. It was a young crowd, and we left early.

So UT, are you listening? I'm sitting by my phone waiting for your call.

The Biscuits of Old San Antone

M and I are on the road for a weekend away--although not that far away since we're in San Antonio for two nights then a final night in Austin.

When we travel, we basically look at art, walk, and eat. There's been less walking this time, but plenty of eating.

I haven't found remoulade this time (but then I haven't looked that hard either), but oh my we found biscuits.

The Pioneer Flour Mill was founded by the Guenther family in the 1800s, and their house, on the grounds of the still-working mill, has been turned into a museum, gift shop, and (the good part) a small restaurant with baked goods made from Pioneer flour. They serve breakfast, and the breakfast they serve is a reason to get up.

The picture above is the breakfast that M and I shared this morning: 2 biscuits, fruit, bacon, gravy. All of that comprises one breakfast although that would take an even bigger appetite than mine, so we split it between us.

Normally I'm not a fan of white cream gravy; I grew up with it and ate probably gallons of the stuff. It's definitely poor folks food since you can get a lot of "full" for very little money. But it's not a food I'll wax nostalgic about--unlike, say, crackling cornbread which can make me positively tear up.

(Here's a digression: I had a friend in grade school who came from a very large, very poor family who lived in the trailer park near my house. I went home with her after school one day and the after school snack for the horde of kids clustered around the table was a big bowl of cold white gravy and a loaf of cheap white bread. Another time I was at her home for dinner and her mother served fried turkey tails, cream gravy and cheap white bread. I don't remember a vegetable or a starch like potatoes, but there might have been because I was pretty stunned by the reality of a giant platter of fried turkey tails. We might have eaten beans and cornbread a lot at the end of each month, but never fried turkey tails.)

The gravy at the Guenther House restaurant, however, is definitely not poor folks food since there was a significant percentage of pork sausage in the gravy.

We ate outside even though it's late July in south Texas because while Dolly made others suffer, she brought some temporary cooling to some of the rest of us.

It's not an exciting way to spend a weekend, but it's pretty darned good. And I have hopes for barbeque in Austin.

A trip to the Land of Guys

I didn't make remoulade today, the first Sunday I'm missed since I started my remoulade diary. I have two excuses. One is that M and I went to Dallas and I sort of didn't have time. The second is that I'm tired of remoulade and boiled shrimp. I still have remoulade from two weeks ago in the fridge, and I just finished off last week's in a salad a few days ago. There are only two of us, and we can only consume so much remoulade in a week. I just don't want another jar of it right now, all right?

But I did have remoulade today, and I had it during my first ever trip to Guy Land--Bass Pro Shop. I had only seen its vastness as I drove by on I-30. I gaped as it was built, amazed by the great expanse of concrete that was poured before the building itself started to go up. That is one big building. And now as I drive by, I keep thinking, Geez, can they sell THAT many boats?

While I was away at a two-week techie camp earlier this summer, M checked the place out and told me stories of an indoor waterfall and pond with fish and just lots and lots of guy stuff. We had also heard from friends (one of whom is a caterer whose cooking skills we respect) that the restaurant is a good one. So on our way to Dallas, we stopped and tried it.

It's not a quick in and out, as anyone who's even seen one of these "shops" from the outside can no doubt tell. It's very much like a Guy Mall where you have to make your way through lots and lots of merchandise before you get to the food court. I guess I was mildly surprised that there were so many families in the "shop" itself, but then I shouldn't have been since I've actually been to a Hooters and was really astonished there to see so many families--I mean, they had a kid's menu! So BPS is sort of like an amusement park where there's way more gift shop than rides. For example, there was a shooting arcade area although I wasn't quite clear on what one was supposed to aim at. There may have been other stuff like this as well; I didn't explore much of the store.

I had already been thinking that I likely was not going to be making any remoulade today, so as I ran my eyes over the menu, I was pretty pleased to see that I could order a crab cake sandwich with remoulade. It wasn't bad. The remoulade sort of looked like thousand island dressing, but wasn't sweet. It was a tad bland; I probably should have perked it up with some Tabasco, but the crab cake wasn't bad considering how far we are from any actual living crabs. I can't say I feel compelled to return to the restaurant (the name of which I simply cannot remember). It was pleasant enough--huge as I should have expected, with lots of fishing kitsch on the walls and "island"-themed music playing (Jimmy Buffett, Bob Marley, you get the picture). Big place, big plates of food.

But the trip to the Land of Guys resonated on another level because I've been reading a lot of guy literature recently for a dissertation committee I'm on. I started with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which I will admit that I loath. Then I read his No Country for Old Men, which I think is terrific. Now I'm making my way through Ellis's American Psycho. Eww. And then I'll be moving on to Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and The Things They Left Behind. Prior to this I had read Philip Roth's Exit Ghost, which is very much an old Guy's book. The representations of women, in all, so far, are pretty limited, and I'm dreading what's coming next in American Psycho since I'm getting lots of foreshadowing that doesn't bode well.

Guy Land is pretty foreign territory, I have to say. But let me say in my defense that I like guys a lot. I'm married to one who's still amazing me with his fabulousness after a zillion years of marriage, and some of my best friends are guys. Still, I just don't get Bass Pro Shop or Cormac McCarthy.

I mean, take this sign, for instance:


This made me think for a second or two before going in, I can tell you.

There was a sign on the stairs to the bottom floor, too, advertising some sort of special on Glocks as well.

I see a connection here between Bass Pro Shop and Blood Meridian, if I can just articulate it. It's an epic tale of the border between Mexico and Texas in the latter half of the 19th century, and the epic includes unspeakable acts of violence. But I found myself, after 100 pages or so, reading and saying to myself, oh, more scalpings. Hmm, here's another horrible death. It became no big deal. In fact, I found myself perking up and reading with more zeal when the characters stayed in a hotel and had baths. I figure Bass Pro Shop is where the Judge (back to Blood Meridian) could go and stock up on ammo these days.

Now I'm not saying that customers of Bass Pro Shop go out and commit unspeakable acts of violence. The clientele seemed like very nice men in bermuda shorts, tee shirts, and caps. But both McCarthy's world and Bass Pro Shops are, in many ways, foreign to me.

On a nice note, M and I went to the farmer's market in Dallas and, among other things got these lovely heirloom tomatoes along with peaches, cantaloupe, and a delicious Israel melon. And we went to the Dallas Museum of Art for a show by artist On Kawara.


So life is good, and I'm very happy that I'm not living on the Texas-Mexico border in 1849.

Veggies take the starring role

OK, this doesn't look very appealing, but it was a darned good dinner, inspired by a collection of tasty leftovers and a trip to the farmer's market in Dallas.

I'm amazed to admit that I'm sort of sick of boiled shrimp. So I decided that an oyster po-boy with a mayonnaise-y remoulade would be just the ticket.

We had some good bread because Friday we made a trip to the big city to go to the Farmer's Market and have dinner and drinks. The bread is actually more important than the middle ingredients for a po-boy since the middle protein source will be fried and what's not to love there? But a squishy, full of high fructose corn syrup roll of no character is just not worth the effort to bring it home from the store.

Of course, I didn't expect to find fresh oysters in the shell here in Mayberry, but I had thought I had a chance to find oysters in pint containers. Nope. We only have two stores, and one is the dreaded Wal-Mart that I try not to frequent. It's an ugly store and I always find myself fighting mild depression when I'm in there.

So no oysters meant I had to rethink my plan. At the farmer's market we bought little eggplants, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, and smoked sausages. We'd had the sausages with grilled onions on some of the good bread last night, but still had a large part of one sausage left over. We also had one (breakfast) pork chop that M had smoked in his propane smoker a few nights ago. And we had some really good lentil salad that I'd made a couple of nights ago.

So dinner in the picture above includes a few slices of sausage, a couple of strips of meat from the one pork chop, lentil salad, marinated eggplants in a mint vinaigrette, tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette with fresh basil, some roasted veggies (zucchini, peppers, and the tail end of a red onion), leftover lentil salad, a piece of toasted bread, and slices of avocado with a too big helping of remoulade.

My trip down memory lane this evening had nothing to do with remoulade but with veggies and suppers eaten in Fort Worth at the home of my grandmother, four great aunts, and one great uncle. If my relatives had tried to live alone as single women and men (my grandmother was the only one who ever married and she was widowed when she was barely fifty), they would have lived in poverty, but because they lived together their entire lives and pooled their money, they were able to build a big house with a big kitchen and make a warm home for themselves and for me on my summer visits. No one can imagine living like that now, and it was pretty eccentric even then.


When they were all working (my great aunts were telephone operators and secretaries) and while my great grandmother was still alive, they always had help--usually a woman of color who cleaned and cooked and looked out for my great grandmother, who lived into her nineties. These women were always called by their first names and were always wonderful cooks, cooking the same kinds of foods my great aunts and grandmother cooked and ate: cornbread, greens, green beans cooked with ham or bacon, corn cut from the cob, okra, black eyed peas, pinto beans--you get the idea. As they retired one by one, my great aunts took over the cooking and they no longer had "help." But the meals were identical--Southern cooking at its best. I don't remember one bad meal during the many summer weeks I spent with them.


Suppers were always more vegetables than meat; meat was more of a seasoning than the main event. And leftovers always played a role as the dribs and drabs of previous meals were put on the table until they were eaten. They had all lived through the Depression and wasting food was a sin they couldn't abide.


They also kept a big backyard garden, growing tomatoes, okra, greens, black eyed peas, and pole beans. What couldn't be eaten fresh was frozen or canned. I swear their home grown tomatoes were beyond anything I've eaten since.


It was a healthy way to eat and live; all, except one, lived into their late eighties or early nineties, and their health problems were minimal.


So remoulade definitely played a minor role in tonight's dinner, but it can't be the star every Sunday.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup Creole mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons Hungarian paprika
1 minced garlic clove
3/4 teaspoon cayenne

Stir everything together to blend then cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.

I backed off on the mayonnaise but left everything else as is. I think I would have liked it even a wee bit hotter and more mustardy.

The recipe comes from Southern Living magazine, but I don't have the date.

This remoulade would be mighty fine on a turkey sandwich, and it's easy.

The Junior League comes through

At last, another contender for Finest Remoulade Recipe.

After last week's mayonnaise extravaganza (although there's nothing wrong with mayonnaise), I decided to go with another oil-based version for this week's experiment.

The recipe comes from a collection put together by and for the Junior League of New Orleans--Jambalaya (this one is the 2006 edition).

My sister A (who died over 15 years ago--so hard to believe) was a member of the Junior League of Shreveport, and I lived with her when she put together her campaign to be asked to join. For those of you from parts of the country where the Junior League does not figure into the social network, think of a sorority for married, middle/upper middle class women.

I was twelve years younger and living with her and her husband for a year of high school, getting away from difficulties associated with living with my parents. It was the late sixties, and while much of the country was going through social upheaval, Shreveport was, at least from my limited experience, still deeply enmeshed in southern traditions, for good and for ill.


The high school I attended was in the first year of integration, but, again, from my limited and very white experience, the year went amazingly smoothly. But when I asked to host a baby shower for a friend who "had to get married," my sister forbade me from inviting my African-American friends. I still remember her pained explanation to my outrage: "We have to live in this neighborhood." I decided not to have the shower at all.

So back to the Junior League: My sister strategically and systematically planned ladies' bridge parties and the like. For each event, the guest list was carefully considered and food was carefully planned, prepared, and presented. Since my parents never entertained, this in itself was an education as I learned that a menu could involve more than what was on sale and what can of vegetables was near the front of the pantry. Cookbooks were for browsing and were about possibilities--not just about how to make sure the turkey was done at Thanksgiving. Lists were made and remade; finger foods were tested before hand to make sure they would not only be appealing and tasty but manageable given the necessities of timing and the small size of A's kitchen.

So I watched the preparations with great interest and helped with the preparation but more importantly learned the work and the pleasure that go into making food that others will enjoy and making entertaining look effortless. I will always be grateful for that lesson, along with so many others that I learned in my sister and brother-in-law's home.

Her campaign was a success, and she was thrilled. No one loved being a member of the Junior League more than A. And while the Junior League is not my particular cup of remoulade, I salute my sister's focus and talent to make it happen.

When my sister died, she left me her fox fur coat--a prized possession, but as she was taller and a bit thinner, the coat always made me look like a clown in a really, really cold country. What I regret is that I didn't let her know that I wanted her cookbook collection which was huge, filling a floor to ceiling bookcase in her kitchen. I'm sure the books went to lots of different folks (her husband was a minister, so I'm betting lots of parishioners loved getting something to remember her by), but I would love to have them now and think of her sitting at the kitchen table with a dozen or so books spread out before her as she planned the next event.

All in all, you can't go wrong for party food with any Junior League cookbook.

The meal we had tonight was a light summer meal that included a tomato given to us by a friend whose mother grew it and a cantaloupe purchased at the tiny farmer's market in Greenville.

Boiled shrimp on a bed of arugula. (It's a wonderful and amazing thing that I'm able to buy arugula in my tiny backwater town.)

Bruschetta (chopped home-grown tomato with garlic, olive oil, fresh basil, and a little red wine vinegar) on a whole-wheat herb bread that MO made on the 4th

Sliced cantaloupe


Here's the remoulade recipe:

2 large cloves of garlic, pressed
1 hard-cooked egg
3 anchovies
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup ketchup (I was worried about this but it turned out just fine!)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 1/2 tablespoons Creole mustard
2 teaspoons dry mustard
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon paprika

In a food processor with a metal blade, bloend garlic, egg, and anchovies until smooth. Transfer to a bowl. Stir in salt, pepper, and remaining 9 ingredients. Chill. Stores well in the refrigerator. Yields 2 cups.

The result is surprisingly smooth. The chilling time is important; when I tasted it before putting in in the fridge, I thought uh oh, this is too sweet. But the chilling gave the other flavors time to assert themselves.

This one's a keeper.

Joy of Cooking remoulade remix

The remoulade from the Joy of Cooking that I made Sunday was sitting in the fridge, begging to be used.

I tried to give a small bowl full to some friends who came for a potluck night before last, but they forgot it. I don't think it was intentional.

Today, I did the obvious: I made tuna salad with it. Tuna, celery, white onion, hard boiled eggs, and the remoulade. Perfect. The tarragon was particularly good.

MO had his on (admittedly inferior) sour dough bread. The only way to get bread in our little town that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup is to make it ourselves--which MO has been doing with wondrous regularity. I had mine (seen above) on a whole wheat tortilla (bought in and transported from Dallas) with arugula.

Happy summer lunch.

A comfort with fat

I can't remember a time when I didn't love fat.

My family was working class, and meat with a starch covered in margarine was the centerpiece of the family meal. Vegetables came from cans and lettuce was iceberg and dressing was bottled and the veggie part of the meal never excited anyone's palate.

At the end of the month--especially when my milkman father was unable to collect all that was owed him from the people on his milk route--we ate beans and cornbread, and no one was happy about it.

But even then, fat was an essential ingredient as the beans were cooked with big chunks of ham fat or the bone left over from a baked ham.

Ham and bacon fat were religiously collected in separate containers to be used as "seasoning." The ham fat was kept in the fridge for more special occasions; bacon fat, less precious, was kept in a metal container on the stove, ready to be spooned into an iron skillet to cook eggs or stirred into cornbread batter or added to the canned vegetable du jour.

My mother tried to instill in me a horror of fat, but it was a hopeless effort. My father would spear the fat trimmed from our various meats and chew with gusto. I trimmed the biggest pieces for my dad but would always leave an unctuous margin on the edges for myself. Given my mother's generally indifferent cooking, I can now see that the fat was the tastiest part of our suppers.

Back in the day, barbecue sandwiches from Sonny Bryan's Barbecue (the original on Inwood in Dallas) came with the bottom of the bun dipped in barbecue grease. Those sandwiches were insanely good. I don't know when they stopped doing that, but I'm grateful because I could never resist such excess on my own.

During the many diets of my life, I have labored to reorient myself toward fat. I have tried to convince myself that fat is gross, that things taste better when they are fat-free. But I remain very affectionate towards fat.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I made a mayonnaise-based remoulade this week. Mayonnaise holds no horrors for me, so I'm sort of surprised that I don't like it more than I do.

I used the Joy of Cooking recipe--the 75th anniversary edition since I gave my old edition to my daughter when she moved into her own apartment.

It's good because it's full of mayonnaise-y goodness and pretty much anything made with mayonnaise is good, but it's still disappointing, I have to say. It's sort of more like tartar sauce with tarragon than a good shrimp sauce. In fact, I figured it wasn't going to work with boiled shrimp as I wanted it to, so I lightly sauteed some tilapia filets and served the remoulade with it. The picture above shows the tilapia with a healthy dollop of remoulade, home grown black-eyed peas (MO and I didn't grow them, but we shelled them), and a salad featuring tiny yellow tomatoes purchased at the farmer's market.

Here's the recipe:

Combine:
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon minced cornichons or sour gherkins (I had to substitute dill pickles because I
couldn't find either in my teeny town)
1 tablespoon drained small capers
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped tarragon (OK, I used dried--but it's organic)
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
salt and black pepper to taste
(1 hard-boiled egg, finely chopped) This was optional but I had an egg already boiled in the
fridge so I opted to use it.

Unless you have a lot of people eating it, I recommend cutting the recipe in half, as I wish I had now that I have a big bowl of it in my refrigerator. This version certainly isn't my idea of the perfect remoulade, but I think it would be darned good on crab cakes (if I could get fresh crab in my rural East Texas town).

Tomorrow we're going to buzz it (per MO's suggestion) with some chipotle peppers and use it to dress fish tacos made with the leftover tilapia and some jicama slaw (another farmer's market purchase).

I have a feeling this remoulade is going to be in our fridge for quite a while unless I can figure out something else to do with it.

Of course you know what would it would be good on? Something fried. Fat, fat, and more fat.

No Proust am I

OK, I don't have much of a memory.

My childhood is largely a blur. I have some moments here and there, but usually I find that what I think I remember is really based on a photograph of me and my sister in a rare Dallas snowfall or me sitting on an alarmingly red-nosed Santa's lap. If I bite into a madeleine (or in my case, a barbeque sandwich), rather than being swept up in memories of a past moment associated with that food, I'm far more likely to think, Oh yeah, I like barbeque.

When I photographed the cookbook that my remoulade recipe came from for my last post, I saw that Mrs. Brown is not who gave it to us. I mentioned it to MO who pointed out that Mrs. Brown had given us another cookbook, a cookbook that I have to admit I find irritating due to its tying the southern Louisiana recipes together with folksy stories told about and by a character called King Culinary. Sure enough, there on the title page (which came out of the binding years ago and is stuck in the middle of the book) is the inscription: "May this serve as a reminder of good food and good friends in Louisiana--The Brown's." A bit of irony, no?

So maybe my memory of Mrs. Brown's remoulade being the same as in the River Roads Cookbook is as faulty as so many of my other "memories." So maybe I needed to make the remoulade recipe from the Brown's gift, Royal Recipes from the Cajun Country by John and Glenna Uhler (1969).

I did, and it isn't at all what I remembered Mrs. Brown's perfect remoulade being. It's good. It's much sharper, and it's really good on boiled shrimp atop a bed of mixed salad greens. But it's different, and I'm not feeling as much love for it as I do for the remoulade I made last week.

Before I provide the recipe, let me add two caveats. First, the recipe calls for Accent, and I felt no desire to add msg to all those lovely fresh ingredients. Second, the recipe recommends boiling shrimp then pouring the sauce over them to sit overnight. Maybe if I lived in a place where fresh shrimp is bountiful and is an everyday occurrence, I'd be open to this. But I love shrimp, and if it's ready to eat, I'm eating it.

Oh, and some folks say shallots but are referring to green onions. So I went with green onions, although shallots would be good, too.

Here's the recipe verbatim:

Combine:

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup finely chopped celery

1/4 finely chopped shallots

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Accent

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons Creole or dijan [sic] mustard

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco (I used more)

1teaspoon horseradish

Mix well.

Boil, peel and devein 2 lbs. jumbo shrimp. Pour the sauce over them and refrigerate overnight. Serve over shredded lettuce.

You can see in the picture above that it's not at all the same color as the remoulade I made last week. The remoulade I made today is yellow and much more chunky with finely chopped celery, onion, and parsley. I pumped up the Tabasco, but it still needs more.

So the next remoulade will be moving out of the arena of personal history (or at least as much personal history as I'm capable of remembering--which ain't much apparently).

I think I see mayonnaise in my future.

Mrs. Brown's remoulade

It seems only right to return to the remoulade that started it all: Mrs. Brown's remoulade. As near as we can tell, the recipe comes from River Roads Recipes, published by the Junior League of Baton Rouge. This one is the 1972 edition (which gives you a hint about how long M and I have been married).

This remoulade is piquant and a little sharp. Not sweet at all. The color comes largely from paprika.



Here's the recipe:

4 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons vinegar
4 tablespoons prepared mustard
4 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
Dash of cayenne (I use a little more than that)
2 tablespoons catsup (optional, and I don't opt for it)
1 cup oil (I used a combination of olive and canola)
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup finely chopped green onion

Combine the lemon juice, vinegar, and everything up to the oil. Gradually add the oil (although I admit that I dumped it in all at once, and I don't see that I did any damage.) Finally add the celery and onion.

You get about two cups.

According to River Roads Recipes, this recipe was submitted by Mrs. Lenton Sartain. Mrs. Sartain, I thank you. If you made this remoulade for them, your family was darned lucky, Mrs. Sartain.

The picture on the right above is my battered, coverless copy of the cookbook. It has moved from place to place with us, well over a dozen times. What's funny is that I had myself convinced that Mrs. Brown had given us the cookbook along with the jar of remoulade, but looking at it again, I'm reminded that it was a wedding present from a member of M's family, not Mrs. Brown at all. So I may be kidding myself that this remoulade is close to what I remember so fondly.

The picture on the left at the top of this post is our dinner: boiled shrimp on a bed of lettuce with plenty of remoulade on top, sliced pickling cucumbers (from the Dallas farmers' market) in seasoned rice vinegar, sauteed yellow squash, and sauteed, sliced sweet potatoes (also from the farmers' market).

I wanted to begin with a remoulade that I know my husband and I love and hold to be the platonic form of remoulade by which all others are judged. And shrimp with remoulade is pretty much the perfect summer dinner. It's hot in Commerce.

The remoulade diary begins

An obsession with remoulade.

A mundane obsession when you consider all the possible obsessions out there: Robert Downey Jr., shoes, cosmetic surgery.

It began more years ago than I care to reveal in a public forum with a wedding present--a jar of home-made remoulade sauce and a cookbook. I had never tasted anything like it. I had grown up in a home where "sauce" meant cream of mushroom soup. This sauce was mushroom soup's polar opposite.

The preparer of the sauce was Mrs. Brown, a southern Louisiana housewife, a neighbor of my soon-to-be husband's grandparents. The sauce itself was rich, oil-based, piquant, spice-rich. I learned its purpose was to accompany boiled shrimp. I loved it.

Many years later, my still-husband MO and my sister-in-law TO began an idle conversation about remoulade. In France, my husband and I had found remoulade sauce to mean something entirely different from what we considered the platonic form of remoulade. On trips back to southern Louisiana, we found, too, that remoulade apparently has no set definition.

The three of us decided that we needed to set out on a Remoulade Tour of the Gulf Coast to taste every possible variation. Unfortunately, we all have to make livings. We have sampled remoulade in a variety of locations, however, and still see the sampling and tasting of remoulade at every possible opportunity as a serious responsibility.

The pictures above are of a couple of remoulades we've experienced at a now (sadly) defunct restaurant, Joe's Dreyfus Store in Livonia, Louisiana. The first picture is of amazing shrimp with remoulade, a mayonnaise-based rather an oil-based sauce. The second is a picture of a plate of boudin balls.

MO came up with the Remoulade Hypothesis stating basically that even though all remoulades are different, all remoulades are good.

At a very popular restaurant, Prejean's just north of Lafayette, we learned that all remoulades aren't good. But our passion for the stuff is undiminished.

Now I've started collecting remoulade recipes, and there are a lot of variations. After our last trip to southern Louisiana, I pulled out that now very old cookbook MO and I were given a whole lot of years ago, and I made Mrs. Brown's recipe, and I still love it.

Soon after, I was thinking about the blog that turned into a book, Julia and Me, in which the writer cooks from Julia Child's classic cookbook of French cooking every day in a tiny New York apartment. I make no claims that my quest is that interesting, but my plan is to prepare, photograph, judge, and share the many variations of remoulade.

Will Mrs. Brown's version remain the standard by which I judge all remoulade? Probably. But it's a win-win since I'm wagering there's plenty of good remoulade available to me if I'm willing to make it myself, and my local grocery in my tiny town sells frozen shrimp.

I will report.