Seattle Author

I love stories that have a lot of characters whose lives intertwine and are told from all kinds of angles. Mainly I see this happen in movies, but sometimes it can be done by a novelist. Here’s Erica Bauermeister’s debut novel – a Seattle author, whose book is set in Seattle – The School of Essential Ingredients doing just that.

This is the ideal rainy day book. The fact that I read it cover to cover one such evening after work should attest to that. This book was a gift from my aunt, who also read it with great enjoyment, and, before passing along the gift, my mom read it, too. (Don’t worry, she told both parties of her intentions which were accepted all around!) That in itself shows it’s a fun read.

Bauermeister’s characters all end up in this class, some with very unusual reasons, and get to put together meal after meal. One class each month from fall to spring – just long enough of a term to allow each student’s point of view to show up once. I actually love to cook as well as bake and last night I tried the sketchy description in January’s class of a bolognaise sauce! As was described, I poured milk, quite a lot, into my ground beef and wondered what would happen. What happened was great spaghetti (of course it was, I used my own frozen tomato sauce from last summer’s produce).

Also, with the truth of any class that is long enough to get to know your classmates, but is also significantly finite, each story has an open ending. Each student has made one or many decisions to propel their future. It certainly makes me want to know what’s on the menu for next year!

Orthodox Heretic?

First, I did exactly what the author, in his preface, requested I not do. I breezed through The Orthodox Heretic in a couple seatings. Second, I judged the book, as well as its author, Peter Rollins, by their respective covers.

Why do authors put pictures in the back of the book? I’ve asked that a hundred times. I’ll ask it a hundred more. Why do I have my picture on my blog? (Actually, it’s only because there was a spot to put one when I set out the title and my name.) Perhaps it’s only another thing to tick off to send to a publisher: name, book title, book content, return addressed stamped envelope, photo.

Enough about the picture, now on to the actual writing. Lots of good disclaimers made in the introduction. Well, these could be parables, if they mean anything. Well, I could be interpreting them, but art speaks for itself. I love it. And I laugh at it.

Pretty much, according to my reading of Rollins’ parable tales, he’s doing a study on Jesus’ parables. One of my favorite/most frustrating parables of Jesus’ was the Good Samaritan. Although there were no retakes on that, nearly all of Rollins’ parables touched on service, the poor, and the ‘wrong’ ending (which is probably part of the definition of a parable).

I do wonder, though, as a Trinitarian Christian, how Jesus was left out (unless one counts reusing Jesus’ parable, which the reader would have to already know). This may be petty, but there were a lot of tales about heaven and reward, not even veiled as “there was a landowner” or something, making the reader have to agree to the idea of afterlife. Not Sadducee friendly stories.

I appreciate how so many tales determined that the everyday character is wasting his life. (Incidentally all the tales were about men; no women finding coins here.) I particularly enjoyed the tale of the scholar changing to a life of service once he’d established, by God’s self-revelation, that God does not exist (p 104, Agnostic to Atheist). There was also treatment of religion getting in the way of faith and needing to be stopped for life to begin (p 57, Finding Faith). Also thought-provoking was a story about how the power of a great gift elicits a heart change at last (174, Reward). Yes, Rollins got at this from many angles.

The ones I’ve mentioned I enjoyed and found interesting. However there was one that just grates (p24, Salvation). The character is more or less completely believable. The tale is a lot like Les Miserables, where the priest gives more than even what was stolen. Yes, there are people (not often me) like that. But in this story there is a demon who is destroying everything while the priest calmly prays. Ultimately the demon asks to enter the priest’s heart. The priest welcomes him. This unprecedented hospitality ultimately defeats the demon who can’t bear to act on his own request and leaves dejected. The priest maintains his resolve to praise his Lord no matter what test comes his way. (I described the ending more to my theological tastes than the author did, in case you read it and think I got it all wrong… J)

This is a tale which I’m sure I’ll never forget… even if I somehow neglect to exercise the hospitality of the priest.

New Recipes, New Policies

Eric Kayser’s New French Recipes have regretfully brought back the sourest of childhood memories. Incidentally it has nothing to do with Kayser, really. It has to do with me not getting around to things. I’ve had Kayser’s cookbook since December. I checked it out from the library and have neither cooked from it nor written about it. Happily I have looked through it, especially at the sweeter recipes, which is why I’ve insisted on keeping it despite the pile-up of late notices and reminders in my email inbox.

It turns out someone else wants this cookbook, as well. Someone in Seattle, which means possibly someone I know. I wish I could keep it, but here I am at the library sending it away to its next home. (Should you wonder if this cookbook is worth asking for from your library, I think – yes.)

New recipes, perhaps, but not so new as to sound unpalatable from the get-go. The organization is exciting as Kayser is originally a bread baker. He concentrates on three French categories, four if you’re a Seattleite: Grains, Seeds, Dried Fruit and Nuts. I’m certain the recipes are good because the ingredients are so delicious and the pictures, go Clay McLachlan, are making me just crazy hungry!

A couple of the things I’ve learned just reading the recipes are that this would be useful for people who don’t want gluten in their diet. Grains include wheat, but are not defined by it. Another interesting adjustment to old recipes is the use of brown sugar, which in France would invariably be cassonade. These are not the same. American brown sugar is far superior in taste and texture – hurrah for us!

Policies have also come into play. I sat down to write about a cookbook, unobtrusively, I believed, in the library. It turns out that Seattle Public Libraries have a “Public Use of Children’s Areas Policy” which conceivably bars me from writing further of Kayser’s recipes because I was in the wrong section of the library. A librarian exercised her newfound right to expel me from sitting where Dr Seuss stories are on the shelves as I cannot prove to have brought a child with me. This offends me deeply, and I believe I will share a comment with the City Librarian’s Office for this disruption to my exceedingly important blog.

No doubt the sour memory with which I began arose from being surrounded by otherwise happy childhood things. Apparently this memorable librarian has become overwhelmed with her own sourness. Kayser’s brown sugar may be the antidote!

Daughter of Persia

Being sick is no excuse. And yet it’s the one that both gave me nothing to do but read Daughter of Persia: A Woman’s Journey from her Father’s Harem Through the Islamic Revolution and the thing that made me too sluggish to write about it afterward. Yet, here I am. Moved and perplexed again at the history and story of Persia, or modern day Iran. Happily there have been many intriguing stories about Iran all of which I have enjoyed reading while simultaneously cringing with something near disbelief.

Persepolis, Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Mulberry Empire (which is fiction) and many articles have given me something of a feel for what the Persians have been through. Not surprisingly that is no comfort as mostly they seem to have gone through a lot of internal-personal mistrust accompanied by foreign meddling.

Satti, who was born into the just deposed ruling family at the turn of the 20th Century, grew up in an anduran, a harem. She does not mind this at all. Her mother does not mind this at all. Her siblings, the servants, the extended family part of the compound don’t mind it, either. I minded. Somehow relegating this to ‘cultural differences’ seems inadequate. The fact that Satti chooses work rather than the life her mother led assures me that there is more than she chose to reveal in the 400 pages she wrote about her life.

Satti’s parents, whom she only praises the entire length of the book, appear as saints. I do not doubt for a minute that her mother was loving and her father clever, nor that both were wonderfully and terribly strong. I wonder whether being very young when her father died and very alone when her mother died were things that kept her perspective on her family so entirely golden. She did not even tell about any sibling that she had particular fights or squabbles with. It’s as though to be in that anduran was on par with being in Eden. Yet she longed to leave.

When Satti’s father died, she took her inheritance of about $2000 and traveled to ‘Amrika’ for university studies. She thought she’d get to see the Statue of Liberty, but showed up in Los Angeles instead. This section of the book was by far the most thrilling. Leaving home, travelling far, meeting people, testing risk and chance, all activities that Sattareh thrived in and excelled at. I haven’t even read many stories of American women at that time taking so many risks. Why, her first boat out of Bombay was sunk by Japanese submarines! Although I have traveled extensively to places full of risk, I’ve never been under fire. I found her story of leaving home riveting.

Later, Sattareh returned to Iran and built the School of Social Work which sounds absolutely astounding. For twenty years she devotes herself to the poor of her country because of the Islamic example set by both of her parents. Their example became her motivation and now she, too, becomes a saint of selfless devotion to work on behalf of the powerless. The school she founds grows from twenty students to over a couple thousand. Meanwhile Sattareh creates jobs for her graduates, sends them abroad for further education, and ensures that they learn to actually care for the poor.

India had Gandhi then Mother Theresa, and Iran first had Sattareh’s cousin Dr. Mossadegh and then herself. What went wrong? I believe it to be a fair question. Sattareh blames the people for following the wind rather than their own convictions. The majority always favors the strong and many manage to survive. Sattareh Farman Farmaian also survives, along with much of her extended family, as she escapes death and Iran, her beloved homeland becoming both to her essentially overnight.

I'm very glad to have read Satti's story and her perspective of Persian history. Learning how a family of great means and power conducted itself on the other side of the world a century ago has certainly caused me to consider the personal choices and votes I'm making here and now.

Address to a Haggis

Recently it was Robert Burns Night, an evening to celebrate by the Scottish and Scotophil alike. Hence I made my way to my sister’s for some haggis and an opportunity to admire my brother-in-law’s kilt. With melancholy heath-inspired bag piping helping us to remember the wintry, rainy Scotland we ate and toasted and addressed the haggis.

I have liked haggis since I first tried it in Scotland somewhere between nine and seven years ago. I recall the experience, the setting, the flavor, and the company. I guess that’s about as much as you can ask of any meal, making it one that is well worth repeating in wintry, rainy Seattle followed by some poetry reading and accent slaughtering.

How a nation comes by their special celebration days is always a bit awkward, but nobody beats the Scottish! Guy Fox Night (more like month), Burns Night, Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, are just a few I’ve experienced and found pretty ‘warm-reeking, rich!’

Regretfully we didn’t get haggis as such (US food regulations make it unavailable for purchase), but enjoyed a delicious and remarkable lamb roast accompanied by the neeps and tatties which fill out many a Scottish meal. Haggis is made of lamb bits and pieces ground up with oats and spices and stuffed into a casing and baked. It is into this near-bursting sausage that the happy host stabs a knife at a precious moment for the dinner party’s enjoyment. Neeps and tatties are parsnips and mashed potatoes, although the addition of carrots and other roots appears quite regularly.

I must say, an evening motivated by writing and a meal appeals very strongly to me. If you can get such a gathering going, I recommend Glenlivet and Bruichladdich for the after-dinner addresses whether or not you’re toasting Burns.

Indochine

Intense mid-20th century writing has surprised me again. Picking up Graham Greene’s The Quiet American from the library for my book group I was happy to see the shortness of it. Sometimes reading small books is a pleasure in itself. Not having read Graham Greene’s work before meant that I was mistaken to assume length had anything to do with weight.

How Greene was able to capture the mindset (which remains contemporary in my opinion) of Western men living in the East impresses me. The Americans, the British, the French, the Chinese, the lone Indian, and the Vietnamese interact and act upon one another. Some with understanding , some with concern, but all perform with enough ignorance and selfishness to create and sustain war.

There were many men, but only three women in this story. The wife, the mistress, and the mistress’ sister sought their vision as hard as the men, yet with nearly no interaction. Their decisions were equally crucial with those of the men in determining the outcome of our heros’ lives, likewise displaying how ownership of a conflict can pass hands and come around again.

Whether the cynic can remain uninvolved or the naïve live through his attachment may need more consideration, yet as presented here the answer is clear. The concept of marriage providing any stability at all comes into question, and the organization of an assassination by one who cringes to see a fly crushed is poignant. Once again, in love and war, everything becomes fair play.

Haiti

This last week I didn’t post any blogs. I guess discussing the pastries I’m making seems callous in the light of the devastation in Haiti. Considering that I went to work and produced pastries every day and have posted blogs when countless other suffering has gone on, I wonder if I’m just pretending that it would be callous.

Having said that, I made a really delicious plum cake…. See, it is out of touch. But I haven’t read more than anyone else about Haiti or Haitian food or Haitian relief efforts. This morning ten-year-olds were telling me about the children who’ve been hurt in Haiti.

So, instead let’s pray that God would comfort and nourish the living, and that God would give the aid workers access to food and water to dispense, that the aid organizations would work together, and that many would have a safe space to rest and recover from this dreadful week.