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Roasted potatoes and olives with rosemary

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Roasted potatoes, olives and rosemary

Roasted potatoes, olives and rosemary

Yesterday I went over to the school to help with a mural. By the time I got there, they were just cleaning up the finishing touches. A classic, “Here let me help you with that…What? You’re all done? Just finished? Well, good job, everybody!” moment. As I stood admiring everybody else’s hard work, Isaac walked by with his class and invited me to lunch. How could I say no? They eat in the gym, at long tables, and it smells like every cafeteria ever: of mushy green beans, something fried, bleach, and kids who have been running around in the sun. And it’s loud! They’re all so excited to be there, and there is decidedly more chattering than eating. Isaac, the boy who won’t eat peanut butter and jelly or bagels or “regular” cheese sandwiches ate his current lunch of choice: goat cheese on pita bread and raw red peppers. The kids who bought lunch dipped their spoons in their macaroni and cheese and smeared it on the trays and tables, but didn’t eat too much. I think nobody ate the green beans. I don’t think they’re meant to be eaten. It was sticker day, and whoever had a sticker on their tray got a prize. The children looked and looked again, sure that this time they’d find a sticker under their paper carton of pasta, though it hadn’t been there seconds before. The winner was announced…Pablo. Isaac’s friend sighed and said, “I wish I could be Pablo just for one day.” When Pablo walked triumphantly back to his seat he was mobbed by kids who wanted to see his prize. A pencil!! A whole pencil! The boy across from me said, “I saw you at the liquor store,” and I wasn’t sure how to reply. Sure, I go to the liquor store from time to time, I mean, I don’t hang out there, but I’ve been known to buy a bottle of wine every once in a while. Isaac, who is famous for his tin foil art, made me a big cuff bracelet out of his sandwich-wrapper. It looked like a swallow. His friend said he could probably sell them, he could probably start a business of making bracelets out of tin foil. I’ve been thinking a lot about Isaac lately, and envying his spontaneous creative spirit. I feel like I work so hard sometimes to find the right words. I’ll spend a whole afternoon writing two sentences. Isaac, he just has an idea and he makes it, be it a tin foil sculpture or a drawing or a poem. He has to write sentences and stories with his spelling words, and because they very often rhyme, there’s always an easy poetry about them.

    I shook it off/I stood there, by the tree/he stood here, in the soot.
    “I rested a knife on my knee. Don’t ask me why there’s a rope with a knot in it. A wren landed on my thumb and pecked at that rope. I owe it a debt fore that. When I was done I read a near letter. It said: Still give the lamb a bath! The end.”

A near letter! I love that.

And here’s a picture Isaac drew on the back of his worksheets. I love this! See how the subway train goes “shhhhh,” just like it does in real life. Outside the city there’s a farm, and beyond the farm is a forest, and standing on the edge of the forest is a man saying, “ahhh.”

Good Town

Good Town

So your lesson for today, children, is that it’s exciting to find a sticker on a tray and win a prize, no matter what that prize may be, and it’s important to dive right in and make what’s in your head, no matter how it may turn out.

This is a really simple dish. Almost too simple to write about, except that it’s so good. It’s just tiny potatoes roasted with olives, in olive oil, with rosemary, salt and lots of pepper. Roasted olives are lovely…tender and flavorful and a little crunchy. Isaac loves them. You could add other herbs, if you liked, or a splash of balsamic vinegar or lemon.

Here’s Do It by the Beastie Boys.

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Chocolate chocolate chip cake with white chocolate-mint ganache

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Chocolate chocolate chip cake with white chocolate-mint ganache

Chocolate chocolate chip cake with white chocolate-mint ganache

I worked this weekend, like I work most weekends. I can’t complain because I only work two days a week. Most of the time I like waiting tables, for reasons I’ve talked about plenty here at The Ordinary. Mostly, it’s because, although I’m dubious sometimes about the goodwill of humanity as a whole, I like people, much of the time. Sometimes I feel good about my job, I approach it with great cheerfulness, I want to keep busy and turn lots of tables. Lately I’ve been in a slump. I suppose this happens to everyone, no matter what their job. I’ve been doing it too long. It’s gotten to the point where my heart sinks a little every time the door opens and new customers walk in. It will pass, I know it will, but that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. Yesterday was supposed to be warm and sunny (they promised!) but instead it was spitting grey and cold. Which means we weren’t very busy, and the day passed in a slow sort of blur, and I did my best to be friendly to everybody, but I was feeling a little grey myself. And then around 3:30 the sun came out. The door opened, and my heart didn’t sink at all, because in walked Malcolm, and I thought I’d never seen anything so bright and beautiful. He wore a bright green shirt, and bright green-and-yellow sneakers, and his green eyes were bright. He wore a purple backpack, and it didn’t have anything in it but lemon drops. I was all done taking tables, so we sat outside on a wall in sunshine that felt almost bewildering, after all the rain. The glad trees around us were suddenly vivid, vibrant, spring green. I drank out of a bright green cup, and I had lemons and limes in my water. Malcolm dropped a lemon drop in my cup, so sweet and tart. And we just sat in the sunshine, in a bright green-gold world, not talking at all. It felt like waking up.

The secret to this cake is that it has a melted easter bunny on top. We bought Malcolm a white chocolate mint easter bunny, because he doesn’t really like chocolate, but he wasn’t too crazy about this, either. If you don’t happen to have a leftover white chocolate mint easter bunny, you can melt white chocolate and add a drop of peppermint essence. If you like, you could add a drop of peppermint essence to the cake itself as well.

Here’s Tom Waits with You Can Never Hold Back Spring

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Pizza with olive-pistachio tapenade and breaded mushrooms and eggplant

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Pizza with olive-pistachio tapenade and breaded mushrooms and eggplant

Pizza with olive-pistachio tapenade and breaded mushrooms and eggplant

Yesterday we had torrential rain on and off all day. In the middle of the grey morning, Malcolm came home sick from school. We sat on the couch with his soft blanket and soft grey dog, and he ate a warm blueberry bagel, and asked if I’d read aloud to him from Go Saddle the Sea, one of my favorite books when I was his age. It’s the tale of a boy named Felix traveling through Spain on a beloved, bad-tempered mule. The boy is about Malcolm’s age, and he’s fair and strong and smart and resourceful, like my Malcolm is. It felt so perfect to sit with Malcolm on this icy wet day, warm and dry, reading this book, thinking about how, when I first read it and loved it, I could never have guessed about Malcolm, never have guessed that someday I’d have a boy so sweet and clever and complex. Malcolm is so strong and capable and level-headed that I’ve come to rely on him to help me with so many things, and it seemed so strange to see him miserable and sick, lying on the couch “crying without even trying.” I’ve probably mentioned it before, but one of my favorite quotes of all time is this one, “Do you know, Lise, my elder told me once to care for most people exactly as one would for children, and for some of them as one would for the sick in hospitals.” It’s Alyosha from Brother’s Karmazov, who is kind and thoughtful to everybody that he meets. It might sound condescending, but I think the point is that we were all children once, and everybody gets sick sometimes. We’re all in it together, we’re all here to care for each other. I think about this passage sometimes when I’m waiting on tables, or talking to co-workers or teachers or total strangers, when I’m feeling bitter and ill-used, when somebody is rude to me. It’s hard sometimes, but with an effort I can remember that they were children once, they’re still somebody’s children, somebody cared for them as I care for my boys. I can remember that they have been sick, or imagine that they’re even in present pain, that they certainly have cares and worries that I’ll never know about. Yesterday I was thinking that being sick makes us into children again. It makes us needy and vulnerable. Everybody wants to be taken care of when they’re not feeling well, no matter how old and important they may be. Malcolm’s so strong and capable, he’s growing up so fast, he does everything so fast, he never stands still. It felt like a rare gift to have this rainy day with him, though I’m sorry he was so miserable. It’s like a rare chance to slow things down a little, to travel back in time to his (younger) childhood, to my childhood. It seems like a reminder that though we’re always looking forward, always looking inward, everything goes in cycles and turns in circles, and we can take an afternoon to sit under blankets and read an old book, watch cartoons, eat crackers and ginger beer, doze and wake. A day well-spent.

Pizza with olive-pistachio tapenade and breaded eggplant and mushrooms

Pizza with olive-pistachio tapenade and breaded eggplant and mushrooms

This was really two meals. The first night I marinated and breaded some mushrooms and slices of eggplant until they were tender and crispy. We ate these over couscous, with a sauce of pistachios and castelvetrano olives. The second night, I made some pizza dough, spread the sauce over, topped it with a mixture of smoked gouda, sharp cheddar and mozzarella, and then scattered the leftover mushrooms and eggplant over that. Delicious!

Here’s A Tribe Called Quest with Excursions, “I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles”

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Coconut-black pepper-rice flour pancakes

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Coconut and black pepper roti

Coconut and black pepper roti

My favorite word at the moment is “perplex.” I like the sound of it–I think it has just a few more consonants than it needs, in just the right order, to make it perplexing to pronounce. And I like the idea of it, it’s not as dire as confusion or as final as bafflement. I find it pleasant to be perplexed, to puzzle over something that I don’t quite understand. It makes me feel awake and alive, although of course sleep and dreams are perplexing as well. Unpleasant things are confusing, like calculus tests and taxes, but perplexing things can be pleasant or even beautiful, like love or a poem with many layers of meaning. Something perplexing doesn’t need to be solved or fixed, but can linger raising questions, indefinitely. I love this quote from the Hagakure, “There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. By doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to all things.” I love the idea that rain is perplexing, because of course it is. Water falling from the sky! The very smell is unsettling and stirring, because it signals a change. It reminds me of an interview with Tom Waits in which he said he named his album Rain Dogs because he liked to think about how perplexed dogs must be after a rainstorm, when everything smelled different to them. He imagined them saying, “Hey, who moved all the furniture.” I love the perplexing phrase, “I don’t want no woman got hair like drops a-rain.” What does it mean? I like the etymology of the word “perplex,” it means entangled, intricate, or braided. I believe that everything is interwoven, and this is both what makes the world so perplexing, and what makes it worth puzzling over. I believe this to be a beautiful summation of the complicated fact that words will never be adequate to describe our perplexities, but they’re all we have. “I am perplext, and know not what to say.” “What canst thou say, but will perplex thee more?” Indeed. And with that, I’ll wish everybody a pleasantly perplexing day, and get on with my work!

IMG_3666I found these cakes perplexing to name. They’re loosely based on Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe for rice flour dosas, but they’re almost like crepes or just pancakes. They’re sweetish, but I thought of them as part of a savory meal, and we ate them with a curry of pigeon peas and raisins in cashew sauce, which I might tell you about some day. They’re quite easy to make, light and tender, and the boys liked them, too. I actually used plain old sweetened flaked coconut, but they’d probably be better with unsweetened.

Here’s Skip James with Look Down the Road.

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Flourless hazelnut walnut mocha torte

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Flourless hazelnut walnut mocha torte

Flourless hazelnut walnut mocha torte

Today is, once again, take your child to work day. David usually takes one or both boys up to his shop, but his job is too stressful and his deadline too close at the moment. So they’re spending the day with me. I had very mixed feelings about this, I must say, which made me more than usually cranky from the very beginning. I knew they’d think of it as a day off, a day to stay home and watch cartoons and play video games and chase each other around the house yelling and eating never-ending easter candy. Because, obviously, that’s what I do all day while they’re at school. I woke them up at seven, like I usually do, and I made them help me pack lunches and make breakfast. We went for a walk, because part of my job is taking Isaac to school. I usually go for a jog after they’re in school, so we tried to do that, and I apologize to anybody whose house backs on to the towpath. I realize you probably didn’t want to awoken by a small boy yelling “SLOW DOWN I’M GOING TO PUKE! DO YOU WANT ME TO PUKE?” And then, sigh, we did laundry we dusted and vacuumed and washed dishes, and I thought how incredibly tedious my day must seem. We got all the cleaning done in the morning, like I always try to do, and then they instantly made a complete mess of everything again, and I announced that I was going to write for the rest of the day so they had to as well. And how is writing “work”? How do I justify this way to spend the day? Sometimes I get paid for it, and I do have a job and a deadline at the moment, although I’m fairly successfully ignoring it. But mostly I don’t. Mostly I’m writing this novel, and I’m completely obsessed with it, and it feels incredibly important to me, despite being frequently confounding and disappointing. I lie awake thinking about it, the characters are living in my head, and if I don’t write it down I’ll lose it all. But that doesn’t make it “work.” That makes me crazy. I see that, but most of the time I don’t acknowledge that fact. As long as nobody is watching me and saying, “Why do you get to sit at the computer if we don’t get to play video games?” (and I honestly can’t say that my novel-writing is any more important than their video game-playing), as long as nobody is watching, I’m okay. But what kind of life is it, if you can’t look at it from the outside without everything falling apart? If you can’t justify your existence if you stop to think about it for a minute? The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the examined life sometimes doesn’t hold up to all the questions. Of course it all boils down to money. If I was getting paid to write a novel, as many people are, then it would be work, then it would be justifiable and even admirable. But I’m not and probably will never be, if my past history of creative success is anything to go on. And yet, perversely, I want my boys to see that I write and that I read, and that both pursuits have great value for me. I want to see them write. I want them to grow up to write stories, and to think of it as work, even if they don’t get paid for it. I want them to know how good it feels to create something you feel happy about, even if you know the next time you look at it you’ll wonder what the hell you were thinking when you made it. I want their values to be as skewed as mine, so that creating something that they need to create becomes more important than making money, although of course I want them to be financially secure as well. I want them to work hard at something, with passion, and know the great pleasure of completing something that has taken great time and energy and thought. I want them to feel good about their life, even when events make them look at it from the outside, with questions and judgement. Malcolm wrote, of today, “The day with mom was fun cause we took walks and I also figured out what her life is like.” He figured out what my life is like! Now if I could only do the same!

Flourless hazelnut, walnut mocha torte

Flourless hazelnut, walnut mocha torte

There was some discussion, last week on The Guardian’s website, of a coffee walnut cake. One commenter mentioned a cake he or she remembered from their youth, flourless, with coffee and walnuts and hazelnuts. It seemed like a pleasant challenge to try to recreate a recipe based on this small amount of information, so I did. And I think it turned out very good! This is one of the best flourless cakes that I’ve made, light but substantial, with a lovely flavor.

Here’s REM with Finest Worksong

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Spinach, tarragon and ricotta quiche with a pecan crust

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Spinach, tarragon and ricotta quiche with a pecan crust

Spinach, tarragon and ricotta quiche with a pecan crust

Today is spring break! Just today. They were supposed to have a whole week, but after all of the snow days this winter they’re left with just this one day. So we’ve packed a whole week’s worth of fun and adventure into this day. To that end, we’ve … cleaned their room! Watched some cartoons! drawn some cartoons! Played with legos! Yes, it’s a vacation they’ll never forget. And we went for a walk. As ever, Clio pulled ahead, lunging at every squirrel and cat and bird, and the boys trailed behind, talking. I heard them earnestly discussing who they were going to be. They were deciding what creatures they would be in the world of their invention. How they would look, and what they’d wear, and how they’d get along with each other. They are telling stories as we walked. And then they caught up with me and told me they’d just downloaded themselves into the world my brother and I invented when we were little. All of our imaginary worlds are joining together to form one great world without end! It made me so happy to hear them talking, and all the more so because I myself was walking along ahead of them completely lost in the world of my novel, creating a world of my own. It’s become so real to me, and so complicated, and I’m so close to it that I only think I ever consider it rationally when I’m out walking, trying not to think about it. Then I catch glimpses of the whole world and all the characters in it, and I wonder what they’ll do next, I wonder how the whole thing will turn out. And it makes me so happy to catch these glimpses of the world I’ve created, most of the time, when it’s going well. I’m glad the boys have that, too. I hope they never lose the ability to create worlds for themselves and each other. I would wish that superhero skill for everyone I know, because sometimes this real world is a little too real. And now, a novel gets written one word at a time, it might be swirling around in my head in great waves, but it comes out one word at a time (and then that word gets erased and replaced with a few, possibly better, words, and then they get erased…) so I’d better get to work.

Spinach, ricotta, tarragon quiche

Spinach, ricotta, tarragon quiche

This is similar to a perfectly ordinary spinach quiche, except that it also has ricotta and mozzarella, which makes it juicy. And it has tarragon, which makes it very fresh and springlike. It’s simple, and made more interesting with the addition of the pecan crust.

Here’s Common with In My Own World

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Crostini with roasted red pepper/hazelnut sauce, capers, and olives

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Red pepper and hazelnut crostini

Red pepper and hazelnut crostini

Malcolm yelled “Good luck!” to the bald eagle. Before work on Sunday, the first and only really lovely spring day this year, Malcolm and Clio and I went for a “run.” It was more of a fast walk, because he’d just eaten pancakes, but that suited me exactly. We came to the place where a bald eagle had built a nest across the canal. A big, random-looking pile of sticks on the top of a huge metal tower.
The tower last year, before the nest was built. What are these things called?

The tower last year, before the nest was built. What are these things called?


I hadn’t actually seen an eagle there, but I stopped to look every time we passed. This time I saw a big hulking bird farther down the tower, and I asked Malcolm if it had a white head, because I couldn’t see that far, and it could have been a vulture. It did! It did have a white head! We walked back on the other side of the canal, to get a closer look. Malcolm was talking cheerfully about his schemes for the future, and I was thinking how good it felt to go for a walk with him again, and hear his zany chatter, after a long, shut-in winter. When we got to the tower, the eagle was gone, but we stood for a moment looking up into the bright blue sky. You could feel the earth getting warmer all around us, waking up and coming to life. And then the eagle flew up out of the river, and landed very low on the tower, where we could see it perfectly. It was a stunning moment, it’s not an exaggeration to say that it felt as if my heart soared up with the eagle. We watched it for a while, sitting there so beautiful and impossibly large and completely cool, and then Malcolm yelled, “Good luck,” and we walked home. It felt so sunny, to hear him say that, to think about Malcolm encouraging this huge unruffled raptor. It seems so precarious to try to raise chicks on the top of a tower that holds power lines, in a world full of people, it feels like such a hopeful thing to do. I’ve been feeling vaguely anxious lately about equally vague events that may-or-may not happen. Worried about the future more than usual, troubled by time passing though I know there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. It feels good to take a walk, and see the eagles and the geese sitting on their nests in the sunshine, everybody is doing what they have to do, getting on with their lives, waking with the spring. Isaac recently showed me the sign for “All you need.” You hold your hands together in front of you, and then spread them to your sides. It’s a beautiful gesture, particularly as performed by a serious eight-year-old. It seems like a good gesture to make when you’re feeling anxious, to remind yourself of what you have, and that all you can do is what you have to do, and try feel good about what you’re working on and where you’re going. It’s a gesture like spreading wings in the sunshine.

Isaac likes crostini. I made these last week after he’d been sick for a few days and eaten nothing but toast. These were like a step up from toast, and Isaac ate quite a few. The sauce itself is inspired by romesco sauce, and it’s sweet smoky nuttiness goes well with the sharp saltiness of capers and olives. It made a nice meal with a big salad.

Here’s All I Need by Radiohead.
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Toasted almond shortbread cake

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Toasted almond shortbread cake

Toasted almond shortbread cake

There’s a crow in my backyard making the strangest noises: throaty, urgent, with just an edge of rudeness. They’ve been all around my house all day, these crows, calling to each other, calling to me, trying to tell me something. It’s not just what they’re saying, either, it’s the way they fly as well, it feels studied, with a pattern and a purpose. It’s quite dramatic and beautiful. And it’s all around my house, circling my world. Of course, once I ventured outside of my house, beyond my block, I realize that they’re all over town behaving strangely, these crows. It’s spring, they’re in a tizzy. But as long as I’m sitting in my own home, searching for meaning everywhere, it feels as thought they’re speaking just to me. I passed a man on the way to school today who was talking to some friends in a truck idling in front of his house. He said that every morning, when he steps onto his porch, he sees the vulture who is nesting in the abandoned house next door, and the vulture is staring down at him, watching his every move. It doesn’t bode well for his day, he fears. I’ve been studying the calls and flight patterns of birds, lately, because I’m applying for an exciting new job. I want to be an augur. It’s a stressful job, I know, with a lot of responsibility, but I feel up for the task. My duties, as an augur, will involve studying the flight paths of birds, listening to how they sing or call, identifying patterns and directions, determining the kind of bird, and whether it flies in a group or alone. If a flock of birds takes into the air all at once, in a confusion of movement, in certain waves, with small sure speed, like an explosion of fireworks, I will know what this means. If a lone bird soars far above the clouds in great lazy circles, I will understand what that bird is telling me, because I will take the auspices. I will decide what is auspicious. Of course the job of an augur is not to determine the future, but to decide if a path already begun upon is the right path to take, if a plan of action is pleasing to the gods. And the gods show us this on the wings of birds, the delicate, powerful, inexplicable, beautiful wings of birds. And this is where I think I would shine as an augur. Because I always think birds are beautiful, I love all of their calls and songs, I love the birds with dusky feathers as well as those with jewel-like plumage. I admire vultures and revere crows, practically anything a bird can do seems like a happy portent to me, except maybe flying into a window. So if you want some good news, you want to feel hopeful about a project you’ve started or a journey you’re taking, come to me. I will read your auspices, I will watch the birds busy in you back yard, feeding in your garden or floating dreamily high above your house, and I will find encouraging signs there.

Toasted almond shortbread cake

Toasted almond shortbread cake

This cake was inspired by memories of a good humor toasted almond bar. It has a simple, shortbread like base, with chocolate chips, of course! And it’s topped with a crunchy almond crumb.

Here’s Flying Birds by the RZA

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Pizza with chard, golden raisins and pine nuts

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IMG_3452“O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!”

“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.”

I love this exchange. It is, of course, spoken by Hamlet and his friend Horatio, and it is, of course, followed by “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I love the idea that a “stranger” is not just a new or unfamiliar person, but a wondrous strange person as well, and I love the implication that we’re all strangers. We’re all full of wondrously inexplicable ideas and emotions and inspiration. We’re all new somewhere, we’re all unusual to someone. And therefore we should welcome strangeness in others, even if they happen to be ghosts yelling at us from underneath the stage. Hamlet and Horatio are students of Wittenberg University, and are presumably deep in the study of rational thought, they probably both believe, as most students do, that it’s their job to understand everything and explain everything. But the ghostly visit teaches them that this isn’t possible for anyone. Nobody’s ideology is broad enough to hold everything on heaven and earth, nor even to hold dreams of everything. And this is why it’s important to welcome what you don’t understand, and make room for dreams of it in your own philosophy, because you’re asking others to make room for you in theirs.

Pizza with chard, pine nuts and golden raisins

Pizza with chard, pine nuts and golden raisins

This is my all-time favorite pizza! Why? Because chard, raisins and pine nuts is my favorite meal, and the only thing that can make it better is the addition of some melty cheese and a thin crispy crust, that’s why!

Here’s Stranger Blues by Elmore James

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Thin sliced roasted potatoes topped with goat cheese, pistachios, olives and capers

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Potatoes with goat cheese, olives and capers

Potatoes with goat cheese, olives and capers

We’re having a sleepy sort of day here at The Ordinary. It’s drizzly and cold and Isaac is home sick from school. He’s mostly feeling better, but he’s subdued and quiet. I found him lying on his brother’s bed, feet up against the wall, playing with a Star Wars toy and singing. He’s eaten nothing all day but three pieces of toast, but this is a perfect day for toast. He had a stomach bug, and he suffered from terrible queasiness for a few days, and it’s one of those things that makes itself worse, that festers and feeds on itself: the more you worry about being sick, the more sick you feel. It’s like middle-of-the-night worries, being anxious makes you more anxious. I was talking to a fellow-insomniac about this conundrum, and he said that once, whilst going through a rough time that resulted in many sleepless nights, he developed the habit of saying, “I’m okay right now.” He would lie in bed and say, right now at this moment I’m healthy and have a warm house and my family is safe, and the thought of present security would help him to chase away anxieties about the past and the future. I love this idea. And so remarkable is the human brain and imagination that if your present is not happy or healthy or secure, you can do as Pierre Behuzov did, and dream about a different, but maybe no less real, reality, “Still less did Pierre think about himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.” Funnily enough I’ve spent the day reading a book by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew called On Superstitions Connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and Surgery. The book, published in 1844 deals with medical superstitions from throughout recorded human history. And many of these involve amulets and charms that work because the patient believes they’ll work. It’s not the moss you take from the skull of a deceased thief, dry to a powder and then take like snuff that cures your headache, it’s your belief that it will. It’s not the three spiders that you hang around your neck that cure your ague, it’s your faith in their power. He talks about “sympathetical cures,” in which the doctor treats the weapon, not the wound. “If the superstitious person be wounded by any chance, he applies the salve, not to the wound, but, what is more effectual, to the weapon by which he received it. By a new kind of art, he will transplant his disease, like a scion, and graft it into what tree he pleases.” But as Pettigrew points out, when a doctor cleans a wound, and then takes the knife that caused it, wraps it cloth, confines it to a closet and tells the patient not to move until the wound heals, his method is not all that different from a doctor who cleans the wound and tells the patient not to move until it heals. Maybe he’s just transferred the worry from the wound to an unfeeling object. After all, he says, the physician and surgeon do all their services by observing the properties of the living body,”…where the living principle is so strong and active in every part that by that energy alone it regenerates any lost substance, or reunites in a more immediate way the more simple wounds.” Pettigrew talks about quacks and charlatans, and their methods of controlling a patient through their fears and worries. And he shows that in most cases it’s only the faith and hope that a patient feels–in the doctor, in the medicine–that allows them to heal. Sometimes it seems our bodies know what they need, and it’s our busy minds that get in the way, and sometimes it’s the power or our imaginations that heal us. Either way, it would seem the best cure is to build a wealth of thoughts to make us happy and alive, to turn to in times of sickness and worry, to have hope and faith not in the amulet or charm, but in the strength of our own minds and bodies.

Thinly sliced potatoes with goat cheese, olives and tomatoes

Thinly sliced potatoes with goat cheese, olives and tomatoes

This was easy to make and I thought it was very delicious. It’s kind of like nachos, with potatoes instead of chips. I used castelvetrano olives, but you could use any kind of olives you like. I chopped them in the food processor with some cherry tomatoes, and then mixed them with goat cheese, mozzarella and capers. I spread this over roasted potatoes, and then returned it to the oven briefly until everything was melted. Comforting but very flavorful.

Here’s Sir Lord Comic with Doctor Feelgood

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