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The Ordinary on NPR…again!!

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Kale and black bean cake

Kale and black bean cake

The Ordinary is back on NPR, for an article about savory cakes! I’ve said, written, and thought the word “cake” so many times that it’s starting to sound really funny. I knew a boy when I was little that would say “cake” or “toast” just randomly, for kicks, I guess, and I’m starting to see why! Anyway, some of these savory cake recipes have been on The Ordinary in the past, and some are brand new. Exclusives!!

Here’s Michigan and Smiley with Nice up the Dance, so we can all have a celebratory boogie!

Arugula salad with roasted carrots, beets, pecans and shaved goat cheese

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Arugula salad with roasted carrots, beets and pecans

Arugula salad with roasted carrots, beets and pecans

“Hey, Claire,” I hear you say, “Why the hell have you never mentioned the ‘kitchen sink’ films of the sixties? Aren’t they perfectly Ordinary?” And then I slap myself on the forehead and say, “OF COURSE! Of course they are! And I love them! They’re some of my favorite movies of all time!” And then I think it over a little more and decide that some are more Ordinary than others, and maybe these are the ones I’ll talk about. The kitchen sink films, for those who don’t know, are British films made in the sixties that are notable for showing working class people going about their ordinary lives. They’re mostly black and white, and though simply, even roughly, shot, they’re gorgeous. They’re often filmed on location with natural lighting, but I would happily save each frame of most of them as a beautiful still photograph. The term “kitchen sink” was inspired by a painting by John Bratby, and this drive for social realism was part of a broader movement that included art, theater and literature.
John Bratby's Kitchen Sink

John Bratby’s Kitchen Sink


The films are also called “Angry Young Man” films, because many of them concern themselves with just such a character, but I find that my favorites are more complicated than this, they’re not always about men, and the central character is not simply angry, but has a conflicted attitude to their home and the humdrum life they find themselves stuck in. One such man is Billy Liar, played with pathos and comic genius by Tom Courtney. This film has an extraordinary balance of darkness and light. Billy works in a funeral parlor, and he woos one of his many girlfriends in a cemetery. His parents needle him to grow up and take responsibility. He dreams of someday escaping to London, preferably in the company of Julie Christie. But the truth is that Billy escapes his dreary reality every day: he has a world in his head, a country called Ambrosia, where he is a hero, or several heroes. Billy’s goal in life is to be a script writer, and through his fantasies, he writes a script for himself, for his life, that helps him to transcend the weighty worries of his real-life. When he’s offered a chance at a actual grand gesture, a genuine adventure, he decides not to take it, and the ending of the film is suffused with a melancholy sense of failure, but once again Billy’s imagination saves him. Billy Liar is a comedy, but it’s a complex one, with layer upon layer of questions about life and society buried deep in each scene. Billy’s world is far from perfect, but seen through his eyes, it’s beautiful and funny and touching. The ending is bittersweet and complicated, just like life. I think Billy has made happiness for himself, and to me that means he’s not a failure at all.

Stay tune for further installments of Claire’s favorite Kitchen Sink films at an Ordinary near you!

Roasted carrot and beet salad

Roasted carrot and beet salad

It’s been too hot to cook, so we’re having lots of salad. But when a salad is your meal, you want it to be hearty, you want it to have nuts and cheese and then you want to try to use up all of your vegetables from the farm, so you add roasted beets and carrots, and then you treated yourself to some special hard goat’s cheese from Spain and some special hard sheep’s cheese from the Basque region, and you want to shave some of that on there as well. And you end up with this big beautiful tangle of greens and everything but the kitchen sink!

Here’s The Decemberists with Billy Liar.
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Malcolm’s madman cake!

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Madman cake!

Madman cake!

It’s Saturday, so it’s storytelling time, but it’s also Malcolm’s birthday, so I decided to write a story about one of my own photos, for a change. And then I’ll tell you about this cake, but you probably don’t need to know how I made it, because I can’t really imagine anyone else making a madman cake!

Malcolm

Malcolm

The funny thing about being pregnant is that at the beginning it’s the strangest most surreal feeling in the world, but by the end of it you can’t remember ever not being pregnant and you can’t imagine a time when you will no longer be pregnant. So that you think you’ll remember every little strangely passing moment, but you won’t, because it will all be as normal as any other day. But you might find yourself remembering some seemingly uneventful times that will become inexplicably important. And you might find yourself in a friend’s backyard drinking limeade the day before your soon-to-be-son’s soon-to-be birthday, and you won’t think much of it, but later you’ll never forget it, and you’ll never forget driving in the middle of the night through July fields with the moon so bright it looks as though they’re covered in snow, and you’ll never forget the two foxes who race away through the pale fields. And the hospital is the strangest thing yet, so that you’re sure you’ll remember every bizarre second of it, but you won’t, it will all be a blur. Time passes in some crazy rhythm so that it seems not to be passing at all, but somehow the sun comes up, and you know it’s hot outside and the world of people is busy and waking and you know what the city smells like, though you can’t smell it through thick clean glass. And you look out on these streets and think about walking them with David when you first met him, at all hours of the night, walking these streets and falling in love. And look where it got you! Well, you wouldn’t be anywhere else. And some of this is harder and more frightening than anything you’ve done before, but you’ve never felt closer to David or needed him more. And you’re desperate for some ginger ale because you’re parched, but they won’t let you have any, not even a sip. And eventually you find yourself in an operating room, and you see a pair of legs next to you and think, “Who the hell do those belong to? Because she doesn’t seem to be doing too well.” And then you realize, of course, they’re yours, these are your strange legs, and they drift back in focus on your body. And eventually everyone leaves, and you’re alone in a strange room with this small beautiful creature. He’s so new to you, because for the first time you realize he’s not a figment of your imagination, he’s not the person you’ve been dreaming up all these months, he’s a real person all to himself. You expect him to be like you and David, you look for all the ways he’s like you and David. It’s not just that he’s not like the two of you; he’s not like anyone you’ve ever met. And that’s the beginning of constant delightful bewildering frightening wonderful surprises as he becomes the person he needs to be, always connected to you but wild and unpredictable as well. And he grows and changes and you grow and change, and somehow it’s eleven years later, and he’s nearly as big as you and he’s sitting beside you on a misty July 13, in the front seat, helping you with your wallet and shopping bags, choosing a lemonade-flavored donut because he thinks you’ll like it. He’s a distinct individual, who likes good music and has a sense of humor and a sense of style and knows what he likes but still asks David if he thinks it’s cool, too. Who remembers what other people like, and saves their favorite flavors for them. Who cries when he’s been mean, which shows that he’s at least trying. And every time you see him you’re ready to burst with pride because he’s so beautiful and strong. He’s strong enough to announce that pink is a cool color, and he’s strong enough to take on the entire ocean with his glowing pink shovel. And he’s wise enough to dive into the waves when they knock him over, and to come up laughing.
madman Malcolm draws this little man, called Madman. If he was a graffiti artist, this might be his tag. One day, the teacher said she needed to talk to us because Malcolm was drawing a bomb! Oh no, we said, when we realized she was talking about madman…that’s not a bomb, he’s wearing a fez! And we all had a jolly good laugh. I decided to make a madman cake, fez and all, and I was very proud that all of Malcolm’s friends said, “Hey, that’s the guy that Malcolm draws!”

Here’s July July by the Decemberists. July has never seemed so strange!

Pistachio ricotta tart topped with greens

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Pistachio tart with greens

Pistachio tart with greens

“You’re probably a year old! You’re not a puppy anymore! Stop chewing up my reading glasses.” “You’re a big seven-year-old boy, stop crying over every little thing.” “You’re nearly eleven years old, learn how to share with your brother!” Yes, I’ve been resorting to the tired parental chestnut of “you’re too old to behave that way,” and this has been my constant refrain of late, generally said with a weary sigh. Of course I realize that my boys could easily answer back, “Well you’re a middle-aged old fool and you cry at stupid things, too.” And Clio could say, “Well, teach me how to read! I want to reeeeeaaad!!” And they would all be right. I read an article recently that examined our changing ideas of how we should all be comporting ourselves at a certain age. People in their twenties used to be considered adults, with jobs and houses and responsibilities and children, and now they’re just roustabouts clinging desperately to every shred of youthful irresponsibility. And by the time we’re fifty or sixty we’re pretending to be thirty or forty. It’s all just one life-long delusional muddle. And maybe they’re right, the writers of this article. They’re probably right. But it’s hard to move through life gracefully, acting as expected at every stage. It’s hard to respond with appropriate maturity to all of life’s frustrating situations. Sometimes it seems as though everybody is constantly struggling not to act like a toddler, desperately trying not to pout or scream about not getting what they want. Some days it is hard to keep from crying over every little thing. Many days I feel less mature than the boys: when I yell at them irrationally or say something petty and childish. They’re very patient with me. From time-to-time I feel that Malcolm is even taking care of me. He saw a biting fly in the car just before I drove off, and he tried to show it the door. When it wouldn’t leave he said, “Mom, don’t get scared and crash the car.” One day, he and I went for a walk and it started to thunder. I grabbed his arm. He said, “sometimes I feel as though I’m the parent and you’re the child.” I laughed until he added, “I hate that feeling.” Sob! Since then I’ve been more careful. I have a lot of fears, but I’m a strong person, and I understand why it’s important for him to know that. And I am a useless lout of a forty-four-year-old ne’er-do-well, and I do go into a sad panic at the thought of growing older. But part of what makes it less frightening and even hopeful is the thought of my boys growing big and strong and funny and wise, the thought of them meandering through life at whatever the going rate is when they’re twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds, the thought of them making sense of their own beautiful muddle of time passing.

Deep pistachio tart

Deep pistachio tart

David said this might be his new favorite! I’m very excited about it! For my birthday I got a lovely deep tart pan (thanks mom & dad!). I decided to make a high crust, with a layer of pistachio ricotta custard, and then to sautée some greens and pistachios to pile on top. It worked very well! A nice combination of flavors and textures. You could really taste the pistachios in the custard, which was a treat. The crust is half semolina flour, which makes it very crunchy. I used garlic scapes with the greens, because it’s that time of year, but you could use regular garlic. You could also add tomatoes or olives to the greens if you were feeling fancy. And you could absolutely make this in a normal-sized tart pan or even a cake tin.
pistachio tart with greens

pistachio tart with greens

Here’s I was Born, by Billy Bragg and Wilco, featuring Natalie Merchant. She doesn’t know how old she is!

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Smoky beet and goat cheese bruschetta

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Beet and goat cheese bruschetta

Beet and goat cheese bruschetta

One hot morning, you could find Clio and me on our daily scamper along the tow path. A spandex-clad woman whizzed by us on her bike, and as she passed she said, “You okay?” My first thought, of course, was “Honey, I’m more than alright, I’m out of sight! I am fine. Fiiiiiine.” But my second, more considered thought was, “Why? Don’t I look alright? IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME? What is it? What’s wrong? Are you talking to my dog? IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY DOG?” It was a very hot day…maybe we looked as though we were about to swoon. Maybe she wasn’t talking to us at all. Who knows? The whole incident got me thinking about a superpower I would like to possess. I’d like to be able to ride around the world on a bicycle, and when I’d ride past people I’d yell, “YOU’RE OKAY!!” And they’d believe me. I think this would be a remarkably useful skill. Many of the people I meet don’t know they’re okay. And throughout my life I’ve observed that the people I find the most kind and interesting and thoughtful are often the people with the least concept of their okayness, they don’t know how important they are to the world around them and they’re not as happy as they might be if they did. One symptom of this insecurity, is that it feeds on itself, and it becomes hard to persuade somebody that they’re doing alright, because it becomes hard to believe that you’ll ever be okay when you’re feeling down about yourself. And, of course, all of this works into my ongoing rant that, as a society, we value the wrong things. We think someone’s okay if they’re pretty or rich. And maybe they are, I hope they are, but if so it will be because they’re also bright and compassionate and interested. In my superhero persona, I’ll have a sort of spider sense that tells me when somebody is feeling down, and I’ll be able to fly by on my bike and yell, “You’re okay!” And suddenly they’ll see themselves from the outside, beamingly, not with arrogance, but with generosity and appreciation for all they have to offer, and thus they’ll walk forth into the world. YOU’RE OKAY!!

Beet and goat cheese bruschetta

Beet and goat cheese bruschetta

Well, it has been hot lately. Too hot to bake. Too hot to cook. Too hot to boil water or turn on the oven at all. This is when we turn to toaster oven cookery. This whole thing was made in the toaster oven, but if you don’t have such a thing you can use a regular oven. My boys like beets and they like goat cheese, so they liked these a lot. I added a little chipotle purée, some lime juice, and some smoked paprika. Atop this cheesy combination, we piled some juicy olives and tomatoes. You could just fresh chopped tomatoes, or even salsa. This could be an appetizer, but we ate it as a meal with a big salad.

Here’s Out of Sight by James Brown.

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Rosy golden beet, zucchini and butter bean sauce

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Beet, summer squash and butter bean sauce

Beet, summer squash and butter bean sauce

Recently, whilst engaged in the sisyphean task of picking anything up off the floor with the boys home for the summer, I found a sparkly rubber bracelet. I absent-mindedly put it on my wrist and it’s been there every since. It’s a sort of golden color, and at the risk of sounding like an idiot, I can’t tell if it’s yellow or orange, so I asked Malcolm. I expected him to say “yellow” or “orange” and probably to add, “duh, mommy.” Instead he thought for a moment and said, “firefly butt, when it’s not lit.” What a perfect description of a color. Now I’m never taking it off. We’ve been seeing a lot of fireflies lately, and there’s no question–they’re beautiful and magical. At night the fields sparkle and glow with them, and the sight of it makes me happy. But it also got me thinking, last night, as we rolled through glimmering grass in the gloaming. I was wondering if they didn’t sparkle, if they were just black bugs with reddish heads and skinny creepy legs, would we just smush them when we saw them? And butterflies, too…they’re not all that pretty without their wings, they’re very buggy and weird-looking. If they didn’t have beautiful spangled colorful wings, would they creep us out, as Isaac is fond of saying lately, and would we crush them, too? Our insect-directed morality does seem arbitrary sometimes. Take the stinkbug. I think they’re lovely. They’re so sweet in their movements, and they’re actually quite striking, in a grey way, if you look at them closely. Plus they don’t bite, as far as I know. I just read that they’re an agricultural pest, they stink, they’re not native to America and their population is growing at an alarming rate, but most of that is true of many Americans as well, going back a few centuries, so we should be able to view them with a certain empathy. And yet, I have seen it happen that our first instinct towards them is to speedily dispatch them. If only they had glowing butts! My own buggy morality is fairly arbitrary, too, I guess. I don’t like to kill anything, but I will kill ticks and mosquitoes, particularly if they’re anywhere near my boys. I’m not fond of disease-carrying blood suckers. I think certain insects do themselves a disservice by looking scarier than they actually are. This technique might serve them well in the wild, but not when there are humans around, because our automatic response to anything small and scary is to kill it. House centipedes, for instance, are supposedly beneficial insects, because they eat cockroaches and pavement ants, but they provoke instant heebie-jeebies and have, regrettably, turned into many a purple smear on our walls and ceilings. Spiders, too, are frightening sometimes, but we love our spiders around here. And, of course, they’re protected because everybody knows if you kill a spider you’ll make it rain. The moral of this buggy ramble, is “love your clumsy, slow-moving, stinky friends, because they’re might be some colossal judgmental creatures looking down on us in the same way.” Probably not, but you never know. There could be, and we might just be creeping them out.

Now that I’ve whetted your appetite with all of this talk of stink bugs, let’s discuss food! We’re entering summer squash season, and we’re still getting lots of beets as well, from our CSA. I decided to grate the squash and beets, not only because I was too lazy to cut them up, but also because I like it when they form a melty sort of sauce. To contrast all this melty sauciness, I added plump butter beans and crisp slices of fresh red and yellow pepper. We ate this as a sauce for long pasta, but I think it would also be good over rice or couscous or toast or even in tacos.

Here’s Jackie Davis with Glow Worm Cha Cha Cha.
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Golden beet and pine nut purée

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Golden beet and pine nut purée

Golden beet and pine nut purée

It’s my birthday!!! AAARRGGHHHH! And I’m only telling you this because…I’m telling everybody! I’m like a little kid when it comes to birthdays. Except that I’m not, really, I’m the exact opposite. I overheard Isaac telling Malcolm, “Mommy doesn’t want it to be her birthday,” which as a birthday-obsessed seven-year-old is a concept he can’t fathom. It’s not the birthday itself I have a problem with, of course, it’s the getting older part that’s hard, that’s putting me in a blue mood. I was thinking the other day that I might come across as a somewhat cheerful, hopeful person, here at The Ordinary. In truth, I’m a moody old cuss. I’m discouraged by the strangest slightest things. And it might seem like I’m a patient mother, but I yell at my boys more than I thought I ever would, and I’m short-tempered with them sometimes even when they’re sweetly trying to get my attention to tell me nice and funny things. Sometimes I just want some quiet to think my own thoughts. Sometimes I just want to look out the window. And my boys don’t like all the weird food I make, though they are almost always kind enough to taste it. They don’t always eat healthy meals, sometimes I just let them drink sugar water, not because they’ve persuaded me that they’re part hummingbird, although I might believe that, but because I’m powerless to stop them because THEY DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD I SAY! And I do genuinely want to love and care for all people, like Alyosha says to do, but I have a noisy foul-mouthed inner misanthrope fighting to get out. I do honestly believe that success should be measured not by good grades or a big salary, but by how happy you are with what you do, day-to-day, and by the way you make your life as creative as possible in all the small moments, and how you notice and remember everything. But I get in foul moods when all I can think is “everything I’ve ever tried to do has failed.” And where am I going with all of this downwardly spiraling self-pitying birthday confessionalizing? I dunno. I think I want to tell you that I woke up this morning and my foolish birthday blue funk had lifted. I feel sanguine and hopeful. I have a lot that I want to do–small things and big big projects, and I feel excited about trying, whether or not they get done. I feel happy about thinking about them, even just thinking about them. I feel good about writing, just writing, whether anybody reads it or likes it doesn’t matter, I feel good about putting thoughts in order, and stringing words together, and surprising myself with all the odd phrases that come out of my constantly surprising mind, which you think I’d know better after 44 years of constant company. Last night in the car I had thought myself into a despondent mess, and Isaac said, “Mommy!! Guess what? Somebody’s being born, somebody’s being born, somebody’s being born, somebody’s being born, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s coming home, somebody’s sleeping, somebody’s sleeping, somebody’s sleeping, somebody’s sleeping…all over the world, right now!” And this morning Malcolm gave me a birthday letter that began “Have you ever wondered how the earth was created, God or science?” and ended, “P.S. Are crab apples edible? Because Charlie likes them and I want to try.” In the face of all of this blissfully cheerful existential information, How can a person stay cranky for long? Well, she can’t, and I won’t.

Beet greens with golden-beet pine nut sauce

Beet greens with golden-beet pine nut sauce

Golden beets, man. They’re pretty! And so darn tasty. We got some more from the farm, and I recently went on a ridiculously indulgent birthday shop and bought pine nuts and all sorts of other pricey items. So I decided to make this golden beet and pine nut tarator sauce. It’s got grated toasted beets, sage, rosemary, pine nuts, garlic, and a bit of balsamic. It was very tasty and surprising. Moreish, as the British say. We dipped fresh sweet peas in it, and crackers, and then I mixed it in with sauteed beet greens. It would be good with roasted vegetables, or tossed with pasta, or as a dip for chips, or any other way you can think of using a creamy flavorful sauce.

Here’s Big BIll Broonzy, who has a birthday today, too, playing Hey Hey, which I know I’ve posted before, but, hey, it’s my birthday!
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Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans with herbs and lemon

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Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans

Roasted beets, potatoes and white beans

Early on this sweltering June morning, the first real day of summer vacation, you could find my Malcolm in a shady room, watching Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress. We all watched it together, some time ago, and he liked it so much he asked me to get it again. (The film is best-known, probably, as the inspiration for George Lucas’ screenplay for Star Wars: A New Hope.)

I was on my way out the door, and I just stopped, and sat with Malcolm and watched it again. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. The film is moving, on so many levels. In the very first scene, we see two peasants, backs to us, walking away. They’re highly animated, squabbling and quarreling, bickering about plans for a future they have absolutely no control over. And then a wounded samurai careens into the frame from a crazed angle, followed by men on horseback who stab him, repeatedly, in an oddly beautifully choreographed dance. (I apologize in advance for using the word “beautiful” hundreds of times.) The peasants are caught between warring clans, and they’re captured and forced to bury the dead and dig for gold. During an uprising they escape, and they find a bar of gold hidden in a log of wood. And then they meet Toshiro Mifune, and they spend the rest of the film walking; following him, running from him, racing back to him.

They’re traveling with hundreds of bars of hidden gold and a princess disguised as a mute peasant. They walk through ghostly bamboo forests, slanting rain, stands of bare trees in the fog, soldier’s spears and flags, they thread their way through one beautiful vertical arrangement after another. They enter the frame unexpectedly, from any side at any time, in stark contrast to the standard left to right movement we’ve come to expect from a hollywood film. They creep, muttering, in one direction and dash, screaming, back again in the other. And they walk in and out of stories.

Each time they stop a small tale unfolds, a small perfect interaction between them or the people they encounter. They start the film as fools, comic and ridiculous, but the thought of gold makes them nearly imbecilic; they can’t control themselves and they stumble and flail, and say things they aren’t supposed to say, and fall all over themselves trying to escape from their poor tangled fate. We laugh at them, but we empathize with them as well. They’re poorer than poor, and they’re caught in a violent struggle that holds no meaning for them, but could destroy their lives.

The princess (Misa Uehara) is also caught in this struggle. She, too, is bound by the history of her family to behave in a certain way. She’s pretending to be mute, but her expressions as she sees a world she’s never seen before–outside of the castle, with people who behave unpredictably because they don’t know who she is–her face as it lights up at the sight of ordinary people doing ordinary things, is wonderful to behold.

In the midst of all the death and violence, all the scheming and subterfuge, all the struggle to keep power and wealth, the travelers happen upon a fire ceremony. Everybody sings and dances as one, as they throw logs into a huge bonfire. Our friends are forced to throw all of their gold into the fire. The peasants are beside themselves with grief and worry, but the princess looks freed, transcendent, as she joins in the dance and sings the odd, dark, existential song. She recalls it later after they’ve been captured, and she sings it in a beautiful scene that places all of the beautiful and ridiculous drama of the movie, and of our lives, too, into a strange, somber, hopeful sort of perspective.

The life of a man
Burn it with the fire
The life of an insect
Throw it into the fire
Ponder and you’ll see
The world is dark
And this floating world is a dream.

I missed a few scenes because I was making the boys’ breakfast. When I returned, the princess sat in a wild tangled bower of bushes, smiling with a sort of happy wisdom, as at something she’d never seen or noticed before. I said, “Malcolm, why is she smiling.” He thought for a moment and said, “It’s the birds.”

This is a summery roasted vegetable dish. It combines new potatoes, beautiful red and golden beets, white beans, shallots, olives, capers, herbs and lemon for a bright roasty flavor. It would be nice with a sauce, like a pecan tarator sauce or a spicy tomato sauce. It makes a meal with some sort of grain–farro, millet, quinoa, rice and a salad, and it would make a nice side dish as well.

Here’s the main theme from Hidden Fortress. The soundtrack is spectacular.

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Chard and white beans with raisins, walnuts and smoked gouda

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Chard and white beans with walnuts and smoked gouda

Chard and white beans with walnuts and smoked gouda

If you’re following along at home, you’ll recall that yesterday found us, here at The Ordinary, seeking some solace from our busy thoughts in the form of quiet film scenes. David mentioned a film we’d watched last week, Le gamin au vélo, and I thought “ah, yes, of course.” I was going to add a scene from the movie to yesterday’s post, but in watching the scene, I realized that this was one I want to go on an on about, so that’s where we find ourselves today. The film is by the Dardenne brothers of Belgium, renowned for making emotionally and stylistically bleak and austere films, most notably La Promesse in 1996. They almost never use non-diegetic music–they don’t have a soundtrack. The sounds of the film are those that people make going about their day, and these sounds become oddly compelling as we become immersed in the rhythms of the character’s lives, as we learn their routine and become alert for any small change in the patterns. All of their films are quiet, they’re a succession of silent moments. And that’s why this scene is disarmingly beautiful. We’re given music! We’re given, specifically, a small, moving swell of music, like a warm gentle wave; a few notes from the second movement of Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto. And then we return to the quiet world of this ridiculously beautiful expressive boy, to the sound of his breath, and of his madly pedaling feet. Throughout the film, in certain scenes, this music washes over us, just a few notes, and then recedes. You feel that you need to hear the rest, you want the notes to resolve themselves. You want the boy’s life to resolve itself, you want him to care for himself, you want him to let somebody take care of him. The Dardenne brothers’ films, though beautiful, are often hard for me to watch. The very honesty and rawness that makes them wonderful makes them painful. Their characters are battered by life, conflicted and rejected, and they spend a lot of time alone. We’re compelled to watch them in their solitude, drowning in the silence of their own company, facing rotten choices and making regrettable decisions. They raise all sorts of questions for me, as a film viewer, and as somebody that hopes to one day call herself a filmmaker again. You could make a film this revelatory of human nature as it actually is–you could, and you probably should, but why would you? Why watch something so depressing? The older I get, I find I have less tolerance for unrelentingly grim movies. When I was younger I could watch anything, but now that I have children, I just can’t–particularly if the movie involves kids the age of my boys, as this film does. I don’t need a happy ending. I don’t want to watch sickeningly sweet saccharine feel-good movies, but I do need some small hopeful sign. So I will admit to you that when we watched this film, we stopped halfway through, and I read about how the film ended, and only then did we watch the rest. But we did watch the rest. Because in being entirely honest about human nature, you have to include moments of warmth and generosity and connection, and that’s what this film does, quietly, slowly, without melodrama or judgement. The few notes of Beethoven that we hear throughout the film are full of sweet sadness, the music veers between hope and despair, light and darkness, but it’s so beautiful that we need to follow it to the end, which they finally allow us to do during the credits. And that is why you watch a movie like this one.

Chard and white beans with walnuts, raisins and smoked gouda

Chard and white beans with walnuts, raisins and smoked gouda

Greens are my favorite! This time of year is the best! We’re getting greens by the armful from our CSA–chard, kale, spinach, broccoli rabe. I love to come up with new ways to prepare greens, and this one turned out really good. It’s a twist on the old chard/raisin/pine nut combination that I love so much. This one adds white beans and smoked gouda, for extra substance and flavor. We ate this with whole wheat pearled couscous, which I prepared “according to the package instructions,” except that I cooked the couscous in olive oil and herbs at first. You could eat it with pasta, rice, millet, farro, a big bed of lettuces, or as a vegetable side dish. You could eat it in a box, you could eat it with a fox.

Here’s the second movement of Beethoven’s Emperor piano concerto.

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Roasted beet and arugula salad with farro and smoky pecan-rosemary sauce

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Roasted beet and arugula salad

Roasted beet and arugula salad

When my brother and I were little, we had our own country. It was called Bouse, and it was top secret, so don’t tell anybody about it. Bouse was shaped like our dog, Tessie (her eye was a lake.) All of the animals in Bouse could talk, and they were all very friendly and happy–we had feasts and dances and plays. There were no people, no cars, no factories on Bouse, but in neighboring Karnland, there were only cars, or everybody was part car, I can’t remember, and they were enemies of Bousishians. All animals go to Bouse when they die, and some kind humans do as well.I speak lightly of Bouse, but it was incredibly important to me growing up, and in many ways remains so to this day. It was formed by who we were and what we believed, and it informed our beliefs and our behavior as well. Now my boys have a world of their own. It’s called World Tenn, and the world is made like a giant tennis racket with water inside, and everybody has shoes made out of tennis balls. My boys have different names there, and they have sisters and a baby brother and a dog who can fly. At first I was charmed by the stories, they’re delightful and inventive, but lately it’s starting to feel more serious for them, and I can’t account for how happy this makes me. Yesterday Malcolm and I took a walk after dinner. Malcolm is fun to ramble through the woods with, except that he always has to have a stick, and he always has to hit things with it. He smashes trees, he slices through weeds and tall grass. We’ve told him a million times not to, that it’s better to leave everything as you find it, that he might be destroying the homes of animals, birds, or insects. But he did it anyway. Yesterday he told me that he’s not going to do it anymore. “Why is that?” I asked. It turns out that it goes against the prevalent morality of World Tenn. The enemy of World Tenn is a king that hates mother nature and spends all of his time trying to destroy plants and animals. My boys have the job of protecting nature. Ack! It just kills me that they share a world forged in the fiery furnaces of their imagination and their affection for each other. And they’ve invented a moral code that they need to live up to. They’ve made their own political philosophy, their own religion, just like my brother and I did. Like all good religions it contains myths and far-fetched stories, it borrows from older tales and legends, it contains strife and violence, it reassures them with an afterlife, and it suggests a way to behave in harmony with the creatures of the actual world around them. There are portals into World Tenn–one is a beautiful winding path that branches off from the secret passage on the other side of the other side of the canal. This morning Malcolm told me that there’s one on the roof outside of his window, because a squirrel sat there for a long time, and didn’t seem scared of Malcolm watching him. Of course the real doors into their world are in their minds, and they can take that with them wherever they go. Whatever they do, they have the comfort and strength of their creativity, of their love for each other as brothers, of their lives as heroes, of a world all their own. And nobody can take that away from them.

Roasted beet and arugula salad

Roasted beet and arugula salad

When I made this sort of warm salad of arugula, roasted beets, farro, goat cheese and pecans, I kept the farro separate. I thought it might be the only part of the salad the boys would eat. Silly me! They gobbled down the beets, goat cheese and pecans, and didn’t have much interest in the farro! So you could serve this with the farro as a layer below the arugula, or you could mix it right in with the arugula if you liked. We ate this with tiny new potatoes, boiled and tossed with butter, salt and pepper, and I recommend this. It’s a serving suggestion!!

Here’s My World by the Rascals

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