Savory french toast (with truffle butter) and broccoli rabe pesto purée with chickpeas

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Broccoli rabe pesto purée

Broccoli rabe pesto purée

Yesterday we talked about Ivan Karamazov’s devil, and it got me thinking about the long tradition of imaginary friends in film and literature. Ghosts, angels, devils, goblins, spirits, pookas – each representing something important for the character they befriend. These phantasms are concocted from a little kernel of conscience, or guilt, or fear, or loneliness. Sometimes others see them, sometimes they don’t, they’re shifting and dreamlike, and they operate according to their own rules. They’re wise or bewildering, in turn; they speak in riddles, they speak a questionable truth, changing and suspect, like all truths. They’re a nuisance, but they can’t be denied. You can’t accuse them of being a bit of underdone potato and say you’d really rather get back to bed. We’ve got Hamlet’s ghostly father, Macbeth’s ghostly dinner guest, poor Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghost and three spirits, Elwood P Dowd’s giant rabbit, and, of course, George Bailey’s guardian angel. Jimmy Stewart seems to have a thing for imaginary friends! I love these last two examples because they remind me most of Ivan’s devil, in that their relationship with their friend is oddly human – frustrating, complicated, and even humorous at times. Harvey is so well-written! We watched it recently, and I’d forgotten just how full of poetry it is! Elwood, of course, is a very ordinary man, but he’s let go of the reality that held him back, and now he’s in a sort of blissful state of pleasantness. “Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it…Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she’d say ‘In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart… I recommend pleasant.” His pleasantness shines out of him as a sort of beam, and his thoughtfulness and kindness confuses but pleases everyone around him. He sets his world aglow with his kindness – touching off the same sort of warm light in everyone he meets. “Harvey and I sit in the bars… have a drink or two… play the juke box. And soon the faces of all the other people they turn toward mine and they smile. And they’re saying, ‘We don’t know your name, mister, but you’re a very nice fella.’ Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We’ve entered as strangers – soon we have friends. And they come over… and they sit with us… and they drink with us… and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they’ve done and the big wonderful things they’ll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey… and he’s bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed.” And then there’s Clarence, George Bailey’s guardian angel. “That’s what I was sent down for. I’m your guardian angel.” “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised…you look about like the kind of an angel I’d get.” His angel is just like he is! Disappointed, kind, well-meaning but baffled. They need each other, they’re connected, and they’re oddly good friends.

So today’s Sunday Collaborative Playlist is on the subject of ghosts, devils, angels and spirits. Some sort of interaction with a human would be nice, but a good song is a good song! I’ll make it collaborative, so feel free to add what you like. I think it’s a very good list, so far! It would make a good soundtrack for a halloween party! And for bonus points, can you think of any other examples of imaginary friends in film and literature? I’ve been racking my brain for a few that are just on the edge of my memory.

We made savory french toast out of the honey oatmeal walnut bread. We spread it with a bit of truffle butter, scattered a little mozzarella cheese on, so that it melted, and then topped it with pureed broccoli rabe and pesto mixed with chickpeas and olives. It was delicious! So delicious that I don’t have a piece of french toast left to photograph. I wasn’t going to tell Malcolm he couldn’t have another piece, just so I could save it for a picture! That would be crazy! This was a quick, easy, satisfying, comforting winter meal. I added a little smoked paprika and rosemary to the french toast, which was nice. This would work with any bread you like, and it would be fine without truffle butter, although that did add a beautiful facet of flavor.

Here’s the Angel/devil/ghost/spirit playlist so far!
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Honey oatmeal walnut bread

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Oatmeal walnut bread

Oatmeal walnut bread

Today, friends, I’d like to talk about one of the most singular applications of ordinariness that I’ve come across. I refer, of course, to Ivan Karamazov’s devil. Here he is…

    This was a person or, more accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a particular kind, no longer young, qui faisait la cinquantaine, as the French say, with rather long, still thick, dark hair, slightly streaked with grey and a small pointed beard. He was wearing a brownish reefer jacket, rather shabby, evidently made by a good tailor though, and of a fashion at least three years old, that had been discarded by smart and well-to-do people for the last two years. His linen and his long scarf-like neck-tie were all such as are worn by people who aim at being stylish, but on closer inspection his linen was not overclean and his wide scarf was very threadbare. The visitor’s check trousers were of excellent cut, but were too light in colour and too tight for the present fashion. His soft fluffy white hat was out of keeping with the season.

    In brief there was every appearance of gentility on straitened means. It looked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle landowners who used to flourish in the times of serfdom. He had unmistakably been, at some time, in good and fashionable society, had once had good connections, had possibly preserved them indeed, but, after a gay youth, becoming gradually impoverished on the abolition of serfdom, he had sunk into the position of a poor relation of the best class, wandering from one good old friend to another and received by them for his companionable and accommodating disposition and as being, after all, a gentleman who could be asked to sit down with anyone, though, of course, not in a place of honour. Such gentlemen of accommodating temper and dependent position, who can tell a story, take a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion for any duties that may be forced upon them, are usually solitary creatures, either bachelors or widowers. Sometimes they have children, but if so, the children are always being brought up at a distance, at some aunt’s, to whom these gentlemen never allude in good society, seeming ashamed of the relationship. They gradually lose sight of their children altogether, though at intervals they receive a birthday or Christmas letter from them and sometimes even answer it.

    The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured, as accommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion might arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise-shell lorgnette on a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive gold ring with a cheap opal stone in it.

This is Ivan’s devil, who may or may not be a figment of Ivan’s fevered imagination. He’s an extremely ordinary fellow! He doesn’t have the decency to wear horns and a cloak, like a devil should. He’s shabby, and dull and embarrassing. Ivan hates him with a passion, he represents everything Ivan despises – everything within himself he hates, facets of his boorish father and elements of Russian society that Ivan disdains. Ivan calls him stupid and foolish, which is the worst thing a person could be, to Ivan. And yet his devil is not stupid at all. He’s extremely clever, of course, because he’s part of Ivan, he shares Ivan’s brilliance. He’s articulate, even witty, and it’s obvious that Ivan has a strange delight in talking to him – in testing him and trying to catch him out, in trying to untangle his devilish riddles. Ivan has met his match, and it is piquant to him, it pierces him almost to madness. He’s sure this devil has the answers to all of his questions, all of the questions that won’t let him rest. It’s such a strange, nightmarish, beautiful passage. The devil has Ivan tied in desperate knots, trying to understand if he is real, or merely a figment, and in the end, it seems he’s both. “Yet such dreams are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests…. The subject is a complete enigma. A statesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep. Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which had not entered your head before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare, nothing more.” In an odd way, it makes you understand and love Ivan better. He’s depressed, and he’s not sure why, but you know that he feels love as well, which is something he would deny, and that he’s almost frantcially hopeful despite his cynicism. I wonder what my devil would be like, made up of all of the parts of myself and the world around me that I hate and fear. Maddeningly ordinary, no doubt, but very dull as well. Probably better not to think about it!

Honey walnut oatmeal bread

Honey walnut oatmeal bread

This bread was very nice, I thought! Subtle. It has walnuts and oats, both toasted, but they’re ground to a fine crumbly consistency, so they don’t overwhelm the bread. It’s got a touch of honey, a touch of black pepper, so it’s a little sweet and a little spicy. Very good with soup, very good toasted the next day with cinnamon sugar, and lovely made into savory french toast, which I’ll tell you about another time.

Here’s Andrew Manze playing Tartini’s Devil’s Sonata.

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Broccoli and chickpeas in coconut curry sauce

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Broccoli chickpea coconut curry

Broccoli chickpea coconut curry

Well! I’ve finally finished Brothers Karamazov, and to celebrate we’re going to have a party. I sent Malcolm to the store and I told him to tell the shopkeeper that Claire sends her greetings, “and will be there directly…. But listen, listen, tell them to have champagne, three dozen bottles, ready before I come, and packed as it was to take to Mokroe. I took four dozen with me then…they know all about it, don’t you trouble…Stay, listen; tell them to put in cheese, Strasburg pies, smoked fish, ham, caviare, and everything, everything they’ve got, up to a hundred roubles, or a hundred and twenty as before…. But wait: don’t let them forget dessert, sweets, pears, watermelons, two or three or four — no, one melon’s enough, and chocolate, candy, toffee, fondants;” That being vegetarian versions of smoked fish and ham, of course! And David said I have to write a twenty page paper on the book, so I’ll share that here, shall I? Ready? Do you have your glass of tea and plate of salted fish and cherry jam? Let’s begin! I’m kidding, of course! No scholarly paper. However, I read that Dostoyevsky had intended to write a sequel about the life of Alyosha, but he died before he had the chance. So I’ve decided to take it upon myself to complete the task. A bit of Karamazov fan fiction, if you will. Of course, we’re going to sex it up a bit for our modern audience. No tortured discussions about spirituality or morality – there’s just no market for that these days. Instead, it’s all going to go like this… Lise, of course, is a vampire. Weak, pale, pretty and wicked, what else could she be? But she’s one of those sparkly vampires. And she bites Alyosha, and then dresses him like this, “I should like you to have a dark blue velvet coat, a white pique waistcoat, and a soft grey felt hat….” And then Alyosha, instead of wandering around trying to solve everybody’s problems and worrying for their souls, will solve all their problems by relieving them of their souls, and turning them, too, into sparkly vampires. Meanwhile, Dmitri’s attempt at escape from prison (which will be described in nail-bitingly extensive detail) will fail, and he’ll be sent to Siberia in exile. But this won’t be a dull, workaday work camp kind of story. Oh no! It will be subtitled Survivor: Siberia, and will tell the tale of a bevy of lordly types roughing it in a grand competition in the frozen wastes of Siberia. They’ll be voted out of exile one at a time, until the winner remains alone. Sadly, he’ll still be alone in exile for twenty years, which will be dull, so we’ll forget all about him. And Ivan, broody young Ivan, will provide the comic relief, as he sets up an apartment with his pesky devil, and they bicker humorously about whether or not either of them exists! Until, of course, he’s turned into a vampire by Lise and then… Well, I confess I haven’t figured out how to end it yet. Something big! Something thrilling! Leave them wanting more! Yes. Actually, I feel a little irreverent for speaking of Brothers Karamazov in this way! It touched me very deeply, and gave me much to think about, and I feel such genuine affection for Dmitri, with his wild impulsive ways and his generous heart, Ivan, with his oddly hopeful despairing cynicism, and, of course sweet, honest, strong Alyosha.

So, broccoli, chickpeas and corn in a curried coconut sauce. This was delicious! And every member of the family liked it and ate several helpings, and I ate the leftovers cold before bed one night. It struck me that the mix of ingredients and spices was a little odd, but I liked them all together. It’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and quite savory all at once. We ate it over basmati rice, and that was nice!

Here’s Saint Behind the Glass by Los Lobos (from Nacho Libre), because it seems to fit!

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Mashed potato popovers

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mashed-potato-popoversIt feels so good to get your appetite back after you’ve been sick. I love that moment of realization that what I’m experiencing is hunger and not nausea. I like to be hungry – it makes me feel healthy and alive. I know that it’s a privilege to feel this way. Not to feel hunger, of course, which is fairly universal, and is decidedly horrible if you don’t have food for yourself or your family. I know it’s a luxury to enjoy hunger, to know that you have a meal coming – that you have all the food you need and more – and to know that you’ll relish it more for being hungry for it. It strikes me that we complicate hunger these days – we eat when we’re not hungry, we eat more than we want, we have appetite suppressants, for god’s sake! What an insane idea! What an indication that we have too much, that we’d need to simulate sickness to try to make ourselves more healthy. This is one of those times that I look at my boys, and they seem to have it all figured out. They have good appetites, it seems as though they’re always hungry. So they eat what sounds good to them, until they’re full, and then they stop. It’s so simple! It makes so much sense! And it has so little relation to the way most adults eat. It’s harder to earn our food these days. We sit all day at desks or computers, we snack constantly, we don’t “build an appetite.” I love the idea of a healthy appetite – not just for food, but for learning, and living, for ideas and enjoyment and music and art. I like the idea of voraciously reading or writing or drawing or cooking – it seems all connected in our spirit, and when one fades, they all fade. Just as you can be sick in your belly, you can be sick in your soul or your heart or whatever you call the part of you that makes you feel creative and curious and alive. And you can spoil these appetites, too, with too much snacking on all the noise from the computer and the television and the tabloids, so you lose that keen edge of hunger. I’ve read that all animals instinctively know what kind of food they need. If they have some sort of deficiency in protein or a nutrient, they’ll seek out foods rich in those things. Humans must have that, too, under layer upon layer of ideas about what we think is healthy or we’re told we should or shouldn’t eat, under all of the nonsense that passes for knowledge. And we must have this instinct, too, about what we need to feed our minds to make them healthy and alive, so that they can work and grow. Of course, sometimes it’s nice to cuddle on the couch with your ten-year-old son, eating junk food and watching dopey historical dramas! Sometimes that’s what you’re hungry for, and that makes it good for you, too.

I’m better, but I still feel a little blurry in my head today, so I hope you’ll forgive all the nonsense I’ve been prattling! There are some clear ideas under there somewhere. When I first regained my appetite, I wanted soft, mild comforting foods. I wanted mashed potatoes and popovers, and I wanted them all at once! So I combined them. David said that these are the food equivalent of a warm snuggly blanket. They’re flavorful with rosemary and black pepper, they’re soft with mashed potatoes and eggs and cheese, they’re nourishing, and they’re delicious! We ate them with carrot parsnip and apple soup, and it was a lovely meal! They do pop up, but, obviously, not as high as regular popovers, and they deflate pretty quickly. But they still taste lovely!

Here’s Bob Marley with Them Belly Full.
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Parsnip, apple, carrot and red lentil soup

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Parsnip apple carrot soup

Parsnip apple carrot soup

I’m still feeling a little dazed, dizzy and down from being sick the other day. (Or maybe just from being Claire, but we’ll blame it on the sickness.) Last week I was thinking a lot about discouragement and ambition and the connection between the two – being afraid to try, being cabined, cribbed, confined by saucy doubts and fears. I was thinking about failure and success, about why someone tries, and how they determine whether or not they’re successful. And then I got sick and felt completely empty – like the black holes that Isaac likes to talk about. And then I came back to life and the world seems, honestly, a little overwhelming. Too much information, too much useless chatter, so much strange bad news. I feel very earnestly and passionately confused, which is actually a good feeling, like recovering your appetite, it feels good to care, good to think, good to be in a muddle. And it’s a good excuse for the nonsensical ramble pouring forth before you. I want to clear my head of all the clutter and distraction, I want to fill it with good things, I want to create a … well, a sort of a sourdough starter of thoughts in my head, a little culture of thoughts, and feed the starter with fascinating thoughts that other people have thunk, and let those ferment until they make sense to me, and watch it grow and become wild and full and, ultimately, nourishing, in conjunction with other ingredients that I might pick from anywhere! I want to take this nagging empty, insignificant feeling and fill it up with some sort of light. I spent some time this morning reading Emerson’s essay on self-reliance, and so much of it resonated that I’ll tell you all about it. That’s right, I’m going to quote an essay that’s all about the importance of not quoting other people, of thinking for yourself and forming your own ideas. Emerson says, “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within,” and I love the idea of this, as it speaks to me in my current mood – the idea that we should learn to ignore the judgments and values of others, their chatter about what is important and what is wise, and even what is good, to listen to the spark of light within ourselves, and to give life and value to that. “If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.” You won’t worry about your abilities, or compare them to those of others, if you’re focussed honestly on the light within yourself – your own spirit, your own soul. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” When David came home for lunch today, he said his idea of a good vacation would be to be Isaac and Malcolm for a while – to look forward to everything and feel good about your place in the world and about what you think and what you make and what you enjoy. As Emerson said, “The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict.” I think its harder than he makes it sound, looking out from your corner and watching people and facts pass by, it’s a lot of work, but they have fun doing it, in their swift and summer-y way. Well, that’s it for now, folks, but you haven’t heard the last of this foolish train of thought! Be forewarned!

To quote Emerson one last time…”A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Of course, Emerson was speaking of the foolish consistency of starting each and every meal with olive oil, shallots and garlic. Last night I made this soup, and I didn’t want it to taste like every other soup I have ever made, so I decided to leave our shallots and garlic altogether! Shocking, I know! I had some very great fears that it wouldn’t be flavorful. But it was extremely deliciously flavorful, and bright and comforting. Lovely and balanced and creamy. I used a larger ratio of carrots to parsnips and apples, but you could easily adjust that to your taste and to the contents of your larder, if you have such a thing!

Here’s Bob Marley with Wake up and Live. If ever a man ignored the wolf pack and let his own light shine, it was this man. Happy birthday, Bob!

    Life is one big road with lots of signs, yes!
    So when you riding through the ruts, don’t you complicate your mind:
    Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy!
    Don’t bury your thoughts; put your dream to reality, yeah!

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Collards and red beans with smoky masa harina pudding-bread

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Masa harina bread and collards

Masa harina bread and collards

So I seem to have brought some sort of stomach bug home from work this weekend. Ug. I feel better now, but I’m tired. I spent yesterday morning in bed with my eyes closed feeling like a big ball of nothing but sick-feeling pain. And then as I started to feel better, I watched the reflection from the windows on the ceiling, and the way it changed like rippling water every time a car passed the house. I felt like I was rocking a little, and the cars sounded like waves as they crashed by in the wet street. Did you know that the word “nauseous” comes from the latin which comes from the Greek for “ship”? I felt like I was on a bright ship lurching along on clear, light, choppy waters. I thought that this would be a good time to really think. Not just about all of the odd figures I saw in the brown patches on our cow-print curtains, but to think about big things, about everything. To form thoughts and connect thoughts, and try to sort things out, and try to remember, and try to plan. It turns out lying in bed fighting off nausea is not a good time to think. I felt very old and not strong enough to fight off a creeping feeling of dispiritedness, and now I feel very tired. And that’s all I’m going to say about that! I’ll talk instead about Joan Aiken, because I love Joan Aiken, and I find her incredibly comforting. Joan Aiken was a writer of brilliant children’s books that never caught on in America, which I think is a crime. Her characters are so lively and engaging, her settings, with their invented historical epochs, so appealing. I love her vast knowledge on small and eccentric subjects – fabrics and styles, music and paintings, nautical matters. And food. Joan Aiken’s books are delicious. She brings her characters into situations of great deprivation – they’re cold, wet, hungry, poor and miserable – and then through some gracefully wrought turn of events, they suddenly find themselves in warmth and comfort, with something tasty and toasty to sooth them. Even the names of the dishes bring solace – pipkins of soup, hampers of pies, and hot possets for all! In the way that certain foods can bring comfort when you’re ill, once you’re well enough to think about food at all, and certain books can bring comfort when your head isn’t so achey you can’t read, Aiken’s warm and timely meals strengthen and console, not just the characters, but the reader, too. Viz: Bonnie and Sylvia are ice skating through the grounds of Willoughby Chase when they find themselves impossibly far from home, with snow falling thick and fast, and wolves gathering in the shadows. What do they do? Take shelter in Simon’s cave, of course! Once they’re snug with his bees and his geese, our lithe and bright-eyed Simon makes them little cakes in the fire. “The boy had separated the fire into two glowing hillocks. From between these he now pulled a flat stone on which were baking a number of little cakes. The two children ate them hungrily as soon as they were cool enough to hold. They were brown on the outside, white and floury within, and sweet to the taste. ‘Your cakes are splendid, Simon,’ Bonnie said, ‘How do you make them?’ ‘From chestnut flour, Miss Bonnie. I gather up the chestnuts in the autumn and pound them to flour between two stones.'” As they’re leaving the cave, “The boy Simon dug in shallow sand at the side of the cave and brought out a large leather bottle and a horn drinking cup. He gave the girls each a small drink from the bottle. It was a strong, heady stuff, tasting of honey. ‘That will hearten you for the walk,’he said. ‘What is it, Simon?”Metheglin, miss. I make it in the summer from heather honey.'” OF COURSE HE DOES! Of course Simon gathers chestnuts in autumn and heather in the summer, and makes lovely restorative cakes and tinctures with them! And I love him for it! I could make a list a mile long of scenes such as this…spice cakes and plum brandy, ginger bread and applesauce, thick comforting chowder. But I’ll give you this bittersweet example, instead. I love Aiken’s Go Saddle the Sea trilogy. It’s so dark and wild and richly imagined; the characters so strong and complicated and bizarre. The central figure, of course, is Felix. He lives in Spain with his cold and unloving grandfather and great aunts. His only friend is Bernadina the cook. Her bustling kitchen is a haven for him, and she shows her love with special treats she prepares for him. When she dies, he visits her kitchen…”It looked as if she had been making herself a merienda just before she had taken ill. A pestle and mortar stood on the big scrubbed table with some chocolate in it she’d been pounding, and a platter held a pastry cake sprinkled with salt, my favorite food. Maybe she was going to sneak it up to me in my room. Now I couldn’t touch a crumb of it.” Poor Felix! One of my very great pleasures, here at The Ordinary, is to bring attention to books and movies and songs that I think should be better known. Joan Aiken is one of those things, in America at least. Put down your sparkly vampires and your derivative wizards, and discover the mad, wild, dark and beautiful world of Joan Aiken. It’s like a warm, restorative, complexly-seasoned posset!

This meal was very comforting in its way. The masa harina bread was soft and dense inside, which is why I think it’s pudding like, and it has the lovely mysterious flavor of masa harina. I love collards! They’re quickly becoming my favorite green. I don’t know why they’re not as popular as kale, but I’d like to announce my campaign to make them so!! Here they’re sauteed with red beans, tomatoes, and lots of lovely spices, like ginger, smoked paprika, and cardamom, to make them spicy, smoky and a tiny bit sweet. Delicious!

Here’s Bessie Smith with Thinking Blues.
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Roasted mushroom “steaks” with walnut black truffle sauce

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Mushroom steaks

Mushroom steaks

I’ve been thinking a lot about competition, lately. Mostly from watching my boys play basketball, I guess. I want them to do well, I want them to want to do well, I want them to care, but I don’t want them to be overly aggressive or mean about it. I don’t want them to think only about winning, at the expense of Love of the Game and all of that. I don’t want them, like MacBeth to be ambitious just because they’re ambitious, “I have no spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/ And falls on the other.” We all know that doesn’t end well! But I don’t want them to be afraid try! I don’t want them to feel discouraged because they’re scared they might not do well, or because they’re my sons and it’s contagious. When I see Malcolm get the ball on the court, I have a little panicky voice in my head saying “get rid of it! get rid of it!” because that’s how I would feel. But I don’t want him to feel that way! I want him to make a brilliant team player-y pass or run gracefully and confidently to the basket and make a beautiful lay-up. I’m conflicted about competition! I’m ambivalent about ambition! And I actually find it a little frightening to think about how everything seems to be a competition. School, work, games, everything. You can only do well at the expense of others. You can only succeed if others fail. That doesn’t feel good. When you submit a film to a festival it’s not about sharing a lovingly created work of art and watching other people’s lovingly created works of art. You’re judged when you submit it, and once you get in, you’re judged again! I think it’s no secret that anything created just for the sake of winning a competition (any competition – the race for money, the race for popularity, the race for fame) is not going to be as soulful, substantial or honest as it could be. I’ve never responded well to this kind of pressure, because I’m a contrary curmudgeon. I went to an extremely competitive high school, and it didn’t make me want to do better than everybody else, it made me want to be a rebel and stop trying. But I don’t wish that for my boys. I hope they’ll be able to do well at everything – do their absolute best – and I hope they’ll be able to achieve everything they want. And I hope that they’ll be able to do all this without wishing that others do badly. I hope they’ll love what they do with a passion, and pursue it with the purity of kindness and generosity.

So this week’s Sunday collaborative playlist is about competition, ambition, or the lack thereof. We’ve got songs like Toots and the Maytals’ journalistic Desmond Dekker came First, which tells how everybody placed in the intensified festival. Songs like Perhaps Vampire’s is a bit Strong by the Arctic Monkeys bemoaning the fact that everybody wants them to fail, and songs like Ken Parker’s Grooving Out on Life, about sitting aside from it all…

    I get my kicks from watching people
    Running too and fro
    And if you ask them where they’re going
    Half of they don’t know
    They`re the ones who think I’m crazy
    ‘Cause they don’t realize
    That I’m just groovin’, oh, groovin’
    Grooving out on life

And, finally, to the food! Why it’s the best meal anybody has made every and way better than everybody else’s!! I’m joking, of course, but it was very good! I wanted to make something special with my black truffle butter, so I decided to make these mushroom and walnut “steaks.” They might actually be closer to a sort of vegetarian meatloaf, or an old-fashioned nut roast. But I sliced them thick and lightly fried them in olive oil, and they’re substantial and satisfying, crispy out, tender in. The sauce is mostly walnuts, white wine and truffle butter. If you don’t have truffle butter, you could make the same sauce with some garlic and shallots. Or just serve these with a simple tomato sauce, or any sauce you like, and it would be just as good.

mushroom steaks with walnut sauce

mushroom steaks with walnut sauce

Here’s your collaborative playlist. It’s a pretty broad topic, so have fun! And feel free to add anything you like!
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Potatoes with meyer lemons and castelvetrano olives

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potatoes and meyer lemons

potatoes and meyer lemons

Here at The Ordinary, we have a rigorous exercise routine. It consists of charging up and down the towpath at breakneck speed with Clio for, oh, half a mile (and stopping to say hello to every single dog we meet.) This is followed by a session of jumping up and down with a can of beans in each hand whilst watching dopey TV on the computer. Every once in a while we run up and down the stairs, being careful not to fall. It’s high-impact, low tech, low-stress, and no monthly fees. And there’s nobody there to see but the dog, who lies on the couch watching with her bright eyes, compiling material for her book Humans do the Dumbest Things! We’ve collected all of this into a kit for each of you at home! For a low low price, you can have two cans of beans (or chickpeas!), a video tutorial on how to turn your computer on and find dopey television, a guide to all the dogs you’ll meet on the towpath, by name and temperament, and detailed diagrams on how to execute the complicated jumping up followed by the jumping down. And repeat. To be honest, this is my routine, and being a routinized person, I’m quite addicted to it. This morning I decided to do something different. After a dash on the towpath with Clio, I gathered Malcolm and we set off to shoot some baskets. The morning is icy cold, but the sun was struggling to warm the world. It hadn’t reached the basketball court, but it glowed in pale golden pools in the silvery branches of the sycamores around the court. The moon hung low in the sky, half-full, ghostly and fading. Wispy clouds stretched across as if trying to hold the moon in a box. The spirit of the night lingered in the day, and Malcolm said it felt like summer in winter, even though he was wearing pajamas under his pants, and had a hat on his head and a hat in his hand. Malcolm’s face was rosy and bright, and light collected in his huge luminous eyes. I felt alive! I felt vivid! The sun finally broke through the trees above the basket, and with each shot made sunspots in my vision that cast the whole world in a flash of rosy gold, like an old snapshot, or a polaroid, reminding me that this was a morning that I wanted to capture and keep. It’s good to break out of your routine, sometimes!

So we have meyer lemons and castelvetrano olives, and, as I warned, I intend to use them in every single thing I make until they’re gone. Olive brownies! I like this dish because, like the morning, it’s comforting and wintery, but very bright, too. I peeled the lemons in long slices, and put the rind and some rosemary sprigs under the potatoes. Their flavor spread upward as the potatoes cooked. I liked to eat the cooked lemon peel, which got a little crispy. Others didn’t so we just served the potatoes on top. And that’s how it goes!

Here’s Early One Morning by Elmore James.

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Chocolate covered caramel cake and salty toffee ice cream

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chocolate-caramel-cakeI was ridiculously excited this week to learn that a person can log into the OED online using … a library card number! I’m so tickled to think of my library card being as useful and valuable as a credit card – the key to uncovering unknown riches!! I think it’s awesome! (Full of awe, profoundly reverential. He did gie an awesome glance up at the auld castle.) I’m a logophile! I love words, I always have. The sound of them, their weight and flavor in your mouth, their shifting meanings. I’m a vague, blurry sort of person, and I’m more than comfortable with the instability and ambiguity of meaning – I’m delighted by it! I’m not clever enough myself to play with words, but I have endless admiration for those who do. My idea of a good time is to discover the hidden meanings behind language, and to see how much fun the author is having as they set you their riddles. Nabokov’s subject matter is often disturbing and depressing (to me) but his playfulness with language (with three languages!) is thrilling. “Haze, Dolores…What is it? The tender anonymity of this name with its formal veil (“Dolores”) and that abstract transposition of first name and surname, which is like a pair of new pale gloves or a mask? Is “Mask” the keyword? Is it because there is always delight in the semitranslucent mystery, the flowing charshaf, through which the flesh and the eye you alone are elected to know smile in passing at you alone? Or is it because I can imagine so well the rest of the colorful classroom around my dolorous and hazy darling…” Or fellow polyglot Tom Stoppard who bemoans the complexity and insubstantiality of language with loving relish…”Rosencrantz: What are you playing at? Guildenstern: Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.” And of course Stoppard is playing with the words of the writer most seemingly in love with words, one William Shakespeare. ““Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord?/ Hamlet: Words, words, words./ Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?/ Hamlet: Between who?/ Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.” I wish we gave words more weight and thought today, and didn’t devalue them as we sometimes do. Well, I wish that I did, anyway, to speak for myself!
I have to admit, though, that sometimes I find words overwhelming. I was going through some boxes in the attic the other day, and I found decades worth of notebooks and journals from every stage in my life. What a lunatic I am! Scribbles and notes and nonsense and sketches. Screenplays I filmed, screenplays I will never film. Stories I started, fell in love with, fell out of love with and never finished. Ideas for stories, random thoughts I penned while not trying to think of ideas for stories, usually in increasingly frantic and illegible handwriting. Little asides directed at whoever was sitting next to me as I wrote. Words words words!! No method, all madness! And why do I keep them? Why do I keep this dusty spider web of ink? I don’t know!! I should start a giant bonfire, and set the words free, to float into the air around us. If you’re a scribbler, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about! And it’s not just my nonsense that overwhelms me, it’s other people’s words, too. In a bookstore or library, the sight of all of these collections of words, so carefully crafted and combined, so ardently arranged, now sitting quietly on some shelf or another, bursting at the bindings with stifled words. It wears me out to think about it! But it’s beautiful, too, these worlds of words, so easily misunderstood, so accidentally powerful, so tricky, so musical, so full of life. Words words words.

toffee ice cream

toffee ice cream

We live in the “Used bookstore district” of our small town, which means that there’s a bookstore next to us and one across the street. I love them both! I love the smell of paper and ink and dust. I love the very old books – gorgeous stately objects – I love the trashy paperbacks with crumbling pages and lurid covers. And I love the soft caramels they have in a bowl by the register at The Phoenix. Wrapped in gold foil, so creamy and buttery and ridiculously good! I’ve been in a few times in the last week or so, and I take one every time. I decided to try to recreate their deliciousness in different forms, because that’s what I do. So I started with a small jar of condensed milk, and the rest is history! I made this cake, which is chewy, crunchy, buttery and, yes, caramelly. The boys loved it! And then I decided to try the ice cream – I made it a tiny bit salty, and it has a wonderfully buttery quality, though there’s no actual butter in it. It tastes a bit like praline ice cream without the nuts. I’m addicted to it! It’s nice and creamy and melty, too.

And that’s more than my fair share of words for the day! Here’s Word Play by A Tribe Called Quest.

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Crepes with pretty roasted roots, castelvetrano olives, and black truffle butter

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beet-crepesThe other night I was listening to Isaac read before bed. Bit of Dr. Seuss. He came to this passage:

    And when you’re in a slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done. You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin! Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in? How much can you lose? How much can you win? And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind. You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

Well! It struck me as very poignant (Yes! I am going to use that word in every post!) to listen to these oddly beautiful words read in Isaac’s sweet voice, and think about what they mean for each of us at our different times of life. Isaac’s future is so full of decisions, large and small. He can go anywhere, do anything, be friends with anyone! He’ll have to figure out the way the world works, what people expect of him, what risks are worth taking, which people worth meeting. And knowing my Isaac, he won’t race at a break-necking pace, he’ll wind slowly through weirdish wild space, singing an amiable song, and drawing pictures of the strange creatures he meets there. I don’t feel so vexed about some of these things any more. I’m not all that worried about how much I’ll lose or win or the right way to get in. I do think about the windows, though – some lighted, most darked. I realize that I’ve always thought about the world this way – as if I’m looking in at other people’s windows, and I hope the dark ones are full of sweet moonlight and silvery shadows and peaceful dreams, and I hope the lit ones are aglow with friendship and warmth. I do think about the weirdish wild space. I do hope the weirdness and wildness are the inspired, creative, inventive, kind, and not the reckless why-would-a-person-do-that-to-themselves-or-anyone-else kind. I worry about my boys going through the unmarked streets and I wish I could give them a map and a lantern. I guess I’ve been thinking about what it means to be in a slump, to be discouraged. (I searched for the word “discouraged” in The Ordinary archives – it’s a frequent visitor! I must be a moody old cuss.) To be discouraged means to be without courage, and when I’m in a slump, that’s what it feels like. I don’t mind a lazy or unmotivated spell, I suppose that’s part of the cycle of our day-to-day life. But it feels bad to be afraid to try. Afraid of failure, or afraid that it’s just not worth the effort. Honestly my ambitions are so small, it seems a silly thing to even worry about! To make a nice meal, write something I feel good about, be patient and cheerful with the boys…just a small handful of little things, but they fall through my fingers, sometimes, and I drop them in the darkness of the wild spaces. Of course, the opposite of discourage is encourage, which means to give courgage. Just thinking about the meaning of it lifts me up a bit! It’s like the word “comfort,” which means to give strength, it’s a powerful word! Comfort and encouragement aren’t just like a pill to make you feel better for a little while, they’re like good sustaining food, that gives you the strength and courage to go on today, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And the strength and courage could come from anywhere around you – from the people in the lit windows, from discovering that you’ve gone into the right place and turned the right direction, from discovering that you just don’t care about sneaking in the back, you’ll walk right through the front door, or you’ll find another place, because there’s always another place, from walking to school with an Isaac who has new bright blue sneakers on his feet and a piece of cinnamon toast in his hand. Thinking about that lifts me up a little bit more. “This enables the birds to run lightly over the floating leaves of aquatic plants, by so much increase of breadth of support that they do not slump in.”

Golden beets, castelvetrano olives and truffle butter

Golden beets, castelvetrano olives and truffle butter

Another way out of a slump, of course, besides running over it on little bird’s feet, is to try something new and inspiring. This weekend David bought a small and wildly expensive tub of black truffle butter. He also bought some beautiful golden beets, and pretty carrots – pale yellow, bright crimson. And my favorite castelvetrano olives, as green as spring leaves. The whole time I was slumping my way through my discouraging job, I had the rosy picture of these ingredients in the back of my mind. When I got home I cooked them up like this…I roasted the carrots, beets and a couple of parsnips very simply with olive oil and rosemary. And then I tossed them while warm with a few spoonfuls of truffle butter and a handful of olives. I grated some sharp cheddar to be melted by their warmth, and made very peppery crepes to wrap it all together, because it’s fun to eat with your hands. Bright and warm and sustaining. If you happen not to have black truffle butter or castelvetrano olives, you could easily substitute regular butter and a bit of roasted garlic and kalamata olives (or any you happen to like!)

Here’s What’s Golden by Jurassic 5. What’s golden? My beets, that’s what!

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