Rebecca: Vegan Cordon Bleu

I love food and I love to read. As a result, the first week of each month, I'll combine these two interests in a post about food from literature. I'll mostly be sticking with books from classic literature, so you're likely to know the storylines anyway, but just in case you don't: warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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It took me a long time to read this book. Not actually to get through it; it is a riveting book that you won't want to put down once you pick it up. But picking it up was the hard part for me. The cover didn't help. As you can see, the cover of my copy looked like a romance novel. Other editions' covers are boring: plain text, plain colors; they make it look like an "important" (but not particularly interesting) book.

Plus, the first chapter is rough! The famous opening line "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" leads into an evasive, depressing, and somewhat confusing first chapter set well after the rest of the events in the book. This put me off at first. BUT when I actually finished the book, I quickly flipped back to the beginning to look through this chapter.

Even though I have a little disclaimer at the top saying there might be spoilers, and the academic in me laughs in the face of spoilers, I hesitate to ruin anything about this book for you. The joy, the craft, the genius of this novel is in Du Maurier's ability to build suspense throughout hundreds of pages. You can guess what's happening, you can think you know what's happening, and by a certain point you may be sure you know what's happening--but you're still waiting with baited breath for the big reveal at the end.

Okay, so that settles it: no spoilers. A safe plot summary: Our nameless narrator is a painfully shy young woman from a poor background who meets a dashing older widower, Maxim de Winter. Maxim marries her and takes her to his huge, lavish estate: Manderley. The young Mrs. de Winter, already feeling unworthy and out of place in her new surroundings, struggles with the duties of managing a household, one that teems with servants and rooms that still seem loyal to their dead mistress. No one wants to talk about Rebecca, the last Mrs. de Winter, except the creepy servant Mrs. Danvers, who brings up Rebecca mostly to make the narrator feel more unworthy and uncomfortable.


Mrs. Danvers being creepy in Hitchcock's film adaptation.

Over the course of the novel, the insecure little narrator begins to unravel some things that don't make sense about Rebecca's life and death, and Rebecca, though dead, becomes the most important, compelling figure in the text.

Other than the gothic tone and the compelling tension throughout Rebecca, my favorite thing was the main character, the new Mrs. de Winter. The narration is from her point of view, and we spend a lot of time in her head, going through her thought processes with her. I'm not a shy person, so our narratrice's (that's a word, right? I know I've used it before, so we'll pretend it is) inability to speak or step up at key moments frustrates me--but thanks to du Maurier's narrative, I at least understand why the narratrice acts the way she does, even if I wouldn't be that way myself.

The plot really centers around the fact that no one will be direct with anyone else. The narratrice doesn't understand the strange situation at Manderley, but is too shy and insecure to ask anyone directly. Maxim, her husband, is trying to protect her and, to an extent, himself, so he won't give her direct answers. Maxim's lawyer, his sister, and his brother in law all try to tip-toe around Maxim for fear they'll upset him by bringing up the past, and Mrs. Danvers hates everyone now that Rebecca's dead, so she won't say anything that isn't creepy and mean. If, in the first few chapters, our narratrice said "Look, Maxim, what is the story with your dead wife?" or "Mrs. Danvers, you are creepy and crazy and this is my house now, too," or "Frank/Beatrice/Giles [anyone, actually], just tell me what's going on with my husband and household," there wouldn't be any tension. But again, the best part of this book is that tension. We understand the mindset of the narratice so well that we see why she doesn't say things like that, even if she really wants to; even if we really want her to.
Despite all the actual action that takes place, for me, the turning point of the novel is a conversation between Maxim and his wife. This is the genius of Rebecca: the book builds up lack of communication so well throughout that a conversation between a husband and wife is the exciting climax. And it is exciting. Again, trying not to risk spoiling anything, after this moment, the main character begins to have more confidence and more volition. Since we, as readers, spend the entire text in her head, watching this turn is incredibly satisfying.

And here is where the food comes in. The food that the kitchen prepares for the de Winters and their guests is a point of power for creepy Mrs. Danvers. She almost bullies the shy narratrice into what they will serve for guests. After the climactic discussion, when our narratrice begins to act with a will of her own, she directs the kitchen and Mrs. Danvers what to make and how to serve it. It's a minor point in the book, but a big deal for the main character--and, because we've been sharing in her thoughts and anxieties, a big deal for us.

When I first finished Rebecca, I thought, well boo, I can't write about this for my blog, because all the food in this is not vegan, and wouldn't be fun to veganize. The characters eat baked chicken, souffle, salmon and lobster mayonnaise (what the heck is that, anyway?). Ritzy stuff consisting of several animals. Not themes I wanted to incorporate into my blog, anyway.

Until the boyfriend's birthday. He requested, for dinner, a vegan version of Chicken Cordon Bleu. I was hesitant to comply, as I'd never had a non-vegan version, but then, I don't think he had, either, so I gave it a shot. And, while making it, I realized: Chicken Cordon Bleu is exactly the decadent, fattening, multi-animal kind of dish Mrs. Danvers (the creep!) would have served.

Finding a good substitute for the chicken was tricky. I thought about seitan, but wasn't sure how to flavor it; I wanted a light flavor, and most seitan recipes are rather heavy. The texture, too, needed to be bake-able, not to dry out. I ended up going with Veganomicon's Chickpea Cutlets. With their lemon zest and added beans, the cutlets tasted bright and didn't dry out in baking. A great choice. Also, for the filling: I dislike buying most vegan cheeses and fake meats, mostly because they're expensive and not usually very tasty, but I only had a couple hours to put together this dinner, and I didn't want to mess anything up by making a too-thin or too-thick cheese sauce of my own... and it was really hot, so I didn't feel like using the oven to make homemade tofu bacon. I bought and used Yves Canadian bacon and Follow Your Heart cheese, but feel free to use/make your own favorite kinds of vegan bacon/cheese.

Finally, I read through dozens of recipes for Chicken Cordon Bleu, and there didn't seem to be a consensus as to whether you bake the chicken or saute it in butter. I went for baking, but I suspect that with gentle treatment, sauteing would work. I include sauteing ideas in my instructions below.
Vegan Cordon Bleu

1 recipe Chickpea Cutlets (from the Veganomicon) (Because I'm allergic to nightshades, I always leave out the paprika and just put in 1/4 tsp or more of black pepper. It still tastes awesome.)
4 thick slices of vegan cheese (or 1 cup shredded cheese or thick cheese sauce)
4 slices vegan Canadian bacon (or normal-sized veggie bacon)
Bread Crumbs--about 1 cup should do, on a plate or in a shallow bowl.

If you want to bake these, preheat the oven to 375, and generously grease an 8x8 baking dish. I strongly recommend greasing the dish by melting 2 T margarine in it by putting it in the oven as it preheats. The buttery taste is all the more decadent. If you want to fry/saute them, see below.

Make chickpea cutlet dough according to the recipe. Divide into four equal parts. Take one of the fourths, and knead and stretch it into a strip at least 4 inches long and 2-3 inches wide. If you can get it wider, all the better, but you don't want any holes in it. Because gluten is so elastic, it'll shrink if you don't keep tugging it back as you work. Once you've got it to a good size, put the Canadian bacon down along one end, put the cheese on the middle of that (one slice, or about 1/4 a cup if you're using shredded), then roll it up, starting at the bacon/cheese end. The gluten will stick to itself pretty well. Close the ends upon themselves (if you can't do so without tearing the dough, don't bother). Roll the completed rolls in the breadcrumbs, making sure to get all sides. Repeat with the other three segments of dough.

If you are baking them, put the four rolls, seam-side (where you sealed the roll) down, in the baking dish. Brush a little oil/melted butter over the top of each one. Bake for about 30minutes, until the breadcrumbs start to turn golden-brown.

If you want to fry/saute them, heat your oil/margarine in a cast iron pan over medium heat. If your rolls are holding together well and you can be very gentle in flipping them, then put them in the pan as is. If they look like they might come apart, stick a toothpick through each one, and trim the ends of the toothpick that stick out, so it'll saute on those sides. (Just remember to remove the toothpicks before you eat!) Rotate the rolls as they cook, making sure each side gets to a nice toasty golden color. This might take a while (up to 20 mins with all the rotating), and you may need to add more butter/oil if the breadcrumbs soak it all up, but it'll be very decadent and delicious.

These don't need a sauce, but if you want to, serve with a salad that has a ranch-type (that is, creamy) dressing, or pour beurre blanc over the vegan cordon bleu, which I'll feature in an entry next week!

[EDIT: GUYS, I just remembered: "Narratrice" is French. While I like English's abundance of gender-neutral words, sometimes when you're talking about a female narrator, you just want to be able to use a word that means "female narrator." Thanks, French.]

Read a Banned Book! In the Night Kitchen: Mickey's Morning Cake

I love food and I love to read. As a result, the first entry of each month, I'll combine these two interests in a post about food from literature. I'll mostly be sticking with books from classic literature, so you're likely to know the storylines anyway, but just in case you don't: warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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BANNED BOOK WEEK 2010: 9/25-10/2


This week is Banned Book Week, a week which, according to the American Library Association, "highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States." You can read more about Banned Books Week at their website, and at the websites of all their affiliates.

Find a list of the top 10, 50, or 100 books that people most often want banned. You will be shocked. People aren't trying to ban, say, books on how to build bombs. No, they want to ban books most of us read in middle and high school, ones we considered boring. No specific type of book is left out of these lists: classics, books written last year, books by minority people, books by old dead white men, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, adult books, young adult books, children's books. Some examples: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bridge to Terabithia, Of Mice and Men, The Scarlet Letter, pretty much everything by Toni Morrison, And Tango Makes Three (a picture book retelling a true story in which two male penguins raise a baby penguin). And that's just scratching the surface.

To me, the most disturbing thing about these lists is a large portion of the books people want banned are for young adults or children. Shel Silverstein's books of poems, which I thought were too silly even when I was in grade school--controversial because they could be bad influences. Other books that people want banned because they contain seditious and/or rebellious behavoir: James and the Giant Peach, Catcher in the Rye, Harriet the Spy, the Lorax.
THE LORAX!!! A HUGE number of books are also controversial for "promoting witchcraft" or containing occult references: Harry Potter books, Narnia books, The Lord of the Rings books, A Wrinkle in Time. And any book, children's or young adult, that contains even the vaguest of references to human bodies and/or human relationships, becomes controversial for showing "sexuality" or "sensuality." Also, several books on these lists are controversial simply because they're scary for kids, or depict cruel behavior.

The reasons people want to ban books are, mostly, the exact reason those books shouldn't be banned: they depict religions or politics people may not agree with, sexism, racism, violence, sexuality, just plain meanness. But so does the world. These books exist and survive because we see our world and sometimes ourselves reflected in them. And if we don't like what we see, that's okay--these books could be perfect learning opportunities. If you are very strictly religious and you're afraid your kids will get ideas about witchcraft from reading Harry Potter? Don't try to keep your kids from ever seeing "the occult;" tell them what makes you uncomfortable about the idea of them reading about it. If you're afraid that rape and racism in Toni Morrison's books will scar your teenage daughter for life, remember that these forces are still active in the world--she should know about them and you should talk about them. (Besides, she's probably already seen Law and Order SVU, which is as disturbing and isn't nearly as well written.)

I think banning books is wrong. It is this simple: if you don't want to read a book, don't read it. If you don't want your children to read a book, tell them why, and let them make their own decisions. If you don't want me to read a book? BACK OFF. You can keep your head in the sand, but you can't, and shouldn't, force someone else to do the same.

Anyway. Read a banned book this week. The lists are full of good ones.

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As promised, today we'll talk about In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak. Sendak is a favorite with the banning-book-people: not only does everyone seem to want to remove this book from libraries, but Where The Wild Things Are is also controversial (because Max is mean and the monsters are scary). When I first heard In The Night Kitchen was controversial, I thought I understood why. Let me do a plot recap, you can see for yourself why you think this book is ban-worthy:

Mickey, a little boy, is in bed, when he hears a noise downstairs. He wakes up and suddenly floats out of bed, out of his pajamas, and drifts into a world where everything appears to be food-oriented: the night kitchen. He ends up dropping into a bowl full of batter. It's the batter for morning cake! Three huge bakers with little mustasches start adding ingredients to the batter.
For some reason the bakers assume Mickey is the milk, which completes the cake. Now to bake it! But just as they put the cake in the oven, Mickey pops out and announces:
Mickey, now wearing a cake-batter suit, kneads some dough into the shape of an airplane.
He uses his airplane to fly up to where the milk is and plays in it, washing off his batter suit. He pours the milk into the cake. Voila! The cake is NOW ready to be baked! He cheers, then slides down the side of the milk bottle, sliding all the way back into his pajamas and into bed. THE END.

Okay, my first thoughts when finding out this was a banned book? I've heard interviews with Maurice Sendak on NPR (here are two of them). The Sendaks, who were Jewish, escaped Poland to avoid being persecuted by Nazis when Maurice was a young man. His father saved money to bring over all their extended family: he got all the aunts and uncles from Maurice's mother's side (who, Sendak says, became the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are), but by the time he had money to bring over over his own family, they had already been taken to concentration camps. And killed. SO, with this knowledge in mind, I thought the whole "little boy being put into an oven by bakers with little black mustasches" thing could be controversial.

Nope. Censors didn't think of that. Okay, so I know Maurice Sendak is gay, maybe some homophobic parents don't want their children to read his books? Nope, apparently that's okay by the censors too.

You know why this book is banned?

BECAUSE MICKEY IS NAKED FOR HALF OF IT.
Are you serious?! Okay, first of all, half the children to whom this will be read are boys. THEY know what they look like without pajamas. Second, even if the little girls reading this book haven't already seen their brothers in the bathtub or having diapers changed, they know boys and girls are different. Are parents banning this just because they want to avoid an awkward anatomy conversation? Finally, COME ON. A naked little boy? THAT is offensive? Book-banning parents, how on earth did you raise your kids if you find naked children offensive?

Anyway. I liked the idea of a "Morning Cake," which is what the bakers in the Night Kitchen bake, so I found a recipe called "Country Morning Cake" and adapted it. (My version below is wildly different from that one, but I felt like I should give them credit.) This is a simple version of a coffee cake. It comes together quickly and, depending on how much sugar you use, can be pretty healthy. I tried it with half whole wheat pastry flour and it tasted great.

I'll mention now, the original recipe called for an 8" round cake pan. I recommend an 8x8" square baking dish, mostly because I don't have an 8" round pan. But recently I used a 9" spring-form pan beacuse I wanted it to look cute to serve to friends, and it came out nice, just shorter:

Mickey's Morning Cake
This cake itself isn't overly sweet, but the filling is very sweet. If you want to cut down on sugar in the recipe, you can reduce the amount of brown and white sugar in the filling by a tablespoon each. Serves 6-10, depending on how large you cut the slices and/or on how hungry everyone is.

3/4 C non-dairy milk
1 tsp vinegar

1/4 C brown sugar
1/4 C white sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp ground flax seed
3 Tbsp water
1/2 C canola oil
1/3 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 C flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3-1/2 C raisins (or other dried fruit, depending on how much you like dried fruit (I used 1/2 C cranberries above)

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly oil an 8x8" baking dish.

In a mixing bowl, combine the non-dairy milk and vinegar. Stir, then set aside to curdle.

In a small bowl, combine the 1/4 C brown and white sugars with the cinnamon. Mix them well. Set this bowl aside.

Return to the milk mixture. Add the water, flax seeds, canola oil, sugar, and vanilla. Stir (or whisk) well until all ingredients are combined. Sift in the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Pour half of the batter into the baking pan. (If you use whole wheat flour it might seem a little thick; if so, spread it evenly with a spatula). Sprinkle about half of the cinnamon/sugar mixture over it, then the raisins, and then the rest of the cinnamon sugar mix. Pour the other half of the batter on top. Smooth with a spatula if necessary. Bake for 25-30 mins, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Enjoy!

what to eat when you have a tooth extracted

According to all 5 dentists I have seen since my teens, I have interesting teeth. Actually, to quote one, “amazingly interesting.” Dentists have actually called their colleagues (or assistants/hygenists) into the room to take a look at my mouth—just to show said colleagues how “interesting” my teeth are. You can’t tell from just looking at me; to the casual observer, including myself, I have fairly normal, straightish teeth.

But apparently the top right side of my mouth is a madhouse. One tooth, the second-from-the-end, has an extra cusp on the side, known as “the cusp of carabelli.” If you look this up online, it sounds as if it’s not that unusual—but I’ve had 3 dentists tell me they’ve only read about it—in dental school. “Interesting,” but no problem. However, there is another feature to my mouth that makes dentists say “hmmm” and frown: the tooth that is the furthest back in my mouth is pivoted 90 degrees. It grew in that way, and until this past year never caused any problems—and because x-rays are two-dimensional, no one took special notice of it until it started to bother me.
Long story short, the tooth had to come out. But because it is such an “unusual” tooth (another word my dentists have used), it wasn’t a simple matter of yanking. No, it was a surgical extraction. The procedure is about the same as having a wisdom tooth out, only in a different part of the mouth, and, if you’ve ever had a surgical extraction, you know it is NOT VERY PLEASANT. It is awful.

The worst part is that I couldn’t chew on that side for a week, and even then only really soft foods. I was despondent when I heard this, not just because I had a gaping hole in my mouth, but because I don’t like soft foods. I only eat soup occasionally, I don’t like drinking my calories (ie, smoothies, etc), and I LOVE CHEWING. I knew the foods I made in the next couple of weeks would have to be delicious, to distract me from the pain and sorrow of not being able to chew.

I didn’t feel like eating for a while after the procedure, and when I did opening my mouth at all was pretty rough, so I mostly took small sips of wildwood’s drinkable yogurt and made a few varieties of green smoothies. As I could fit a spoon into my mouth, I started eating soy yogurt and ice cream. But I became bored with sweet things and wanted substantial meals, so I went on a crazy soup kick.
First, a Carrot, Ginger, and Beet Soup that is apparently in Didi Emmons’s Vegetarian Planet, but I found on this site. I normally only use beets for Borscht when it comes to soup, but the thought of pureeing borscht seemed wrong. I’ll definitely make this recipe again; the ginger was a nice addition to the beet and carrot flavor.

Peaches are in season (and delicious!!!), so Peach Gazpacho from Martha Stewart’s website came next. I changed this recipe by adding a slice of bread and more water to get it the almost creamy consistency of gazpacho. Being allergic to nightshades, I’ve never actually had gazpacho, but The Boyfriend loves it, and reported that this tomato-free version is just as good as normal tomato gazpacho. In fact, he ordered tomato-y gazpacho at a restaurant a couple weeks later, and though to me they smelled the same, he said my peach one tasted better. Even though the peaches I used were ripe, the gazpacho wasn’t very sweet, which was nice—I didn’t feel like I was having dessert for dinner. However, the leftovers the next day definitely seemed sweeter. I REALLY recommend this one.

I also REALLY recommend these two soups from the gluttonous vegan.
Finding the recipe for this Spiced Parsnip and Coconut Milk Soup was easily the best part of the tooth extraction ordeal. It is delicious and filling AND by this day I had discovered that I could eat bread if I soaked it in the soup for a long time first, which was really exciting.

Being the intrepid entertainer that I am, I had a small dinner party 4-5 days after the extraction and served the gluttonous vegan’s Smoky Sweet Potato Soup. Since paprika is a pepper (nightshade), I replaced the smoked paprika with about a teaspoon of liquid smoke. I sautéed some zucchini with onions and lemon juice until it was really soft and roasted chickpeas for the side/garnish. I tried one before we ate—I could actually bite down on it! It had been 5 days since I had chewed anything, and I was so happy I almost cried.

I ate things other than soups, too! I made pesto and mixed it into mashed sweet potatoes, and served it for brunch with basic scrambled tofu.
The Boyfriend got some nice crusty bread with this brunch, but I had to do without. (So I gave myself extra avocado.)

I was still eating yogurt for my snacks, but it was getting boring, so I figured out other ways to use it, including in this Arugula Dip. It’s based on a spinach dip and is mostly arugula, silken tofu, and plain soy yogurt with some garlic, salt and pepper. Embarrassingly, I still couldn’t really eat chips at that point, so I just sorta ate the dip off of the chip. The Boyfriend got to eat the chips, though.

I also made Blueberry Crisp, here topped with ice cream that for some reason hated the flash on my camera:
Finally, though I didn’t make the following recipe after my tooth was extracted, I wish I had. All of the information the dentist gives you afterwards, and all of the websites you read, advises to eat soft things like “ice cream, pudding, and jello.” This reminded me of a recipe I made just a week or two before:
Strawberry Jelloish Dessert
Serves 4-5. It’s not very sweet, but I prefer it that way; taste before you add the agar and add more agave/sugar if you want it sweeter.

1 1/2 cups strawberries, chopped into pieces no bigger than 1/2 an inch.
4 C water
1/4 C agave (or sugar) (more to taste)
1 Tbsp agar powder

Combine the strawberries, water, and sweetener in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally. After about 10 or 15 minutes, when the mixture starts to bubble, reduce the heat. Stir in the agar powder, and stir constantly until the powder is completely dissolved (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat, pour into either a large, flat bowl, an 8x8 baking dish, or, for swank-looking desserts like I made, into glasses. Chill in the fridge at least 1-2 hours.

Serve by itself, or garnished with fruit, ice cream, cashew crème (as below; soaked cashews and dates blended with vanilla and soymilk until whipped-cream-y), or some form of vegan whipped cream.


Anyway, I’m long back to chewing solid foods, thank goodness—but in case YOU need to go on a mush diet for a while, you’ll know what to do!

"Adopt a Shelter Pet" stamps

I love the Post Office. I'm just going to say that right up front. I know people who complain about the United States Postal Service, but I adore them. I write a lot of letters, enjoy sending packages, and really really love getting mail--and the USPS has never let me down. Well, no, once I think a letter I sent didn't get to its destination, but I've written hundreds of letters in my life, so a < 1% fail rate is okay by me. While the lines always move slowly at Post Offices, it's worth it to me to be able to send mail wherever I want. It's actually amazing to me: if I want to send a letter to someone in California, from Boston, it often only takes 3-4 days. They allow you to rent out PO Boxes cheaply. When you move, they'll forward your mail for free for a year! The post office is so cool!

My love for the USPS knows no bounds anyway, but ESPECIALLY this past spring, when they released their "Adopt a Shelter Pet" stamps. Every year, the USPS does a "social awareness" stamp line, be it for cancer, literacy, or children's health awareness--and this year, they are drawing attention to the need to adopt animals from shelters. (You can read the USPS press release about the line here, where the Postmaster General mentions how the awareness campaign aims to "encourage pet adoption and promote humane and responsible pet care.")
I've been using them since they first came out this spring, and I'm way more excited about them than the fruit or vegetable lines they had a couple years ago (and that's saying a lot, since I was really excited about those). (Guys, I can't help it: I really like stamps and mail.)

Not only do I love them just because they're stamps, but also because the stripy orange cat on the bottom right looks like Fritz, one of the three (former shelter) cats with whom the boyfriend and I live:
If you are interested in increasing awareness of shelter animals and supporting the post office (I love both of these things!), you can buy these stamps at your local post office or online. Do it sooner rather than later, because with unstable economies, you never know when stamp prices may change!

One Hundred Years of Solitude: milk candy

I love food and I love to read. As a result, the first week of each month, I'll combine these two interests in a post about food from literature. I'll mostly be sticking with books from classic literature, so you're likely to know the storylines anyway, but just in case you don't: warning: there may be spoilers ahead.

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I have taken two comprehensive literary exams this year: the Literature GRE, and the literary history comp exam for my MA program. One thing that becomes engrained into your mind as you study for the world literature portions of these kinds of tests: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works embody the genre of Magical Realism. In Magical Realism, the setting is the real world, our world, and feelings, actions, and situations are all ones that could happen in real life, but inevitably certain supernatural things happen--often unexplained. I like Realism as a genre, and as a result find Magical Realism to be a tricky line to walk: authors have to be very careful not allow readers to feel tricked ("oh, I didn't know this was a magic world, I thought I was reading historical fiction!"), nor to dwell on the magic parts too much (who wants to read pages and pages of characters acting surprised and trying to puzzle out miracles?). For me, Marquez's genius lies in his ability to make strange and unbelievable events occur in his novels with such a subtle touch that I, as a reader, don't even question whether it could happen in real life--I don't have time to wonder, because the story (like life) goes on. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, ghosts wander in and out of alchemy labs, rain occurs for four years straight, characters live to be 140 years old or more, and the vast majority of the characters just accept these things as true and move on with their day to day activities.

(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Though I like Marquez's model of Magical Realism, I didn't actually like this book. I read Love in the Time of Cholera a couple years ago for my book club, and thought it was decent, but have been told many times that Marquez's real masterpiece was One Hundred Years of Solitude, so I bought it at a second-hand bookshop. The book follows several generations of the Buendia family as they found, settle, populate, control, lose control of, love, and hate the town of Macondo. The book spans around 200 years (despite the title), and jumps from family member to family member, none of whom is a main character and all have similar or the same names. The book explores repetition between generations, how we pass down good and bad behaviors, how and whom we love and hate and worship and fight. But that's where my problem with the book comes in: there isn't a plot. The writing is cyclical (we often hear about events several times before and after they happen in the book) and the lives of the characters are cyclical, and the whole thing never goes anywhere until the family dies off and the book ends. The book is about generations and what kinds of things we pass down from generations to generations, and I can get into that idea; Zola and Balzac, two of my favorite French authors, both explore similar themes in their works, but their novels and stories actually tell a story. One Hundred Years of Solitude starts to tell dozens of stories, one for each member of the family and some for the townspeople around them, but it never finishes the stories it starts.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book, however, and the main focus of this entry, is the strong role women had in shaping the development of the Buendia family. The matriarch, Ursula, is one of the longest-lived characters in the novel, living almost to 140 years old (the other oldest character in the novel, Pilar Ternera, is also a matriarch of the family, though an illegitimate one). Ursula offers strength, support, and common sense throughout the affairs (business and love), wars, births and deaths that occur constantly throughout the text. She is practical and industrious, and even when she goes blind in her old age, she hides it from her family and runs the household as if she were still in her thirties. And, the reason I am writing about this book at all: she makes candy. Milk candy, to be specific, and shapes it into little animals and makes a living off of mass producing and selling milk candy from her kitchen. I am always interested in food in a novel, not just because I love food, but because it usually represents sustenance: who's giving it, who eats it, and what form it takes is fascinating to me. Here, Ursula, the matriarch, makes milk candy to support her family and offspring, as mothers do (with milk!), but also to keep herself constantly busy--the same way she does by raising her constantly-extending family.

With Ursula making little milk animals every few chapters, I began to wonder: What are these candies? What are they made of, other than milk? ARE THEY DELICIOUS? So I started to do some research into Colombian candy. Though it appears the vast majority of Colombian sweets are dairy based, the dairy desserts are usually caramels or sauces--nothing you could mold into animals that would hold their shape. However, Marquez doesn't set his novels specifically in Colombia, his homeland, so I expanded my research to include other Latin American countries. Dulce de leche, caramels, and milk fudge abounds in Latin American countries, but a specific Milk Candy was hard to come by, until I discovered Canillitas de Leche, a traditional Guatemalan candy made from sugar, milk, and cinnamon.
Canillitas de Leche literally translates to "Little Milk Legs," so called because of their shape. You can use your hands to shape them into these little oblong pillars, so, I figured, maybe someone as industrious as Ursula Buendia could shape them into animals! So I found a recipe online, veganized it, and took it upon myself to make what I think of as Ursula's Milk Candy.

Vegan Milk Candy (Canillitas de Leche)
Depending on the size, this will make 12-15 2-inch canillitas. You will need a candy thermometer.

1/2 C soymilk powder (I used Better than Milk)
1 1/2 C water
2 C sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp margarine (optional)

In a medium-sized saucepan, whisk together the soymilk powder, sugar, and water until thoroughly incorporated (ie, no lumps). Turn on high heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and stir constantly until the mixture reaches 240 degrees. This is going to take about 40 minutes, so have a book you can hold with one hand while you stir with the other. Don't let the temperature go over 240, because the mixture will get too hard too quickly when it cools: it's better to err on the side of a couple degrees cooler.

Remove from the heat, take out the cinnamon stick, and pour into a glass baking dish or large bowl, so as much of the surface touches the air as possible. Stir in the margarine, if using. Let the mixture cool until you can handle it. This, too, will take a while. Depending on the room temperature, give it at least half an hour before you go near it--it's very hot! Once you can handle it, roll small handfulls of the dough into little oblong pillars. The original recipe said you can dust your hands with flour to keep it from sticking, though I think having slightly wet hands would also help. Allow them to cool fully before eating and/or storing the ones you don't eat in an airtight container.
The end result has a texture like maple sugar candy, and I know this is going to sound weird, but it tastes a lot like maple sugar candy, too, only without the maple part. I'm not a big candy eater, but they are delicious! The cinnamon flavor is so subtle that you can't quite tell it's cinnamon, but it adds a nice level of complexity. Just a reminder: it's important not to let the recipe go over 240 degrees, because then the mixture will get too hard to work with as it cools. I know because I made this mistake, and only got to make about a third of the canillitas before the remaining dough in the bowl hardened and had to be scraped out. It was still totally edible, but not pretty:

Oops.

Crazy Rumors Lip Balm

I am a lip balm fiend. It started back when I was in elementary school, since I always licked my lips, making them red, raw, and swollen. I started simple: chapstick, then worked my way up to those Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, which had a huge variety of flavors. By middle and high school I was using all-natural and/or environmentally-friendly brands, and by college I added "animal-friendly" to my list of necessary traits of lip balm. Unfortunately, this meant that my once huge collection of lip balm varieties dwindled. Most companies use beeswax or lanolin or honey or something else not vegan to make their products. The few vegan lip balms I've had since are often disappointing: they come off easily, taste/smell funny, go bad quickly, or they melt or separate too easily.

But then I discovered Crazy Rumors.
And I went a little crazy. But I'm glad I did--the lip balm goes on smooth, doesn't feel too greasy, and feels like it lasts for at least an hour. The ingredients are awesome: about half organic, and all natural. That is, you can pronounce everything, and probably even picture it. It helps that they are made in small batches by the couple who owns the company. The flavors are strong, but though they smell sweet and have stevia in them, they aren't sweet at all, so I don't feel like I'm rubbing my mouth with a popsicle or something. They are all an opaque, waxy color, so they won't stain or tint your lips.

As my "small" collection suggests, Crazy Rumors has a variety of flavors. They have multiple lines, each of which contains 4 different flavors. The "Soda pop," "Fresh Squeezed," "A La Mode," "Gumball," and "Candy Cane" lines all sounded a little too fruity and/or Lip Smackery to me, though I did try the Raspberry Sherbert and the Peppermint Stick. Ther sherbert one does smell a bit too fruity for my tastes--I like my lip balms to be a little more subtle, and remind me a little less of when I was 11. The peppermint one is a decent, basic mint-scented lip balm--just what I wanted. The Brew line, however, sounded more up my alley. Tea-flavored lip balm?! I tried the Orange Bergamot/Earl Grey-flavored one and was a little disappointed, because it's really fruity, not too tea-y. Their flavors are strong, but the site says that, because they use all natural flavors, the flavors might fade a little over a year or so. Maybe I'll age my Orange Bergamot lip balm so the flavor mellows ; )

If you're like me and LOVE chocolate and/or coffee, you really should get all the flavors on the Perk line.
They're all coffee-themed, so there is a straight-up coffee lip balm (which I found to be the msot subtle of all the scents; it's barely there, but in a good way), amaretto (which is AMAZING), mocha, and french vanilla (my boyfriend, sitting across the table from me when I first put it on, asked "is that french vanilla coffee?" so their flavoring combination is spot on!). These are my favorite.

They have other line I haven't tried, but have read good reviews of on the ppk forum: Hibiskiss line of lip colors.

Right now, Crazy Rumors is having a HALF OFF EVERYTHING sale, as they (as in, the couple who makes them and their baby) are moving. Use the Voucher code MOVE to receive 50% off your order. This is an AMAZING deal, especially because their homemade, natural, mostly organic, vegan lip balms are now cheaper than most of the low-grade, questionable lip stuff you find at pharmacies.

Note: Crazy Rumors don't endorse this entry or even know it exists. This review is unbiased; I just love sales, lip balm and small family businesses and wanted to pass on the news.

fresh summer rolls and my new obsession with jellyfish

The boyfriend and I live on the third story of a three-story building. In the winter, our location allows us to save money on heat bills: heat rises from the units below, and comes down through the not-very-well-insulated roof. However, in the summer, our place is consistently 5 degrees hotter inside than out--and with temperatures consistently above 90 degrees in Boston this month, we have been sweltering. I still cook most nights, but sometimes we just have to escape to restaurants for warm food, or eat meals that involve little or no cooking.

The boyfriend is fine with salad every night, but not me! So last week I made fresh summer rolls, a quick dish that, depending on your ingredients, can be a simple side or appetizer or a filling entree. Note that summer rolls are the uncooked cousin of spring rolls, wrapped with rice paper instead of wheat-based wrappers. If you can't find rice paper your grocery store (though if your store has an "Asian" section, it should be there), they are always available at Asian markets. Like tortillas, they come in varying sizes; if you can only find the 12-inch ones, just use a lot more filling per wrapper. Unused wrappers should be stored in a resealable plastic bag so no moisture gets in.
Before you begin with the rice paper, gather and chop all of your fillings. The ingredients you use to fill summer rolls are flexible, but they should all be cool at the time of rolling. Good ingredients include (but are not limited to): lettuce, vermicelli noodles, cilantro, mint, bean sprouts, strips of marinated tofu (or other protein, cooled if cooked), chopped mushrooms (cooled if cooked), grated or julienned carrots, shredded cabbage, julienned cucumber.My ingredients were (clockwise from the top left): chopped mint, pea shoots, carrots, finely chopped mushrooms I'd sauteed with garlic and soy sauce earlier in the day, and spinach.
Fill a pie plate or baking dish with about an inch of lukewarm water. Slide in one sheet of rice paper, and allow it to soak until softened, about 30 seconds.
Remove from the water, hold it above the dish for a second to let the excess water drip off. It'll be really floppy and will stick to itself almost as easily as saran wrap. Lay on a flat surface. [Right now, as a sort of assembly line process, you can put another wrapper into the water while you fill and roll this one] Place 2-3 Tbsp worth of filling (or just small handfuls/spoonfuls of each ingredients) near the bottom of the sheet. Fold in the sides and roll it up from the filled bottom, just like you'd do with a burrito. The roll will stick to itself at the ends, so it won't come apart.
Ta dah! Now, for sauces. I like to have a variety of choices. Any bottled Asian sauces will do, but to make your own, I recommend a sweet-and-sour sauce that is almost equal parts vinegar and sugar or mirin. (For a thicker texture and less sweetness, do what I do and do equal parts apple sauce and vinegar, pictured below.) There are good recipes for this available all over the internet (for the first link there, scroll down to the bottom for a few different sauces, substitute soy sauce for fish sauce). Hoisin sauce is a HUGE favorite of mine; this recipe is really simple. (I omitted the hot sauce and added extra pepper.)Also, for something a little heavier and with more protein, a good peanut sauce is always nice. I made this this one but didn't heat it, just stirred it a lot... and added some extra water, and baked it with tempeh to really round out the meal:
Yum!

While I was making these summer rolls, I couldn't help but think of jellyfish. Of course, everything makes me think of jellyfish lately; I'm obsessed. Before this past month, I had only ever seen jellyfish in aquariums, so I assumed they were tropical creatures, like sea horses. However, I work by the Boston Harbor, and sometimes I take breaks to walk by the water. AND GUESS WHAT I HAVE SEEN IN THE WATER:
JELLYFISH. IN NEW ENGLAND. I've since told everyone I know about this, and almost no one else is surprised. I guess everyone but me knows that wherever there is salt water, there are usually jellyfish. Seeing these little guys by my office inspired me to do some research. Jellyfish especially thrive in areas that are overfished and/or get runoff and other pollutants in the water. While most jellyfish sting, these little guys, the one most common in New England, are Moon Jellies (Aurelia aurita), which do not sting.
Earlier this month, some friends and I went out to one of the Boston Harbor Islands, which have ample areas for hiking, swimming, and soaking in gorgeous views of Boston:When we first went on the beach of the island, the tide was out, and I discovered that jellyfish frequently wash up on shores during low tide. Though they are dead, they are still soft to the touch. My friends and I were at first too timid to touch them, since, after all, jellyfish who do sting can hurt you even when they're dead, as people on New Hampshire beaches learned last week, but two 5-year-old girls came running down the beach and were literally juggling the dead little jellies, so I guess there really is no need to fear moon jellyfish.
Seeing the jellies on the beach really allowed me a chance to see their anatomy; it's hard to see it when they're alive in the water because they move all the time. But one thing I noticed about their anatomy:
THEY TOTALLY RESEMBLE RICE PAPER.