Month: June 2014

Tuesday Reviews-Day: The French House

Tuesday Revews-Day

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“An American Family, a Ruined Maison, and the Village That Restored Them All”

Who wouldn’t be curious about a book with such an intriguing subtitle. Especially if that who happens to be me, at the time in the throes of purchasing my own home (which some would also have considered ruined where we just saw potential). In The French House, Don Wallace tells the story of how he and his wife Mindy came to own a falling-down house on the island of Belle Isle off the coast of Brittany, back in the 80s as fledgling writers living in Manhattan. 30 years after they purchased the home, almost sight-unseen, at the urging of a local friend and former school mentor of Mindy’s, the house went from ruin to what I would call full of character and quirks, and a fitting retreat in a French village that has staved off many of the modern advances and tourists threats over the decades.

The writing is infectious. Take, for instance, these passages from early in the book, a page of Instructions they uncovered in some old notebooks.

Bonjour et bienvenue—

There are a few things that have to be done immediately when you open the house. Please read ALL these points carefully.…

3. Water heater. To turn on the water for the water heater, go to the closet across from the cabinet. It is full of sporty stuff (tennis rackets, golf clubs, swim fins, masks and snorkels, spear guns, wet suits, Frisbees, bocce balls, all of which you may use after you complete every step of these instructions).
You want to get water going into the heater. To do this, peer behind the water take–at the base near the wall you will see a black switch. Turn it parallel to the floor. You should hear a clunk. Note: do not touch the red faucet. Nobody knows what it does. We think it connects to the secret core of hot magma that lies under the island and, if thrown, will result in worldwide catastrophe. You will have hot water in about three to four hours. And it will be hot. Very! Be careful not to scald yourself….

4. Bathroom. Go upstairs to the bathroom. By the toilet you will see boxes of the septic tank chemical that will keep everything smelling sweet. Put two packets in the bowl and flush.
Despite this, you may notice a sort of sickly odor that rises like a miasma at night when the entire village is humming behind closed doors and windows are fogged from all the shower baths taken in succession. This odor should be ignored; taking notice of it will only encourage it.
For Women Only: You will note that there is only one tiny mirror in the bathroom and no mirrors anywhere else in the house. This is deliberate and done for your own well-being…we recommend cultivating the Belle Ile look of bohemian-athletic-seaside dishevelment to go with that Coco Chanel suntan you’re working on. The same goes for clothes….
For Men Only: If you have any male children, it may be wise to have Daddy demonstrate how the toilet lid works, or fails to, if you’re attempting to take a whiz while standing up. Just when you least expect it–bang!–the lid falls like a guillotine.
Don’t worry if you botch this demonstration. Even if your son starts wetting the bed because you nearly amputated your own unit, you’re in luck–not for nothing is Belle Ile known as “the island of psychiatrists.” There are two in Kerbordardoue, another three in adjoining villages, and then all sit down at the beach together, which makes an informal consultation easy to arrange.

5. Stove/Oven: France uses propane for cooking, which is interesting if you think of her distinguished pedigree for cuisine and how, in America, a propane tank is associated with backyard barbecue or football tailgating.
Under the sink is a blue bottle with a round disk valve on top. Turn this all the way open. Wait a minute and turn on a burner and light a match to test it. Note: We turn off the blue gas bottle at night. (Just our neurotic American ways, I guess, but once you read about the the oven you will understand.)
Important oven note: sadly, the oven has become so unpredictable we have to say: try to avoid using it. The dials mean nothing, so you may think you have turned it off and it is merrily filling with gas.  There’s a reason the knobs are unreliable. One afternoon our son Ror’s older cousin Devo filled the stove with gas before lighting the oven. The resulting explosion removed his eyebrows and budding soul patch. It also blew the knobs across the room….I think one knob is still embedded in the wall, the others dangle on the stove, looking deceptively functional….

6. The fireplace: Works well….just keep the fires small, especially at first, so the smoke has a chance to draw up the chimney and dry it out after the long winter….
P.S. The barbecue in the fireplace goes outside, to the right, where our house’s white wall meets the rough stone of the shed….
P.P.S The bicycle in the chimney is also to be removed before starting any fires. If you can get the chain to stay on, feel free to ride it. Don’t ask why it’s there. That’s a story for another time.

Reading this before bed that first night I stopped and reread the entirety of the Instructions to Todd, stifling some giggles along the way. I don’t think the author would mind in the least, though.

Go ahead and laugh–at the joke, at the house, at us. We’re used to it.

With an introduction like the above, you might get the idea that The French House is all droll humor and quips when in reality it gets real, fast. They buy the Belle Ile house, their building in New York City goes co-op. They have a child. They have career struggles, are unable to make it to their crumbling island paradise some summers due to family and financial dramas, all while trying to orchestrate needed repairs on a shoestring via letters and phone calls.

Frankly I find it frustrating to deal with a contractor 30 miles and a state line away, I cannot imagine how it was for them; or, rather, couldn’t if not for Wallace’s way of getting to the point while maintaining a gallows-humor even through the rough patches. There were highs and lows, as is to be expected in a story that spans three decades, and the “end” is bittersweet as so much changes in this village we come to know and love through the story-telling skills of the author.

It’s not just the story of a couple or their home, it’s the story of a way of life, both one that pre-dated them and the one that will follow.

I read this book in spurts. It was easy to devour (just another section more) but I wanted to spread it out. Unlike a series where you know there’s more to come, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the Wallace family or their village, so I would force myself to stop, put down the Kindle, and go to sleep. Now that I have read to the end, I’m left with the feeling of having had a wonderful, virtual vacation on that island, leaving behind good friends and fond memories.

For the rest I’ll just have to subscribe to his tumblr feed: DonWallaceFranceBlog.tumblr.com

***I was provided a digital review copy of The French House for purpose of review. All opinions expressed are my own. The French House was published June 1, 2014, by Sourcebooks.***

Menus For An Average Week

Nibbles

I’ve been making weekly menus since I first got married in 1995. I couldn’t fathom going to the grocery store and not knowing what I’d need for the week or how other people did just that. It’s somewhat ironic that the menus fell by the wayside while I was in culinary school, but understandable when you consider that I worked until 5pm and usually ate a Lunchable or some such in the car on the way to classes that started at 5:30pm and went to 10:30 or 11 at night, four days a week.

With so many ingredients on the no-list due to their high FODMAP content, it was a bit of an adjustment when we first started cooking this way and I still get asked exactly what we eat, as if the restrictions are abject deprivation. While I do miss asparagus and broccoli from time to time (for instance), I think we do okay keeping a variety of foods in rotation so that we don’t get bored with any one ingredient or flavor combination.

So here’s what the last week looked like.

Monday: Chicken Florentine with Whipped Sweet Potatoes

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We had a partial package of gluten-free spaghetti in the pantry so I added that just to round out the meal, and added a couple of parsnips in with the sweet potatoes. Florentine on a menu, of course, just means “with spinach” so what else you add is completely up to you, but some cherry tomatoes cooked just til bursting adds some nice color to the dish.

Tuesday: Dinner with friends at Momo’s

On the first Tuesday of each month we get together with folks from the TNG (Tallahassee Nerds & Geeks) meetup group at a local pizza place for “Beer & Cheer.” Momo’s in known for their incredible pizzas, with slices as big as your head, but thankfully they have a good salad selection. I forgot to grab a picture, but I ordered their Buffalo Chicken Salad with oil and vinegar dressing while Todd got a calzone and cheese sticks.

Wednesday: Pineapple Pork with Brown Rice and Green Beans

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The combination of Todd working late and some extra vegetables leftover in the crisper turned the brown rice into Fried Brown Rice (though I didn’t add a scrambled egg into this batch) with Sweet and Sour Pork (the sauce made with water, gluten-free soy sauce, a big of raw sugar and thickened with an arrowroot slurry). The pork was dredged with rice flour and seasoned with 5-Spice Powder and it really made all the difference.

Thursday: Corn Chowder

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I had a commitment after work, so this was the perfect night for a slow-cooker soup so supper would be ready when we got home. Quick enough to prepare on the stove under normal circumstances, it works just as well in the Crock-Pot.

Friday: Dinner out at Old Mexico Restaurant

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We don’t normally go out twice in one week unless our schedules are abnormally hectic, but since we were headed up to Thomasville to spend the night at the new house and get some projects done and the kitchen is bare, we use this as an excuse to try out some of the local restaurants to find our new regular haunts. I ordered the Chiles Rellenos and, yes, they are battered and fried and this means I knowingly ate wheat products.

Hypocritical of me? Not really. The thing about the Low-FODMAP diet/protocol/whatever you want to call it is that it’s not meant to be super-restrictive forever. It’s good to re-challenge foods over time and, sometimes, you just want what you want. My outlook on it is that if I follow a Low-FODMAP diet 99% of the time, the few times I “splurge” with a High-FODMAP option, I won’t generally have as severe of a reaction as I would if I were constantly eating High-FODMAP since the effects are cumulative. Did I have a small reaction after this dinner? Yes. Did I regret it? Not in the least. It’s about choices, and this was the choice I made and planned for this week.

Saturday: Dutch Baby Pancakes with Strawberries and Sausage

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Breakfast for dinner is a favorite of ours and usually fits into our menus each week. Todd’s fond of omelets and hashbrowns on his breakfast nights while I tend towards the breadier options. These were made using my go-to Low-FODMAP flour blend and they cooked up just fine with the substitution–something you’re never sure of unitl you try it. Saturday was a particularly good night for these since they (the Dutch babies) don’t keep well and we didn’t need to worry about having leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.

Sunday: Shrimp & Orzo with Minted Carrots

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There was much rejoicing in our home when we found a wheat-free orzo pasta on the grocery store shelves. We love it so much that we frequently keep a spare bag in the pantry just in case the next time we look for it, it’s gone. We’re devoted to our orzo and this shrimp dish is a favorite from the pre-FODMAP-awareness days–making it with rice just isn’t the same.

Planning our menus in advance helps us keep from having back-to-back chicken or beef nights, usually allows for a vegetarian options, and almost always includes a shrimp or fish dish. We get variety with the convenience of not having to stop for “just one more thing” each night or dread coming home to cook each night.

And now you know it’s not all Daring Bakers and Mac & Cheese doughnuts up in here.

The Next Stop on the Florida Writers Blog Tour

Creative Business

I don’t remember, now, if Sandi Hutcheson of LooksGreatNaked.com (and the novel of the same name) found me first or I her, but I know we bonded over cocktails and Limoncello on my cocktail blog, Sips & Shots. I love reading the exploits of her dachsunds, Laverne and Shirley, and her three-legged Australian Shepherd, Pancho, as well as her carefully constructed observations on life that she shares on her blog. Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, she’s happily settled her toes in the sand of beautiful St. Augustine, Florida, and is working on a new novel.

Sandi was kind enough to tag me for the blog tour.

Growing up I dreamed of telling stories. Stories that people wanted to hear, needed to hear, and wanted to share. I didn’t dream of being famous, I just dreamt of being heard.

Of course that was back before CD players were commonplace, much less the Internet as we know it, and now anyone can stake their claim to a few bits of server space and someone’s bound to hear you. Mission accomplished? Almost.

Between then and now I learned how wonderful it feels to share not just the entertaining bits, but to actually serve a purpose and give something away that they could use to better their own day to day lives. Which is why, when I wrote my cookbook, What to Feed Your Raiding Party, I was adamant that it couldn’t just be yet another cookbook on the shelf, but something targeted, something useful, and I feel like each I’m succeeding at that mission in my own small way.

But books are a little like potato chips: you can’t have just one.

I can’t speak for all authors, of course, but seeing the enjoyment my little cookbook brings to a new fan, and seeing what they make from the book on our community forum, is a heady thing. As are the occasional hugs and high-fives I’ve gotten from people at conventions when I introduce them to my work. And I fully admit: I’m greedy. I want more of that. So I’m certainly not stopping at just one book.

1. What am I working on?

In addition to the first sequel to Raiding Party, fans of my cocktails might be interested to know that I’m working on a printed collection of the “50 Shots of America” series with updated photos, illustrations, and more. I also have a novel banging around the back of my desk that can’t fully make up its mind if it wants to be strictly prose, a graphic novel, or something in between. Maybe one of these days it’ll tell me, huh?

2. How does my work differ from other of its genre?

My cookbook isn’t just a collection of recipes, it includes 5 comic “books” and a game system as an incentive to reluctant cooks. While there are many comic book or illustrated cookbooks on the market, and a smaller number but widely varied gaming cookbooks, my book is the first to combine it all, much less include a leveling system, so it’s a bit like I’ve forged my own path and I’m doing my damnedest to lead others down it, pied piper-ish though it may be.

3. Why do I write what I do?

Because a story is no good if we can’t share it. In the case of cooking, the story is how much better off we are by putting our own hands into the food we eat, the fuel we provide our body to work with. It’s about making what some see as a chore into something fun and sharing skills that have practical value. Even in a zombie apocalypse, someone still needs to be able to cook!

The other stuff: the blog posts, the cocktails, the stories that have yet to be seen? They’re about brightening a person’s day. I don’t want to be so bold as to consider myself a teacher or inspirational–there’s a lot of weight to those words–but I do consider myself an encourager, a cheerleader, and a creative enabler. If we can access that creative side of ourselves a little bit each day it gets easier and easier to find it and when we’re being creative, in touch with our muse, often the daily grind doesn’t seem so bad.

4. How does my writing process work?

It all starts with an idea, of course, but usually I work best with a theme and a title. A good title helps me stay organized and on-track. For instance, I had the name of the cookbook written down two years before I started any real work on the book (a 2-year incubation period is pretty standard for me). Those two years were spent pondering and researching a few things here and there. I’d love to say I work in an orderly, linear fashion when putting a book together but really I’m all over the place. I have notes (index cards and stick notes) everywhere, pages of reference sheets, worksheets I create for myself (excellent for the different steps to get the recipes ready for formatting), binders full of sketches.

You’ll notice all of that is physical: while I love technology and computers, when I’m in the working stages of a project I like being able to put my hands on each piece and manually shuffle them around. Maybe when the Minority Report-esque holographic touch screens become standard for home use I’ll do away with my Post-Its and index cards, but for now they work for me. I also keep a notebook with me at all times for snippet jotting and so on.

I spent 2 1/2 years writing Raiding Party. Approximately 6 months of that was recipe development, and a year and a  half was drawing the comics, though they overlapped a bit and there was a health dose of procrastination thrown in at times. Only the two months at the end that were spent knee-deep in spreadsheets and page design were the concentrated, linear effort that I wish I could harness for the rest of the process.

I do the majority of my book selling at conventions where the gamers and comics fans congregate. While this method has some detractors (distinct hills and valleys in sales, the cost of travel), one of the best parts–aside from meeting buyers face-to-face–is meeting the other writers and artists at the shows. We spend a good amount of time behind our tables and it’s quite common to get chatty with your neighbors.

At ALT-Con Tallahassee this April I was fortunate to be neighbors with the lovely and vivacious Evelyn Rainey, who I’m tagging as the next stop on this tour. She is a teacher, writer, and bellydancer–among many other things–and she’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, comfort and encouragement just radiate from her being. Her first novel, Minna Pegeen, was published in 2011, followed by Bedina’s War, and Perky’s Books & Gifts, in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Her latest, The Island Remains, is due out this summer.

Something That Looks Strangely Like Progress

The Gingerbread Diaries

I’m happy to report that things are progressing well, over all, at the Gingerbread Dollhouse, even though we haven’t been up there in a couple of weeks (first missed weekend was spent at a convention, then the next one we just needed a quiet weekend at home to recover from the previous one!). Of course, when we were last there, we (and by we, I once again mean Todd) went for another round with the hot water heater (which I realize is rather redundant, and yet I seem to always default to that instead of just water heater–I’ll work on it).

[Direct link for feed readers: Gingerbread Diaries, Ep. 1.4: Todd vs the Hot Water Heater (redux)]

Look out, y’all! I found the speed controls and some background music; before you know it I’ll almost look like I know what I’m doing! But seriously, I’m making an effort to keep the videos rather short and single-topic, so this is the first part of “weekend 4” and there’s at least 1 more part to add to our Gingerbread Diaries Playlist on YouTube, so make sure you subscribe to not miss anything (not all of them will be embedded in posts).

While Todd was working on the water heater, I was taking care of another small chore that I’d been meaning to do since we bought the house: smudging.

You might think I’m a bit off, or maybe you agree with me, but with new spaces (and old houses especially), you just never know what kind of energy has been left behind. Between the 100+ years the house has stood and in light of the last 10 years or so spent as a personal care home, there’s bound to be some negative vibes hanging around that we could just do without. I actually don’t mind if the house is haunted–it might add some character, you never know–but I’d like only happy haunts if you don’t mind. To that end, I went room by room, window by window, and door by door, with a smoking bundle of sage and sweetgrass to help cleanse the area. If nothing else, it felt like a productive thing and gave me a bit more peace of mind when I went to sleep that night.

In fact, it might have been the first night I slept easily and soundly in that house!

We even slept in until 10am–almost unheard of for Todd–and only got up when the doorbell rang. It was a neighbor from down the street wanting to chit chat about the house and it was only after he’d left that I looked in the mirror and realized what a mess my hair was, not to mention the raccoon eyes and lack of bra. Great first impression that one. (At least I was wearing shorts and a long-sleeved tee instead of something more nighty-like!)

He wasn’t our only visitor this weekend, either! One of Todd’s former coworkers knocked on the door to take a peek inside the place and we were happy to show her around (despite the construction clutter). We haven’t even moved in yet and we’ve had more people stop by and say hello from the neighborhood than we have in the 3.5 years we’ve lived in our current home! Once again, Thomasville shows itself to be a true southern town.

The new flooring in the upstairs bath.

The new flooring in the upstairs bath.

Since that visit Todd’s been kind enough to drop by the house and take pictures of the progress so I don’t feel so out of the loop! In the last 2 weeks they’ve replaced the vinyl flooring that was in horrible shape with a rather nifty sheeting that looks like wood planks. Since I’d told them to find the cheapest replacement out there I was expecting plain white or brown flooring so this is an unexpected treat. We’ll be replacing it all as we do the room-by-room renovations (hence the request for cheap and serviceable) over the years but this’ll hold us better than expected while we decide what to do next.

They've repaired the brick pillars at the back (the culprits for our "structural" issues) and installed lattice skirting to enclose the crawlspace.

They’ve repaired the brick pillars at the back (the culprits for our “structural” issues) and installed lattice skirting to enclose the crawlspace.

There were almost enough recovered cut-work spindles to reassemble the railing on the side of the porch, looks like they only had to cut 1 new one.

There were almost enough recovered cut-work spindles to reassemble the railing on the side of the porch, looks like they only had to cut 1 new one.

And they've even built us new railings on the ramp/stairs (the ramp is staying until we get moved-in, we figured it might make things easier for moving furniture).

And they’ve even built us new railings on the ramp/stairs (the ramp is staying until we get moved-in, we figured it might make things easier for moving furniture).

Aside from a few odds and ends inside, the last big push is to get the exterior scraped and then the big finish: painting!

54 | The Almost Universal Language of Food

64 Arts

4square_digi

Every industry has its own functional language. Sure, it might technically be English that the doctor, laywer, or programmer is speaking but for all intents and purposes it’s Greek to you! Whether you’re working with or needing work from someone in a different field, being able to understand some of the references they’re using, the jargon and buzzwords alike, will make it easier to accomplish whatever task is before you.

If you’re lucky, you’ll go long stretches without needing to understand medical or legal-speak, if ever! And even though computers are everywhere, there’s a good chance that your average individual isn’t going to need to hire a computer programmer (though IT services might be called for). There is one realm with it’s own vocabulary that almost everyone encounters ever day: the kitchen!

We all have to eat, and as more and more people are becoming aware of the effect food has on our daily lives combined with the continuous “feed” of cooking shows available for viewing, understanding food-speak provides a definite benefit. Here are a few words (by no means an exhaustive list) and the way they’re used in the kitchen.

Aromatic: as an adjective it refers to how something smells, but in cooking aromatics include herbs, spices, and some vegetables (like the trinity of onion, celery, and bell pepper in Cajun cuisine) added to a dish to enhance the flavor and the aroma.

Cream: obviously the high-fat dairy product, but creaming is the first step to many cakes and cookies and entails mixing the butter or shortening with the sugar until it’s light and fluffy.

Dressing and Stuffing: A frequent debate around the holidays, they are essentially the same thing the name is determined by where it’s cooked! Dressing is cooked in a pan and then scooped out to “dress-up” or embellish the main dish while stuffing is, of course, stuffed inside the main dish (usually poultry of some sort, though you could conceivably have a stuffed crown of lamb or some such).

Filet and Fillet: the first (with one L) refers to a boneless tenderloin of beef while the second (with two Ls) refers to fish and may be boneless or not! They’re both pronounced the same and it also refers to the actual cutting of the portion.

Mince: as a verb it means to chop up very fine, into tiny pieces, but in England mince is approximately what we’d call ground beef (or other protein–usually beef though, from what I can tell).

Portion: sure, it’s the amount of food in a serving but it also the verb to divide a meal or item into individual portions. Like portioning a whole chicken into it’s 8 pieces or a pork loin into 2-3 oz cutlets, that sort of thing (and it’s also known as fabrication, which makes it sound something made in metal-shop).

Scale: as well as the tool used for weighing, to scale a recipe is to adjust it up or down to change the number of servings.

Temper: when dealing with eggs in sauces or creams that you have to be careful not to curdle, you temper the eggs by adding a bit of the hot mixture into the eggs to warm them up a bit before adding the tempered eggs back into the main, hot mixture. Meanwhile, in Indian cooking, tempering involves heating whole or ground spices in oil to bring out their best flavor before adding to the rest of the dish. And then there’s a way of treating chocolate meant for high-end processes that involves precise temperature controls to produce a certain texture and finish to the chocolate.

Of course, not all miscommunications in the kitchen are a matter of word usage. Aside from Metric measurements (admittedly far more accurate) and US Customary and the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius and back again, I ran into the peculiarities of British Imperial measurements when I first started participating in the Indian Cooking Challenge. They use may of the same terms but their cup is 2 oz bigger than ours, and their teaspoons half as big again. You can see the chart I transcribed in When a Cup Is Not a Cup.

A friend of mine is an ESOL volunteer and has invited me to help go over food terms and US recipes with some of her students. After all, everyone has to eat and learning about a culture’s food preferences can act as a bridge for all sorts of other successful encounters. I’m looking forward to it and curious to see if they stump me with any of their questions!