And the 2025 classic read is ...

Middlemarch. Yes, I've read it before - I read it in college for English 272, which was a survey class on some 19th century Brit Lit classics. (I still have the asssigned copy, which is why I know what specific class it was ... I wrote it inside the cover.)

But Middlemarch slithered into my consciousness because of that column in the New York Times Book Review called "By The Book" - a weekly interview with some author who has just published something. I skim it every week, and often it's too twee for words, but what I started to notice was how many people mentioned Middlemarch in response to a question.

• What books are on your night stand?
• What books are you embarrassed to admit you’ve never read?
• What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?
• What’s the last great book you read?
• Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine?

Because this had come up in conversation, on Sunday, my sister texted me a picture of the 12/29/2024 book review because yes, Elda Rotor named Middlemarch as something she was embarrassed not to have read.

In a fit of something or other, I sat down at my computer and I methodically searched the Times website for the entirety of 2024, and located 51 of the 52 "By The Book"columns. There may have been one on 9/1/24 - but I couldn't surface it. And 11 times in 51 weeks, someone answered Middlemarch. That's 20 or 22% of the time! (Math is complicated because Robert Kagan gave Middlemarch as the answer to two different questions in the same interview.)  If you would like to see the fruits of my labors, I made a spreadsheet - it's here. 

This is a long way around to explain why I'm cracking Middlemarch open later.

War and Peace: COMPLETED

At the end of last year, I learned about a "slow read" of War and Peace. Something about the idea of reading a chapter a day intrigued me so I bought a used paperback, of the Louise & Aylmer Maude translation, and plunged in. 

For the most part, I did actually read a chapter a day, although there were a few moments when I got behind and caught up, or read ahead because it would fit better into my life. And let me tell you, War and Peace is a potboiler of an action-packed soap opera. That is, up until the second epilogue in which Leo gets all philosophical and stops talking about the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys. And Pierre. To be honest, I think just reading it straight through over, say, a month might have been better. I remember the experience of reading A Suitable Boy and feeling completely bereft at the end; I missed all of those people that I'd spent every evening in bed with. Taking an entire year to read War and Peace meant bite sized reading sessions - but also meant that by the end, I'd forgotten what happened at the beginning. Well, not really, there were a lot of parties at the beginning. 

Anyway - if you so desire - the slow read was under the auspices of one Simon Haisell, at Footnotes & Tangents. Every day, there's a group chat, and every week, Simon does a wrap up. And some kind soul provided merit badges for the end of every section. 

As for me?  I am damned happy to have read it, finished it, done the thing I set out to do. 

April 1st

Of course yes, it's April Fool's Day. It's also the birthday of Gil Scott-Heron (b. 1949), and the anniversary of the day that Singapore became a British crown colony (in 1867), and the date that then-President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law (in 1970), and when Google launched gmail (2004). And in 2009, my mother died. Fifteen years ago.

She sits beside me - in the books on my shelves, the objects hanging on the dining room walls, the roll top desk in the next room. Her plants are in my garden, a bottle of her perfume is on my dresser.

Last fall, my husband and I visited our daughter in the south of France. Shortly before our trip, my sister unearthed a small spiral bound notebook, with the notes my mother had taken when she took my siblings to the same general area in 1985. I scanned the whole thing and took it with us. It's a gem, and we are still quoting aloud from it. Taking that notebook with us was like having her along.

Cavaillon - the Hempstead of France

Here she is, hiding behind an urn, in 1985:

Moky as Gorey character

I miss her. But I am glad to have her around in the ways that I do.

In Which We Attempt That Baked Icing

I'm not going to lie: the spice cake with the baked icing intrigued me, because "baked icing". I had never heard of such a thing. But I am a person that owns two copies of The Joy of Cooking, 1953 and 1975, so I pulled them out and sure enough, both editions had a baked icing recipe.

The Joy of Cooking, 1953

The Joy of Cooking, 1975

How about that language change around the addition of cocoa? In 1953, cocoa varies the flavor, but in 1975 it provides an exciting new taste!

I made Mrs. Wright's recipe more or less as written, and while it was okay, I don't think I'll do it again - mostly because it's hella sweet. The icing is interesting though - it's essentially a baked meringue topping, spread thinly and baked long enough that it's brittle. Also - it's fragile and a little tricky to get out of the pan - it would probably be best baked in a loose bottomed pan.

If you want to try it, here's a slightly tweaked version of Mrs. Wright's recipe. (I used butter and yogurt in place of shortening and soured milk, added ginger, and left off the nuts.)

SPICE CAKE WITH BAKED ICING

• 1/2 cup softened butter (1 stick) 
• 1 cup brown sugar 
• 1 egg + 1 egg yolk 
• 1 1/2 cups flour 
• 1/4 t. salt 
• 1/2 t. cinnamon 
• 1/2 t. ground ginger 
• 1/2 t. ground cloves 
• 1/2 cup yogurt (not greek)

Preheat oven to 350° F. Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and egg yolk; beat well. In a separate bowl, stir together all dry ingredients. Add flour mixture to the butter/sugar/egg, alternately with the yogurt.

Spread into a greased & floured pan (1 8" square, or two loaf pans). Use a parchment sling, or a loose bottomed pan, if you want to be able to get the cake out of the pan in one piece.

• 1 egg white 
• pinch of salt 
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Beat egg white until it forms stiff peaks. Mix in the salt and brown sugar. Gently spread this meringue on top of the batter. Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes, and then gently move the cake to a serving plate.

Time For Dessert (part 3 of 3)

The last two of Mrs. Wright's recipe cards are for desserts that are a little off the beaten path. When was the last time you had a dessert with concord grades, or a baked icing? Indeed, when have you even heard of a baked icing?

If you've been around my blog for a while, you may remember a concord grape pie courtesy of a different neighbor, Ruth. Marian's Concord Grape Crunch isn't a pie - it's got an crust of oatmeal/butter/sugar pressed into a pan, spread with concord grape "filling", and topped with crumbles of the rest of the oatmeal/butter/sugar mix. Of course, true to form, there is no recipe for the filling - once agin, as in so many of Marian's recipes, one is just expected to know how to make a [fill in the blank]. This card's in someone else's handwriting, but I'm pretty sure it's not the next door neighbor Ruth's hand.

I confess that the part of this next and last recipe that attracted me was the "baked" icing. Reading the card, it's a pretty basic spice cake, but the last step before it goes in the oven is to make an egg white & brown sugar meringue, and spread that on top of the raw cake batter. I'm a little intrigued.

I also love the addendum with the instructions on how to sour milk.

I think March will be "make all the things" month.

Time For Dessert (part 2 of 3)

The next two desserts are both familiar and not particularly exotic: Pecan Tassies and a Lemon Loaf Cake. It is possible that I kept the card for the pecan tassies because of another neighbor who always made them (and who, together with her husband and 215 other people died in the crash of EgyptAir 990), but I don't know that Marian got this particular recipe from Sharon. Maybe, maybe not. If you've never had pecan tassies, they are a bit like tiny pecan pies, with a hint towards rugelach since they're made with a cream cheese dough.

There are a million recipes for lemon loaf cakes - and yet, this one spoke to me. Maybe because it's typed? With a pencil direction "For Mrs. Wright"? Maybe because it's got BUTTER (instead of the margarine in other of Marian's recipes - like the pecan tassies)? Maybe because of the precision of the recipe with its admonition to "not beat the eggs". Although, the oven temperature is merely given as "moderate", and when do you add the grated rind of one lemon which "furnishes the flavoring"? I might make this.

Time For Dessert (part 1 of 3)

In all the time that I knew Mrs. Wright, what I knew her for - kitchen-wise - was dessert. It is, therefore, no surprise to me that I kept six recipes for sweets (seven if you include the "dessert" in the jello post).

Today's installment of Mrs. Wright's recipes includes two. The first one confuses me, and I kind of want to send it to B. Dylan Hollis for his take. It includes cooked mashed potatoes, and peanut butter, but after you make a dough with the mashed potates, and smear the peanut butter on, and roll it up, what then? Is it done? Does it need further baking, chilling, anything? Peculiar.

Also it's on a larger than usual index card, which had to be folded to fit in the standard 3" x 5" box, and it's in someone else's handwriting. Where did it come from?

Mrs. Wright was terrific at pizzele. She and my mother would compare notes and my mother's were never as good as Marian's. This is another example of a recipe for someone who knows how to cook. No instructions whatsoever - just a list of ingredients. If you want to be picky, there are two verbs: melt and add. But the proof of pizzele is in the baking. (And I wonder what happened to my mother's pizzele iron...and Marian's for that matter.)