REVIEW: Solitude: A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr (5-stars)

 First, this book is magnificently structured.  The quality of writing and clarity of concepts laid out from the preface to the last page is well organized and clear without being overly pedantic or repetitive.  The author refers to concepts and goals of previous sections of the book - even mentions upcoming areas that will be addressed later - and it all just flows really nicely.  Very tightly written book - it's only 202 pages (the rest are notes).

Second - this book does a really great job of talking about the need for solitude as a balance to the need for human relationships and interactions using the experiences of highly accomplished historical figures including Beatrix Potter, Kant, Dostoevsky, Newton and many others.  

This was originally published in 1988 - so many watershed events happened in the 80s, and most people in developed countries were on the precipice of previously unknown opportunity for connection, distraction and surveillance of each other's activities.

"At the time of writing, it is generally considered that the highly introverted person is more pathological than the very extraverted person. This is because of the current emphasis upon object relationships, and the disregard of processes which take place in solitude."

The premise is that people who want solitude or who are single are missing out and have something wrong with them.  We even use the Greek word for a person who lives alone - troglodyte - as an insult to indicate some kind of stupid or defective person.

Storr goes into detail about the intrinsic need for humans to spend time alone -- sleep, for example, and dreams -- they provide our brain with time alone to integrate and heal and process experiences, ideas and thoughts about things.  Humans always crave some kind of solitude -- and even in the face of social convention and obligation, we come up with ways to get time to ourselves -- Florence Nightingale feigned a health complaint so she could get time alone to study and write.  Victorian women would have time to "rest" in the afternoons after spending so much time being empathically focused on the needs of others.

So - why is it that 30 years after this book was written, it seems like we are still not allowing people to take or make space to integrate their thoughts, experiences and ideas so that they can be healthier, happier and more productive?

I'm thinking specifically here of corporate professional work and the move to crowd people into "open workspace" areas and the retraction of control over where one works (many employers are repealing remote/work from home policies).  It seems counter productive to require an "always on", in the office for 8 hours workday when that's not really how human brains function.  

Being alone is necessary not just for personal life - but for professional life as well.  While corporate culture values ideation, collaboration and consensus for decision-making -- where is the space for integration and problem-solving on an individual level?  

Lots of great material to dig into here -- it feels like this is just another spot on the tip of the iceberg of a subject that fascinates me:  the psychology of creativity.  If you enjoy reading "Finding Flow" and other books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi -- you'll enjoy this book.

REVIEW: Solitude: A Return to the Self  by Anthony Storr 

RATING: 5-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: American Gods by Neil Gaiman (5-stars)

 I confess that I only read this because I recently watched the TV series and I enjoyed both.  The TV series seemed awfully violent and bloody - especially the first episode.  There's a lot that was changed in the TV series from the book - and I truly marvel at the skill and imagination of the authors of the screen play -- what they created is absolutely in line with this universe.

The book was very enjoyable -- I found Gaiman's writing style to be very easy to read.   He's got a good sense of humor and I enjoy the small jokes that he weaves in.  Many of the characters were very likeable - and I really admire the way he created such a dense web of interrelationships, stories and sub-plots.  

It wasn't until I was nearly halfway through the book - that I asked, "Who IS Shadow Moon, anyway?"   Gaiman's interpretations of mythology and character development is a lot of fun to read.  I just wish I had the paperback version (not the e-book) so I could share this with someone.

If you've been reading reviews of the TV series written by fans of the book - you'll already know that the carousel scene is not in the TV series, and there are several other things that have been added which are very enjoyable (such as expanding Mad Sweeny and Laura Moon's characters, changing the location of the first meeting with Easter and her response, OMG the ice cream truck!).

I did read the expanded author's special edition which may have added scenes and content not in the well loved original version of the book.  The carousel scene was a really fun pile of events -- reminded me of the descriptions of hallucinations in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in some ways.  When Shadow Moon looks at Mr Nancy - he sees all the visual incarnations at once -- which is a stretch for a human brain, right?  

The idea that "gods" are created by a number of people growing to believe in a thing is the basic premise of this book -- people brought their "gods" with them from other lands, like cutting a branch of code off a tree -- that god came as a version of him/herself at the time, leaving behind versions in the homeland who may be having a different experience.  The "old gods" are basically subroutines.  The new gods are net-new -- maybe that makes them more powerful in some ways, but also less personally invested in the same kinds of things that drive the other gods.

One of my favorite concepts in the book was "Backstage" -- the idea that there is this place that looks like the world we see, but it's not quite the same. Even the passage of time is different - a few minutes backstage is like hours in the world we see, and so on. This alternate reality is a convenient mechanism for playing out important actions and conversations.

REVIEW: American Gods by Neil Gaiman 

RATING: 5-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter (2-stars)

 I really wanted to like this book -- the author's voice and personality shine through her writing very clearly.  She seemed like a snotty, self-important, shrill and unbalanced person.  I kept reading, hoping that the author would undergo some transformation that would redeem her, and thinking that perhaps she wasn't as self centered as she made herself sound -- but when it got to the section about how demanding and rude she was to the woman who butchered her pigs -- I realized:  the author is just a bossy, self-centered, judgmental hipster who can't even keep the streets straight (the Temescal street with the upscale Mexican, wood fired oven pizza and bakery is Telegraph, not Shattuck) because she's too busy obsessing over whatever non-existent drama she's invented for herself.  

Seriously?  Ghetto?  I know plenty of people who live off MLK Jr in the 25-33 range -- it's not what I'd call a "ghetto" and I don't know anyone who lives there who would refer to it as such as often as this cracker hipster does.

REVIEW: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter 

RATING: 2-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

Plum Jelly Round-Up

Earlier this year, tired of squirrel bandits on my bird feeders - I discovered that I could trap them in my Hav-A-Hart trap -- and relocated 3 of 5 squirrels to a park two miles away.  The unexpected upside of this is that my neighbors finally got tree-ripened loquats and I had a LOT more plums on the tree in my backyard this year -- I harvested about 125 lbs in the two days before July 4th!

I barely had room in my freezer and fridge to put all the juice and puree -- and this week I am making up jelly -- a lot of it!

Plum-Habanero
16 c plum juice + 1 c lemon juice + 4 c sugar + 5Tb & 1tsp pectin + 5Tb & 1tsp calcium water + 3.75 oz habaneros (seeds cut out) =

• 21- half pints plum habanero jelly

Plum-Habanero-Lemongrass

• 18 - half pints 
• 15 - quarter pints

 Plum
20 cups of plum juice + 5 c sugar + pectin/calcium water + 1 c lemon juice =

• 11 - 20 oz jars 
• 13 - half pints

Plum-Lemongrass
24 cups of plum juice + 6 c sugar + pectin/calcium water + 1 1/4 c lemon juice + lemongrass =

• 33 - half pints

Zucchini & Tomato Soup

What else do you do with a giant zucchini - or two - but make a pot of soup (if you aren't making my Zucchin-Carrot Relish!) -- here are a couple recipes I have made recently, and since I put the information in on a web app - actually have the caloric data for it!

I threw in 3-4 frozen cubes of home made basil-garlic-raw almond pesto - so made the almonds an optional ingredient here, as well as the olive oil.  I also have a lot of roasted red padron puree in the freezer from last fall - one ice cube is roughly 1/4 c, I think, and I added that in - you could substitute Harissa paste (if you want heat), or chopped fresh red or green bell peppers.  Or throw in any spicy chopped peppers!

INGREDIENTS:

• 8 c zucchini, skin on, cut into large chunks (remove pithy parts and large seeds) (168 calories)
• 4 c crushed canned tomatoes (312 calories)
• 2 oz dried shitake mushrooms (200 calories) - or - 16 oz fresh button mushrooms, sliced
• 6 Carrots (150 calories)
• 1-2 c broccolini greens & florets (45 calories)
• 8 Garlic, Cloves, Fresh (35 calories)
• 1/2 c chopped basil leaves (4 calories)
• 2 c sweet/Vidalia onion, chopped or sliced to preference (128 calories)
• 2 T dried Thyme (or double fresh) (16 calories)
• 3 c cabbage, chopped (66 calories)
• 1/2 c green onion, chopped (9 calories)
• 8 c vegetable stock (160 calories)
• 2 packages Westsoy Chicken Style Seitan (770 calories)    
• 1 bunch of chopped parsley (16 calories)

Optional:

• 1.5 T Red miso (the refrigerated kind) (45 calories)
• 3 tsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil (120 calories)
• 3 Tb raw almonds, finely ground (102 calories)
• 1/4 roasted red padron puree (9 calories)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Break up the dried mushrooms into quarters or smaller and place into a heat proof dish or pan; pour boiling water over the mushrooms and allow to steep while you assemble the rest of the soup.
2. Pour the stock into the pan - note - I used tomato juice from canning tomatoes last year -- which is just the water that was around the seeds.  As I seed the tomatoes before putting them in the pot, I put all the seeds into a metal mesh strainer and then stir them around to get all that water out separately and save it for soups.  In this case, about 5 cups of my vegetable stock was tomato water (not sauce!).  If you like more tomatoey flavor, throw in another can or pint jar of crushed tomatoes -- they'll break down and give you plenty of flavor.
3. Add the Westsoy Chicken-Style Seitan - be sure to keep the broth in the container, it's tasty stuff - and tear up any extra large pieces of seitan with your fingers.
4. Add the carrots first - I slice them on the diagonal for nice big chunks, and put them into the stock first while it's heating up.  Add in the rest of the veggies items as ready -- and add additional water to cover if needed.
5. Reserve for last (as in - just a few minutes before serving) any fresh herbs and the red miso paste (which you can dissolve with a small whisk separately before adding in).
6. Salt & pepper to taste --  and yes, this a HUGE pot of soup but you can eat as much as you want because the entire thing is a whopping 2300 calories -- 12 large servings at 191 calories each!

   
   

Zucchini Vegetable Farro Soup (no onions/no garlic)

I made this giant pot of soup and shared it with my family - the corn kernels mix in with the similarly sized farro and provide a nice counterpoint of flavor and texture.  Tarragon & thyme provide the flavor - no onions or garlic in this soup, resulted in a soup that was sweet from the corn and carrots only.

INGREDIENTS:

• 10 c zucchini, skin on, cut into large chunks (remove pithy parts and large seeds if using monster zukes) (210 calories)
• 6 carrots (150 calories)
• 4 c crushed canned tomatoes (312 calories)
• 2 c farro (400 calories)
• 4 c broccoli or other sturdy greens like collards (140 calories)   
• 1 oz dried shitake mushrooms (100 calories) - or - 8 oz fresh button mushrooms, sliced
• 16 c vegetable stock (400 calories)
• 2 packages Westsoy Chicken Style Seitan (770 calories)   
• 2 ears of corn, cut off the cob (147 calories)
• 3 Tb "Mellow" white miso (90 calories)
• 4 tsp red miso (45 calories)
• Dried herbs to taste - I used lots of tarragon & thyme

DIRECTIONS:

1. Break up the dried mushrooms into quarters or smaller, place in a heat proof dish or pan and cover with boiling water to steep while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.  When they are soft, add the pieces and the water to the pot.
2. Pour the stock into a very large pot -- if you cut down the stock by half and use water instead, the soup will probably taste just as good!  Use what you have on hand!
3. Add the carrots first - I cut them up into big chunks, and put them in the pot so that they cook up faster.
4. Be sure to add the stock from the seitan package - it's yummy!  If you don't have this brand available where you live - substitute your favorite seitan or even some nice smoked tofu (yum!).
5. Add the miso paste last -- you will want to take some stock or hot water and dissolve it so that it mixes into the soup better.
6. Don't cut yourself cutting the fresh corn off the cob - after cutting off the niblets, be sure to scrape the cob with the back of your knife over the pot to get all the juice and flavor out of the corn cob (yum!).

Summer Strawberry Jicama Slaw

Summer Strawberry Jicama Slaw

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and chopped small (not fine)
• 1 cup jicama, julienned
• 1-2 limes
• 1/4 c finely minced mint leaves
• salt, tiny pinch
• champagne vinegar, 1 tsp
• (optional) 1 small jalapeno pepper, finely minced
• (optional) 3 Tb toasted pumpkin seeds

DIRECTIONS:
Toss ingredients and serve at room temperature - the crispy sweet jicama makes a delicious counterpoint to the sweeter and more tender berries, with a little acid from lime/vinegar to punch it up, and complemented by the mint & spicy jalapeno pepper.

BONUS: Turn this slaw into a salsa by chopping up the strawberries & jicama into smaller bits and adding half a chopped red onion and two pressed garlic cloves.

SUBSTITUTIONS: if you can't find jicama, substitute cabbage for a slaw, or cucumber (no seeds, please!) for the salsa or a chunky salad.

Pears, Persimmons & Sourdough

Well, it's been a while! What can I say except that things got away from me. I visited family in November, my mother visited for 3 weeks in December, plus I had to deal with the 8 weeks long chest cold from hell. 

My chief culinary accomplishments of late fall and early winter include:

PEARS: My friend George forwarded me a note from a community list along with a photo of a gorgeously laden and tempting looking pear tree.  I harvested about 30+ lbs of small pears which seemed quite hard, along with my friend Veronika.  The location was near Oakland's Chinatown, so while we were back there, some neighbors came by and also harvested some pears.  V and I thought they were kind of firm but one lady bit into it and said they were good.

The pears were small, a bit mealy and very hard.  They had a yellow-green skin under a brown layer that scraped off with light application of fingernail or nylon scrubby pad.  I washed all the pears and laid them out to ripen on trays.  And waited.  And waited.  After 2 weeks, some of them just went mushy, so I did some research.

What I discovered is that there are some old varieties of pears that are only for cooking - I think these pears were Kiefer pears.  So, I poached some pears and they came out so amazingly delicious!  I canned the rest of the pears in several batches - some with light syrup and some with light syrup and spices (clove, cinnamon, star anise). I'll be set for a while for canned pears, I promise some lovely pear photos.

PEAR VINEGAR: As Marilee from Urban Legend Cellars said, "folks don't know how EASY it is to make vinegar!"  I put a big pile of pear peelings and cores into a gallon glass jar with distilled water - and I keep adding water and aerating it.  It's now growing a mother on top - just like kombucha or Bragg's apple cider vinegar!  Soon I will get up the nerve to taste my pear vinegar.  Expanded post with pictures coming soon.

GROUND CHERRY JELLY: the ground cherries kept going long after everything else quit.  The one Giant Ground Cherry plant I got from Annie's is still going out there - and I hope to promote those for the next season over the smaller kind.  I made up 12 half pints of jelly but it didn't set as firmly as I want, so the jars are still on the kitchen windowsill waiting to be remade (or poured over pound cake and ice cream, tough call).


PERSIMMONS: In early November, I made my annual harvest of persimmons from Larissa & Geoff's 3 story high Hachiya persimmon tree. After I picked about 200 persimmons in early November, left them to ripen while I was gone for a week - and ripen they did!  Then I and dried them all - with some pulp in the freezer as usual.  I made two giant trays of persimmon bread pudding for Holly & Marina's wedding reception - it was very well received and there were no leftovers!

SOURDOUGH: I took a Sour Flour class just a few days into the onset of the Horrible Chest Cold from Hell - and had mixed results with the starter (it eventually died).  I plan to get some starter from a neighbor named Ana.

GARDEN - Veggies vs Flowers: no, I did not manage to get my winter greens garden in properly this year again.  However, I did manage to keep alive my digitalis purpura and put it in the ground, along with some jasmine and a 2-stick rose plant - so there will be lovely scented flowering things along the fence in my garden.  The brugmansia that I got as a leafless wine barrel size root ball from Freecycle is flourishing in the side yard and sending up leaves and new growth, fingers x'd that I will have some lovely scented angel trumpets in the spring.

The broccoli di cicco has gone feral and seems to be flowering continuously - an attack of little grey aphid-y things on the broccoli, mustard and broccoli rab volunteers makes them inedible but I am leaving the large stand of broccoli di cicco because it seems to be making the honeybees very happy.  Once my other flowering plants start producing flowers, I will tear it out to make space for tomatoes.

What I love about my neighborhood is that you get random curb scores - I got a paper grocery sack half full of rhizomes labeled "FREE!" Purple and light blue irises!" which are going into the ground along the house by my steps this week.


Wow! And here I thought I hadn't done much - it turns out I've just been a lazy blogger! I promise to make it up to you, the one reader who still checks in on my blog occasionally (hi Aunt Sue!) and some backdated posts that I obviously owe are coming this week!

REVIEW: Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose (4-stars)

 What a great social history of personal relationships - whether they were larger-than-life literary figures or not, these well documented couples present variations on a theme of women's role in Victorian England.  Fantastic read - well written, very enjoyable.

Sadly, I loaned my copy to someone and it hasn't returned.  It seems like a re-read is in order with all the celebratory fluff around Charles Dickens.  The section on Charles Dickens relationship with his wife in this book merits more attention.  Yes, he was a talented writer and overcame much but he was also an incredible dick!  He philandered, he was controlling and abusive with his family, and more.

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

Dried Tomato Disappointment

Looking for tea today, I moved my quart jar of dried Principe Borghese tomatoes - 8 lbs fresh.  Full of little worms covered in webbing (not moving around).  *sigh*  It only cost $5.60 for the tomatoes, but it took me a while to pick them and then wash, dry, slice and dehydrate them... I guess it's good I didn't eat them.  Was it one bad tomato?  Were there several? I'll never know.  I wonder if I should have frozen the dried tomatoes after they cooled off (just put the whole jar in the freezer, right?)