The Dinner Files

My summer is pretty much over. I can tell that by looking out the window. Yesterday when I looked up from my computer screen I saw a smooth blue lake surrounded by birches and pines and maples and oaks. For the past month-plus I spent my days in swimsuits and sundresses and shoes were worn only as protection against rocky paths. Today the sky is grim, the air is gray, I need a sweater, and wool socks are de rigeur. From the big old midwestern sun of a Minnesota summer to the damp gray of San Francisco’s famously chilly non-summer. I’m insanely grateful that my parents put in the wifi at the family cabin that allows me to de-camp there for weeks in the summer. I’m also happy to be home, August fleece and all.

My trip ended with a bang, though. On my last day I met my new niece and she is awesome, if just a bit lazy. It appears she would rather sleep than eat, so I gave her a very serious talking to while admiring her extraordinarily long fingers. Then, on the plane ride home I read Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim.

I was born in 1970 and grew up in Minneapolis. I think by law I was required to love Little House on the Prairie in all its forms. My first grade teacher read Little House in the Big Woods out loud to us after lunch. We made maple snow candy at recess. We even took a field trip to Lake Pepin, for god’s sake. Every Monday night my family would watch Little House and my dad would cry at some point during at least two-thirds of the episodes. I never, however, wanted to be Mary (too boring) or Laura (who wanted to be good like Mary, which baffled me). But Nellie? There was a girl with some life to her. It’s not that I wanted to be her so much as she caught my attention. I didn’t want to be mean like Nellie, but I sure didn’t want to be a good little girl with crappy clothes and tons of chores who seemed to spend the majority of her time trying to impress her Pa like Laura either.

As soap operas prove daily, the villain is always more interesting.

So I, like everyone else my age, grew up watching Little House. That would have been enough to make the flight from Minneapolis to San Francisco go by pretty quickly. Yet my connection to Prairie Bitch goes just a wee bit further. In 1993 my dashing husband (then boyfriend) and I took a trip down to Los Angeles to visit his younger brother and some friends. The trip happened to be over Halloween. His friend Jack took us to the Magic Castle – a crazy old-time-like castle in LA home to magic shows – because, if I’m remembering this correctly, a girl he was dating or, perhaps, was hoping to date, worked there. We went to the show. I recognized the magician’s assistant. It was Nellie. The people we were with told me I was crazy, but I knew what I saw. Our connection there confirmed that the assistant was, indeed, Alison Arngrim, and asked if I wanted to meet her. Before I really had a chance to answer or think the better of it, the lot of us were brought backstage.

I mentioned how it was Halloween, right? Did I mention I was in costume? As Esther Williams?

So I met Nellie Oleson while dressed in a 1940s bathing suit. (She had been dressed as a magician’s assistant, of course, which would have put us on more equal wardrobe footing, but had already changed into jeans and an old T-shirt.) She could not have been nicer. She was happy to meet us. She regaled us with tales of crazy fans who had trouble with the it’s-just-a-TV-show element of reality and yelled at her or even tried to hit her. She was warm and hilarious and completely down to earth. She even offered to have our picture taken, I said it wasn’t necessary because I didn’t want to seem like a total geek, and she said I would probably regret not taking it and insisted in the most charming of ways. I’m so glad I have it and I love that the flash gave her devil eyes.

I also rather love that if you didn’t know who was the celebrity and who was the fan who was super-psyched to meet the celebrity, well… you might not guess correctly. I also wish I had even remotely appreciated how smooth my skin was at 23, but I digress.

Prairie Bitch was just what I needed. I read a lot this summer, and a frightful amount of it was just not exciting. Seriously. I made my way through way too many dull or just plain bad books. Prairie Bitch was fun. Alison Arngrim did not have an easy childhood, but she is a lady who has made the best of what life has handed her. I remember from our brief meeting 17 years ago that she seemed like rollicking fun and a straight talker, and that was just how the book read.

There were a few other glimmers of delight in my summer reading, and if you still have some summer left and like to wile away some time in a lounge chair or on a towel on a dock or on the sand with a book in hand, these were the books I woke up early or stayed up late to finish:

The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman is for anyone who has ever lived abroad or worked in publishing. It focuses on people doing both at the same time. Like all good novels, though, it completely transcends its subject. As a writer and a reader the structure dazzled me. Brilliant. (If anyone reading this is the person who gave me this book, please let me know. I thought my dashing husband passed it on to me, but when I thanked him he had no idea what I was talking about.)

Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg. Whether you’re well-versed in the disaster that is modern industrial fishing and what it’s done to the oceans or you don’t know what I’m talking about, this book spells out how we got to the place where every fish counter in the U.S. is selling the same stuff – no matter location or season. Greenberg, most refreshingly, goes beyond the idea that if people just buy different fish everything will be okay. Amazing research well told.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett. What can I say? It’s a page turner!

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel by Colum McCann is, from what I can tell, being read by every book club in the land and was recommended to me by five different people, so you’ve probably already read it. It was really good, wasn’t it?

Two friends and an acquaintance (well, I know him and he might recognize me but maybe not) have come out with books this spring. It was with great relief that I opened them up and found them to my liking. There is always that moment before reading a friend’s book or going to their gallery show or hearing their band when I hold my breath and hope the deepest hope that I’ll like what I read/see/hear.

Food books first. Gordon Edgar’s Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge recounts his travails running the cheese counter at Rainbow Grocery here in San Francisco. I’ve been shopping at Rainbow, a worker-owned vegetarian co-op in my neighborhood, for years. Since it’s a co-op, the workers tend to stay around. The nice guy who always helped me deal with bagging and getting stuff to my car when my son was a tiny baby in a sling is still there, working the service counter, directing cars, and, I’m sure, helping other overwhelmed new moms. The cheese counter Gordon (a.k.a. Gordonzola) oversees is the reason that I desperately wish against all hope that someday Rainbow will stop its vegetarian ways and start selling meat. I wish this primarily for my own convenience, but also because, if the cheese counter is any indication, the meat counter would be amazing. I’ve watched the cheese section at Rainbow grow and develop over the years into the shining beacon of deliciousness and overcrowded convenience behind the produce area. There is a lot of cheese in not much space back there, but the grab-and-go pre-cut pieces and stellar variety combine to trump, in my opinion, the fanciest cheese spots around. Sometimes I want to sit and taste cheese and talk about the cheese before I buy, but not usually. Usually I’m doing the grocery shopping and need some Italian fontina, a hunk of Parmesan, a soft blue, and maybe something else but I’ll figure that out myself, thank you very much. Reading Gordon’s account of learning about cheese, developing the cheese section at Rainbow, and how this all fits into his essential punk philosophy and radical politics reminded me about everything I love about that store. It reminded me that the insane parking and long lines are worth it.

As much as Cheesemonger hits on how I shop for the food I cook, Marcia Gagliardi’s The Tablehopper’s Guide to Dining and Drinking in San Francisco hits on how I eat when I go out. Finally someone has organized a restaurant guide in a way that I eat and choose restaurants. I’ve turned to Marcia several times for restaurant suggestions and she has been spot-on every time. Spot to impress clients from out of town but quiet enough so their older ears can hear well? Chez Spencer. Where to go for a 5 o’clock dinner with my father-in-law with my son in tow because my husband has a meeting at 6 and it’s a school night? The bar at Two serves plenty of real food that early. I could go on but I don’t need to because her book answers all these questions and plenty I never thought of. The girl knows nothing if not the dining scene in SF. If you live in or ever come to SF, this book is a must-own (unless you’re staying at my house, I have a copy you can borrow).

Finally and completely unrelated to food, Elissa Auther’s String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art is, after many years of anticipation, in my hands in full book form. I’m interested in the whole concept of craft (my two favorite things to do besides actually craft in the form of quilting or knitting are writing and cooking which have the craft about them) and the difference between art and craft, so this book has my name all over it. I’m about a quarter in. Here’s the thing, I know Elissa well. I love how this book sounds just like her. She speaks with this level of precision – it’s a joy to hear and a pleasure to read. It is rare that the academic prose has life to it (and here I should admit a real weakness/fondness for academic studies – it reminds me of all the quiet alone reading time I had in graduate school which even then seemed like such a gift), but this book strolls along through the use of fiber in contemporary art with grace and verve.

I also recently re-read My So-Called Freelance Life to remind me not to take assignments unless I’m either really interested in them or they pay really well (of course a combination of the two is always nice…). Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs kept seeming like it was going to be tragic but wasn’t too depressing and is beautifully written and should be read by anyone who has ever even flown over Madison, Wisconsin. The Ghost Map about the cholera epidemic in London is written like a mystery and has filled out my knowledge of cholera epidemics nicely (Paris 1832 – go ahead, ask me anything!). Even though I’d read all the stories when they were published in magazines, I still savored the time I spent snuggled up with Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness: Stories.

How about you? What have you been reading?

Even though I hail from the Midwest, I know precious little about farms or farming. What I do know was gleaned from The Farm Report, which I watched when I woke up before dawn at age 5, 6, 7. (Full disclosure: my bedtime until I was 9 or 10 was 7 pm. That was some hardcore old-fashioned Midwestern child-rearing my parents did.) I didn’t wake my parents, I just went downstairs and watched The Farm Report until cartoons came on. Sometimes I would have a bowl of cereal, but mainly I would just wait. Wait for cartoons. Wait for everyone else to wake up. Wait for the sun to rise. In the meantime I learned about the importance of weather (these people were obsessed!) and commodity prices (which didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time and about which I am still fuzzy because it sounds like a bit of a scam – but I must still be missing something).

So when two people I know and like came out with books about farms this spring, well, I was nervous. I was worried they might be dull. I was anxious, as I always am before I read a friend’s writing or see their artwork or hear their music for the first time: what if I think it sucks? I was also worried that no one would care, that farming has been too farmed out of our lives (that phrase proves its own point) for anyone to be hooked by a book about farming.

I worried in vain. I am thrilled to report both books are excellent. I rejoice in the pleasure I took in reading them. I feel so damn lucky that I know the people who put these words together. They put the writer back in food writer and the farm back in food.

Lisa M. Hamilton’s Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness is so good it made me angry. It was so good I had to stay up reading it, I just could not find it within myself to simply put it down and fall asleep. Lisa loves farms and farmers. Deeply Rooted tells the stories of three farmers who have opted out of what conventional farming has become – bigger is better, chemicals are fine, debt is a necessity – to forge their own paths in the American agricultural system. They have different degrees of success, they face problems, they are imperfect and fallible human beings. Lisa captures all of this with respect and insight. If you care at all about farms and farmers it’s a must-read, if you like good writing I’d put it in that same category. Not to get your hopes up or anything, but in some ways it was like if Alice Munro wrote non-fiction about farmers. Yes, I did just say that. You can read what Lisa has to say about why she writes about farming and how she eats locally in this Q&A with Lisa M. Hamilton I posted at Local Foods, as well as my Review of Deeply Rooted.

I met Novella at a conference where she spoke and the rest of us laughed our asses off at her shenanigans with chickens and rabbits and pigs, oh my! Novella is the kind of person who is so good, who seems to be living such an authentic existence that is so true to her self and her vision of the world that she makes you feel better just for knowing her. Why is that sentence in the second person? I have no idea how she may or may not make you feel, she makes me feel awesome and hopeful and topped off with possibility. Novella works at a biofuel station. That’s her day job. Then she writes as well – and as demonstrated in her book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, does so beautifully. And when others might watch television or play Scrabble or stare at the ceiling and try to hear the quiet, Novella gets up off her ass and takes care of animals and a thriving garden and feeds a little pocket of the world that rubs up against her farm in the ghetto of Oakland.

I went to see her earlier this week (to get the quotes for this Q&A With Novella Carpenter I posted over at Local Foods). As I drove up to her house at 10:30 in the a.m. a hooker in a non-ass-covering gold lame body stocking-as-dress and a pair of knee-high Ugg knock-off fuzzy black boots was posing for an old man with a camera. Lying in the gutter for him, slithering up against the doorway of the shooting gallery/outhouse on the corner, and generally causing Novella and her neighbors to yell about how crazy it was to each other. That’s the neighborhood in which she has her farm. Prostitutes and shooting galleries? Check. Concerned neighbors bonding together over the insanity? Check.

We hung with her baby goats, who could not be cuter, and sat in the garden and chatted about her farm, why she farms, what farming means to her, and how very screwed up most people are about where their food – and particularly their meat – comes from.

“People think ‘I know this animal and I don’t want it to die’ but I’m going to eat unnamed meat and not feel bad about it. That makes no sense. It’s logically flawed. For me there is no conflict at all. There is great love and then you enjoy them all the more because you did know that they had a good life.”

I love everything she is doing and she is so smart and funny about it and so clearly fulfilled by it. And I know that I am never going to plant that garden or raise those animals. That’s what Novella does. The world is the better for it. I’m the better for witnessing it. And I’m really really glad she wrote a book about it because it is honest and funny and a fabulous story. (Read a review I wrote of it for Local Foods – Review of Farm City by Novella Carpenter.)

So it’s been a good spring, bookwise, anyway. Besides Farm City and Deeply Rooted, I also read:

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which took my sweet self and blew it right out of any water it could find – that book simply freaked me out with its genius and language play and all of its pretty pretty words
• The Dud Avocado, a 1950s novel about… well, read it to find out but it starts with an American girl in Paris – perfect summer beach reading for those who like their page-turners well written
• A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg of Orangette, full of her simple recipes and fabulous writing
• The River of Doubt, who knew I cared so much about Theodore Roosevelt? That’s what good writing does, of course, it makes you care when you otherwise might not

I’ve read other things this spring, these are just the stand-outs. As the title of the post says, it’s been a good season for reading. I’m feeling lucky.