Adventures in Food: Gnocchi Edition

Tonight, I had a severe case of writer's block. And not just block, really. It was a full blown case of writer's aversion. I didn't like my writing at that particular moment (or myself, life, the universe, and everything [You know how writers are. Our frustrations are epic!]). I needed to take a step back and return to the simple things in life.

Enter: gnocchi recipe on my wonderful friend's blog, Matzo & Rice.

Electing to watching the Jets/Patriots game (go LT!) and make gnocchi from scratch instead of writing, here's what I did:

Gwen says, "Hurry up and boil, potatoes!"


Once the potatoes were boiled, I mashed up a cup of potatoes with butter and salt and pepper (per the very clear and excellent recipe). At this point I thought, why ruin delicious mashed potatoes by making them into a gnocchi that I will inevitably botch? But the Jets were pressing on, and so did I.

Next came the dough! One cup of flour was plenty. The directions said knead, so I punched it warily a few times, then decided if you could see my knuckle imprints in the dough, it was good enough. Then I shaped the gnocchi into bite sized bits and got a good man to make the gnocchi sauce:

Voila! Dinner!

Now I feel much happier about the world. If only that meant my story was done and winding its brilliant way to the New Yorker.

New Year, New Books!

After an exciting day of scraping snow off my car, editing books, marveling at recalcitrant authors, and wending my way home behind cars still spitting off snow, I arrived home to find a package of books propped up against my front door! My Amazon shipment has arrived!

As I said in my new year's day post, I am excited for all the reading that I'm going to do in 2011. I am especially excited about pushing my boundaries a bit more than usual by venturing into the realm of short story collections in addition to novels (basically the only thing I read).

In the mail for me was:

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguru
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
Best European Fiction 2011 (on my Kindle), edited by Aleksandar Hemon


Lahiri and Ishiguru have been on my radar for a long time, I've seen Jennifer Egan's book making a splash in book stores and reviews, and Meloy and the European fiction are short story collections that I bought out of a spirit of mad, unknowable adventure! This is how I go wild, okay? Five whole new books and they are all mine!

What new books are you reading in 2011? Any recommendations?

Tom Rachman at Politics & Prose

Last night at Politics & Prose, Tom Rachman kicked off his book tour for the paperback release of The Imperfectionists. For the first night of his first ever book tour, he came across as at ease, thoughtful, and funny. Reading a long section of the book (something most authors, honestly, are not up to), he kept the audience engaged and laughing, doing a perfect American accent for the newspaper editor from Alabama, a credible stutter for the obit writer, and a lively tone during narration.

The Imperfectionists is a book I encountered after it was reviewed (glowingly) by the New York Times. Comical in the way Graham Greene books are comical (sometimes because the situation is absurd, often because the situation is quietly tragic), the book is about people who work for and read an English language newspaper in Rome. Each chapter is a different character’s story, starting from the inception of the newspaper, through its heyday, to its demise. Each character has his or her problems: too much ambition, too little, and so on, but you are made to love all of them. The writing is clear and concise, letting you see each person honestly for the coward, dreamer, or faker he is, but it increases instead of detracts from your empathy with him.

As far as I know, this book has not won or been short-listed for any prizes this year. Nor has it gotten the same kind of attention as Freedom (also mysterious missing from the National Book Award list). I have read both and enjoyed both books, but I would have to say that I loved The Imperfectionists while I enjoyed and respected Freedom. I’ve seen both Tom Rachman and Jonathan Franzen speak in the last year. Both are good speakers, both with a quick sense of humor.

The two books are hard to compare, as they differ greatly in scope and structure. But I would say that while Freedom at times gets lost in detailing the absurdities and failures of both characters and countries, The Imperfectionists is always stepping back to the next mundane task of getting the newspaper published, getting groceries in the refrigerator, getting a shower and shave before a dinner that still has some hope or promise. The characters always seem a moment away from perhaps, at long last, fulfilling the promise that every part-way decent person has, to make their lives better. In Freedom, the descent of the characters is, immediately, inevitable. It is simply slow, and very very artful. And the ending is barely redeeming.

If you haven’t read The Imperfectionists, please run out and buy it. He deserves your money and you deserve the experience of reading his book. If Tom Rachman is in your area soon giving a book talk, go out to see him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you!

Happy New Year!

It's the first day of 2011 and, as eleven is my lucky number, I expect this to be an excellent year!

All the blogs I read are full of new year's resolutions, so here are mine:

Write.
Read.
Run.

My life is pretty simple. If I do those three things, I will be happy. If I don't do them, I won't be.

To make this a better writing year than last, I need to write every day. My writing group, a year old, will keep me on track. For reading, I need to be more intentional about what books I pick up to read. The end of 2010 got away from me (Outlander, anyone?), but my book orders for 2011 are already in and I am raring to go! First up: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Running is just about going and, with my coworker and good friend by my side, I know I will. Nothing gets rid of stress for me like running.

Here's to another year of making myself happy and getting better at the things I love.

And here's to making a better looking carrot cake for 2012! First step: make sure the frosting doesn't look like Elmer's glue. Next step: steal the carrot cake recipe from the Carleton College bakery.

Happy New Year to all! If you have any resolutions yourselves, I'd love to know.

In the Words of Friedrich Schiller, Good Night Carleton College!

For 99.9 percent of people who watch the Colbert Report in Comedy Central, the last four seconds of Monday night's show probably didn't make a lot of sense. Why is Stephen clutching a bust of Friedrich Schiller?

My boyfriend and I, both Carleton alums, sat up straight in our chairs, look at each other, and asked, "Is that our Schiller? It is! It must be! How many hilarious busts of Schiller can possibly be in circulation?"

So a tip of my hat, as Stephen might say, to the intrepid Carl who got Mr. Schiller on the show. All praise the maize and blue!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
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In Like a Lion, Out Like a Mob: A Weekend of Protests on the National Mall

This weekend was the first weekend of spring, and anyone out enjoying spring on the Mall yesterday or today saw a lot of protesting. Leaving Union Station on Saturday, I found myself in the middle of a group walking to the capital to protest health care reform. Two women behind were talking, and one said to the other, when I was twenty, I just bought my own health care. Besides, what does a twenty-year-old even need health care for? It made me so angry and broke my heart all at once. Why would a twenty-year-old need health care? Besides being able to see a doctor, treat basic infections, get annual pap smears, and have chronic health conditions treated and monitored? Besides knowing that if you are in an accident your family won’t be bankrupt by astronomical hospital bills? No reason.

Another man protesting health care reform pushed a stroller with his daughter in it, holding a sign above his head that said “Kill the Bill.” And I thought, what if your daughter got sick tomorrow with a disease that is with her the rest of her life? Is the world you want for her a world where graduating from college means she loses coverage to pay for medicine and doctors? A world where she is unable to buy insurance for herself? A world where she isn’t able to be a freelance writer or start a small business because she needs to stay with a safe, big company with a group plan? That is the world right now, without reform.

Worked up walking next to the person I love, a person with a scar down his chest and three anxious years of no health insurance thankfully over, I yelled, “Health care is a human right!” in the direction of the mob. Useful, no, but it felt, for a moment, better than walking silently by. A man walking next to me kindly informed me that health care in fact isn’t a God-given right (who said anything about God?) because health care takes from some to give to others. I am sure he’s right. Jesus would be against that . . .

After getting worked up yesterday, I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to be on the Mall for Vote Day, but I’m glad I went. There were a few hundred protesters outside the capital, ready for round two of yelling racial epithets at some of our black congressmen. But down the Mall, packed body to body between 7th and 12th, were 200,000 people protesting for immigration reform. Flags commanded the sky line, many American, many more from the Americas. There were African nations represented, Asian nations, and more and more Latinos. It reminded me of the mall on Inauguration Day. Many races and a lot of hope.

I grew up in San Diego, I lived in Mexico and Argentina, my heart is with the people who do the most dangerous, poorest-paid jobs in our country. My heart is with the undocumented immigrants who cleaned the rubble from the World Trade Center and now have no legal recourse to get money for the illnesses they contracted doing that dangerous work. With the pickers in the fields and the children brought to American when they were two, now unable to get help with college tuition because they are stuck flying under the radar.



I want to see health care reform and immigration reform debated. But I do not understand debating whether or not we need reform. We need reform and I want to believe that we can achieve reform. Sí se puede.

Oscar, Stop Fluffing the Actors. We Know. They're Huge.

Photographers stalk them. Women and men diet to emulate them. Fortunes are made writing about them. Are actors still in need of an ego boost? Oscar thinks so.

Every year the Oscars run too long, and every year they claim they'll deliver a brisk, focused show. This year's show shuddered and stalled, jerked forward, braked hard, and gave out just as the Best Picture Oscar was handed over like an exhausted afterthought, a little after midnight.

What went wrong? Not enough Neil Patrick Harris! Okay, maybe that’s just me. Instead of trimming the program across the board, the "small fry"—sound mixers, film editors, short film makers—were rushed through their acceptance speeches. If there were two or three people winning one award, the mic was turned off after the first person finished, leaving the others to mouth thank yous as the camera pulled away and the music swelled. Did you want to say something? Too bad. We are cutting you off so that we can spend an extra long time patting actors on the ass.

I love actors. When Colin Firth’s name was mentioned, I was bounding into my chair so that I wouldn’t miss a minute. But not even I, avid Colin fan, need to hear his costar say what an awesome human being he is. No doubt he’s a great guy, but he (and all his fellow nominees) weren’t nominated for their work on Haiti or their giving personalities. They were nominated (theoretically) because they can act and did so in an exceptional manner at some point during 2009. End of ass patting. I just saved the Oscars forty minutes of air time.

So let the actors performances speak for themselves—and let everyone else get a word in edgewise.