The Every Day Cookbook

The economic downturn has me nesting a little. I'm not just weeding out what we don't need; I'm exploring old sources for doing things. Going low tech is a defense mechanism for me. Looking at what I have for multiple uses is another.

I inherited a number of old books from my grandmother, including two old cookbooks. One is 'The American Woman's Cookbook', copyright 1942, which has not only recipes but also instructions on planning menus, packing lunches, and marketing (grocery shopping, not selling to others). In flipping through it, I found margin notes in Grandma's writing, so I know she used that one. The other book is older and has missing pages, but the header on each page was 'The Every Day Cookbook.' It is also more than a cookbook; more like an almanac or encyclopedia. It reminds me of the 'Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook' I got as a wedding gift, which has a section on basic nutrition and instructions for chopping onions and other things I took for granted.

Being a sucker for historic detail, I looked up 'The Every Day Cookbook' online. It was written by Miss E. Neill and published in 1889. I could not find any other copyright information until I found a link to Barnes and Noble. Apparently it was reprinted in December 2007. It has some really good information in it, most of which would have been common sense in 1889: Do your own grocery shopping rather than leaving it to your servants (i.e. husband or kids these days?), pay cash unless absolutely necessary, choose only the best produce and meat. Some of it is outdated, such as saving someone from choking by quickly bending the end of a hatpin into a hook and using it to extract the obstruction. That one makes me shiver!

I'm considering buying a new copy to have for reference so I don't trash my original, although I may wait to see if I get it for Christmas. If the gloom and doom the news portents comes to pass, we may all find ourselves going back to the way things were done in 1889.

"A Writer's Space"

The other day, PBW posted a review of "A Writer's Space: Make Room to Dream, to Work, to Write" by Dr. Eric Maisel in her blog. Since I had to be in the vicinity of a book store later that afternoon, I scribbled down the title and stuck it in my pocket. The book store had one copy, which I happily divested them of, and I was on to the next thing.

It's a small book--about 6" square, and just shy of 250 pages, including the index and author's bio. It's a good thing, too, because this is not a straight-through read for me. There is so much information that I have to stop and digest before I can go on. I suspect it's going to live in my purse for a while and will be read and re-read in waiting rooms and grocery store lines through the summer.

So far, the chapters in section 2 have made the most sense. They deal with writing through distractions--the drippy faucet, laundry that needs to be done, and the thousand other little things that plague anyone who works at home. He doesn't even bother to mention the big stuff we all deal with--people who think that because we work at home, we don't really work, and that we live lives of leisure. He cuts right to the quick and addresses what even we don't see--that it's about choosing to write and shuffling everything else into its own time. It's about carving out a time--or several times--every day to boot up the laptop and tackle another piece of the project.

Yesterday, I got the section on writing in public. The section title is a little misleading. It's not about how to deal with the guy hovering over you in the coffee shop, offering suggestions about how your heroine can extricate herself from her latest mess. It's more about writing things as you really see them. He uses an example of a father and his children hurrying home from temple, describing how he can tell that they are going home and not to temple, that the father is distracted or upset because he's rushing the children along, pointing out that the mother is absent. As I read, I realized that I've been writing for the masses. I've been censoring myself so as not to offend anyone, and that safe writing isn't what I want to write or to read. I also need to incorporate more sensory detail--smells, colors, the bite of cold on the hero's face, the stab of fear when he hears that his girlfriend has been kidnapped.

I think this book has come to me at just the right time. It's given me some tools I was missing to get me to the next level. Too bad he doesn't have a chapter on why my cat wants to lay on my arms when I'm working and how to get them to quit. Maybe that's in his next book.

"Anansi Boys"

I must confess, I'd never heard of Neil Gaiman until we watched "Stardust" on DVD. Somewhere in the credits was a blurb that it was based on a book. I missed it, but Eric didn't, and a few days later he came home with a bag full of Neil Gaiman books.

I started to read "Anansi Boys" a few months ago, but I had a hard time getting into it and put it back down. It sat under my night stand until Saturday, when I found it again. I was looking for something else and shuffling through piles of stuff when I found it and thought maybe I'd try reading it again.

Once I figured out the writing style, it was a surprisingly easy read, but that took a little time. I was reading it after church yesterday and told the family that it was a very strange book. That's when I realized it's written very much like a Lemony Snickett book aimed at an older audience. It was just the paradigm shift I needed to zoom through the rest of the book.

It's really quite a lovely coming of age/finally growing up story. The protagonists are two brothers, Fat Charlie, who is a doormat in the beginning, and Spider, who has it all and takes what he wants. It is sprinkled with dry-as-a-bone humor (Neil Gaiman was raised in England, if that helps) and Anansi folklore.* All in all, it's a great beach or hammock story, and with summer coming on, there should be opportunities for anyone to read it. It's appropriate for pre-teens and up; there is some fighting and reference to sex, but it's far less than one would see in a thirty minute sitcom. (I'd be more specific, but I gave up watching sitcoms years ago. I'm basing my opinion on commercials and what I see passing through when the kids get control of the remote.) It has a wide array of characters who have odd idiosyncrasies, not one of whom failed to make me laugh at some point.

I was curious about whether his writing style was Lemony Snickett-esque all time or whether it was specific to this book. I started reading "American Gods" last night, and so far it seems to be just that book. I'll report back when I've finished.




*I had no idea what Anansi was at first. Honestly, I looked at 'Anansi' and my brain translated 'Anasazi', as in the ancient Pueblo tribe. That could account for my initial confusion and may give more insight to the inner workings of my convoluted little brain that anyone wants. Once I finally got it straight, I remembered seeing a book when I worked in the library in Italy about Anansi; I shelved it quickly because Anansi is a spider, and even cartoon spiders make me do the yucky dance.

Body Clutter book review

It's all Jean's fault. She mentioned reading Body Clutter and writing in the same sentence, and I figured if it helped with her writing, maybe it would help me! Jean, I'd love to know what they said that helped with your writing, if it's not too private, because I sure didn't see it.

Let me start with a disclaimer. I'm not overweight. Yet. I could be without much effort. My family's legacy includes cancer, obesity, high blood pressure, both types of arthritis, and diabetes. I'm also at risk for osteoporosis and melanoma. Denial doesn't prevent any of those conditions, and being in my 40's now doesn't help either.

Body Clutter really didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. I don't have 'comfort food' issues; my food issues are more hormonal--cravings and such. It did tell me what I already knew in a different way, from a different perspective. They emphasized FlyLady's Baby Steps and renamed exercise "Blessing Your Heart", which is hilarious when you consider that FlyLady lives in North Carolina. In the Carolinas, if you say, "Bless your heart" to someone it generally means, "Poor thing, you don't know how stupid you are." Maybe both can apply equally in some cases!

Even though I really didn't learn anything new, it was worth the effort of buying and reading. I kept thinking of people to recommend it to. They use such a logical approach--almost a "Well, Duh!" approach. I think what struck me the most is how they kept saying, "Don't let perfectionism get in your way." I never thought of myself as a perfectionist until I started seeing a psychologist for alternate ADD therapy. Apparently my perfectionism was so deeply rooted that I didn't know it was there, but it stalled me in several areas of my life. Making the shift from "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all" to "Good enough for government work" has improved the state of my health, home, and mental well-being. FlyLady and Leanne reinforced that and had a few suggestions to help, too.

Bottom line: You don't have to be unhappy with your body to benefit from this book. It's an easy read with a lot of common sense and concepts that can be applied, literally, to anything in your life.