Tag Archives: love

My Books of 2012: Part Two

28 Friday Dec 2012

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Yesterday, I began listing the books I read in 2012, sharing with you the stories and works I’ve paged through this year. I’ll continue that today to finish up my list of sixteen books read in 2012, exceeding my goal of reading one book per month.

My Book of 2012:  Part Two

keeping the feast:  one couple’s story of love, food, and healing (paula butturini)

Earlier this year, I resolved to read as many food-related books as I could in order to continue my education as a food writer. This book, Keeping the Feast, was a surprise for me. I purchased it from a bargain table at my local bookstore, and I didn’t expect the impact it would have on me. I wrote about it here on my blog, and the author, Paula, was kind enough to write back to me, leaving me a lengthy comment and then responding to an email exchange I started with her. This is another of those books that I want to make people read so we can discuss. It’s just gorgeous and intense and hopeful.

The Books I Want to Write: Jael McHenry's "The Kitchen Daughter" (and recipe for GA Peach Martinis)

the kitchen daughter (jael mchenry)

McHenry’s first novel, The Kitchen Daughter, taught me a lot about point of view and how to weave food into a novel, letting it factor in organically instead of forcing it in. I had always been taught that a narrator or point of view character with limitations – mental illness, disability, addiction, etc. – couldn’t necessarily be trusted. That the narrator was sort of problematic. But this book, told from the point of view of a girl who has Aspergers, and who then begins seeing ghosts, was thoughtful. I trusted the narrator. And even more than trusting her, I felt for her. I was close to her, cheering her on. The story gave me a lot to think about in terms of my pre-conceived notions of narrators and point of view. But on the level of sheer reading, the book was entertaining and heartfelt. Definitely worth reading. 

the gastronomical me (mfk Fisher)

Ah, my first M.F.K. Fisher. This book was at times intensely entertaining, at times a little veiled with inside jokes, and at times just a bit dry, but M.F.K. Fisher had a hand in making food writing what it is today, and I’m so glad I read it. Yesterday afternoon, I read another essay by M.F.K. Fisher (in another book) about the right kinds of foods to serve if one wants to seduce their dining partner. It was hilarious and insightful. I love M.F.K. Fisher for all her purity, her naughtiness, and her way of describing food. The Gastronomical Me was a great work of hers to start with.  Continue reading »

Thankful Foodie: Reflecting on Thanksgiving

22 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in Blogging, Food, Writing

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I wrote last weekend about how bonfires (or fireworks) make me think of the last time I experienced bonfires (or fireworks). The same holds true for holidays, and as a food blogger and avid eater, this is one of my absolute favorite holidays. And since I managed to get through the day enjoying myself without having to take Alka Seltzer, I consider it a job well done, and for that, I am thankful.

So here are some gratuitous Thanksgiving food photos and a few random (or not so random) notes of thanks from me before I nod off into my turkey-induced sleep.

Turkey (brined with Williams-Sonoma Apples & Spices, then massaged with butter and sprinkled with fresh cracked black pepper and kosher salt).

1. I’m thankful for my parents who gave me the opportunities and resources to learn to cook. My mom taught me some of my first recipes, and her cinnamon toast is still unsurpassed in my book as the ultimate in comfort food and ease. My dad had me cooking my first Thanksgiving turkey when I was eleven years old because he got a free turkey from the car dealership he worked at that fall. I made box stuffing, jar gravy, and frozen veggies, and he had to help me lift the turkey in and out of the oven because I was too little to do it alone. My next solo Thanksgiving would be when I was fifteen, and by then, I had gotten more experienced, using my mom’s recipe for sausage stuffing, calling her for last minute tips and questions.

2. I’m thankful that I can still call my mom for last minute tips and questions. Like today when I realized I bought pineapple chunks instead of crushed pineapple for the sweet potato casserole. Mom offered advice, and crisis was averted. And that casserole was perfect. (Tip of the day from me:  use the jumbo campfire marshmallows that you usually use for making s’mores. Cut them in half, and arrange them in rows. They provide perfectly even coverage, and they’re thick enough that there is an equal ratio of yam to marshmallow.)

3. I’m thankful that I’ve retained enough of my child-like hope and wonder that I still tear up when the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade begins. We started watching it on CBS this morning, but it just didn’t seem like Thanksgiving if I couldn’t be vaguely annoyed with Matt Lauer and Al Roker, so we switched over to NBC just in time for me to see Al Roker and the lady who runs the parade doing the ribbon cutting with a group of Girl Scouts. A small part of me still wishes I were a Radio City Rockette. And I still tear up and get goosebumps watching the parade. And I’m thankful for that spirit.

See what I mean? 50% yam, 50% marshmallow. Just like God intended.

4. I’m thankful for a slow, relaxing, food-filled day to hang with my honey in the middle of the week. Weekends end up being stuffed (get it? turkey? cause it’s Thanksgiving?) with errands and chores and social engagements. We’re off work, but we’re not really relaxing. But a day off today was perfect. We stayed in pajamas and drank coffee and mimosas and ate leftover Monkey Bread. We started cooking, each of us with our own tasks, helping each other when we needed it (stuffing a bird is sort of a two-person job). This time next year, I will likely have said goodbye to Amanda, sending her off on deployment for the better part of a year; I’m so happy I got to have Thanksgiving with her today and cherish having time with her here at home.

5. I’m thankful for pie. That’s all. I’m just thankful for pie.

Grandma Ople’s Apple Pie

6. Lastly, I’m thankful for this blog. Two years ago next month, I quit my job at a law firm where I worked as an administrative assistant. It was a good job with good people, but it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t challenged. And I knew that my trips to Barnes & Noble on my lunch break, where I walked the aisles and trailed my fingers along the spines of books and sometimes cried a little in the parking lot, were signs to me:  Dana, let someone who is right for that job have it. Go do your job. That was teaching, yes, but it was also writing. I started this blog  few months later, and I have learned more about cooking and food and community and writing and my own voice and reading and taste and hunger in the past year than I ever could have imagined. I’ve gotten so much closer to being the kind of writer I’m supposed to be, and that has come partly from writing Whisks & Words. I am thankful for the people who have given me writing jobs, for the people who have been good enough to publish my stories and essays. I’m thankful for my writing community, both the ones I went to school with and hang out with and the ones I’ve never met in person, the ones in my blogging community and on Twitter and Facebook. And I am so thankful for this blog, for the freedom and confidence and experience it has given me. And also the pleasure and enjoyment. And I’m thankful for the readers who stop by (and even more for the readers who come back again!) and read and chat with me.

I’m one thankful foodie. And that time, I almost said foodie without cringing. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

This post is part of NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. Check out other great posts at BlogHer and yeah write.

Thankful Foodie: Day Three

21 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Food

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I find it becomes more and more difficult to narrow down and write about only one thing I’m thankful for each day. I am in the very fortunate position of feeling very thankful for a lot of things. But nonetheless, I have to narrow it down, and so today, I want to write about how thankful I am for friends.

This morning, I hosted a brunch with a small group of close friends who I don’t get to see as much as I’d like. We’re all busy, all with different schedules, different demands. Our lives are very similar, but they are diverging more and more as we follow our chosen paths in life. But even as we walk our separate paths, it’s good to leave the beaten down clearing or stop thrashing through the underbrush and come together and celebrate our friendship.

Yesterday, I blogged about my gratitude for cooking and my love of preparing food for my friends. Today’s brunch really allowed me to follow through on that part of my life, on the sharing and hospitality. It allowed me to nourish them and get them a wee little bit drunk on mimosas. We teach; we need alcohol.

Tonight, Amanda and I will make pie and deviled eggs; we’ll eat chicken wings and broccoli for dinner. We’ll watch Oprah’s Favorite Things on the DVR before tomorrow’s feast for two. (I should point out that when I told my friend Andrea what was on our menu for tomorrow, she asked if we were having company. No, I said. It’s just for us. She shook her head, but she also admitted it sounded fantastic. And it will be.)

But before I head off into the stupor of cooking and eating and relaxing before tomorrow’s day of cooking and eating, I wanted to share with you my brunch menu and recipes. I wanted to take a moment and express how grateful I am for my friends, who I refer to as my “chosen” family. Because one family you’re born into. But the other one, you pick out along the way, drawing them close to you, taking comfort in them when you’re far away from your born-into family, celebrating their successes, mourning their losses, and sharing in that sweet sense of community.

Pre-Thanksgiving Brunch

Every year, I like to do a big breakfast the day before Thanksgiving. The past two years, I’ve done Monkey Bread, but I knew it would be just me eating it here by myself while Amanda was at work. So I invited reinforcements, one of whom is a vegetarian, so I chose to make a vegetarian-friendly strata as well.

Monkey Bread

Monkey Bread takes me right back to Sunday School potlucks when we would bring breakfast for everyone to share. Monkey Bread was one of my favorite dishes. I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com.

3 (12 oz) packages of refrigerated biscuit dough

1 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

(Optional:  1/2 cup chopped walnuts; 1/2 cup raisins – I’m a purist, I leave them out. Consult original recipe, linked above, for instructions with these ingredients.)

Monkey Bread! | Photo by Tara Shea Burke

1. Grease a bundt pan with cooking spray. Continue reading »

Thankful Foodie: Day Two

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

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Dinner for my roommates | Pic by Andrea Nolan

I’m struggling to be truly thankful for blogging and NaBloPoMo, which is tricky because I had intended to write something to that effect.

But I’ve got a dinner reservation in an hour, I’ve been on the go since 6am, and my Internet is being slow. So that post isn’t happening tonight.

I am, however, thankful for one very significant activity in my life that plays a part in blogging:  I am thankful for cooking.

Today, I finished my grading marathon of 70 papers, 19 exams, and 70 Reading Responses. It took awhile, at times it was defeating, but mostly it was okay. Just time-consuming.

But today I finished and then got a haircut, then read a magazine and watched half an episode of 30 Rock. And then, I got cooking.

I find cooking incredibly therapeutic. I feel at home and at ease in the kitchen. Amanda once told me that I cook with a sort of quiet confidence, and I like to think that (most of the time) that’s true. It’s a serene place where I am in control and confident.

Every once in awhile, I have a Julie Powell-style breakdown. But those are rare(-ish) and usually funny afterwards.

Fish tacos: one of my favorite things to cook with my honey.

I cook to provide for myself and my family and friends. I cook to nourish. I cook to relax. I cook to learn and experiment. I cook to comfort and console. I cook to reward myself for a long day of work. I cook to find balance and clarity in a world that is often far less predictable than the reaction I get from mixing butter, eggs, flour, and a few other magic ingredients to get cookies. Continue reading »

My Vested Interest: Or B-I-G N-E-W-S!

12 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Adventures

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It’s sort of a funny thing, this blogging thing. When you have exciting things happen in your life, you call your parents, your siblings, your closest friends. You announce it on Facebook so you can save the phone calls you would have to make to all of your FB friends. But when you blog, you’ve got a whole extra community of people to announce special things to. A community of almost-strangers whose words you read, or who regularly read your words, and who form a vested interest in one another.

I have a vested interest in you. And I have exciting news to share:  I am getting married.

(Wait. Hold on. Not adequate enough excitement. – I’m getting married!!!)

If you read this blog regularly, you’ve heard me talk about my sailor who I met, fell in love with, and who eats the foods I make, who indulges my whims (Me:  I need to leave this big bowl of sourdough starter in the laundry room until it starts to stink. Her:  Okay, sounds good. When’s the bread coming?), who loves me tremendously.

Our agreement to get married, our actualizing of a plan, was a months-long conversation about what we thought about getting married, how we saw our relationship, what marriage meant (means) to us. It’s an ongoing conversation.

One day, I busted her looking at rings on her computer. When I pressed for details, she told me she had been shopping, but she had no idea what kind of rings I liked or what size I was, so as much as she might like to surprise me, that wasn’t going to happen.

So we did what we do best:  we worked together. About a week ago, we went ring-shopping, got the ones we wanted, and declared ourselves engaged.

Since then, we’ve changed our address to Cloud 9, Virginia. Continue reading »

My Hampton Roads Bucket List

25 Thursday Oct 2012

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I moved to Norfolk, Virginia five years ago to go to graduate school at Old Dominion University. Truth be told, I wanted to leave Georgia – ready for a change, a challenge, an adventure – and I had always had a feeling I would live in Virginia. What’s more – I wanted to live in Virginia. I had no reason for this. I had ridden through the state once on the way to a family vacation in Washington, D.C. And yet, Virginia called to me. I imagined golden maple trees, and vineyards, and forests with the tallest trees I had seen. And I was right, to a degree. There are stretches of Highway 58, heading towards the Hampton Roads area, where the trees do, indeed, seem to reach up and up and up until they begin to curve inwards, making me feel like I’m driving through a tunnel of the oldest, tallest pine trees.

Last year, before Halloween party at Mambo Room in Ghent.

I came to Virginia for school, and I stayed because I fell in love with the area. I loved the water (even though it means flooding), the weather (even though it means hurricanes), the community of writers (even though it sometimes means more pressure than I can take), and the friends I made (no conditions on that one; the friends I made here are a second family). I got my education here, I got my first major publications here, I was offered fantastic opportunities to grow as a writer and a person here, and I took them, and I’m grateful. I figured out who I am; I came out; I became an adult; I tried on different hats. I have known great happiness here, and there are still times when I drive across the bridge from Suffolk to Norfolk in the mornings, as the sun rises over the water and casts a pink and orange show behind the packing cranes, and I think, holy crap, I live here.

I stayed here because I fell in love with the area. I’m leaving because I fell in love with a woman. And that woman has orders to California. We will leave in late spring. Which means I have six months to take full advantage of my time left in Hampton Roads, reliving the things that have brought me the most joy, or experiencing the things I have always meant to but never got around to.

And to help me along, I’ve begun making my actual Hampton Roads Bucket List, which you can see on my blog. Continue reading »

CSAcation: Falling in Love Apple Pie

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in CSAcation, Food, Recipes

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I think that in every relationship, if you think hard enough about it, there’s a key moment. It’s the moment when you know. You’re falling in love. This is serious.

I love asking for these stories from couples, young and old. I love hearing about that moment when one or both of them knew that they were falling in love with the other.

For me, that moment came with a discussion about apple pie.

I had been dating Amanda for a couple months. She had invited me over for dinner, which she cooked for me. I’m not sure what she cooked; it was possibly grilled salmon, or a pasta casserole. What she cooked that night is not terribly important. It’s what we talked about.

Somehow, we came around to the discussion of pie. Pie is essential in life, I think. She once asked me, if I had to live for the rest of my life, and I had to choose one dessert – pie, cake, or cookies – to eat, what would it be? I thought for about an hour (it’s a very big question!), and then I decided pie. Partly because we can also incorporate fried pies, cobblers, and tarts in with pies, and I think I could happily finish out my life with such things.

We discussed, that fateful evening, what sorts of pies we liked (almost all of them) and which ones we weren’t too jazzed about (cherry, for me, and probably mincemeat). Since I was trying to be dazzling and charming and keep her around a little longer (at that point in my dating life, I was firmly convinced that women liked me for anywhere between two to four dates and then tired of me), I announced that I make a fantastic apple pie. (Which is true.)

She said, “Oh, me too.”

And in unison, in a moment of simultaneity that only happens in movies, we both said, “Grandma Ople’s.”

Felt insecure about how my pie looked, so I brought in decorative pine cones.

I gasped. I wanted to announce that I both loved her and was horrified by her admission. No one (except for the 5000+ people who have rated it on Allrecipes.com) knows about Grandma Ople’s apple pie. It was like she knew my deepest culinary secret.

And that was the moment I knew:  I was falling in love with Amanda. Because of Grandma Ople and her pie. Perhaps that’s weird. So be it. Continue reading »

CSAcation: Chicken Soup. Stat.

29 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in CSAcation, Food, Recipes

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I’ve been away from my blog for days. My Facebook page has been neglected. I went entire days without Tweeting. And what’s worse, it’s not because I’ve been having fun. It’s because I’ve been sick, sick, sick.

Upon returning from my lovely weekend in D.C., I feel victim to the sniffling-sneezing-congested-headache bug that is making its way around my campus. My students are dropping like flies, and my fellow teachers are posting messages of solidarity on one another’s Facebook pages, comparing notes on symptoms, how long we’ve been sick, and what remedies we are using for treatment.

For the past two days, I’ve been able to do little more than lay in bed or haul my sorry butt to campus, giving half-hearted lectures and mostly sitting in my office with my head on the desk.

But lo and behold, today, the sickness seems to be moving out of my head and down into my chest, which isn’t great, but at least means I can stay upright long enough to blog and make some cider and work on writing the chapters of my book, pages of which are owed to my writing buddy, um, tomorrow.

And at times like this, I am so grateful for a CSA.

When we came home from D.C., we put a whole chicken in the crockpot with oil, salt and pepper, and a lime and a few cloves of garlic in the core. I saved the stock, picked the chicken clean, and threw the whole mess, plus some leftover chicken and vegetable broth and some water, into a pot with some CSA vegetables for chicken soup. It’s like, somehow, I knew that I would be sick as a dog within twenty-four hours. And this was my body’s final attempt to protect me.

Dana’s Sick Day Chicken Soup

Chicken soup, though simple, is such a grand, wonderful dish. I have eaten some really good chicken soup in my day. One of Norfolk’s loveliest little restaurants, Azar’s, serves a darn good chicken soup with big pieces of white meat, chunks of vegetables, and a lightly flavorful broth. Amanda proved her girlfriend chops to me last year when, during a 24-hour bug in our early dating days, she left work, sent me a text asking whether I wanted rice or noodles in my soup (despite my protesting that, really, I was fine, I didn’t want to be a bother, this was so sweet but she didn’t need to leave, really, noodles), and showed up at my door, in Navy uniform, with a bag from Panera with chicken noodle soup inside. She sat with me while I ate it, making me fall a little more in love with her.

And one of the best chicken soups I ever had was from my friend Claudia. During my thesis year in graduate school, I got a cold that seemed to last about two months. I could not kick that thing. And at the beginning of it, when I was reeling from the shock of my body’s betrayal during such an important time with so many deadlines, Claudia brought me two jars of homemade chicken soup to my office. This was the good stuff:  big pieces of chicken, a layer of fat at the top of the jar that melted into a beautiful dreamy broth when I heated it up, big chunks of veggies floating throughout. She joked that it wasn’t kosher, so it didn’t have the “Jew magic” to it, but she also pointed out the real truth of chicken soup:  the magic is in the love that someone shows when they make it (or bring it) to you. Continue reading »

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