Sandwichville

Many of you know I love inventing dishes and having them turn out well. I also love yummy sandwiches, according to me and confirmed by this blog. Ickie and I are fans of the PBS show Sandwiches You Will Like and regularly update our personal list of favorite sandwiches. Here are a few highlights:

*Pot Roast Sandwich, Good Eats Cafe, Grand Rapids, Michigan
*Steak & Cheese, Llywelyn's, St. Louis, Missouri
*Chicken Cranberry, Marie Catrib's, Grand Rapids, Michigan
*Lobster Roll, Red's Eats, Wiscasset, Maine
*Grilled Cheese, Hog Island Oyster Co., San Francisco, California
*Hot Pastrami, Italian & Greek Market (now closed), Santa Barbara, California
*Original French Dip, Philippe's, Los Angeles, California

This past Saturday Ickie had a Cuban pork sandwich at La Familia in Portland that probably needs to be added to the list.

Today when I was hungrily making my way home from the gym, I was considering what I had in the fridge and what I could create from it. Hence, I invented this scrumptious sandwich, which I scarfed down too quickly to take a photo.

Bacon-Squash-Cheddar-Spinach Sandwich

2 pieces thick-cut bacon, cooked
2 slices crusty Italian bread
Irish cheddar
Leftover roasted butternut squash
Spinach
Jalapeno jelly

I placed a slice of cheese on one bread slice, mushed some squash onto the other, and toasted it in my toaster oven. I added the bacon and spinach when it came out and had the jelly on the side, which I spooned onto each bite. I think chutney would work well in place of the jelly.

This is pretty much what happens when I watch reruns of Top Chef at the gym.

Welcome to Kid World

If you're looking for a book that will make you laugh out loud many times, as it did me, consider The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Ever since reading Bryson's A Walk in the Woods about 10 years ago, I've been a fan of his amusing travel logs. Thunderbolt Kid is his memoir of growing up in Des Moines in the 1950s. It's packed with humorous childhood episodes and is an idyllic snapshot of life in a small Midwestern town during a time when Americans were happily obsessed with Jell-O and household appliances.

Bryson's writing is both loving and snide, adoring his parents for their rather doubtable optimism and poking fun at his boyhood community. In one of my favorite chapters, Bryson recounts his humiliation when his mother made him wear a hand-me-down pair of his sister's lime capri pants to school.

I've always thought Bryson's word choice was exceptional when it came to depicting in great detail a place or event rife with humor and/or wonder. For example:

"The last stop on every shopping trip was a corner grocer's called Benteco's, where they had a screen door that kerboinged and bammed in a deeply satisfying manner, and made every entrance a kind of occasion."

"We did sometimes (actually quite routinely) give a boy named Milton Milton knuckle rubs for having such a stupid name and also for spending his life pretending to be motorized. I never knew whether he was supposed to be a train or robot or what, but he always moved his arms like pistons when he walked and made puffing noises, and so naturally we gave me knuckle rubs. We had to."

"Essentially matinees were an invitation to four thousand children to riot for four hours in a large darkened space."

"Mrs. Vandermeister was seven hundred years old, possibly eight hundred, and permanently attached to an aluminum walker. She was stooped, very small, forgetful, glacially slow, interestingly malodorous, practically deaf. She emerged from her house once a day to drive to the supermarket, in a car about the size of an aircraft carrier."

Similar to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon stories and Jean Shepard's In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (which inspired the movie A Christmas Story), Thunderbolt Kid made me yearn for a time when children could wander around town all day long without parental supervision, getting into mostly harmless mischief and talking to strangers at will.

The Infinite and Inexpressible Grace

I'm reading Dante's Purgatorio for Lent this year, and I came across a beautiful passage today. In it the Angel of Caritas speaks to Dante:

"It is because you focus on the prize
of worldly goods, which every sharing lessens
that Envy pumps the bellow for your sighs.

But if, in true love for the Highest Sphere,
your longing were turned upward, then your hearts
would never be consumed by such a fear;

for the more there are there who say 'ours'--not 'mine'--
by that much is each richer, and the brighter
within that cloister burns the Love Divine....

...Because within the habit of mankind
you set your whole intent on earthly things,
the true light falls as darkness on your mind.

The infinite and inexpressible Grace
which is in Heaven, gives itself to Love
as a sunbeam gives itself to a bright surface.

As much light as it find there, it bestows;
thus, as the blaze of Love is spread more widely,
the greater the Eternal Glory grows.

As mirror reflects mirror, so, above,
the more there are who join their souls, the more
Love learns perfection, and the more they love."

I'm a Cheat

Many of you are aware of my dismay at leaving behind truly abundant and authentic Mexican food in California. We have found one restaurant, Loco Coco's in Kittery, which serves very good Mexican food, but their menu lacks my weekly favorites from Los Arroyos in Santa Barbara: homemade tamales and carnitas. Carnitas is the slow-cooked, super tender pork, which is perfect on a homemade corn tortilla with just salt and a squirt of lime. I got a craving for it a while back and was aghast to discover that in order for me to make my own authentic carnitas, I'd have to cook the pork in an alarming amount of lard.

Bravely pressing on, I found a recipe for cheating white people, and it's surprisingly good. It's not completely authentic and it doesn't have the wonderful charred edges like the real carnitas, but we enjoyed it a great deal.

Carnitas in a Crockpot for Fraudulent White People

3 pound pork roast (Pork butt is recommended, but I used another bone-in cut which was fine.)
4 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno, whole
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika
1 bottle light beer (I used Sam Adams light.)

Cut 4 slits in the pork and insert garlic cloves. Add the pork, jalapeno, and cilantro to the crockpot. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika (you can add a bit of chili powder if you want it to be spicier, but the jalapeno gives it a mild spiciness). Pour beer over everything. Cook for 4 hours on high, then 2 hours on low.

Remove pork from crockpot and shred or cut into chunks, trimming off fat. Ladle liquid from the crockpot over pork to keep it moist.

This made so much meat I served it two ways: For tacos, we had the carnitas on soft corn tortillas with a generous squeeze of lime and homemade salsa fresca. For burritos, we filled large flour tortillas with spanish rice, black beans, pork, salsa verde, and shredded monterey jack (or queso fresco if you can get it). Top burritos with sour cream and guacamole, if desired. Have a beer or margarita to go with it, or a soda, if you are a disgruntled pregnant teetotaler like me.

Improving upon a Classic

Mistress Masham's Repose, penned by T.H. White (author of The Once and Future King, another favorite of mine), filches Jonathan Swift's Lilliputians, making them far more fascinating and fun. I always liked the concept of Gulliver's Travels yet found it rather a dull read. White even offers a brief but meaningful literary critique of Swift's work in a lighthearted discussion between two characters.

In Repose, young Maria is an orphan living in her crumbling family estate under the thumb of a cruel governess and a dishonest vicar. She discovers a secret outpost of Lilliputians living on a small island on the estate, and after some initial misunderstandings, they become friends. The action really picks up near the end of the book when Maria and the Lilliputians are threatened.

White has an extraordinary ability to take an existing myth and give it new life and depth. His prose is beautiful and painstaking, and he can poke fun at characters in the manner of Wodehouse. Repose is a children's book, the sort that assumes children are intelligent but don't have to understand every detail to enjoy what they are reading. How many children's novels include amusing anecdotes about Rousseau?

"He searched the Chinese Parlor, into which Rousseau had suddenly rushed in 1768, when he had indignantly read out an interminable and incomprehensible letter from himself to Diderot, leaving all hearers completely stunned."

White knows what children like. He condemns Algebra lessons as the worst kind of punishment, allows his protagonist to explore the grounds freely and happily at night, and proves her to be cleverer than her wicked oppressors. Like all the best children's stories, it concludes at Christmas with a generous exchange of gifts and a large meal.

I suspect Maria has much in common with young T.H. White. He suffered an unhappy childhood with parents who "loathed each other," but like Maria, he enthusiastically threw himself into learning and adventure. He taught himself Latin shorthand and falconry; he became an airline pilot, a fisherman, and a deep sea diver, not to mention the author two of the better novels I've read in my lifetime. His biography says:

"T.H. White seemed to follow the same advice he has Merlin give in The Once and Future King: 'The best thing for being sad is to learn something.'"

Imagine how different we would be if we always took this advice.

Dulce Domum

For those of you who haven't seen a photo yet, here's one of the house we are buying.

That's right, we're buying a yellow house in Maine, just like Haley Mills' family did in the beloved (at least by my family) Disney classic, Summer Magic. We plan on performing far fewer musical numbers, though.

My plan is to turn the spare room on the first floor into the library and arrange all the books lovingly in there. We'll probably put the computer desk in there as well, but I'd prefer to have a cushy chair or two instead and leave the room utterly devoted to the written word. So here's a question: What color should one paint a library? Is blue, green, red, or taupe more conducive to good reading?

"Playwrights teach us nothing about love. They make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust, but they cannot make it true."

I have often been accused by Jackamo of not being forthcoming with my mushy feelings. I let people know how I feel, and I'm sincere about it, but I rarely gush. And since I've grown up, I've found that I despise most romantic comedies. On the rare occasions when Ickie is out of town, my plan is to move a few movies up on our Netflix queue that only I'd enjoy. But each time I have the same realization: we like and dislike the same things. If I like a romantic movie, he'd almost certainly enjoy it as much.

Now, I know there are just as many BAD romcoms as comedy, drama, horror, or action movies. I think what bothers me is that people who don't know me assume that I'll enjoy this trash just because it's aimed at women. I also believe the superficial relationships and manifold fallacies found in romcoms are quite damaging to lonely, impressionable females (we've all been there at some point). For several fine examples, I direct you to a list of "10 beloved romantic movies that are cloying, annoying, or unintentionally dysfunctional." There are so many I thought of adding to this list that there's no room here to discuss them. But just in time for Valentine's Day, I thought I'd mention some films I find to be genuinely romantic as well as having other fine qualities.

Northanger Abbey (2007): The leads are charming and funny, the satire is spot on, and the love story is never too heavy.

BBC Pride & Prejudice (1995): Once again I'll point out Austen writes comedy, not romance, but Lizzie and Darcy are able to achieve both with their clever banter and the depth of admiration they build for each other. Woe to all remakes.

A Room with a View (1985): This movie as well as the book has my favorite kisses in it: they are sudden and lusty--on an Italian hillside, in an English garden--and they make me feel all swoony.

Amelie (2001): Sure, there's a love story between two quirky characters, but the real love story is of a free-spirited life in candy-colored Paris.

Mostly Martha (2001): This German movie has all the conventions of a romantic comedy, but it still manages to do them well, and it's improved by an abundance of good food and culture shock.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): This is the most heartbreaking and true of the list. They know the relationship is hopeless, but they are so drawn to each other they're willing to take the risk anyway. Beautiful.

Sliding Doors (1998): This is probably the weakest entry on the list, but I still like the way it contrasts two separate story lines and toys with the themes of chance and destiny.

Roman Holiday (1953): This is my favorite romantic classic, not to mention the ideal date: joyriding around Rome on a Vespa. And like the most moving stories, the characters make selfless, honorable decisions in the end.

Shakespeare in Love (1998): It's a clever, hilarious story about the world's most famous playwright, and it's wonderfully passionate.

An Ideal Husband (1999): Who better to portray the nonsensical madness that is love than a gay playwright and a gay lead actor?

Before Sunrise (1995) & Before Sunset (2004): Both of these movies feature actual dialog between two people falling in love with each other, which is typically removed from romcoms (in favor of insipid montages). Both movies are a snapshot of the couple's life, set in a day, casually wandering around European cities. I applaud the opened ended conclusions of both movies. The second movie's ending rather goes against my moral judgment, yet I still can't resist it.

Strictly Ballroom (1992): Baz Luhrman combines pop music, tacky subculture, and comic opera like no one else. It's ridiculous and laughable, and the melodramatic final scene makes me absolutely giddy.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993): This is my favorite of Kenneth Branaugh's efforts to take Shakespeare to the modern masses. The scenes lush and gorgeous, and the rapport between Branaugh and Emma Thompson is positively delicious. (Although, Ickie and I are always sad when we watch it, regretting that those two broke up in real life.)