In Bed with a Book

Even though I'm not a particularly superstitious person, barring an odd knock-on-wood, the overt tempting of Fortune just doesn't seem to be a good idea. Any kind of bold pronouncement or claim automatically sets a person up for a reversal; hence, a certain smugness about one's good luck in "never getting sick" is bold invitation for a cruel smackdown.

Having avoided allergies, the flu, and even the common cold for many a year, I suddenly have the constitution of a Victorian miss who does "delicate" for a living. I just can't seem to recover my rude health. I have felt puny for weeks now, and one bug after another seems to be invading my system. One of the most fascinating chicken-and-egg questions of origin has to do with health, I think. Does depression make us sick? Or are we depressed because we feel too poorly to go out and absorb some Vitamin D? My friends are getting weary of my constant and boring lament: "I'm tired." How can I snap out of it? It's hardly the season for rising sap; in fact, a long hibernation seems far more appropriate.

Since I don't know how to kick my bad health blues, I am forced to rationalize them. As long as one is not too ill, a bout of sickliness can do wonders for the reading habit.

I was supposed to attend a Ball on Saturday night, but my floaty black dress and new shoes will just have to wait for another festive occasion. Instead of dancing, I lay propped up in bed most of the weekend. When I wasn't sleeping, I was reading -- and I managed to polish off Zoë Heller's latest, The Believers, and half of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I also watched a film that I had really looked forward to, and then unaccountably didn't get to the theater for: The History Boys. In one sense I didn't have a particularly sociable weekend, true, and yet I felt that I kept extremely good company with these three.

Having recently enjoyed the BBC's production of Tess, I am up to my usual trick of comparing film to book. (I rather like seeing the film first, and then getting to fill in the details from the book.) I hadn't read any Hardy in more than 15 years, and his language is like an impenetrable thicket compared to the modern, clear prose of Heller. It's not that Hardy isn't fit reading material for the sickbed, but he does require a bit more mental concentration. A friend's fifteen-year-old is reading Tess in school this year, and I wonder what those teenage girls -- so used to text-speak -- make of the vanished Wessex vernacular.

I rarely spring for hardcover books, but I've been wanting to read The Believers since the flurry of Heller interviews and reviews. I thought that Heller's last book, Notes on a Scandal, was an absorbingly good book. It also features one of the best examples of the "unreliable narrator" in literature. Like Barbara, the sour snoop from Notes on a Scandal, unlikeable female characters make up the majority in Heller's latest novel. Apparently this is becoming her stock-in-trade, as her interviewers seemed to not want to talk about anything else. Although her main characters – a mother and her two daughters – could be described as shrewish, judgmental and wet, in that order – they are not without their sympathetic sides. A family crisis tests what Heller describes as the “Litvinoff family’s romance of itself” (p. 270), and its members are left floundering. Although they have all of the toughness and sophistication of the average contemporary Manhattanite, they need something to believe in – whether it is religion, political ideals, love, marriage, drugs, rehab or sex. They try pretty much everything but literature, I think. Heller has a very pleasing, truthful way of describing her characters, but the narrative does lack a certain something – not resolution, really, but momentum and depth. Still, any book which I can read in almost a single sitting (or lying-down, as the case was) is worth some praise.

If you are interested in a nuanced story, both funny and poignant, with fascinating characters set against the backdrop of a school, then The History Boys should go to the top of your Netflix/LoveFilm queue. Although the plot of The History Boys is easy enough to grasp, the story has a load of cultural markers -- "Grammar School," "A-levels," "Oxbridge examinations," "Yorkshire" -- which it give it a particularly English spin. Without going into too much detail about the specifics, (English class system, North/South divide, etc.) I think it is enough to say that a group of eight young men from a range of modest circumstances are trying to get into the poshest, most illustrious names in education: Oxford and Cambridge. "Getting in" is the Holy Grail, with little thought given to what the boys will do with the achievement afterwards. But happy futures assured or not, even the non-English know that those hallowed places are like an expensive, rare perfume that trails after you for the rest of your life. The fact that the boys are all trying for places in "History" has a neat double meaning.

Despite the specificity of the setting -- Sheffield Grammar School in 1983 -- many of the questions raised by the film (originally a play) are universal. What does it mean to be well-educated? What is the purpose of education? How do you determine if one has been educated? How important is Truth? And is there even such a thing -- or is it all down to argument, context and presentation? The film handles all of these with a light touch, though, and there is really no pontificating. In addition to these Big questions, a number of other issues germane to education are more or less "touched" upon: student/teacher relationships, sexual and otherwise, corporal punishment, authority, and the desirability of academic selection or streaming. Indeed, the very subject of grammar schools -- which are an academically selective form of state education -- is a matter of ongoing debate nearly 25 years later.

Three teachers-- Hector, Mrs. Lintott, and Irwin -- are attempting to school the boys for these all-important exams and interviews, and each of these three represents a different face of education. Hector and Mrs. Lintott are "old-school" in every sense. Both nearing retirement, they are the kind of teacher often described as an "institution" -- and I like the way that word plays on the idea of "fixture," important customs and handed-down wisdom, and even a touch of the crazy too-long-inside-ness of a teacher who has seen a lot of Septembers roll by. Hector, played by the marvelously original Richard Griffiths, is the rather whimsical director of General Studies. A great lover of poetry, Hector has a suitable quotation for any occasion. When one of the students complains about having to learn yet another verse of obscure meaning, Hector counters: "Learn it now, know it now, and you'll understand it whenever." Showy and theatrical, Hector emphasizes the "fun" and even the subversive in learning -- but the students aren't always too clear as to the point. His "curriculum," as such, is littered with his own personal enthusiasms. As the Headmaster complains, Hector gets results and provides inspiration, but the results are "not quantifiable." Mrs. Lintott, on the other hand, is "straight man" to Hector's rather more flowery and wayward genius. She believes in "The Facts," and one can deduce that good old-fashioned rote learning plays the leading role in her classroom. Played by Frances de la Tour, with perfectly dry and wry wit, Mrs. Lintott is the one female counterbalance to the overwhelming male atmosphere of an all-boys' school.

Irwin, the Young Turk brought in to give some authentic Oxford sophistication to these rough boys, is not all that he seems . . . but then the Stranger never is. He is meant to spice up the meat and potatoes teaching of Mrs. Lintott, but he proves to be more about spin than substance. He doesn't exactly teach the boys to be original, but he teaches them how to appear original -- and convinces (most of) them that the result is all that matters. Irwin represents the arrogant, breezy future, but he is not nearly as invulnerable as he initially appears. Like the snobbish, ambitious headmaster, who fakes his conversational French and has to ask the boys to explain an Anne of Cleves allusion, Irwin's lack of solid scholarship is repeatedly revealed.

All three of the teachers are effective in their own way, and all of them find their adherents among the boys, but Hector -- flawed though he is -- is the teacher that I wish that I had. There is a particularly tender moment between him and the gifted, sensitive Posner ("I'm a Jew... I'm small... I'm homosexual... and I live in Sheffield. I'm fucked. ") which is the quiet center of this story. As they examine one of Thomas Hardy’s poems together, Hector tells Posner:

The best moments in reading are when you come across
something -- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things -- that you'd
thought special, particular to you. And here it is -- set down by someone
else, someone you've never met, perhaps even someone long dead. It's as if
a hand has come out and taken yours.

Use your loaf!

Last night I made a quick detour to the grocery store to pick up some flour and yeast. I've had a full-blown obsession with baking bread for the last couple of weeks and I managed to run low on the vital supplies. Although statistics show that people hardly cook or bake anymore, the shelves of Waitrose told a different story: they were fresh out of yeast!

Apparently, it's not just me. I don't know if it is an autumnal rite, nesting instinct, or soothing ritual, but a lot of people seem to be baking. Even if everything is definitely not "all right" with the world, the exquisitely yeasty smell of a fresh-baked loaf can help you feel that it is.

My family aren't big bread eaters under normal circumstances. We hardly ever eat sandwiches, and we tend to favor oatmeal over toast. When I buy sliced bread, it will invariably grow moldy or stale (ie, chicken food) before we manage to finish it. But freshly baked bread! It has a siren's lure. If I leave a warm loaf on the counter on a weekend morning, it will disappear by afternoon -- slice by surreptitious slice. And if I strategically position the peanut butter (for the girls) and Marmite (for my husband), I can manage to get out of making lunch -- and crack on with the "fun" stuff, like washing all of the p.e. kit and school uniforms.

In the past couple of weeks I've made banana muffins, gingerbread, apple pie, butterscotch cookies, english muffins and Homesick Texan's splendid oatmeal bread -- and they've all done an admirable job of perfuming my kitchen and pleasing my family. However, the recipe I keep returning to has the seductive title (and method) of The Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever. It is nutritious, adaptable and easy; and for bread, it's pretty quick, too. It doesn't have to be kneaded, or punched down, or proofed, so there's no need to be wary of it -- even if you are short on time and/or baking skills.

The Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever
(from the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book)

Combine the following ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
(If you have a standing mixer, use that bowl.)

1 1/4 cup (10 oz) lukewarm water
1/4 cup (2 oz) orange juice
3 tablespoons (2 1/4 oz) molasses (I use treacle, or honey)
3 cups (12 oz) traditional whole wheat flour (I use "strong" bread flour)
1/4 cup (1 oz) nonfat dry milk
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast

At a medium-high speed, beat the mixture for about three minutes. (If you have a KitchenAid, use your paddle attachment. )

Spoon the batter (it will be sticky!) into a greased bread tin. The recipe calls for something that is 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches, but I just used my biggest tin and that was perfect. Cover the pan with greased plastic wrap and let the dough rise for an hour. By the way, I use Crisco (vegetable shortening) for the business of greasing.

Preheat your oven to 350 F/175 C while the bread is rising. The bread will need approximately 45 minutes to cook, and you should tent if with foil after the first 20 minutes. Remove it from the oven and let it cool on a rack (in the tin) for about 5 minutes. Then you can run a table knife around the edges and ease it out of the pan. King Arthur recommends cooling for 30 minutes before you attempt to eat it . . . but you're on your own with this advice, because I won't even pretend to be so abstemious. It should be golden brown when finished.

King Arthur describes this bread as "a coarse-grained, moist, easy-to-slice loaf." If you make it with molasses, it will definitely have a texture and flavor that brings Boston Baked Bread to mind. (My daughters prefer it made with honey, but I like both versions.) It is sturdy, and it toasts quite obediently. It has a satisfying chew to it, and it tastes nourishing -- but without being the slightest bit reminiscent of sawdust or birdseed.

I was fortunate to have a bread-baking mother, and her kitchen was (and still is) always warmed by the smell of good things. In addition to my KitchenAid mixer, almost any decent pan or knife I own, and a dozen favorite cookbooks, my mom gifted me with this awesome book. Thanks, Mom!

English trivia: "Use your loaf" is Cockney rhyming slang for "be smart." It works like this: "use your head," and head rhymes with bread, and bread is synonymous with loaf. Get it?

Seasonal Food

Apple Harvest (for a lazy person)

Last weekend was apple weather: crisp, sunny and cool. As you can see, nature's bounty was laid out, blanket-like, for us -- and all we had to do was scoop it up. The girls and I gathered up great bowls of apples, which became numerous jars of applesauce, bags of sliced apples for the freezer, and a delicious apple and blackberry pie. If the blackberry foraging was slightly more difficult than the apple picking, only because of the arm-grazing bramble, it was equally unearned. Eating "seasonally" is certainly easier in some seasons than others.

Whilst a turnip has to be planted, and then dug up, and then somehow made palatable, an apple drops (literally, and literarily) into one's hand. How apt that it symbolizes temptation . . . or should I say knowledge. If only other bits of learning were so easily picked up and passed hand to hand.

The truth is, while I know a bit about cooking food, I am more or less ignorant when it comes to procuring food at its source. I can negotiate my way around a grocery store, sure, but give me a bit of earth and I'm scratching my head in pure befuddlement. For many years I've been content in my cluelessness, but just lately it has started to bother me. I'm sure it is partly due to a growing environmental awareness, which often borders on anxiety; and it may also be attributed to my specific English environment, in which it is common to trade plant cuttings and recipes for elderflower cordial. For many years now, I've been increasingly curious about the source of my food, and really this new urge to grow things is the natural extension -- or conclusion -- to that concern with origins. Growing your own food is a matter of simplicity versus complexity, and independence versus dependence. Who knows what will happen with pensions and Social Security? Just in case the all-you-can-eat buffets are gone for good, it may be best to have some real-life growing skills.

I'm not the only who thinks so, either. Foraging was the lead story in the Sunday Telegraph's Food section, and I've read in more than one place that keeping chickens is the nation's new favorite hobby. Colin, my gardener, reports that all of his "clients" are expanding their interests beyond herbaceous borders. One woman is putting in an orchard, with enough trees to supply the fruit needs of all of her family. Another man is buying up some wooded acres to graze poultry and pigs. As Colin and I reviewed the successes and failures of my family's first attempt at a vegetable patch, and made plans for next year's new and improved patch, I realized that I had made some mental switch: from frivolous experiment to rather more earnest project.

A wigwam of runner beans

Although I have only one growing season under my belt, I did indeed learn a few things. For instance, the runner bean is a most prolific plant. It is marvellous to watch it grow so quickly, and it has quite an attractive orange flower, but unless you are a great lover of the runner bean (which has a surprisingly coarse and "hairy" surface) two wigwams of them should suffice. We planted four wigwams, and that was at least two too many. Another thing that I learned from hard experience is that a slim and tasty courgette (zucchini to the Americans and Italians) will quickly turn into a bloated and watery marrow if neglected for a few days. I actually had no idea that courgettes and marrow were different versions of the same plant . . . or is that "fruit" of the plant? I'm not entirely sure that any Americans know this. I have a theory that the thrifty English "invented" the idea of the marrow -- and then came up with the idea to stuff it and call it deliberate. Americans persist in thinking that it is just an overgrown zucchini, and better fed to the hogs. On the subject of courgettes, I can also report that there will invariably be a correlation between the vegetable your children least like and the one that produces the most offspring.

The runner beans and the courgettes were our biggest successes -- although, as I have suggested, this was a mixed blessing. As for the rest, they were mostly failures. We had a few nice strawberries, but we weren't vigilant enough about picking them before they were taste-tested by creatures. The corn looked good, but we were pipped to the post by some marauding muntjac. The broccoli and cauliflower were devoured by caterpillars. The tomatoes and peppers never ripened. I'm not sure what happened to the broad beans. The carrots were a mixed success -- although they would have probably thrived if we had thinned them out properly. Unfortunately, we left them all bunched up -- and they never managed to attain their rightful length. Still, they were edible. The lettuce was a great success -- but we should have planted less, and staggered the plantings more. We had way too much of the stuff, and then it went all coarse and leggy. I'm not sure what happened to the cucumbers. We have two beautiful artichokes, still on their stalks, but only two. Although I carefully labelled each row of seeds, we had so much rain that I think we lost a few crops -- both in the ground and in my memory. Did we plant onions? I can't remember.

The blueberry vines didn't produce any fruit, but they are still alive -- so better luck next year? Speaking of next year: I think that I will focus first on what we really like to eat. Instead of all of these annual plants, which just have to be ripped out at the end of the season, I'm going for some of my favorite perennials: rhubarb and raspberries. I think that it would also help if we start planting earlier than May, and if we didn't go away for the better part of July and August. That last bit is crucial. There really isn't much point in growing your own food if you aren't there to eat it!

I've just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's inspiring book on a year of seasonal eating -- titled Animal, Vegetable, Miracle -- and it was truly illuminating on a wide variety of food subjects. Although I was hardly a grower on Kingsolver's scale, it did make me realize that serious vegetable growers don't leave their patch during the summer months! Part cultural critique, part memoir, and part field guide, Kingsolver's chronicle of the family farm made me a believer -- but it also made me a realist. I need a much bigger freezer, more equipment, more energy, and a more cooperative partner if I'm going to expand the family's agricultural holdings. Although I think that eating seasonally is a really sensible idea, I might (personally, you know) be better off with an organic veg box scheme. But even if we are starting small, I think we will persist in trying to grow things -- and then eat the things we grow.

Perhaps there is something atavistic about my sudden urge to grow edible things . . . after all, my paternal grandfather was a farm boy. Even later in life, when he lived in Fort Worth, he always kept an extensive garden in his back yard. I can remember him carefully tending his rows, and bringing in handfuls of vegetables for my grandmother to do something with. I can also remember him dripping with sweat from the hot Texas summer, and perhaps this explains why I didn't pick up any of his gardening skills. I was perfectly content to stay in the cool darkened rooms, either reading books or watching old Shirley Temple movies. It never occurred to me that I might learn something useful from that patch of dirt.

Now I regret that I was such an indolent, air-conditioning loving creature. Colin must think that I'm the most ignorant greenhorn that ever lived on this lane. One of the points that Kingsolver makes is that the knowledge about growing and preserving food has largely been lost in just two generations. Except for farming families, and they continue to shrink in number, many of us haven't got a clue. As I read the Little House on the Prairie books with my daughter, I am constantly struck by the fact that Ma and Pa are almost entirely self-sufficient. They buy coffee, cornmeal, flour and Christmas candy -- and that's about it. I'm having to play catch-up on all sorts of basic things that I should have already known, but hopefully my youngest daughter will grow up taking for granted the mysteries of growing vegetables and fruit.

While I'd never want to give up Waitrose, and yoke myself to the land, I hate to think that I would be the least useful person to have around if we all run out of petrol. And I can vouch for the fact that homemade applesauce tastes a lot better that the stuff that comes in the plastic pot.

The financial news still reeks, but my garden is fragrant

A glimpse of my garden in late September.

No matter what time of year, it can be chilly and wet in England. Because of this tendency to what I think of as the English "default" weather, the distinct outline of the different seasons tends to blur.

This year's wet summer has meant that even the trees which change with the autumn have clung to their leaves. We have conkers and blackberry bramble -- sure signs of fall -- but my garden is full of the blooms, and even the buds, more associated with summer. One season can bleed into the next and the only way to tell the difference is by what is coming out of the ground -- but even that method isn't foolproof.

"It's been a good year for fruit, but a bad year for grain," says my gardener. The tomatoes, which had showed early promise, never got enough heat to ripen and ended up rotting on the vine. But we've had a bumper crop of apples, and the roses have bloomed again and again.

After a dreary August, which kept gardeners inside and the butterflies away, we have had a good run of sunny days. It always seems to be this way. We get one more precious blast of glorious warmth before the dark door of October closes.

So as September slips away, I offer up a fond last look at summer.

"The Pilgrim"

I picked this rose because I am a sucker for a name, and I liked the American association. Too late, I learned that the "pilgrim" refers to Chaucer's pilgrims, and not the ones who took the Mayflower to the New World.

Never mind. It is a beautiful rose, and a really "good goer." I guess that pilgrims tend to be tenacious.

I can see this rose by looking out my kitchen window . . . and the colours echo my kitchen curtains, by design.

Except for some of the ramblers, which tend to flower only once, all of my roses repeat throughout their flowering season. The Pilgrim rose has been flowering since June, and it looks like it may keep going for a while. Another good repeater is Jubilee Celebration, the showy pink rose pictured below. The Jubilee Celebration is new to my garden this year -- and it is probably my favourite. The picture doesn't really do it justice, as the colour is actually quite complex -- a pink shot through with peachy gold. It glows in the sunlight.

It's a shame that this picture isn't a scratch-and-sniff.

The fragrance is described, by experts, as "strong and fruity,

with a hint of fresh lemon and raspberry."

This is the infamous rose hedge that I planted on a wet and windy Bank Holiday weekend.

There is a mix of pink Penelope shrub roses and pale yellow Malvern Hills climbers. Someday, if I'm lucky, the roses will cover the fence and hang in garlands from up above.

A lovely little willow tree, just out of the picture, casts its shadow.

At the foot of the garden, you can see the Chicken Pen -- home to Ralph and Lauren.

If you look carefully, you may just be able to glimpse Minstrel, our tabby cat.

He likes to lounge here, between the tall grasses and the Iceberg roses.

His days in the sun may be numbered. For this year, at any rate.

Should we start growing turnips?

I can go months, nay years, without a turnip crossing my mind or my lips. Yet in the last 24 hours, turnips have cropped up not once, but three times! Surely three of anything is a pattern, and therefore of significance? And so I talk, not of "cabbages and kings," but of turnips and banking titans.

Is there anything worth talking about at the moment other than the meltdown of our financial services and banking industry? Despite the fact that I go about my daily life . . . making soup for sick children, ordering bulbs for next spring, attending an Arthur Miller play . . . all I can really think about is the shaky state of our collective finances. I am reading, from afar, about the mighty battle in the U.S. Congress to determine how much, and to what extent, the Treasury (and thus all taxpayers) are going to bail out the banks -- as they list, and sink, under bad debt. A quote from Lloyd Doggett, Democratic congressman and fellow Texan, sums up the situation fairly pithily, I think: "The problem is that the people getting asked to clean up the broken furniture didn't get invited to the party." (The Guardian, 25.9.08)

Who IS to blame for this mess, frankly? Is it really just the Wall Street fat cats? Is it the people who borrowed money they couldn't afford to pay back . . . or the people who let them? Is the Bush regime responsible for the encouragement, by means tacit and overt, to create financial growth by any means possible? Or is the banking crisis just the opportunistic virus which has invaded a body already weakened by its decadent appetites and habits? Have we all just become really greedy?

Yesterday, I was invited to play tennis with three women of slight acquaintance -- they are what I like to think of as jolly good English sorts, "veddy middle class," very WI, and all probably 15 years or so older than me. The last bit -- age -- was particularly pertinent to our discussion because these woman all came of age in an England much different from the one we live in now. England in the 40s and 50s was a much more parsimonious place, by all accounts, and even the well-heeled of that era had more frugal habits than the majority of us do now -- particularly when it came to borrowing money. Being "greedy" was not only sinful, but even worse, it was a sign of bad manners. One of the women claimed to still feel "slightly sick" when she surveyed the vast choice at today's grocery stores. Another woman related that her young son, a fledgling titan, had been interviewing Lehman Brothers refugees all week. Only 30, he was hiring men many years his senior and experience level -- and all of them with crushing monthly direct debits for mortgages and school fees. Apparently, he was feeling grateful about being relatively unencumbered. As lifelong savers, these women's major concern seemed to be how exactly to disperse their savings -- because the UK banks are only going to guarantee a certain amount. They aren't quite to the point of mattress-stuffing, but it's getting close.

In the end, we only played one set of tennis -- because we had squandered all of our time huddling around the AGA. It wasn't like any of us had any real answers, not to mention any in-depth understanding of the situation, but we were all gripped by the need to talk about it. Although it was meant to be a humorous remark, our hostess finally threw out, "Well, I guess that we are going have to go back to growing turnips."

Later that morning, I was scanning the newspaper and I came across an article trumpeting root veg: Humble turnip makes comeback. Apparently Tesco "revealed yesterday that sales (of turnips) were up by 75%" (The Guardian, 25.9.08). The article went on to suggest that inexpensive root vegetables could "bulk" out the diet and stretch the shrinking food pound.

It was during the bedtime story hour that I came across my third reference to turnips for the day.

For several months now, my youngest daughter and I have been working our away through Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series. We are just nearing the end of the third book, On the Banks of Plum Creek. I was an avid reader of these books as a child, and it is interesting to square my memories with the stories as I read them afresh. On one hand, I had an enduring sense of the family's closeness: of Pa's twinkly eyes and fiddle-playing, of Ma's gentle and genteel ways, and of the three sisters -- one good, one naughty, and one just little and inconsequential. On the other hand, I had retained a deep horror of the farming life. Every time you think you've got a decent crop, some plague or weather freakishness is sure to come along and destroy it. Perhaps the most memorable of these natural disasters occurs in this book: the incident of the plague of grasshoppers. Even though the event occurred more than 130 years ago, it cannot be read without a sense of horror and grief as fresh as today's news.

Briefly, the Ingalls family has moved to the Minnesota prairie and invested their meager net-worth in a small farm and sod house. "Pa," who is optimistic to the point of derangement, has planted a field of wheat . . . and then he makes the mistake of borrowing money against what promises to be a splendid harvest. Wilder is a master at foreshadowing and suspense: with each mention of "glass windows" and "new stove" and "we'll start harvesting next week," you know that disaster is around the corner. It arrives in the form of a "glittering cloud" of grasshoppers. -- and like the Biblical plague of locusts, they eat every edible scrap on the land. Pa, who doesn't even have a decent pair of shoes, ends up walking hundreds of miles to find work on another farm. Ma and the girls have to struggle on their own for months -- almost starving in the process, although the book skims somewhat lightly over that fact. The next year, the family manages to salvage a crop of turnips -- and Laura, the story's protagonist, writes of their gratefulness for the plentiful supply of one of the least delectable vegetables. (authorial editorializing)

The "Little House" books are all about the resourcefulness, independence and grittiness of the pioneers who staked out a claim in the American wilderness. They play to every American myth -- including the one that says anyone who works hard will be able to earn their own homestead. I can't help but compare their situation to our current one. There was no such thing as "bail out" for Pa; he literally had to dig himself out of the financial hole he found himself in. A lot of people don't think there should be a bailing-out now -- survival of the fittest and all that -- but I do wonder if we are going to have to prop each other up, or all fall. As Ma says, "There is nothing in the world so good as good neighbors" (p. 178).

And just in case, we might all start planting turnips.

Mammon

Today, at the Tate Gallery in London, my attention was caught by a late Victorian painting titled Mammon. Painted in 1884-85 by George Frederic Watts, the painting depicts Mammon, the god of money, as a "cruel tyrant on a throne." Two young figures are prostrate at his bloated, gouty feet, presumably crushed by their service to filthy lucre.

Sound familiar? What with the financial meltdown of seeming colossi like Lehman Brothers, and the couple of trillion dollars it will take to rescue the mortgage defaults underwritten by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the subject of money, money, money has never been more topical. Perhaps Watts would argue that the more things change, the more they stay the same -- as he used both painting and writings to "criticize modern commerce and its de-humanising effect on the nation" (Tate Gallery, notes on the painting). Of course Watts lived in a world innocent of derivatives and short-selling, but presumably the problem of living beyond one's means and chasing the almighty dollar (or its sterling equivalent) has always been with us.

On the train journey back to the countryside, I read a bracing editorial which suggested that financial "hard times" can actually be an opportunity for a beneficial overhaul. Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto contends that "Abundance is bad for you. A tighter-belted Britain would be less obese, less profligate, less self-indulgent, less stuffed with junk food and trash values" (Evening Standard, p. 13). Having taken consumerism to a whole new level, apparently many of us are going to have little choice but to discover the pleasures of a "less is more" lifestyle.

So, at the close of this tumultuous week in the global financial markets, and in the spirit of "cutting back," I offer up a recipe for black bean soup. It isn't as cheap as stone soup, but it is a healthy and inexpensive dinner which can be fed to vegans, those who can't tolerate gluten, and people who are trying to avoid eating methane-spewing livestock.

Black Bean Soup
(serves 4, with leftovers)

One or two onions, finely chopped
A few cloves of garlic, crushed
Two or three carrots, roughly chopped
Two or three stalks of celery, roughly chopped
A can of diced tomatoes, or Ro-tel tomatoes (if you are lucky enough to have access to them)
Two to four cans of black beans (I usually use four)
A pint of faux chicken stock, made from Marigold Swiss Bouillon
Salt and pepper to taste

Gently fry the onion, garlic, carrots and celery in a tablespoon or two of olive oil until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the tomatoes, black beans and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, and then simmer (uncovered) for anywhere between 10 minutes and an hour. (I like to cook it for an hour because it makes the black beans get a lovely, creamy texture.) Season to taste.

Serve with brown rice.

Tortilla chips, guacamole and grated longhorn cheddar (red leicester in the UK) are all suitable embellishments, too, although not necessary. If you have them, and I usually don't, a squeeze of lime juice and some freshly chopped cilantro/coriander can be stirred in just before you serve the soup. A measure of sherry in the broth, and sour cream on top, is also very nice -- and makes for a soup which is slightly less austere.

Truly, this recipe is just a blueprint. It is a tremendously flexible recipe that you can add to or detract from without really spoiling. Sometimes I get a better "scald" (does anyone else know this expression?) on it than other times, but it is always tasty. I have been making this soup for ten years or more, and I've never had a bad batch of it.

After we visited the Tate, we walked along the Thames -- enjoying the fine weather and the spectacular sights of Big Ben and Parliament. Since we opted out of going into Westminster Abbey, thus saving 24 pounds, I suggested to my mother that we use the hour before the 4:18 train from Paddington to enjoy the relatively cheap pleasures of cappucino and people-watching. We hopped off the Tube at Sloane Square, because I knew of a place with could offer the above -- along with alfresco seating.

Perhaps it was due to the "Freaky Friday" effect of today's share bounce; perhaps it can be attributed to the rare and glorious sunshine or TGIF; perhaps it is just analogous to the orchestra playing as the Titanic sank. Whatever the reason, and despite the fact that it was mid-afternoon, all of the tables at the Oriel Brasserie were full and everyone seemed to be swilling champagne! Recession, what recession?

But just in case, black bean soup is good roughage.

Glum

For those of you who have been kind of enough to enquire, YES, I'm still here. Just not writing much.

I could attribute my continuing silence to the back-to-school frenzy, or the fact that my mother is visiting, but that isn't the whole story. I seem to be fretting quite a lot, and that doesn't seem to be much in the spirit of be drunkenness. However, to quote Nina Simone, It Be's That Way Sometime.

I'm worried about Hurricane Ike -- and all of the friends who might be affected by it.

I'm terribly sad for Brave Sir Robin, who is dealing with a family tragedy.

I'm incredulous, bemused, angered and just plain anxious about the Palin/McCain team. I've been reading Jane Smiley's latest, Ten Days in the Hills, and it is bringing up all of the old angry feelings from the spring of 2003 -- when Washington declared war on Iraq -- and the fall of 2004, when Bush got re-elected. I wish that I could maintain a sense of humor about the U.S. election, but I'm starting to get all strident and ranty again.

Hopefully, someday soon, I will be able to focus again on thoughts life-affirming. Tomorrow I am going to Bath to see Vanessa Redgrave perform in The Year of Magical Thinking, and perhaps this study of grief will snap me out of my funk.