Pink of Perfection

As soon as I read the subtitle I knew it was for us: Simple, Splendid Food that French Women Cook Every Day. Yes, please! This is a cookbook that eschews grand to-dos and difficult preparations in favor of bringing the special into the everyday, or as author Wini Moranville puts it, ce soir. Cassoulet is made approachable and ingredients lists become procurable, all while still staying true to the soul of French cooking (no cans of this or that here). There’s a spirit in this book that I found infectious and inspiring. Go ahead, add a flourish to a simple pork chop (it takes an extra minute or two), make do with what you have (use the maple syrup instead of honey, if that’s what’s on hand), and open the front door to your friends, even if all you offer is a glass of wine and a hunk of cheese. And that, perhaps, was my favorite moment of the book: when a wise cookbook author reminds us we don’t always have to cook. “If the task of cooking up something for a simple drink is going to keep you from inviting someone over,” she advises, “then don’t cook––but pick up the phone anyway.” Leave a comment by midnight EST, Sunday, January 22 to win a copy. One Pink of Perfection reader will be chosen at random. Bonne chance!

Update 1/23: Congrats to the lucky, Sara! And thanks to all for entering!

Sunday.

This morning I got up early and set the coffee to boiling. I fried some sausage and made biskit, and cooked some hominy grits and eggs. Maudy sat in Martha’s lap to eat, and Oakley got some church music on the radio. It was that old time gospel hour out of Bristol. And then, for a minute while everybody was eating, I felt like church. I mean I think I felt the way you are supposed to feel in church, which I never do. The back door to the orchard stood open and sunlight fell in a long solid block into the kitchen, touching Maudy’s red curly hair. Little bits of dust went twirling in the sunlight which lay warm and restful on my new linoleum tablecloth which is all flowers, red and white roses entwined in circle that repeat and repeat and repeat. It is real pretty. Can I have some more eggs? Bill said. You can’t fill him up! Danny Ray was reading a book which he does all the time and I said, Don’t read at the table. He was reading, The Mayor of Caterbridge. Here’s some more biskits I said and took them out of the oven and Oakley said, These are real good, Ivy. The Blue Sky Boys on the radio were singing Look on the Sunny Side of Life. I got us all some more coffee and sat back down and all of a sudden I thought how funny it was to have everybody there at the same time, usually they are off and running a in a million different directions especially the boys. Where is the honey? Oakley said because it is new honey, he has just robbed the bees, and I got up and got a piece of it still in the comb and put in on a blue plate. It is pale, pale yellow honey, the lightest sweetest kind. Oh that is good, said Martha, and the children were chewing the comb, they act like it is candy. Don’t reach, I said to Bill. Now you will just have to wash all over again, you are such a pig, Martha said to Maudy who had smeared it all over herself. Do piggy, Maudy said, and stretched out her fat little leg and wiggled her toes and Martha said This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed home, this little pig had roast beef, this little pig had none. Maudy was giggling, Oakley was staring out at the mountains the way he does, Danny Ray was reading The Mayor of Casterbridge. The gospel singers sang This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine on the radio. The sun felt warm on my forehead, like somebody’s hand. Bill was eating up all the sausage. I put some of the new honey on a biskit and ate it myself. It was smooth and sweet. This is the best honey yet I said to Oakley who said it was because we’d had so much rain. This little pig cried wee wee wee all the way home, Martha said, pulling Maudy’s least toe. Maudy started squealing and jumped out of Martha’s arms and ran around and round the table. Gotcha. Oakley grabbed her. I ate another biskit, may be I will get old and fat like all the women in Oakley’s family. Holding Maudy, Oakley was staring at me the way he does. It is clear to me now Silvaney that however much I may have wated to die, I am stuck smack in the middle of this life.

I remain

Your loving sister,
IVY.

––Fair and Tender Ladies, by Lee Smith

Photo: honey comb print available from Etsy seller butterflyfood

I have a memory of lying in the sunshine on a towel spread over the small patch of gritty, damp sand beside Square Lake, my wet hair dripping over my shoulders. I was reading a thick hardcover copy of Valley of the Dolls (no jacket) checked out from the library. I can remember other hot afternoons that summer whiled away in front of my bedroom window fan reading about El Morocco, cocktails, smart suits, and the scandals of young women in 1960s New York. It was heaven.

It’s been awhile since I read a summer book that utterly enveloped me. Right now I have a Buddhist text and a stack of New Yorkers on my bedside table, and neither of them are sweeping me away–out of my head, out of my life, and into another world entirely. Let’s put our heads together for a Pink of Perfection Ultimate Summer Reading List. What was the best summer book you read? We’re not talking trash (at least, not necessarily)–we’re talking compulsively readable, the kind of book that can occupy you for hours in a hammock or in the beach breeze so that you look up hours later and realize––well, look at that––it’s time for a gin and tonic.

I need one of those. (The book, I mean. Though the drink doesn’t sound too shabby, either.)

I have long had a blog crush on the The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, and now, happily, I have a book crush. In the The Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking, Kate Payne speaks to that fun, creative desire for pleasure-filled, budget-friendly, mindful self-sufficiency so many of us are after in efforts to make a house a home and a life our own. It’s an inspiring guide for the badass of domestic arts, and one lucky Pink of Perfection reader will win a copy! Enter to win the giveaway by leaving a comment about your favorite homemaking skill or tradition by Friday, April 23. One winner will be chosen at random. Happy nesting!

What inspires you to write, to create, and to live well?

Simplicity and sharing. I’m continually astonished at how basic my needs are to be happy: homemade bread, being outside to feel the way the light falls at dusk, shared suppers, hearing the trains passing in the night, reading books in the hammock, and good coffee, of course. The opportunities to share these simple pleasures (and help others discover what makes them happy) keeps me moving forward every day.

Continue reading “Giveaway: The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking” »

One of the greatest impediments to my sewing is the hauling-out-and-threading-of-the-sewing machine. Each time, I have to read the directions and take it one slow step at a time. Sewn by Hand is the very beautiful antidote to that. Another antidote: the author herself. In this Q&A, Susan Wasinger reminds me that the effort of creation is an offering back to the world. I hope she inspires you to create beauty in your own corner of the world in whatever way feels right for you. Enter to win the giveaway by leaving a comment with an answer of your own to any of the giveaway questions (whichever one strikes your fancy) by midnight EST Friday April, 15. One winner will be chosen at random. Good luck, and happy beauty-making!

What most inspires you to create, to write, to live well?

I have been given many lucky things in my life. I’ve had a great family, incredible friends, and I’ve been lucky enough to live in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. I feel like the way to honor all of that good fortune is by working hard, and taking on creative challenges, and spreading around the things others have taught me. When I get cranky about how full my inbox is or all the impending deadlines, I remind myself how often the fortunes have smiled on me, how often jewels have been laid at my feet. It would be unthinkable not to pick up those boons and blessings and hand them on to others.

What’s some of the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

Well my daughter picked this up in her travels through the world and I think it is very good advice: “It will all turn out okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.” The other good advice is that you have to show up. You have to stand up, go out, and meet your life. It is no good sitting around thinking about things you want to do, places you want to go, the person you want to be when you grow up. You have to make that effort, and take that first step, even if sometimes that first step is a real leap.

Continue reading “Giveaway: Sewn by Hand” »

This seems like a fine spring book, doesn’t it? I have mentioned before how important and beloved Mary Frances’s writing is to me. So much of my love of her work is about the exquisite timing of it. Just when I was forming my ideas of how I wanted to live, what that meant, and what it might look like, there she was at the library in the form of a a slim orange spine of a book. And so, on this spring Monday, a giveaway for you of the newest biography of one of my very favorite writers. Anne Zimmerman‘s An Extravagant Hunger examines M. F. K. Fisher’s “passionate years,” delving into Fisher’s loves: gastronomic, creative, and romantic. Sounds a juicy as as Mary Frances’s radiator-toasted tangerines. Leave a comment by Friday, March 18 at midnight EST to win about an ecstatically sumptuous food memory; one commenter with be chosen at random.

Update 3/21: And the winner is Christy! Thanks to all for entering!

Last week we spoke briefly about women who are generous with their wisdom and knowledge. If there is someone who has given freely to me with her advice, her guidance and her support, it’s Margaret Roach. We met over turkey sandwiches at a long board room table. I was too shy to even say hello, opting instead (bizarrely) to send an email after lunch. And since then, I have been deeply in awe of her: her elegant, soulful writing, her boundless energy, her fearlessness to strike out, to leap, to learn something new. Like the woman herself, Margaret’s new memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There, is inspiring, but it’s the sort of encouragement of a close friend. This is not an bulletin-pointed instructive how-to of living your dream life. It’s the deliciously intimate story of a woman who feels like a pal through the pages, never too serious to miss a joke and never too silly to see the signs. If you can be proud of someone who is a mentor of sorts, then with Margaret’s book I am very much that. Details for the giveaway are at the end of the Q&A.

What most inspires you to create, to write, to live well?

Certainly the primary inspiration for all aspects of my life has been, and is, nature and the natural world:

How the solitary spider, ever busy but reclusive, goes quietly about its creative business of weaving a web.
How the light on the landscape is distinct in color and angle or attitude in each season and time of day. Attention! Attention! How the intricate detail of even a single seed, bud, insect, feather commands you to be still, look, gather yourself to really grasp it (even though it’s too big to ever grasp).

I sometimes think that everything I have learned, I have learned from plants, birds, the weather: powerlessness and some degree of humility, the inevitable cycles of change (why fight?); and where I fit in.

Meaning: Nature provides a spiritual explanation that I can live with and be guided by; it makes sense of things for me.

What’s some of the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

“Busy hands are happy hands” (my Grandma Marion, who also taught me meringue technique and a love of zinnias by age 9).

“Learn something new every day” (from Martha, her motto. It’s corollary to my sister Marion’s exhortation to find a “full-funded curiosity” if you can in life—some way to have your work and your passion converge and reward you on every level.

“Never stop wanting more plants” (from Marco Polo Stufano, my garden mentor and friend, retired founding director of horticulture, Wave Hill, the world-class garden in NYC).

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” (from Leonard Cohen, in “The Anthem,” adapted from Buddhist thinking).

That “code is poetry” (from Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress. I love poetry, so if not for those seductive words about lines of PHP and CSS and MySQL and HTML, which I cannot read, I might have chosen another blogging platform, and made my rural, remote life so much harder).

You took a big, flying leap in your life–how do you steel yourself to go for it in the face of fear (in small everyday ways, and in big life change ways)?

All my life, I have use words on paper to bear witness to what’s up with me and set and refine goals. Not necessarily journals—I have only kept journals for a year here and there—but notes to self.

I kept a list called “Tolerances” on my city kitchen bulletin board for many years—as in “how much of what can you tolerate?” (And when is it enough?)

I likewise kept a list of fears, and when I saw how long it was, it scared me. (Tee hee.) It was time to get a grip!

I also have reached out at various times to my ex-therapist, to listen while I talked through the ideas that were coming to the surface, ideas about possible big change.

Whether in gardening or growing up, never be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help. Again, as with the pin-up notes: the talking with him was another form of bearing witness, getting it out of my head into a somewhat more concrete dimension.

These days I scribble on a set of whiteboards of different sizes, still talk to the shrink periodically, and have the view out the window to calm me and remind me I didn’t take a wrong turn.

You accomplished the big thing you wanted to do–live a life on your own terms. What do you still want to do (big things, little things?)

Make something increasingly delicious (to me) out of the ingredients of the “new” life I have started:

Write a few books about things I care about;
Fearlessly renovate my aging garden so that we grow old gracefully together (and don’t just fall apart or topple over from neglect);
Mentor again in some way (the one aspect of my former career I miss is having younger staff to teach, and learn from);
Never eat standing up as if I have something better to do or somewhere more important to be than here, nourishing myself.

Random, but somehow related to the spirit (heh) of your book: Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe in spirits, to be sure, but not in ghosts. In the acknowledgments at the end of “And I Shall Have Some Peace There,”  I thank various animal spirits (the snake, frog, fox, bird, cat, weasel…) who have turned out to be tour guides and inspirations.

I believe that the dead are with us but not as ghosts manifested in a swirl or blur or light. I suppose my belief about this centers more on the impression and imprint they have left behind in us (as us?) than some ongoing visitations.

However, that being said: I do almost daily ask Jack the Demon Cat, the accidental companion on my latest journey here who first showed up the morning of September 11, 2001, when I arrived in a hurry from New York City:

“Who are you, Jack? Who are you?”

He simply must be someone sent from who knows where.

Enter to win a copy of Margaret’s book by leaving a comment by midnight EST, Friday, February 25 about an act of bravery in your life, whether of the quiet, everyday sort, or the leaping-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound variety. One winner will be chosen at random.

Update: And the winner is Jackie of Devour This! Thank you to everyone who entered. I think I speak for all us when I say what a brave, inspiring bunch!

Once when I was in college, I sat on my wooden desk chair holding the lipstick red cordless telephone to my ear, listening to a friend from high school. He was trying to impress me with stories of school in Montreal, how he could smoke pot on the sidewalks freely, when a friend in distress came in and sit on my bed. “I have to go,” I said, “a crying girl just came in.” His response still leaves me smiting today: “You must be in heaven. You always loved a person in crisis.”

I thought about this on Friday when a reader emailed me. “I was wondering if you had any advice on heartbreaks,” she wrote. “I don’t know how to overcome one!”

I’m not in the advice business, of course. If anything, I think of what I do sometimes as “different ways to think about the same old problems,” and it’s in service to others as much as it is a help to myself. A lover of crisis? You’re talking to a girl who loves security, not mayhem. But compassionate? Definitely.

So I thought about this email a lot over the weekend. Truth be told, it’s been a long time since I cried over any guy but the one I married. But when a friend drew the three of swords in a tarot reading on Saturday, I viscerally remembered that feeling of everything falling away––hunger, interest, energy––and feeling only the numbing ache of a broken heart. For me, the behavioral fallout often included self-destructive distractions, weeping into pillows, and at its worst, totally withdrawal from life. I don’t know if you can willfully mend a broken heart any faster than the natural regeneration process. But I do know what you can do until time puts the pieces back together again.

Make your life a luxurious cradle for yourself as you mend. One friend’s mother instructed her to “change the karmic energy of her bed” by finding new sheets she loved, free of any old associations. Treat yourself kindly. Buy a silk bathrobe. Make wholesome, nourishing dinners. Take yourself out to the movies. Read a mystery. Find luxurious smelling candles. Soak in a bubble bath. Let people caringly touch you: get a massage, get a haircut, get a manicure. And grieve: Tell a friend you need that proverbial shoulder. Write in your journal. Write a letter to the heartbreaker you’ll never send. Remember the bad parts of the relationship, too. Think about what you learned, what you want out of your next relationship, what are your non-negotiables, and what you deserve.

Some people deal with heartache by not acknowledging their feelings; others by dwelling on the break too much, too long. You know yourself. You know when, as Glamour so brusquely puts it, you need to “move the eff on,” and when you need to queue up The Bourne Identity and a facial mask and wallow away a Saturday afternoon.

But when heartbreak strikes, I like to think of Jane Eyre, perhaps unrecognized as the best break-up book of all time. Jane let go of love–the only she’d known in her life– because of her sense of personal integrity and self-worth. She wouldn’t settle for a bum deal. Even without ever directly experiencing it, she knew in her bones, in the very cells of her body, what she deserved.  That unwavering belief gave her the will to wander out into an unknown world with nothing but the clothes on her back and start over–no friends, no money, no family, no fallback. And when another man offers the prospect of a loveless marriage, she walks away from that offer, too, still knowing that a deep, passionate love and a marriage of true minds is what she requires for union. Jane Eyre has grit, a diamond-hard tenacity of spirit that comforts her in her darkest hour. She knows what she deserves, she doesn’t settle for anything less, and in the end, (SPOILER!) she gets just what is rightfully hers. Through these inevitable, unavoidable heart aches and disappointments in life and in love, that’s the kind of happy ending we all should hold out for.