Issue No. 12: The Pedialyte Chronicles
Plus Middlemarch, Reading Lists, and Summer Suppers
Good afternoon, dear readers, and welcome to mid-June. It’s been a while! I have tried multiple times the last month to finish this up and send it out to you, because I’ve genuinely missed writing, but things have been rather hectic. But finally, if you’re reading this, I have pressed send. Happy Monday, indeed.
How are you, you ask.
Well, I’ll quite simply say this. There may come a day in your life when your husband is cruising around Mykonos and eating a metric ton of feta cheese while you are sitting on a couch drinking Pedialyte for two. I recently lived this day.
Yes, dear Mitchell was off in Greece for twelve days with his father and brothers, visiting the sites of early church history like Corinth and Thessaloniki and Mount Athos (with just a sprinkle of Santorini thrown in.) In my mind, the guys were going to be slogging across the Aegean on some replica of Paul's Missionary Sailboat, bailing water and catching Mediterranean perch for dinner. Alas, they got the all-inclusive drink package on their cruise to Patmos, in addition to the fish gutting at the ancient monastery. (Yes, that happened.)
And I am twenty one weeks pregnant, dozing off while my daughter tunes in and out of Baby Einstein Mozart videos. While Mitch was away, I unfortunately fell to some sort of cruel stomach virus, to add insult to injury. But thanks be to all the saints in heaven, I am well and feeling much better.
Mitch has returned from Greece, I zoomed down to Mexico and back for the most wonderful wedding of a friend, and we are just home from my sister’s dreamy lakeside wedding this weekend. Whew. We are all back under one roof after a long time apart, and merrily we are going right along.
I thought I’d pop in with a bit of a summer kickoff. A few bits and bobs — this issue marks just about one year of Editor & Chef! Twelve issues later, I’ve managed to keep a pulse on this thing. So thanks for reading. Second, part of my longer hiatus is due to the fact that for most of the last three months, I have been generally repulsed by food. But, we have turned a huge corner people. My appetite has returned and the second trimester energy is kicking in. So I am hoping that my thoughts will become a little more organized and my meal plans a little more consistent. Third, my kitchen is positively infested with fruit flies and no matter how many vinegar traps I make, they seem to keep multiplying. I’m about to turn into that French grandma from Ratatouille and gas out my kitchen. (See photo.)
Send me your bug killing tips.
Stick around this issue for my thoughts on Middlemarch, which I might argue is the greatest novel I’ve ever read, and some summer recipe riffing.
XOXO — Allison
The Journal: Read the Really Long Book
Over the Christmas holidays on my drive to Midland, I listened to a podcast by Joy Clarkson called “How to Read Really Long Books”. In this episode, Joy and her sister Sarah discuss the merits of reading those lengthy works of fiction like Dickens and George Eliot. I had already been thinking of what book I would begin in the new year, and this delightful conversation settled it. Middlemarch was my calling, and thanks to a birthday gift a few years back from my dearest friend Carlee, I already had a copy on my bedside table.
So on January 1, I cracked the cover, knowing nothing of what lay inside the pages of George Eliot’s 1871 Victorian masterpiece. Depending on your edition, Middlemarch is 800-900 pages in length. It is about a fictional town in the English Midlands, called Middlemarch. The story ventures between town and country — the drama of country estates and marriages, new hospital openings and political newspaper campaigns. It’s about money, status, fidelity, forgiveness (or lack thereof), justice, ambition, and personal sacrifice. Ultimately, I think I would tell anyone interested that Middlemarch is a book about marriage.
Any way you slice it, it is dense, wordy, and has a lengthy dramatis personae. At times, it is riotously funny. It is also dreadfully serious. A few pages later, you encounter some of the most incisive commentary on human nature you’ve ever stumbled across. And then there’s a long stretch about the Reform Bill of 1832, about which you know next to nothing. But you just keep turning the pages, knowing it’s a marathon, not a sprint. (Not that I am ever in my life inclined to participate in an actual marathon, but I can get on board for the long-haul read.)
After four full months, I had made it about 450 pages. Fifty percent remained. I had set aside many other books the first half of the year to keep slogging through this tome. I was weary. Everyone seemed unhappy, and I was ready to shelve it. But I knew if I set it aside for a while, I would lose all momentum and never complete it. (See me trying to read War & Peace in 2020). So, I pressed on. I stayed with dear Dorothea Brooke, Tertius Lydgate, Will Ladislaw, Rosamond Vincy, and Mary Garth.
And from April 24 to May 10, I read the last 400 pages.
Now, I don’t know if a riveting Victorian novel is the kind of thing that will keep you up until nearly 2 in the morning, but there were multiple nights where I’d tuck myself in at 10:30 and look up three hours later, completely engrossed in 19th-century middle England. The world around me melted away, and I lived inside the minds of these people.
As the marriages between characters reach points of tension, some to a devastating degree, I was often moved to tears, longing for the characters to communicate better, to say what they felt, to avoid the consequences of their own silence and inaction. And more than any other British novelist I have read, Eliot has an uncanny ability to take you deep into the psyche of each character. It was remarkable to encounter such mastery of the English language and such insight into the gradients of human nature.
Virginia Woolf said Middlemarch is one of “the few English novels written for grownup people.” And Emily Dickinson said of the book, “What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?” I concur.
As this sprawling narrative wraps up in all its grandeur, one of the most amazing things about it is that for such a big book, it focuses heavily on smallness. Eliot writes on unseen lives in the middling places, of ordinary people trying to find their way through challenging marriages, financial difficulty, professional disappointments, and frustrated ambitions. Of the heroine of the story, Eliot concludes,
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
At the end of this reading experience, what can I say except I hope, at best, that the effect of my life is incalculably diffusive on others, that I live faithfully whether or not anyone knows about it, and that in some small way I can add to the growing good of the world?
In full disclosure, reading this book is not for the faint of heart. But I would say there is a good return on the investment. I know I have only gleaned a fraction of what lies within these pages, and wish I could take at least a whole semester-long course on just this one book. I need someone to help me unearth its riches. Someday, I need to read it again.
So if you have a long book on the bedside table and you feel up for the challenge, crack the cover and see what awaits you. Don’t rush it — but let it take its course. It just might be worth the time.
The Bookshelf
Well what can possibly be next on the reading list, you might wonder.
Since completing Eliot’s masterpiece, I read Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, which in some ways I liked and others I didn’t. I enjoyed Fanny Price as a main character, but I found the conclusion of the novel to be a little too rosy. She didn’t compel me in the same ways Anne Elliot in Persuasion or Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice did. But I’m glad to be making my way through all of Austen’s canon.
Last weekend, I tore through a frivolous beach romance novel on a quick trip to Mexico — People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. I read this one in a day. It made me laugh a few times, and had some serious “When Harry Met Sally” Vibes. was nice to have a quick page-turner after my Victorian slog of a spring, but ultimately, I do prefer something of more substance.
Now I am on to Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, the author of Gentleman in Moscow. I love his writing style, and I’m happy to be reading a Manhattan socialite drama of the 1930s.
Next up will most likely be another 800 pager. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, author of Piranesi. I have heard wondrous things about this book, but wanted to get a few more titles checked off this year before I signed my life away to another extremely long title.
Any good summer reads you’ve got going? And have you ever read an extremely long book? What’s your favorite?
The Menu
For those who come to this publication for me to talk about food, we have finally arrived for a brief stopover.
Summer is for eating bright, crunchy salads, buckets of ripe fruit, slightly charred proteins, and olive oil slicked tomatoes. It’s a very exciting time to be finally regaining my appetite.
My favorite thing I made last week — a riff on Ina Garten’s Crispy Mustard Chicken and Frisée. She described it as the perfect summer supper, and she was correct. We love a low-effort, high-reward, splatter-free, sheet pan dinner.
Part of the pain of wanting to eat crispy chicken is the whole ordeal of “dredging.” Ugh. So many small containers for flour and eggs and breading, a holding area before it gets frizzled up, and another clean pan after it comes out of the oil. And truly, no one wants to clean that up on a Monday night. This recipe, however, cuts out a bit of that work and still delivers on that crispy chicken craving. We’ll call it dredge-lite.
Dip the chicken in a flavorful dijon/wine mix, and press a lemony panko topping onto one side. Flop it on a sheet pan and add in the potatoes and roasty roast it up. The dijon layer adds tons of flavor, the panko topping is hits all the right notes, and the oven does all the work. Add in a cold, crisp, lemony salad . . . Voilà! Perfection.
I made a few substitutions with what I had on hand:
For the white wine in the marinade — I subbed red wine vinegar. Worked just fine.
I sliced chicken breast into cutlets since I didn’t have chicken thighs.
I used Aleia’s gluten free panko crumbs (so so good!)
I chopped up a russet potato in place of the fingerling potatoes.
And I made a salad of romaine tossed in lemon, dijon, and olive oil.
Basically, I changed the entire recipe. But in its essence, I delivered crispy mustardy chicken, roast potatoes, and a salad dressed in a punchy vinaigrette. Recipes are frameworks for our own creativity and resourcefulness, I think. So may you be inspired to find a recipe and use what you have this week!
Meals I’m Planning to Make This Week
After a crazy last month and a half, I feel like I’m catching my breath for a normal week. On deck for dinner this week:
My old faithful, Smitten Kitchen’s Street Cart Chicken and Rice bowls.
Julia Turshen’s version of Conchita Pibil (delicious shredded pork carnitas).
Julia Turshen’s baked ratatouille pasta.
Perhaps Molly Baz’s slow-roasted piri piri chicken.
And perhaps some kind of veggie-heavy taco I’m formulating. Think roasted cauliflower, sweet potato, black bean? Not quite sure yet. We’ll see.
I would link to these, but they are all in cookbooks. Shoot me a message if you want me to send you the recipes!
Who knows what else we will get up to in the kitchen! I have a full fridge and plenty of possibilities.
Oh, yes, one last bit of news before I go! My sweet husband is so thoughtful and kind, and for Mother’s Day, he planned a trip for me and my mother to go to England before I get to my third trimester. So in just a few weeks, my mom and I are off to London and Oxford. I haven’t been back in four years, so I am really grateful for a chance to return.
With that, I think we’ll call it for this issue.
All my love xx
Allison
I must register myself here as someone who has read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell! Im eager to find out what you think of it.