Author: ellen

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The occasional recipe: tabouli

I had almost forgotten how much I like tabouli. And it’s a natural for summer–cool, light, and tasty, featuring summer’s best: tomatoes and herbs. It’s always tempting to pick up a package at the supermarket, but how long have those tomatoes been in there anyway? They always look a little sad and mushy to me. And the parsley is often less than bright green Of course you can always buy one of those dry packages, but then you still have to add almost everything anyway. It’s really just as easy to make it yourself from the beginning. Trust me. No cooking involved, just a little minor chopping and mixing. Try it!

Tabouli

1 cup bulgur wheat–you can usually find this in the bulk bins at the market
2 cups boiling water (ok–I said no cooking: you DO have to boil a little water. Really, is that cooking?)
1/2 cup olive oil
juice of 2-3 lemons or more as you like
1-2 tomatoes–chopped up
scallions–as few or as many as you want, sliced
a few sprigs of fresh mint, chopped
as much fresh parsley as you like, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1–Put bulgur in a bowl and pour boiling water over it. Let it sit for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
2–Drain in colander (sometimes all the water is absorbed, sometimes not).
3–Return bulgur to bowl, add other ingredients, and mix well.
4–Chill for about 2 hours. (No comment!)

This is not exactly the recipe as I received it. This is the recipe as I realized it could be modified to suit the tabouli tastes of the person making it.

Also–important modification–you can put the bulgur, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and scallions together ahead of time and keep it in the refrigerator for a few days. Then, when you’re ready to eat it, just add the tomatoes and fresh parsley and mint. I’m guessing cucumber would be good in it, too.

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Picturing too much of a good thing

I just got back from getting some photos at CVS. one of those 21st century everyday marvels–you take the memory card into the store, slip it into the right slot, touch the screen a few times and voila–a CD, prints, whatever. OK.

It was nice to have the photos. They were from a family-centric weekend and everyone looked cute. And yet…and yet….

I got the photos home, put them on the kitchen counter. right near the other photos that have yet to find a home in frames, in books.

And I thought how, although we can get our photos in just a few minutes, whiz pictures back and forth through thin air just to show someone a flower or ask, “Do you think I should wear this,” something’s been lost here. I grew up when dinosaurs roamed the earth and a visit to Grandma often involved snuggling next to her and carefully turning the pages of the photo album.

I remember the interminable wait for pictures to be ready, picking them up and opening the envelope as you left the store to see what you had. Yes, I remember overexposures, underexposures, blank, blank, blank of mistakes, photos of thumbs. But I remember something else, too: pictures used to be more….how shall I put this..more special.

Slavoj Zizek, a professor of philosophy, has posited that, among the fundamental conditions for happiness is “enough, but not too much.” A minor deprivation from time to time–the book you can’t wait to read is on backorder, you’re on a waiting list for the college or Hermes bag of your choice, the farm stand is out of pea tendrils. Or there’s almost enough hot water, not quite enough chocolate ice cream (family hold back). Just enough to make you not accept something mindlessly, to realize, “Oh, good–it’s here.” I think he’s on to something important and it may be related to the photo counter at CVS.

We’re used to having our photos–like so much else–right away. A ten-minute wait: bummer. Ready right away: oh, ok. No big deal either way. We’ll have our photos to take home in a couple of minutes. We won’t need to bother looking at them because we just saw them. No surprises.

I’m talking about the majority of what we take, not the wedding photos, the revelations, the true moments-justes–the others….what’s the big deal? We take them, we send them. They’re convenient, we depend on them. But do we get excited about them any more? Are they fun? Do they surprise us? Do they delight us?

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Who’s in charge anyway?

“Tweet Less,Kiss More” urges a recent Bob Herbert column in The New York Times. To date 237 readers have posted online comments. A letter to the editor asks, “who will be the first to say, ‘enough?’” As someone who’s a little more plugged in than she’d like to be, I think the question is, rather, “Who’s in charge here anyway, the gadget or me?”

Admittedly, the lure of the ringing phone is hard to resist. It’s almost a revolutionary act to let it ring, though, of course, we can screen. And, okay, it is a kick to go from “when did Alf Landon run against FDR” to “1936” in under a second. And who knows who may have sent an e-mail since we last looked ten minutes ago. Hmmm…500 Business Cards for $1.99… Oh. In his new book, “Hamlet’s Blackberry,” William Powers theorizes that we may be evolutionarily programmed to respond to the ping, the ring, the link. And there’s no doubt that it keeps us connected in one way, even as it disconnects us in another.

But I’m feeling it’s time for me to be the boss of me, or at least of my time. Maybe time management is the new portion control–another difficult concept in our much-much-more-is-better world So here and now I’m taking a public pledge to take control of my time. It’s the only worldly good I really have, right? So why should someone or something else be in charge? I’m promising myself to check e-mail less, be online less, be connected more to the unplugged world. Maybe you’d like to think about that, too–except for reading my blog posts, of course.

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Life lessons

I’ve lost people lately–family members, friends, people I had known for years, and those I’ve known only recently. In each case I attended a funeral or a memorial service in which tributes were offered that spoke to various aspects of who these people were and what their importance was in the lives of others.

Yesterday I heard a nephew’s deeply loving–and beautifully written–tribute to a grandfather who, he said, had “only one laugh”–never a sarcastic or condescending or polite laugh, but only a genuine expression of humor to be relished and shared. A few weeks ago heard a woman talk of a poet friend’s passion for reading not only poetry but about the lives of the poets and what may have led them to write the particular words they wrote. I heard about a new friend–a man I met only after he had become quite ill–whose unremitting appetite for life lasted through physical trials that might have discouraged someone else.

And from hearing about each of these lives, I learned a little more about what I want in my own.

I’ve found that kind of lesson, too, in obituaries I’ve read. I know people don’t like to admit they read obituaries. It seems like the occupation only of the old. But I’ve been fascinated by them for years, these mini-biographies of people who have left some mark on my own times. They may have been well-known, maybe people I admired. Or maybe they were people I had never heard of. But their stories told me something about how lives are lived.

There is a line by Willa Cather which sounds very true to me and which I have quoted in my own writing: “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” Those stories have been lived before. Other people have discovered ways to live them and their examples offer lessons that can inform, even enrich, our own lives.

And so, to those writers of memorial service tributes and to the writers of obituaries as well as to the writers of biographies, my gratitude for teaching me more about what is important, what is enduring, what make a life of meaning in the world.

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The body of work

So I told you how impressed I was with “The Great Man“ a novel by Kate Christensen. Well, I am about 50 pages into another of her novels, “Jeremy Thrane,” and I don’t think I’ll be reading much further. It’s understandable that a writer’s body of work would not necessarily be all at the same level. Understandable, but disappointing.

It’s the same feeling I had when, after reading Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” or Colm Toibin’s “The Master.” How many writers produce book after book of unfailingly high quality? There’s a reason Jane Austen and John Updike and their ilk actually have, well, such a small “ilk.” What they accomplished, book after book, is extraordinary. They just made it look easy.

Part of the disappointment comes from meeting an author for the first time in a book you’ve heard or read good things about. Then, when you want to read more–the atavistic Bobbsey Twins/Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew impulse–maybe what you’re left with are the earlier novels in which literary gifts were being gradually honed. Maybe it’s our impatience to discover the next new wonderful read coupled with the writer’s impatience to be the next brilliant young star. Didn’t writers used to have the luxury of a long, steady apprenticeship out of the spotlight, away from all but private expectations? Maybe writers need to have some unpublished work stashed away in desk drawers.

But I’m also thinking that I need an attitude adjustment. First comes savoring the books that are truly wonderful, giving myself to them slowly and completely without rushing to the end and looking for more. That there may not be more does not diminish what there is.

And second comes discovering a different pleasure: following the development of a gifted writer, reading his or her work chronologically and enjoying watching the gift unfold. How many of us, after all, would want to be judged on our early efforts in anything? Maybe it is not a question of disappointment that a particular writer has not produced more wonderful work but rather, gratitude that he or she produced the one wonderful thing we have in front of us right now.

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Surprising summer reading

It’s summer (all right, it’s a big three days into summer) and already I’m feeling the warm laziness that extends to even choosing a book to read. So I was glad to be handed a book by my sister-in-law, Susan, a discerning book person personally and professionally.

The book was something of a surprise. I had not heard of “The Great Man” and knew nothing about its author, Kate Christensen. The title, author photo, and first few pages led me to expect a different book, one I was surprised Susan would recommend. I was wrong.

The novel is about a constellation of women whose lives have revolved around the eponymous “great man,” a critically acclaimed artist so much larger than life that he remains at the heart of the women’s lives despite having died five years earlier. This could so easily have been light fiction of little consequence. There is the wife, the mistress, delicious food being prepared, a few outfits being chosen: all the basic warning signs of what is condescendingly referred to as chick-lit. (I could stop here and do a whole rant on the sexist dismissiveness of this term, but I won’t.) .

But then came the surprises: substantive and fascinating discussions of modern art and artists, septuagenarians in unapologetically juicy relationships, serious questions of what truth is and what art is and how women’s lives unfold through conscious decision and circumstance.

In short, I devoured the book and find that, several days later, it remains with me, satisfying and thought-provoking. And, no surprise, I’m going to read more of Kate Christensen’s work.

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It’s good to laugh


No video, unfortunately, but here’s a picture of the scene and description of the action: A couple of mourning doves are in the garden near the bulkhead door to the basement. One dove flutters up to top of bulkhead, slides down.

That’s the whole thing–you have to picture it. Bird looked silly but otherwise unperturbed, though I’m no expert on bird facial expressions. No fluttering of wings, though. Just rode down the slide, got to the bottom, and, like a toddler on a playground, went off to pursue, as they say, other interests.

Now I can’t look at that bulkhead without giggling. Hope you get a little laugh out of it, too.

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Nostalgic or not, here I come

I just got back from a high school reunion. It was, as these things tend to be, bittersweet. There was a crowd of attendees, excited to see each other. There were those who couldn’t make it and others whose pictures were surrounded by candles and stars. And there were those who, for one reason or another, had decided not to come. It made me wonder why some people seek out the nostalgia while others stay far away.

As someone firmly in the former group I never considered not going. But most of us were probably already in touch with the people we had been closest to. So, about the others–was it mere curiosity about what the prom queen looks like now? (She looks great, actually.) Or what happened to the boy and girl “most likely to succeed”? He wasn’t there, but she has the happy look of someone with a satisfying life. What exactly had we come there for?

Those of us in the room on Friday night were a self-selected group. We were the ones whom life may have knocked around a little but who felt we looked not too much the worse for wear. We were the ones who felt pretty much ok with the way things had turned out. And we were the ones who couldn’t imagine not wanting to reconnect with our early days and the people who shared them. They were the ones who knew us “when” and who still remembered all those old references no one else would know.

I don’t tend to live in the past, but there is something I can’t resist about going back in time. It feels like a way of honoring the years, one of those marker moments when we can stop and acknowledge that there may be hopes and dreams that have fallen away, but we do have accomplishments we are proud of. Where we started out is part of who we are, its mark indelible on us all these years later.

So, my fellow Dynamiters (ok, it’s a long story), seeing you again was a wonderful treat. Those burgers and fries at the Charcoal Pit, though, not so much.

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Trying Hard to Stay Current


Sometimes I get the feeling the world is passing me by. Things are changing more quickly than I have the ability, patience, or desire to keep up with. The other day in a doctor’s office I picked up a magazine about, well, sort of shopping. Really. Well, the other choices were all magazines about sports and race cars. Anyhow, this one was filled with people whose names I didn’t recognize. (Who are the Kardashians and is one of them made out of plastic?)

Then I got in the car and turned on NPR, where the talk was about movies. Do you know there’s a movie out, “The Prince of Persia,” that’s based on a video game? Well, I guess I remember one awhile back where Professor Plum was in the lounge with a wrench….

But I do try to keep up with some things. Over tea a week or so ago, Miriam Levine, encouraged–inspired!–me to add photos to my blog. She told me I could do it easily. Then my husband, aka Dr. D., showed me how to download photos from his digital camera. So, here’s my first attempt, a look at the garden. And I move one step closer to the current century.

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A Weekend in Another Country

I’m spending a weekend with friends in rural Connecticut in a 19th century house on a hill with wonderful views in all directions. Just outside the window where I’m writing this I can see a small and perfect garden of purple and white and some spots of pink.

It’s a lazy weekend, that started with plans for hikes and bike rides and wound down to snacks and people reading in every corner of the house. The house is filled with books and magazines that tempt me away from the book I brought. I found a magazine that carried me to another time.

I had never heard of the magazine—it was called Show—and the issue I found celebrated its third anniversary: October, 1964. There were nostalgia-prompting ads, for Hasselblad cameras and Garrard turntables and a tennis resort where “you don’t have to be Pancho Gonzales.”

But it was the articles that astounded me. Thought-provoking, erudite. “Four A.M.,” a haunting essay on that lonely hour by James Baldwin, accompanied by a Richard Avedon photo. A delightful brainy photo essay of the separated-at-birth genre, but this one matched famous faces with ancient works of art. A feature on the 1964 version of Brad and Angelina: Liz and Dick. (Taylor and Burton.) A writer’s chance encounter with Robert Frost. Musings on the definition of success.

And then this: An editorial section headlined “Show Deplores,” which included these:

–“Character assassination masquerading as biography. “ Well, ok, that’s still going on.

–“The damage being done to the English language by the space age.” They should have had a glimpse into the tweeting age!

–“The continuing rudeness of a few box office attendants in New York’s legitmate theaters. “ Custom service people treating customers rudely, can you imagine?!

–“The five Midwestern Congressmen, members of the House Education and Labor Committee, who filed a minority report opposing that Committee’s National Arts and Cultural Development Act.” What can we say? The arts continue to be expendable.

Reminders of such a different time on a weekend when a hole in the earth is spewing oil into the Gulf waters and no one seems to know how to stop it. Another Memorial Day. The sun is shining and we go on.