“Not Bad for a Vegetarian” (Or, How to Feed Your Book Club)

One of the first things I did when I began serving at First and Beckville was accept an invitation to join the Beckville book club.  The group includes, as you might imagine, six ladies from Beckville, as well as a woman from another Lutheran congregation and even a Methodist.  (I know.  It’s radical.)

We meet monthly, and we read all kinds of books.  Everything from The Good Earth to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I love being  a part of this group, where the discussion is lively and the food is fabulous.

This month, it was my turn to host.  Since I only managed to read about twenty pages of the book (Vilhelm Moberg’s The Emmigrants, which was just not for me, at least right this minute), I felt the least I could do was provide a nice spread.

Sometimes, when entertaining, I still feel like this.

Also, since my house is too small to host a sit down meal for eight (at least, to host it comfortably), I did my hosting at the church.  So the food I served was all easy to transport and serve chilled or at room temperature.

Here’s the menu:

Artichoke Salsa with Tortilla Chips

Broccoli and Carrots with Lime Dressing

Mom’s Mexican Roll Ups

Texas Cowpoke Trail Mix

Edy’s Frozen Fruit Bars (pineapple, pomegranate, or coconut)

In other words: four things I had never made before and one frozen treat I had never bought.  A recipe for success, right?

As it happens: it was!  All four recipes were easy, and all were at least moderately tasty.  (The lime dressing could have been limier.)  As one of the ladies said, “Not bad for a vegetarian.”

So: which recipe should I share first?  

And, what are your go-to entertaining foods (or your most spectacular flops)?

Book Report: Corelli’s Mandolin

I will tell you right now: SPOILERS ahead.  If you do not want to know how this book ends, you might not want to read this post.  That is how I ruined Battlestar Galactica for myself (although, what really ruined BSG for me, I think, was BSG–that just was not my show).

image via Amazon.com

All aboard who are coming aboard?  Okay.  Correlli’s Mandolin was my October book club book, and since I only managed to read about fifty pages of my September book club book (Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose–sorry, Wallace, it’s not me, it’s you), I was pretty motivated to finish this one.

And I am mostly glad I did.  I was not crazy about this book, but it was at least compelling, in the same way Wuthering Heights was compelling but not enjoyable for me (I am an Austen girl, not a Bronte girl).  And there were funny parts, though it was not the romp I had been led to expect.  (Pro tip: books about WWII are seldom romps.)  

This novel, set mostly on the Greek island of Cephallonia during the Italian and German occupation, focuses on the strong-willed Pelagia, her wise father Dr. Iannis, her first betrohed, Mandras the fisherman, and two noble Italians, Carlo and the eponymous Captain Corelli.  It is mythical, historical, tragic, romantic.  And infuriating.

Nicolas Cage plays Corelli in the movie version. That is probably infuriating, too.

Not a spoiler: Corelli and Pelagia fall in love.  Corelli has to sneak off the island when the Germans take over, but he promises to return when the war is over.

Spoiler: The war ends.  Pelagia adopts an infant left on her doorstep.  One day, she is playing in the yard with the baby, and she sees a figure who looks just like Corelli in the distance.  She calls to him and runs after him, but he has disappeared.  This happens every year for ten years.

Right away, I thought, “Oh no!  Corelli saw Pelagia with a baby and assumes it’s her baby!  He is heartbroken but noble, so he is leaving her in peace with her baby and husband, even though there is no evidence of a husband anywhere!”  But then I thought, “No.  That is absurd.  That is not how people behave.  He must be Corelli’s ghost.”  (The fact that Corelli’s ghost might plausibly appear gives you an idea of what kind of book this is, and I do not mean that negatively.)

Big Spoiler: Many years go by.  Pelagia is old.  Suddenly, Corelli returns, and it turns out that my first terrible suspicion was right.  Correli did come back.  He did think Pelagia was married.  He did nobly, bitterly leave her alone for decades.  But now he’s back, and after an all-too-brief resistance on Pelagia’s part, they set about recreating the innocent love affair they had fifty years earlier.  The end.

As you can probably tell, I hated this development.  I do not demand absolute realism from fiction, but I do demand . . . well, more realism than this.  I know this kind of Tragic Misunderstanding is a common trope of literature and film (see An Affair to Remember, for example), but I simply cannot stand it.

Even if I could accept that a person would make the assumption that his beloved is married and then decide to leave without speaking to her or asking anyone in the village about it or anything (and clearly, I cannot accept this), I cannot find it satisfying.  Because really, we want the people who love us to fight for us, right?  To at least do more research before they take their noble leave.  Ask around, Corelli.  Or, you know, watch for more than two minutes.

Next time: I make my book report on One Day, the book that is now an Anne Hathaway movie.  Guess what?  I hated that ending, too!  

Book Report: Miss Mopp’s Cakes

When I was a small child, my parents enrolled me in a “children’s book of the month club” through Parents Magazine Press.  (They also enrolled me in things like karate and ballet, but reading was definitely my favorite.)

When I was in college, I tracked down many of these somewhat obscure book club selections at used book stores and online.  Now that I’m a parent, I have the great, great joy of sharing them with Zoe.  I can’t get her to stick with Septimus Bean and His Amazing Machine quite yet, but she loves my personal early childhood favorite, But No Elephants!, and another beloved book, Miss Mopp’s Cakes:

image via Amazon.com

Except that, as you eagle-eyed readers have probably noticed, it’s not called Miss Mopp’s Cakes.  It’s called Miss Mopp’s Lucky Day.  And while I agree that Miss Mopp is lucky, I can’t quite get behind this title.  (Even my father, who read this book to me probably 1,500 times in the early 1980s, was shocked: “It’s not called Miss Mopp’s Cakes?!?”)

Because, while the book is filled with creepily anthropomorphic characters–a smiling sun, a scowling big gray rain cloud, and a bunch of threatening but ultimately inept forest creatures–and the mop-headed, suit-and-sneaker-wearing Miss Mopp herself, the real star is clearly . . . Miss Mopp’s cakes!

Miss Mopp was the best baker in town.

She baked all kinds of cakes–

pink cakes and yellow cakes,

big cakes and small cakes,

plain cakes and fancy cakes.

So our story begins.  There is Miss Mopp, surrounded by pink and yellow and big and small and plain and fancy cakes.  As each animal in turn hides behind what is possibly the biggest tree in the world, each of them swoons and says, “Miss Mopp’s cakes!”  (Pro Tip: Draw this sentence out into three sentences for maximum effect.)  In the end, all the animals–who collide when they all attempt to gobble up Miss Mopp’s cakes in the forest–gather at the bakery and enjoy . . . Miss Mopp’s cakes!

Don’t get me wrong, Miss Mopp is lucky.  She is lucky she remembers that she forgot her umbrella, and lucky that she gets it before the rain starts.  She is lucky that all those cake-loving animals bumped into each other instead of attacking her in the woods.  And she is very lucky that they are all willing and able to buy the cakes instead!  Where do they keep their wallets, you ask?  Probably in the same place they keep the slings and bandages they’re all wearing in the book’s final pages.

I tease because I love.  Miss Mopp’s Cakes (as Zoe and I choose to call it) is a book Zoe loves, and a book I love reading to Zoe.  If you’re interested, it can be yours for only a dollar (plus shipping) from half.com!  Bizarrely, the best used price on Amazon is nearly thirty dollars.

I love Miss Mopp and her cakes, but not quite that much.