Manic Bookstore Cafe

Sometimes it is nice to make food and feed friends, and sometimes it's nice to go out to eat and let someone else cook. When we were younger, we would occasionally come out to Yellow Springs early on a Sunday morning, bike to Xenia and back, about 18 miles, and then go to the Winds for brunch. Then we moved here 8+ years ago, and if we've been for brunch two times, I would be surprised. Having younger colleagues with younger children come out to see us and taking them  to the Winds made us feel, well, younger. And older at the same time. Their kids were 2, 6, 7 and 9; ours were the babysitters, and they felt like rock stars. The day was warmish and gray, and when we returned from our highly adult outing, we stood around in the backyard watching the children jump on the trampoline, climb the tree, play soccer and basketball... Oddly festive, and super fun. The truly warm hugs of our colleagues reminded us that we can host without huge efforts in the kitchen; sometimes ope...

It's true. A cookbook can change your life. This morning I made the most amazing paneer, using the recipe from Vij's at Home. As in the Russian proverb, "первый блин комом," my first attempt at paneer a few weeks ago was only so-so. The second was fantastic. I found a thin cotton produce bag (given to us, I suspect, by Steve's sister Allison) and it was perfect for making the paneer. It may be that the local milk I bought made a difference as well. The recipe is as follows: Pour 1/2 cup of water into a soup kettle. Add a half gallon of whole milk. Heat over medium high for about 15 minutes, until the milk rises about 3 inches in the pot. Then shut off the flame and add 1/4 cup white vinegar (which I used today) or lemon juice. Swirl the vinegar into the milk without using a spoon. Wait ten minutes. Then take a bandana, a cotton bag, or cheesecloth and place over a colander. Pour the milk solids and liquids into the colander and let sit for 10 or 15 min...

I've recently decided that in a household of 4, plus two cats, it's rather likely that two or more of us will be grouchy at any given moment. This was a week of grouchiness, including several episodes with Olivia's crazy cat. But on the weekend I managed to get into the kitchen. Since we were headed to two parties in Columbus, one of which was a potluck for ESL learners at the Worthington Library, I decided to pull out my new Vij's at Home  cookbook. (When we were in Vancouver I had a great French lunch with my friend and colleague Evelyn, and our UBC hosts took us to an amazing Chinese restaurant, called Lin's, I think. But after that our timing got all messed up and it became clear that we were not going to manage to go to any more restaurants. So when we were gathering picnic food at the indoor market, I made sure to buy one of the cookbooks from Vij's, which they say is the best Indian restaurant in Vancouver. The cookbook is fantastic, and I've tri...

A followup on Louis Menand [pronounced LEW-IS MEN-AND, not the French way I've been pronouncing it!]. The Future of the University group I belong to at Ohio State, in conjunction with the Humanities Institute, invited Menand to speak on campus in November. I was pretty hot to go, as I thought his book was interesting, and he's a very good writer. The event was on the 11th floor of the newly renovated library, which was a treat -- that room is beautiful and a great place for a special lecture. Unfortunately, Menand is not a special lecturer. It's hard to imagine a more monotonous style of delivery, and this was a "canned" lecture that repeated much of what was in his book. The lecture also confirmed for me what the book suggested: people who live in Ivy-Covered Ivory Towers shouldn't come out to Ag Country. We here in the Midwest are notoriously in awe of the Establishment of higher ed, namely Hah-vahd. But when someone in the audience asked Menand...

Does it count as a blog if I post once a month? I think so -- this is just the electronic equivalent of all those notebooks and diaries on my shelf which have the first few pages filled out. Some of them are new year's diaries, when I do a recap at the end of the year. Still others represent new ventures, new times in my life. I hope this new period will be a time of travel. I attended the Russian language class of a t.a. yesterday -- ostensibly to give her feedback on her teaching and to be able to speak authoritatively about it in my letters of recommendation as she goes out on the job market. The theme of the class was "verbs of motion," but in the end it turned into "Professor Brintlinger -- a great traveller!" (Профессор Бринтлингер -- великая путешественница!) How great is that. The students were asking me questions about my trip to China this summer, my trip to Crimea, my trip last year to Lake Baikal, and I got to end the class by saying: "And in...

Home again indeed... We've been back in OH for 2 weeks, and it's dry. Brown lawns, yellowed corn stalks -- we're worried our new red maple, planted in May 2011, may not make it. The corn we buy at farmers' markets is still sweet and delicious, but the ears are not fully developed. Tomatoes are fewer, apples and peaches are harder to come by than out in PA. This weekend, Labor Day weekend, feels very quiet, in part because the humidity from Hurricane Isaac is rolling in. Despite the seeming end-of-summer lull in activities, we had a terrific dinner party last night, and I used some of the recipes from dinners we had in Philadelphia in July and August: the watermelon-feta-mint salad, the lemon-oregano tuna mousse. Of course, I had to purchase all the herbs I used at the store, because everything in our garden and our friends' gardens has dried up. Even though it's not asparagus season, I made a chilled asparagus soup that was quite delicious, and I shouldn...

My daughter recently posted a revised version of our second day in Hong Kong, now an entire month ago. Seems crazy that we could have been exploring Hong Kong, and then China, and experiencing the heat and humidity there, and now we're in Philadelphia for our traditionally hot and humid summer experience. It's good to be home. The rhythms of the farmers' market, biking through the city, seeing relatives and friends, cleaning and cooking, reading the newspaper and trying new recipes, staying busy enough that I never quite sit down to read a book and lose myself in it... In Philadelphia for such a short time this summer, we're hyper-aware of the need to take a big bite. And we've done well so far. Still on the list of things to do are a long bike ride through the city on a Sunday afternoon; visits to museums, especially the new Barnes and the renovated and reopened Rodin Museum, and with any luck a visit to the fantastic Mercer Museum in Doylestown. Plenty of w...

A pointy stick Zack found and was carrying in the Botanical  Gardens. Hong Kong Houses   This is a video of the loud noises the Siamang gibbons at the Botanical and Zoological Gardens make.         Today, after a fancy breakfast for "Golden Circle Members" at our hotel, we braved the stifling heat and went on a walk that took us around to the Western Market, which was unfortunately closed because it was on the early side of the morning. We passed Ginseng and Bird Nest Street. The street was lined with shops full of medicinal animal parts. Next stop, we walked along the Dried Sea Food Street, and you can only imaging how that smells! I was sad when I saw all the shark fins for sale. The smell, as you can imagine, was not a lovely one. The street was filled with nasty dried seafood smells. For sale in the shops were random dried seafood creatures that have a purpose most likely for cooking.     Next we walk...

After 3 weeks of traveling, we arrived home and began to get settled on Tuesday. Apparently I was missing the kitchen, even though it's been too hot to think about cooking. I planned one of our normal pasta salads to take to the pool for a picnic with our neighbors, and then I checked out Steve Poses' blog: http://athomebysteveposes.wordpress.com/recipes/ . He's the Philadelphia restauranteur behind the Frog/Commissary Cookbook (and those restaurants, which I know only from the cookbook) -- and *that* is where I found the recipe I have modified as "Angela's Best Cookies," a recipe that was actually requested for a recent school event. Anyway, I was intrigued by a salad recipe, and yes, I did modify it a bit,  but I found it to be very yummy and just the trick on a hot afternoon. Try it. Avocado and Black Bean Salad. http://athomebysteveposes.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/avocado-black-bean-salad-recipe/ I felt like I didn't want to waste the pulp -- the...

Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (New York: Norton and Company, 2010). This is a book of academic history and policy, with a decided private / Northeast bias. It treats the topics of General Education; the history of the Humanities and literary studies; “interdisciplinarity”; and the concept that “all professors think alike” [i.e. that faculty are overwhelmingly liberal politically; not a very interesting chapter]. Some of what Menand has to say about Gen Ed and the “humanities revolution” is not true at Ohio State (or, I suspect, other large state institutions). But this is a very smart book with good research and it raises interesting questions. I highlight some of them below. National Defense Education Act of 1958 led to direct federal subsidies of higher ed (rather than only subsidies via specific research contracts): NASA, NSF, NIH; but also targeted science and foreign languages as primary needs (pp. 66-6...

Hong Kong has been amazing, as is made obvious by the fact that Olivia hasn't had time to really blog about it. We've been sweating more than we thought possible, walking and hiking everywhere, taking all kinds of public and other transportation, even been out to the New Territories. But I won't spoil the surprise; we will all read about it from her point of view. The purpose of this blog for me (Angela) is not just travel -- though we have been doing plenty of that lately and will be travelling even more in future -- but also, of course, books and recipes. So I wanted to write a little about a novel I've just read called The Weird Sisters , by Eleanor Brown. This is an airport novel that I picked up on my way to Ukraine last month (figuring I might get stuck somewhere along the way and need something to do), but instead of reading it I simply brought the book with me through Istanbul to Alushta, Crimea, and back again. On the plane on the way to Hong Kong I decided ...

Olivia has been dying to blog ... but I'm staying in control. Not much she can do about it -- it's my computer, and I'm her mom. I will check her posts and make sure she's at least using proper grammar and punctuation ... though I won't necessarily censor her! The name of our JOINT blog is "Manic Bookstore Cafe," after my long-cherished idea to open a bookstore/cafe where sometimes there will be LOTS of yummy baked goods (scones, muffins, cookies, pie, cake...) -- the result of a manic baking phase -- and sometimes ... there will be nothing. Nada. Go next door if you're hungry. The bookstore/cafe may never happen -- do I really want to get into retail? and if Olivia goes on to other, more interesting occupations, why would I want to do it by myself? But at least we'll have this joint project for now ... until she gets old enough to have her own computer with unlimited access and her own blog. So that's the story of the blog's name. I...

    Today I went to the Dayton airport at 9:15 a.m. After getting our plane tickets, we embarked on our journey.  We flew to Chicago where we waited for two hours, negotiating our tickets to change our flight to a direct flight to Hong Kong. Eating bagels, tomato/mozarella/pesto sandwiches, and deep dish pizza with butter crust for lunch. Zack, infatuated by his new gadget, an iPod touch given to him as a goodbye gift from Tina, spent most of the time trying to recharge it.     Our airplane, a Boeing 747, was huge; it had a top deck and a lower one. The food was not good. They gave us Pop Chips, which the first time I tasted them I didn't like them, and other snacks. They also had nasty meals. The movies playing on the plane (they didn't have personal screens) were Journey 2: the Mysterious Island, Man on a Ledge, Big Miracle, and My Week With Marilyn. They also showed TV shows. The funniest one was How I Met Your Mother. My friend was ri...