Blossom Time (Early Edition)

Photos © 2026 mae sander

Watching TV and Reading

Netflix: A History of the New Yorker Magazine 

Watching a documentary about the famous New Yorker magazine.
It brought back memories of reading it since I was in college.
I haven’t read it recently as much as I used to. Maybe start again?

Reading This Week

Concentrating on this book seemed very challenging as I read it, because the authors range widely through history. The seven cheap things are: “nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives.” (p. 7) The time frame is the last several hundred years. The geographic extent of the phenomena that the authors cover is also broad: “although Europe features in it, capitalism’s story isn’t a Eurocentric one. The rise of capitalism integrated life and power from Potosí to Manila, from Goa to Amsterdam.” (p. 90) I’ve tried to select some quotes to capture some of the key points of the book, though I admit that I’m very challenged by reading it, and I might not understand it very well.

Cheap money is at the heart of history, say the authors: “Although, as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789, ‘in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,’ cheap money links the two. The modern art of war became a way to turn gold and blood into capital.” (p. 80)

The authors think in terms of categories of people, mainly binary categories that defined humanity and all its activities: “At the origins of capitalism, strategies used to corral Indigenous Peoples into the pen of Nature were also used to create and manage a category of humans who would perform unpaid care work: women. Human bodies were forced, sometimes medically and always juridically, into one of two inescapable categories: man and woman. The resulting entangled binaries—of Society-Nature, Man-Woman, and paid work–unpaid work—have left us with a way of thinking that has committed humans in capitalism’s world-ecology to making spectacular oversights: we continue to think of ‘real work’ solely as wage work and forget the care work that makes it all possible.” (p. 116)

Food to feed the people who did the work is another important consideration: “Cheap food is ‘cheap’ in a specific sense: more calories produced with less average labor time in the commodity system.” (p. 143) Through cheap food, societies succeed. Hunger in contrast “began to matter politically only when the poor came to the cities and translated it into anger, and thence potentially into insurrection and a challenge to the rule of cheap nature.” (p. 149) However, “cheap food regimes … guarantee neither that people are fed nor that they are fed well—as the global persistence of diet-related ill health and malnutrition can attest.” (p. 158)

“Capitalism may have claimed the New World with guns, germs, and steel, but the New World’s order was kept through race, police, and profits. …  Capitalism’s ecology has shaped the modern nation-state and vice versa, through the colonial frontier, through the interactions between early capitalists and ‘savages,’ and through the technologies of communication that capitalism fostered at its inception.” (p. 180-181)

All in all, I’m overwhelmed by the enormous amount of detail in this book. Do I really understand it? 

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

Our World

 

We watched the landing. It’s hard to believe this adventure is real, but it is.

An Old Favorite

My blog has DOZENS of pancake recipes and photos of pancakes that I have made or that we’ve eaten somewhere else. Somehow I have missed one favorite: cottage cheese pancakes. Along with one or two other favorites, it came from a very old baking book that we have had for years:

This morning, Len made the pancakes.

Today's pancakes have added blueberries.

We like real maple syrup on all kinds of pancakes.

Recipe: Cottage Cheese Pancakes

2 oz butter 

1 cup cottage cheese

4 beaten eggs 

1/2 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder 

2 tablespoons milk

Optional: add a few berries or raisins.  

Melt butter. Stir in cottage cheese. Fold in eggs, then other ingredients. Cook pancakes on very hot griddle. Eat with Maple Syrup.

Original Recipe

Recipe as it appears in the very old cookbook.

When we make pancakes, we double this recipe, as it appears above. The two of us eat most of the pancakes.

 Blog post © 2026 mae sander

Nobody

 Son of Nobody: A Novel by Yann Martel

“In The Iliad, not a single commoner speaks (with one notable exception). Homer’s omniscient perspective closely aligns with the point of view of the Greek ruling class. It is an aristocratic perspective. Whereas here [in the fictitious epic the Psoad], a commoner speaks so much he practically filibusters.” (p. 62)

Son of Nobody alternates between two stories, one modern in the US and England, and one in the ancient world of the Trojan War. The link between the stories is a classical scholar who has discovered a new epic about the Greeks at Troy, the Psoad, the history of a common soldier named Psoas. This scholar works at a library in Oxford, while his wife and child have remained in America. At the beginning of each chapter of Martell’s novel, we read an excerpt from the newly discovered epic (which of course exists only in the novel). Following each excerpt, we read the story of the scholar as he hears from his wife, who resents his absence from their home while he’s in Oxford.

Tragedy strikes: their child dies of a sudden infection. Martell suggests connections and similarities between the modern and ancient stories. I find the situation of a very sick child and remote father to be poignant, though contrived. Throughout there are vivid and significant details — such as the appearance of the pottery fragment where the previously unknown epic was recorded. Emotions like the suffering of the family, the grief of a bereaved father, and the fear of the mother all are vivid. But collectively, the descriptive passages somehow did not come together for me: I don’t think the book succeeds.

As far as I can discover, the character Psoas along with his name and the epic about him are the creation of Martel, not taken from ancient myth or history. There is an English word psoas, which refers to “a long, ribbon-shaped muscle in your back. It starts at your lower back and runs through your pelvis to the top of your femur.” (source) I see no connection between the word’s meaning and the character in the novel.

In short, I find the novel a bit puzzling and not entirely satisfying.

Artifacts from Homer’s Era

From our trip in 2025

As I read, I was thinking about the objects we saw last summer when visiting the Greek islands.

A pottery fragment from the time of the Homeric epic.

“The temptation is to see truth in the rational and mere embellishment in the myth.” (p.229)

Blog post © 2026, photos © 2025 mae sander

Quiet Sunday

 Tana French: The Keeper

This book is too long. There is a detective story in it but the author seems much more interested in describing the complex relationships among dozens of inhabitants of the little Irish town where Cal Hooper, an American policeman, has retired, but where he gets no peace. I forced myself to read to the end. By the time the one and only death in the story was explained, I didn’t really care.

Occasionally, I found some amusing mentions of food in the book, especially raspberry jam that one of the women puts up in little jars and gifts to several other women, an action that becomes enmeshed in the plot. Detective Cal likes to cook: “even though he only took it up out of a belief that Trey [his daughter] needed to eat something other than hamburgers and grilled cheese and whatever boiled-into-submission stuff her mother came up with. Now he tries fancy things all the time, and mostly they work out.” (p. 180)

At a cafe that’s central to the action, the food isn’t very good, mostly fried eggs and “toasties,” but the cozy atmosphere is important, especially in contrast to the nastiness that is a big part of life in the town (and not just the mystery part). It’s a depressing town, as exemplified here:

“The townland is scattered with these places, homes emptied by famine in the 1840s, orphaned by emigration in the seventies, left behind in the millennium rush to easier city jobs. Mostly no one bothers to knock them down.” (p. 356)

I’ve read all of Tana French’s earlier police and detective stories, and I think I liked them better than this one.

The Power Plant

Besides reading, we took a Sunday afternoon walk along the Huron River.

Review © 2026 mae sander 

Happy Passover

Wednesday evening was the start of Passover, and we celebrated with a few other people.
This photo shows the ritual items: the matzoh, the lamb bone, the egg, horse-radish root,
and the greens that symbolize spring. Matzoh reminds us of our ancestors’ exodus from Egypt.

At the table.

Another view of the ceremonial items, as well as the gefilte fish that we
like to have as part of the meal.

Our main course was Chicken Marbella, a 1980s favorite that I had never cooked before.

Gefilte fish (photo by Alice).

What it all means: From 2007

In 2007, I wrote a child-friendly explanation of the symbols on the Passover plate. Here it is again in case you would like to see it. We celebrate the same way each year (you might notice that it’s even the same tablecloth). Back then, I was writing for Miriam and Alice who were small children. Happily, Alice was with us in person this year!

In the spring we celebrate the Jewish holiday called Passover. We have a special ceremony called a Seder, and we tell a story about Jewish history a long, long time ago. To tell this story, we have special food on the table. The picture shows the table from last year.

At the Seder, we tell the story of how the Jews were slaves in the land of Egypt in this long-ago time, and how Moses, their leader, helped them to escape. We celebrate freedom and the coming of spring.

Moses and all the people ran away from Egypt so fast that they didn't have time to bake bread, but ate a flat bread called matzoh. For the holiday of Passover, many Jewish people do not eat any other type of bread or crackers for 8 days, because they want to remember the story.

When the Jewish people were slaves, they had to work very hard making big buildings for the Egyptians. On the Seder plate is a special fruit jam called charoses that tastes very good.

Charoses looks like the mortar that holds a brick or stone building together, and we eat it to remind us of the lives of the Jewish slaves who worked on the buildings in Egypt.

The next special food is called "bitter herbs," or horseradish. This is a very bitter, sharp-tasting root. This taste makes all the people at the Seder remember the hard and "bitter" lives that the Jewish people had when they were slaves around 3000 years ago. They make us remember that freedom is a good thing.

One part of the Seder is to eat matzoh with some charoses and ground-up horseradish on it, and remember the bitter and the sweet parts of the story.



Salt water on the Passover plate makes us remember the tears that people wept when they were not free men and women.


The egg on the Passover plate reminds us that spring is here.
Parsley or other mild-tasting green herbs is also on the Seder table to remind us of spring. Another part of the Passover celebration is to eat egg with salt water and matzoh, and to dip the parsley in salt water.


Also on the Passover plate is a bone from a lamb. We also drink wine as we tell the story.

When Moses helped the Jews to escape, the first thing they did was to cross a big sea named the Red Sea. Here is the magical part of the story: the water of the sea opened up, and everyone could walk between the walls of water.

While they walked, Moses's sister sang and danced to help them on their way. Her name was Miriam, and she has an important part in the story. After all the Jews crossed the Red Sea and escaped from slavery, they lived in the desert for a long time. Miriam had a magic well so that wherever they went, they found water to drink. Even though the desert is a very dry place, Miriam's magic well was always with them.

 Photos © 2007, 2026 mae sander

March in the Kitchen

 New in My Kitchen in March

New Mug Rack that Len made for some of our many mugs.
Len has been doing a lot of woodworking.

We have been using the new tray for many meals… such as this patè, cheese, bread, and chips.

Good Meals in March

We cooked at home for most of our March dinners. Here are photos — some new, some you’ve seen earlier this month. 

At Home

… and another roast chicken!

For Saint Patrick’s Day, of course.

We frequently have tuna salad in one form or another.

Alice made us some classic chocolate chip cookies.

Len made Pad Thai — super good!

Another meal that Len made.

Bacon on Special

I needed a few strips of bacon for classic Boeuf Bourgignon, so I went quickly into a Kroger store.
They had a special: buy one package get one free. So we have had about a year’s worth of bacon this month!

A Take-Out Meal: Food from the Himalayas

At Slurping Turtle 

Miso Soup

Seafood plate.

Sashimi with raw tuna and vegetables.

Final March Reading (not in my kitchen)

I’m not sure I’ll keep reading this in April.
The first 200 pages have been disappointing. I expected more from
Diana Wynne Jones.

Shared with Sherry’s “In My Kitchen” 

Blog post and photos © 2026 mae sander