Sunday, February 02, 2025

Girl in Hyacinth Blue

I have now read almost all of Susan Vreeland’s books, and enjoyed them all. Girl in Hyacinth Blue tells the story of a painting, an imaginary painting by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), the indescribably wonderful Dutch painter. Though the painting in the novel is imaginary, it’s described vividly as it seems to several characters who are enchanted by its power:

“The girl in the painting had a blue smock. How glorious to drape oneself in blue—the blue of the sky, of Heaven, of the pretty little lake at Westerbork with the tiny blue brooklime that grew along the banks, the blue of hyacinths and Delftware and all fine things.” (p.76)

I enjoyed reading this book, which is a series of small stories about several owners of the imagined painting going back in time until we meet the artist. The awe in which the work of Vermeer is held in the book is something that I can really grasp, as every Vermeer painting I have ever seen has captivated my thoughts and stayed with me as a vivid memory. I believe that in the course of visiting many museums, I have seen over half the surviving works by Vermeer. I’m adding some images of Vermeer paintings that I was thinking about as I read the novel.

Two Vermeer Paintings of a Girl in Blue

Lady Seated at a Virginal

Woman Reading a Letter

Seeing Vermeer Paintings

Last year we visited The Haague and saw the Vermeers at the Mauritshaus. one of the best museums in the world because it is small and every painting is a masterpiece.

Vermeer’s View of Delft as we saw it.

The tiny figures on the shore.

The museum.

Friday, January 31, 2025

Food and Prices in the New Year

In My Kitchen January 2025

Kitchen prep and its rewards…Shared with Sherry at Sherry’s Pickings…

Ingredients for lamb chops au poivre, a New York Times recipe.

A nice red wine was good with this dish, which I made using a New York Times recipe.

Len made this dinner, using another NYT recipe.
About half the meals depicted here are his, and about half are mine.

First pizza of 2025…

The second pizza — different cheese.

A recipe from Ottolenghi’s Flavor.

The famous Roman dish cacio e pepe was the subject of scientific research by 8 Italian physicists.
The conclusions of the study supported the method of Ottolengi but did not mention him.

Ottolenghi and his pasta.

A very delicious chicken dish: another from the New York Times

Sauce Grenobloise contains lemon, capers, and butter. Its origin is in Grenoble, France.
The sauce is traditionally served with trout or other mild fish.

Len’s rye bread topped with broiled steak and mushroom sauce.

I love Len’s rye bread and convinced him to bake two more loaves.
This time the accompanying dinner is meatballs, fruit salad, vegetable salad, and savory sour cream sauce.
The meatballs were a new product: chilled and ready to cook from Trader Joe’s.

For Lunar New Year: Fish-Fragrant Eggplant, smashed cucumbers, and buckwheat noodles.

On the Fridge: Magnets, Of Course

Bird magnets again this month.

I now have bird magnets on the side of the fridge, not just on the front.

Birds shared with Eileen’s Critters

Food Prices

This week: egg prices ranged from $3.49 to $6.99 a dozen, with the highest price being charged for pasture-raised organic eggs. (In 2020, the average price of eggs was around $1 per dozen.)

In kitchen news this month, the ever-rising cost of food is a central topic, especially as the campaign promises of our new overlords — promises that food prices would be reduced — were almost immediately acknowledged as a lie. Prices for many foods, especially produce, are likely to take another jump in US supermarkets if tariffs are levied on Mexican imports. Specifically: “The United States imported $9.9 billion worth of vegetables and more than $11 billion worth of fruit and frozen juices from Mexico last year.” (source)

Especially noted in recent discussions of food costs is the globally increasing price of cocoa and all chocolate products. I have a way to compare prices from the past with current prices for the same items; specifically, amazon keeps a record of my purchases, including orders from Whole Foods. Thus I can see what I paid in the past and compare to the price they are charging now for the same items. For example: Pepperidge Farm Milano chocolate cookies ordered from amazon have gone from $7.32 for three bags in 2020 to $10.50 for the same product at amazon.com this week.

From Investopia, I found a discussion about international commodity prices for cocoa. To quote their “takeaway” points about cocoa prices at the end of 2024:

Global cocoa prices have surged to almost $12,000 per metric ton, an increase of 88% in just three months.
While production is expected to increase by 11% this year, it won't be enough to rebuild depleted inventories.
Chocolate makers typically respond to rising prices by reducing bar sizes, adding fillers, and using more artificial flavors. (source)

Prices of tropical and sub-tropical commodities like chocolate, coffee, bananas, and olive oil have been rising because of climate change affecting the areas where these products grow. Crop yields for wheat, rice, soy, potatoes, and feed crops are also being negatively affected by climate change.

The rapid increase in the price of eggs is due to a widespread outbreak of bird flu, which is infecting large numbers of chicken farms. This may be relevant only in the US, see this article in the NYT — "Egg prices are high." Locally, here in Michigan, the cost of eggs is also increasing because a new state law took effect on January 1 that requires large-scale egg producers to install cage-free housing with nest boxes, perches, and other animal welfare measures.

This week 365 brand olive oil is $15.99.
The record of my order from 2020 shows a price of $12.99.

If you prefer to see a chart, here’s the US Bureau of Labor Statistics presentation of the average price of ground beef over the past 30 years in the US. Current price: the highest in history.

Shared with Deb at Readerbuzz.

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Good Dirt

Finally: a really good book! Just published this week (January 28, 2025). Have you noticed all my lukewarm or very cold reviews lately? This book is different.

Charmaine Wilkerson’s Good Dirt has likable characters, a good plot, and very beautiful writing. It’s full of fascinating historical detail, set in the context of one family’s experience. The central character in the novel is Ebby, a young woman who struggles because of a devastating trauma she experienced at the age of ten: witnessing the murder of her older brother. Most of the action takes place when she is around thirty years old. Recently, she has also suffered a humiliation when her fiancé abandoned her on the day of her wedding.

Ebby’s parents are highly successful and wealthy descendants of Black and Native Americans who settled in New England during the nineteenth century. The author makes it very clear that the history of all races in the US is American history: not separate, but part of a whole. This theme of the book is both powerful and meaningful, and I enjoyed discovering the author’s viewpoint, which is integral to the novel and very much part of its appeal to me. Her choice of characters and events allows her to present many ideas without being in the least preachy — an impressive accomplishment.

A major character from the historic era in the novel is named Moses; he is a skilled potter who was enslaved in the South where he produced large storage jars of great usefulness and beauty. One of these jars remained in Ebby’s family until the tragedy: her brother’s murderers also toppled and destroyed the jar itself. As part of her efforts to forge a meaningful life after trauma, Ebby records the family stories about the maker of the jar and the family’s experiences in Africa, in the Old South, and in New England.

One good thing about this novel is that it doesn’t try to make everyone happy and satisfied at the end in a fake way, as sometimes happens in novels about bad things that happen to good people. The ending is realistic, acceptably provides a resolution to the story, but not forced.

Inspiration for the Historic Era in this Novel

From the author’s afterward: “While writing the story of Moses, I visited an exhibit of nineteenth-century stoneware that originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and traveled to other cities. The show, Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, included key pieces by the real-life potter Dave (called David Drake following the end of his enslavement).”

Two Storage Jars, University of Michigan Museum of Art in 2023

As I read the novel, I was constantly thinking about the exhibit titled “Hear Me Now,” which was presented at our local museum last year. Remembering the exhibit contributed to my enjoyment of the novel, which brought a fictional version of the enslaved potters to life, including their search for “Good Dirt” with which to form their useful and beautiful creations. Here are two of the items that impressed me.

Text of the label for the depicted jar:

____________(Potter once known)

Likely enslaved at Phoenix Stone Ware Factory (about 1840)

Alkaline-glazed stoneware with iron and kaolin slip High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Purchase in honor of Audrey Shilt, President of the Members Guild, 1996-1997, with funds from the Decorative Arts Acquisition Endowment and Decorative Arts Acquisition Trust

Stamp: PHOENIX / FACTORY / ED:SC

This object stands apart for its striking decoration. A Black man and woman in fancy dress make a toast. Below, a nursing hog faces off against a two-handled pot evocative of this watercooler. Little is known about the object, and the significance of the imagery is not clear. Some interpret it as a wedding scene, while others read the pot as a presentation piece, intended to showcase the skill of the potters at the short-lived Phoenix Factory

A storage jar by the potter David Drake, probably like the one in the novel.

Birds Along the Huron River

Trumpeter swans seem to love this stretch of the river.

Golden Eye Ducks

Hooded Mergansers.

From the pedestrian bridge we watched ducks near the railroad bridge.

Graffiti on the railroad bridge.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Puzzling Novel

I am baffled by Helen Oyeyemi’s novel Mr. Fox (published 2011). I understand three things:

It’s a retelling of the classic folktale of Bluebeard, originally published in Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale collection. Echoes of folktales about foxes also occur throughout. Bluebeard, you may recall, married many women and killed them by beheading them. Finally his last wife discovers his crimes when she opens a secret room that he has told her never to open.
The frame story of Mr. Fox is about a novelist named St. John Fox and his wife and about the stories he writes, especially stories about a woman named Mary Foxe and her murderous husbands. The stories reflect the many traditional interpretations of the Bluebeard legend. Was the moral of Perrault’s tale that wives shouldn’t be curious about their husbands’ past (and catch them at their crimes)? Or that they should be more assertive (and avoid being murdered)? The fictitious writer, his wife, and embedded stories in the novel seem to explore the various interpretations of the original Bluebeard.
The invented stories also become a reality in the fictitious author’s personal life as the novel proceeds — or maybe they don’t, maybe the intermeshing is delusional and exists only in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Fox. As one of them says: “I know what this is called—a folie à deux, a delusion shared by two or more people who live together.” (p. 235)

This novel is exhausting to read. That’s all I can say. I had exactly the same reaction to another book by this author — I wrote: “A very puzzling book, Gingerbread. I'm totally confused by it, but don't feel like rereading it to see if it makes more sense the second time through. I'm not sure I can write a coherent review.” (review of Gingerbread that I wrote)

Monday, January 27, 2025

Holocaust Remembrance Day: 80 years since the Liberation of Auschwitz

From the Guardian Photo Essay for Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025.

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Another Quiet Week

A New Resolve

We rejoined the fitness center that we dropped during the pandemic. (Ok, that’s a long time!)
No photos allowed inside so I used the picture from their website.

An Interesting Mystery

Black Beadle (published 1938). E.C.R. Lorac (1894-1958) wrote a huge number of
police procedural novels about the detective Robert MacDonald (Goodreads lists 45 of them!)

After the murder of a quite unpleasant man at the beginning of Black Beadle, Inspector MacDonald investigates four suspects. These possible murderers represent four social types in England just before the war. As the inspector says they were “men of such different types that it seems almost ludicrous to group them under a common heading.” (p. 161)

It’s a tightly plotted novel with an interesting theme underlying MacDonald’s efforts: the exploration of contemporary views on Jewish people and Jewish stereotypes in England, mainly by the focus on one suspect who is Jewish and one upper-class suspect who despises Jews. There is also a heavy consciousness of the persecution of Jews that was underway at that time in Germany.

I think the author meant well, but I found the book to be uncomfortable reading because I see even these well-intended attitudes as condescending and now outdated. Just one example, the Jewish character is often identified as “the Jew” — for example:

“The appeal made to him by the Jew had been, in its essence, an emotional appeal.” (p. 112)

“He sensed that the Jew was upright, humane, and sincere, but there was in him that touch of the fanatic which rendered him doubly dangerous.” (p. 105)

I’ve read one other novel by this author, and I may read more. Quite a few of them are still in print or in e-book form.

Kerrytown Lunch and Shopping

Lunch at one of our local favorites, Miss Kim in the Kerrytown shopping center downtown
Carrot salad, broccoli salad, Korean fried chicken, and spare ribs.
A Zingerman’s chocolate cupcake for dessert