Japanese Arts

Bonsai

The entrance to the Bonsai Garden at Matthaei Botanical Gardens, Ann Arbor.

Many botanical gardens and other types of gardens where I have visited have a section devoted to bonsai, often displaying bonsai trees that have been created by members of local bonsai clubs or associations. I always enjoy seeing these miniature potted landscapes, which are often meant to look like dwarf versions of trees one might see in an actual landscape, especially in a rugged setting where the tree has been stressed and stunted. I've been reading a little bit about this art form, which originated in China as much as thousands of years ago, which was adapted to Japanese taste hundreds of years ago,  and which is now a popular hobby with Americans. Various groups of bonsai enthusiasts have developed their own styles and conventions for how to train the tiny trees to create an effect of miniature natural beauty. 

Reading about Bonsai

I am a frequent visitor to the bonsai garden at out local Botanical Gardens, but after my most recent visit, I felt curious about the art of training these dwarf trees to look like miniature landscapes. In the current LA Times, I read an article, "The Oaxacan-born cook caring for Yamaguchi Nursery’s historic bonsai collection," about Miguel Hernandez, who works as a cook in a diner in Los Angeles, but who also is a talented bonsai artist. The nursery was founded by a Japanese bonsai expert, George Yamaguchi, who died in 2005. In Japan, bonsai is an art form; there are contests for best works, and examples sell for large sums of money.

"But in the U.S., bonsai has always been the project of devoted hobbyists, and most of them are not Japanese. John Naka, known to enthusiasts as the godfather of American bonsai, eschewed competition and encouraged a focus on personal mastery. Along with Yamaguchi and other Japanese Americans such as Ben Oki and Harry Hirao, he traveled the country and taught anyone willing to put in the time and do the work."

Another article from 2022 in the New Yorker described the experiences of a young American, Ryan Neil, who managed to become an apprentice to a leading bonsai artist in Japan. Titled "The Beautiful, Brutal World of Bonsai," this article describes the six-year apprenticeship that included quite a bit of abuse that would be entirely unacceptable in any US educational or professional environment. In fact, such brutal treatment has become outside the norm in Japan as well, but still exists in a few areas.

Bonsai in other gardens

Bonsai at the Morikami Gardens near Boca Raton, Florida, 2020.

Bonsai for sale at the La Jolla, California, farmers' market, 2008.

Bonsai at the Huntington Gardens near LA, 2019.

Gardens and Tea Ceremonies

Korakuen Gardens, Tokyo, Japan, 2008.

Morikami Gardens, 2010.

I am fascinated by the beauty in many Japanese garden traditions. This is the Ihoan tea ceremony hut
 at the Kodaiji Temple in Kyoto. The formal garden traditions seem to me to echo the aesthetic of bonsai. (source)

The rituals of the tea ceremony include views of flower arrangements and often a walk through a
garden to arrive at the tea house, as suggested in this 19th century illustration. (source)
This tea party is included to be shared with Elizabeth and her Monday blog party.

Blog post and original photos © 2008-2023 mae sander

Other images as credited.

"Blue Skies" by T.C.Boyle

I don't like T.C. Boyle's new book enough to write a complete review. I was really looking forward to reading Blue Skies, but I'm pretty disappointed. At first the book seems to be a satire (maybe a bit like the books of Carl Hiaasen, but not as funny), but that mood dies out quickly as the plot thickens. 

A few observations:

• The book deals with Big Issues. But it's too predictable: the main theme is about global warming and species extinction. Exaggerated floods in Florida, drought in California, and nothing but helplessness. Not really insightful. Not one of the characters seems perceptive about the whole thing. They try but I'm not convinced.
• Snakes again. There were snakes in the last T.C.Boyle book that I read. What's with the snakes? See "When the Killing's Done" by T.C.Boyle. And at the end there's a parallel event to another of his books but I won't say more than that because no spoilers!
• Characters are mostly flat. They seem to be half-baked versions of the ones in previous novels by this author. Central characters: an airheaded self-centered couple without much to make them sympathetic or believable. Secondary characters: better human beings that never quite became three-dimensional. 
• Social media is another rather forced characteristic of some of their lives. This element doesn't have the pithy irony or the social relevance that I have seen in a number of other authors' books.
• Plot: melodramatic. The things that will happen to the characters are too obvious from the start. Boyle is not Shakespeare; the fact that you know what's coming isn't a dramatic accomplishment.

Check out this example of the author's tired prose style:

"Half the world was flooded and the other half parched and the crops kept failing and failing again. People were starving, even here in California. There were refugees everywhere. The wine tasted of ash. (Blue Skies, p. 290).

Boyle always seems to have a character who is a committed, fanatical vegetarian, usually with the same thoughts as all the other vegetarians. A little tedious:

"She ordered a breakfast burrito—with ham, though she knew he disapproved or maybe she’d forgotten or didn’t care because what he thought or felt or declaimed to the world meant nothing to her under the present circumstances—and he had the same thing, only without meat, because meat was murder, for starters, and it was the carnivores who’d destroyed the earth, fueling the Auschwitz of the slaughterhouse and lining up at In-N-Out Burger with their motors idling for as long as it took for the animal matter to sizzle on the grill and the air to turn to poison. She saw the look on his face and said, 'I like ham once in a while, so shoot me.'” (p. 317). 

Around a dozen times the characters prepare and eat eggs for breakfast, usually with a muffin. Somehow this seems very repetitive! --

"Normally she’d fix herself eggs and a medley of fresh fruit—papaya, kiwi, honeydew, blueberries or raspberries or whatever looked good in the market that week—but she thought maybe she’d go for a muffin, blueberry, with a sprinkle of sugar, just to settle her stomach, and skip the coffee." (p. 22).  

In a rather tepid review, the New York Times' writer Matt Bell summarizes the food part of the novel: "Boyle has always been a foodie writer, and much of “Blue Skies” unfolds at what increasingly feel like last suppers for the bourgeoisie." (NYT Review Here) 

I'll spare you a number of other cooking scenes, take-out ordering scenes, fast food, and fine restaurant scenes that I found less than imaginative. In fact, I'll spare you any more of this. If you are a die-hard fan of the author, I'd like to hear what you think.

Review © 2023 mae sander.

In My Kitchen and in the World

Global food insecurity from "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World"
Published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 2022.

In all the kitchens of the world, cooks are worried about food scarcity, higher prices, and short supplies of favorites, and even of necessities. Food insecurity is increasing, on a global scale. One reason is deteriorating conditions for growing crops in many places. Climate change is accelerating food supply problems and cooperation  among nations to take effective measures against the warming planet are not going well. Here’s the unfortunate and inconvenient fact:

"With each fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would disappear." (New York Times, October 26,2022)

Declining food production is already occurring in some places, and hunger — even starvation — is already widespread in some parts of the world. Besides climate change, the war in Ukraine has caused higher prices of grains and cooking oil. Though not as disastrous as was first expected, the situation is volatile. The impact of the war on global food supplies and prices is very important and also complicated. I have not addressed it in this post: the issue needs much more space and attention than what I have written here.

Thinking about people around the world and their problems obtaining healthy food, or in fact any food, is often on my mind. I’m also thinking about how current issues are directly affecting my kitchen and kitchens like mine. For this blog post, admittedly centered on the American kitchen of the moment, I’ve chosen just a few examples of foods in my kitchen that almost everyone in the US depends on, but that are affected by the variables of a warming planet. I definitely know that I’m privileged, but these details are part of a big picture of the state of the whole world’s kitchens. 

Processed Tomato Products

From my pantry: this can of tomato sauce says “Organic California Roma Tomatoes.” Ninety- five percent of processed tomatoes for US consumption are grown in California. Pizza sauce, tomato sauce, tomato paste, catsup…we Americans depend on these products for many of our favorite dishes.

In 2022 the tomato harvest is coming in much smaller than usual, as “rising interest rates, inflation, and the crushing drought squeezed farmers who saw their margins sliced and diced. While the cost of growing tomatoes continues to rise, it’s ultimately hitting consumers in the wallet as well.”

The drought has vastly decreased the farmers’ access to irrigation water, and many farmers had to leave their fields standing fallow. Some farmers weren’t even able to plant any crops at all, and others have switched from tomatoes to less water-intensive produce.  (CNN, October 17, 2022)

Prices will go up, even if imported produce can replace some of the US farm products. Unfortunately, this is not solely due to inflation, but to actual reduction in supplies of food.

Fresh Vegetables

While California produces most tomatoes for canning, Florida is a major producer of fresh tomatoes and also other vegetables such as the green onions in my photo. Green onions, which normally come from Florida, were hard to find here for a while, and the ones in the photo are from California. However, there are problems with harvests, planting, rain (too little or too much), and many other aspects of the farms where many such vegetables grow. 

The tomatoes in the photo were grown in Ontario, Canada, which is a local supplier in our area (it’s only around 70 miles from here to the tomato-growing farms and greenhouses along Lake Erie). Florida is also a major fresh tomato growing area: from October to June, Florida supplies over half the fresh tomatoes for the US. At other times, we rely on the declining capabilities of California agriculture. Again, a climate issue is disrupting supplies:

“Because Hurricane Ian made landfall three weeks later than Irma, almost all of southwest Florida’s tomato seedlings were planted when the storm arrived, meaning that many acres will need to be replanted after basic services are restored in Lee and Charlotte Counties, counties hit hard by Ian.” (source)

Far more food supplies than tomatoes and green onions have been disrupted by the hurricane. Farms in Florida produce citrus fruit, field crops, and  also raise cattle and produce honey. “Across Florida, Hurricane Ian trampled through about 4 million acres of farmland, according to the latest figures from the Agriculture Department for the affected counties.” (source)

More from my refrigerator: cucumbers from Canada; lettuce, celery, and carrots from California, 
and fresh ginger from an unnamed source.

California has a different set of problems with the many vegetables it supplies to American consumers, including lettuce, broccoli, and more. In fact, California provides Americans with  the majority of their almonds, artichokes, celery, figs, garlic, grapes, raisins and quite.a few other fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Most of these have also become more expensive recently, for a variety of reasons. For example, the California lettuce crop is in trouble, as heat waves intensify problems from plant diseases. As of earlier in October the situation was this:

“For three years, Central Valley lettuce and leafy greens growers have battled Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus (INSV), which is a plant pathogenic virus. Hot weather three weeks ago really activated INSV damage. But the influence of the disease begins with the outset of summer. In mid-October, yields were down as much as 50% below full production … ‘the industry is reaching some peak pricing.’” (source)

Many other countries and other parts of the US beyond California and Florida are growers of agricultural products, and their supplies are not necessarily as troubled as these major producers. But even if alternate agricultural areas can offer more produce to be imported to the US and supplied to other countries, many issues of international supply, demand, and rising price are looming ahead of the planet. 

I’ve only discussed the issues for well-off consumers in the US, but for poor people and for countries that don’t have the resources of the US and Europe the increase in prices and the decline in supplies have even worse consequences. Don’t misunderstand: I know that people in my situation have more choices and are more fortunate. 

Sriracha Hot Sauces

Last summer, Huy Fong foods, California maker of the famous Sriracha hot sauce, was “forced to suspend production of its iconic spicy sauces — Sriracha, Chili Garlic and Sambal Oelek — due to a lack of chili peppers.” (source)

An unprecedented crop failure last spring of the chiles that are grown in California and Mexico just for Huy Fong was the cause of the interruption in production: another consequence of the widespread drought. Another non-climate factor: a large judgement against the company in a lawsuit brought by the chili grower in California also may have had some impact on the corporation.

In the photo, in my kitchen, you can see my supplies of Sriracha hot sauce and chili garlic sauce. I just purchased the new jar of chili-garlic sauce last week. The Korean and Indian specialty shops where I shopped seemed to have ample supplies of the product in several sizes. I’m not sure of the details, but I think that supplies of Sriracha products, which were scarce over the summer, have now returned to normal. Still, this drought-related interruption in supply is another example of the way that food supplies in our time are unpredictable.

Orange Juice: No More “Florida’s Natural”

“Florida’s Natural” Labels:
The Old: "NOT FROM CONCENTRATE NON GMO"
The New: "FROM CONCENTRATE"
(photos are from supermarket websites)

Let's talk about orange juice. Until recently, the juice you would find in my kitchen was often from the growers' coop "Florida's Natural." Not any more! 

Look carefully at the old label on the left and the new one on the right. I've always avoided packaged juice that is reconstituted from concentrate; the quality is just not the same. I’ve found other brands are still not from concentrate, and I hope that will continue.

The sad fact is that production of oranges in Florida’s citrus groves is no longer adequate to supply American OJ-drinking habits. Diseases of the trees, insect pests, and disastrous weather events have devastated the citrus crops for several years. After decades of emphasizing that all their juice was grown in Florida, the Florida’s Natural growers now explain : 

"Unfortunately, the Florida orange crop has been declining for decades while our fans continue to buy more and more Florida's Natural orange juice. The Florida orange crop can no longer meet our consumer demand, so we are adding in only the best Mexican Valencia orange juice."

Besides all the other problems, hurricane Ian resulted in a total loss of this year’s crop for many citrus farmers in its path, and up to 30% of their trees may be lost. “Even before the storm, the USDA had predicted the Florida orange crop would be down by a third this year.” (NPR, October 14)

Sweetness for a Warming Planet 

Throughout the world, in kitchens everywhere, you can find a variety of food supplies affected by heat, drought, fires, and exceptional storms. Honeybees in the US have suffered from “colony collapse” which is probably a result of decreased availability of pollen sources, due to climate change. Another source of sweetness: the sugar-maple groves in Michigan, Vermont, and Canada; these trees have become less productive because of unpredictable weather in spring, when the sap is gathered for maple syrup. Sugar cane cultivation has also been affected by storms and heat waves. Also food for thought: unlike many other crops, cane sugar production is a major producer of greenhouse gases that drive climate change.

In my kitchen: sugar, honey, maple syrup.

An article "Turkey's Honey Apocalypse is a Warning to the World" (in the Atlantic, published October 28) summarizes how unprecedented heat and fires are affecting beekeepers in Turkey, California, Morocco, India, and Australia, diminishing the number of productive hives in a number of ways. The importance of bees as pollinators of other crop disrupt agricultural success. The article is specifically focused on the way that wildfires of exceptional intensity destroyed large numbers of honey-producing beehives in Turkey and Greece in 2021. One of the local Turkish favorite types of honey is now virtually unavailable.

On a global scale, the article points out: "bees are an integral part of our ecosystems, and the destruction of bees and their habitats can affect the pollination of plants that produce almonds, coffee, and more. As heat waves and fires sweep through North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, sweetness and sustenance are too often reduced to ash."

No Matter How Bad Things Are, Have a Happy Halloween!

Don’t worry, we do have something other than vegetables in the house.

In fact, we are ready for the trick-or-treaters. I promise not to eat any before 6 PM.
Candy prices have gone up a lot, but that’s yet another discussion!

Blog post © 2022 mae sander. 

Shared with Sherry’s In My Kitchen Blog Party 

and with Elizabeth’s weekly tea party.

 

Orange Juice

Orange juice from Whole Foods Market (screen shot January 8, 2021)
My preference is for half-gallon cartons of pasteurized orange juice.

Throughout the pandemic, I've been ordering Whole Foods orange juice through the above page at amazon.com.  Evidently, a lot of people are drinking orange juice this year. While sales of orange juice in the US had been declining for years, in 2020 they increased by around 10%, partly because there's a general belief that orange juice improves one's health -- which everyone is worried about. Also, more people have been eating breakfast at home, including more orange juice. (Source: Citrus Industry Magazine, January 8, 2021)

John McPhee's book Oranges tells the history of orange groves and orange juice production in Florida, as well as the history of oranges in many other times and places. In the 1960s, when McPhee wrote, the Florida orange-growing industry was completing the transition from producing and shipping fresh fruit up the east coast to producing frozen concentrate. 

The invention of frozen orange juice had caused huge change: while formerly, growers shipped boxes of fresh oranges to consumers, they now sent most of their produce to nearby factories, in which the more imaginative businessmen among them were investing their money. Instead of selling fruit whose flavor varied from season to season, from tree to tree, and even from one section of an orange to another, the factories blended multiple types of concentrated, processed, frozen juice (which tastes, says McPhee, like a blend of sugar and aspirin) with a little of the real thing. Small or large cans of juice concentrate became ubiquitous in supermarkets and home freezers.

McPhee wrote about consumers who had gladly switched over from squeezing oranges to reconstituting the syrupy stuff from the frozen cans. He discussed the sociology of orange-juice drinking: the blue-collar families of his day were still buying canned juice, while the educated consumer had embraced the frozen, and hardly anyone still squeezed their own. Neither the juice box nor the pasteurized OJ that's now most popular had yet been invented.

Researching his book, McPhee traveled the byways of rural Florida -- remember, before Disney. He observed that even the remaining roadside orange juice stands that he found were serving reconstituted juice concentrate. Further, his interviews with growers, pickers, and factory owners revealed that many orange groves were being cleared for new land use: the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral was in the process of being built on former groves. Finally, he wrote about the frenzy of effort to create new chemical orange juice surrogates. Add water to some crystals they were inventing -- they thought you would get orange juice. (I think they were actually creating Tang, but that was still in the future and they were optimistic.)

My orange juice for breakfast almost every day.
The Whole Foods orange juice carton has a new design.

When I was a child, everyone in my family had a small glass of orange juice with breakfast. My sister, brother, and I had been given "baby orange juice," that is, strained and sweetened orange juice, in our nursing bottles from something like the age of 6 months. It was a standard practice then, but is now considered very bad for babies. We survived.

My mother, like many people, switched from squeezing oranges to reconstituting frozen juice when this innovation became available in the 1950s. Some time in the 1970s, fresh-squeezed juice became a kind of a fad. Small markets or restaurants would have juice squeezers so they could make fresh juice on demand for their customers. Soon, bigger beverage bottlers began to offer fresh juice for the refrigerator aisles in the grocery store. This was much better-tasting than frozen juice. Then the orange processing industry developed pasteurized juice, which was less expensive and had a longer shelf-life but still tasted good. I continue to purchase and drink it. I guess I’ve been a very conventional consumer all my life!

Florida growers were the largest supplier of orange juice to Americans until 2017, when Brazil overtook them. Brazil currently leads the world in production of orange juice with nearly three times US production. Many Florida groves have been converted to other land use, like subdivisions of retirement homes. Florida citrus growers have struggled unsuccessfully against citrus diseases, and occasional frosts and hurricanes have destroyed orange trees over the years. Moreover, the price of Brazilian juice is lower; thus, many bottlers no longer buy American juice. The two cartons of orange juice in my refrigerator list Mexico -- the world's third-largest producer -- as the country of origin. (Statistics on global production here.)

Hesperides by
Samuel Tolkowsky. (link)

Over the years, I've read several other books about the history of citrus fruit. My favorites are McPhee's book (which I first read in 2008 and then In 2016, with my culinary history reading group, and again this week) and a very old and hard-to-find book titled Hesperides: A History of the Culture and Use of Citrus Fruits by Samuel Tolkowsky. This extensive book covers the history of entire citrus family from ancient times up until the book’s publication in 1938 -- a very interesting cultural study!

When my culinary reading group read Oranges, we particularly admired John McPhee's style and his captivating way of portraying the many people in the orange growing business in Florida. His sketches of the lives of advertising men, grove owners, fruit pickers, and many others enlivened his description of the history of citrus in Florida. Though out of date (the book has not been revised since its publication in 1966) the book brings a lot of the business of citrus to life. We wished there would be an update to tell us about modern issues like labor fairness, water consumption, climate change, and fluctuating demand from consumers of orange juice. 

I'm sharing my orange juice memories with Elizabeth and the other bloggers who like to talk about drinks once a week. This post is based on my previous writings about McPhee's book,  blogged here and here as well as current thoughts, so it is copyright © 2008-2021 by mae sander.

"Skinny DIp" and "Lucky You" by Carl Hiaasen

Lucky You, published 1997.

"The Everglades empties off the Florida peninsula into a shimmering panorama of tidal flats, serpentine channels and bright-green mangrove islets. The balance of life there depends upon a seasonal infusion of freshwater from the mainland. Once it was a certainty of nature, but no more. The drones who in the 1940s carved levees and gouged canals throughout the upper Everglades gave absolutely no thought to what would happen downstream to the fish and birds, not to mention the Indians. For the engineers, the holy mission was to ensure the comfort and prosperity of non-native humans. In the dry season the state drained water off the Everglades for immediate delivery to cities and farms. In the wet season it pumped millions of gallons seaward to prevent flooding of subdivisions, pastures and crops.

"Over time, less and less freshwater reached Florida Bay, and what ultimately got there wasn’t so pure. When the inevitable drought came, the parched bay changed drastically. Sea grasses began to die off by the acre. The bottom turned to mud. Pea-green algae blooms erupted to blanket hundreds of square miles, a stain so large as to be visible from NASA satellites. Starved for sunlight, sponges died and floated to the surface in rotting clumps." (Lucky You, p. 337).

Skinny Dip, published 2004.
(Skink book 5)

Carl Hiaasen's books have these two subjects in common:

• "the destruction of the Florida Everglades and the $8 billion effort to save what remains." (Skinny Dip, dedication)
• "the pestilential abundance of lowlifes in South Florida." (Skinny Dip, p. 271).

About his first subject, the ruin of the Everglades, Hiaasen is deadly serious. The second observation inspires him to create comic plots and situations that are enormously fun to read. I've read several of his books in the past, and just finished these two.

Although every book I've read contains some very serious descriptions of the Everglades and their destruction, his invention of special instances of the lowlife characters of Florida and their antics is consistently hilarious. I think I especially like the fact that I've been to the areas he describes. For example, some of the key scenes in Skinny Dip were in the Loxahatchie National Wildlife Refuge, where we went for birdwatching during our visit to Florida last month.

Some of the key action in Skinny Dip takes place on a cruise ship. Obviously this is a setting where Hiaasen can find comic themes; as he observes: "gluttony being the principal recreation aboard cruise liners" (p. 5). Hiaasen is especially vivid when it comes to gluttony and more generally to the characteristic eating habits of his characters. For example, before the ship even sailed, there was a problem:

"... a raccoon had turned up berserk in the pastry kitchen. One of the chefs had wrestled the frothing critter into a sixty-gallon tin of guava custard before it had shredded the man’s jowls and humped snarling to the depths of the ship. A capture team from Broward Animal Control had arrived, along with health inspectors and paramedics. Evacuated passengers were appeased with rum drinks and canapés. (p. 4).

Skinny Dip has a small number of scenes with Hiaasen's very weird character Skink, who lives a hermit's life in the Everglades wilderness and eats roadkill and all-around disgusting foods, as well as making other people eat with him if they stray into his territory. He doesn't play a big role here, but in his brief apparance he's up to his old tricks, frying a dead otter and making one of his visitors share it "because that was better than leaving it to the buzzards" (p. 317).

The weird character unique to this book is nicknamed Tool. He's huge, hairy, mean, and stupid. Also funny. One of his antics is to steal pain-killer patches from nursing homes, and use them to assuage the pain of a bullet wound. He's also funny when he eats; for example at one point, he "emerged wearing black denim overalls and carrying a pizza that was frozen solid. When he took a bite, it sounded like the crack of a .22" (p. 113). As in other Hiaasen books, the course of events causes Tool to reform his very nasty attitudes, while other mean and nasty characters -- especially those that conspire to keep polluting the swamps -- receive quite drastic punishments. Comic and cruel!

On the other hand, there are scenes where food is normal -- Florida normal! For example, the novel's two sympathetic characters share "a lunch of conch chowder, grapefruit salad, sardine sandwiches and sangria" (p. 285). On another occasion, one cooks for the other: "Each slice of fish went first into a bowl of bread crumbs, then the frying pan. Joey heard the sizzle when the fillets landed in the hot oil; she counted eight and wondered if that would be enough for both of them. Never had she felt so famished" (pp. 41-42).

I like Hiaasen's books despite the repeated themes, the relentless dwelling on the tragic ecological disaster (which we've witnessed are getting worse and worse each time we visit Florida), and similarity of the overall plot in which evil characters conspire to do bad things to not-so-evil characters, and the good win out in the end.

To learn much more about Hiaasen, I recommend the recent article "Carl Hiaasen: A Crime Reader's Guide to the Classics" by Neil Nyren, which includes thumbnail sketches of his most amusing characters and a summary of his career as a writer, including the terrible tragedy of his brother's death in a mass murder. The first of Hiaasen's numerous books for kids and adults were published in the 1980s, and --

"Hiaasen’s adult and kids’ books have won nearly a dozen honors since, his journalism has brought him four of the most prestigious awards in that field, including the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and his books have been published in 34 languages, 'which is 33 more than I can read or write.' 

"There hasn’t been a new adult book since 2016, though. "There’s an obstacle to my kind of writing if you have a lot of stuff going on in your personal life,' he has said. 'I think it’s a particular obstacle if you’re trying to be funny and the stuff in your life isn’t particularly funny.' That was the case in 2018, when in June of that year, a man with a vendetta came to the office of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, and killed five people. One of them was Carl’s younger brother Rob, age 59, a columnist and assistant editor."

I've only read a small percent of Hiaasen's twenty books, and look forward to more, especially to the new one that's scheduled for publication later this year.

Blog post copyright © 2020 mae sander

for mae's food blog at maefood dot blog spot dot com.

"Moonglow" by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon's Moonglow is a really enjoyable book. Despite some of the more depressing elements of the plot, it has a light touch and often is very amusing. Although Chabon pretends that his narrator's story of his grandfather is a memoir, it's clearly fiction. I enjoyed the way the novel jumps around in time and space, playing on the various themes and memories that are being developed. As the reviewer in the Guardian wrote:

"This is a novel that, despite its chronological lurches, feels entirely sure footed, propulsive, the work of a master at his very best. The brilliance of Moonglow stands as a strident defence of the form itself, a bravura demonstration of the endless mutability and versatility of the novel." (Review by Alex Preston, Jan. 10, 2017)

The grandfather had always been a reticent character, but during his final illness, he offers a number of stories to his attentive novelist grandson -- suggesting that this be written down. I guess this makes this a little bit of a meta-novel, emphasizing the irony of its being a pretend memoir. Although there are very serious themes throughout the book, I liked the context of lightness in which they are developed.

I'm so grateful to my friend Margo who
loaned me Moonglow!

Combining his own memories of both his grandparents with his grandfather's final confessions, the narrator is able to detail his grandfather's life. The stories include the grandfather's early days in Baltimore and Philadelphia, his experience with the American troops at the end of World War II, and his relationships with his parents and his brother. A highlight was the meeting of his grandfather and grandmother, but also the grandfather's unfortunate prison stay in the mid-1950s, the consequences of the grandfather's obsession with space travel, and quite a bit more. All captivating, I would say.

Both the narrator's grandfather and his grandmother were fascinating people, and the portrait of the grandmother -- who suffered from crippling mental illness -- was incredibly rich and intriguing. Along with her very small daughter (who became the narrator's mother), she came to Baltimore as a refugee from France, her native land, just after the war. Needless to say, she had suffered a number of traumas that come out in the narrative. Mother and child were sponsored by a synagogue that wanted to help the victims -- the grandfather wanted no part of synagogue social life, but was persuaded to attend the Purim party where they met. The love story of this couple is at times tragic, but not always. The whole story is full of irony and improbability, which makes it very good to read.

As always, I like to see how authors use food to help tell a story, and Chabon provides a variety of examples of this throughout the story, especially the mentions of his French grandmother's very skillful French cooking (like the time she made him a tarte Tatin and he ate it all). Or the fact that the narrator has lost the omelet pan that he had inherited from his grandmother, though he still makes some of her recipes.

At the end of his grandfather's life, after the death of his wife, he moves permanently to Florida. The tragic elements of his story seem less tragic and the comic parts seem more comic: at least until his final illness sets in. He meets a widow named Sally, and their relationship, it's a relief to say, is pretty amusing. For example, he invites her to dinner at "an overpriced crab house in Boynton Beach, a rope-trimmed tourist trap that my grandmother had despised." He suffers gastric distress which seems "as though her ghost had poisoned his chowder," though eventually he decides it's his nervous lack of confidence in his date with Sally. I especially found this amusing because I've visited relatives who have retired to Boynton Beach.

Some Highly Rated Books of 2018

I've been reading three books this month. All were published in 2018, and all with very good reviews, including winning or being short-listed for some prestigious prizes. A brief report on these:

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li.

I enjoyed Number One Chinese Restaurant because it surprised me. I didn't realize that I had a stereotyped expectation for a book about the owners and workers in a Chinese restaurant, but I did. It's a very good book: good plot, well-drawn and numerous characters, lots of action.

The author seems aware of these stereotypes. Her characters have a painful awareness of who they are and who other people think they are: their identity as waiters or busboys or Chinese restaurant owners. They know themselves, and they know how their customers, their bosses, their business contacts, their children, their parents, their wives or husbands, and their lovers think of them.

One waiter, who has been working 6 days a week for 50 years, for example, performs for the customers:

"He hobbled off, cutting a comic figure as he swung his left leg in front of his right. He could still fool the customers into thinking his lurching walk and shaky hands were part of his character, a Chinese Charlie Chaplin who might look as if he’d spill the tray but never did." (Kindle Locations 358-360).

Despite his success, the owner, Jimmy Han, fears stereotypes too:

"Han was hardly reinventing the wheel with his menu. Northern Chinese cuisine could be summed up in three words: meat, onions, and garlic."(Kindle Locations 473-474). 

"All around him were restaurants that were out of his league. The pizzeria boasting eight-hundred-degree ovens and ninety-second Neapolitan pies; the sushi restaurant owned by a Japanese chef with a show on Netflix; the French bistro with tasting menus starting at $145 a person. What would the Glory have? Peking duck carved tableside, like on a fucking Carnival cruise!"(Kindle Locations 1864-1866).

"Was it tasty? Sure. But was it authentic? Was it anything to be proud of? Only the Peking duck fit the bill. His father, not for want of trying, had never figured out how to prepare the duck faster than the traditional way, with the fowls shipped down from Long Island, their skin air-dried then brushed with sugar, and finished off with slow heat in a rotisserie oven. Everything else on the menu was a scam." (Kindle Locations 2090-2093).

“We’re a Chinese restaurant,” Jimmy said. “We buy what’s cheapest.” (Kindle Location 4832). 

My brief review doesn't really get at how the development of characters and situations in this book worked to explode my stereotypes, but it really did a great job!

Florida by Lauren Groff.

"Of all the places in the world, she belongs in Florida," is the description of the hapless helpless woman in the last of Lauren Goff's short story collection. It could be the description of every heroine in the book. Some women in these stories are single,  some have problem husbands, some are homeless, some abandon small children, and a few of them dwell obsessively about climate change or piling-up worldwide trash: "the world my children will inherit, the clouds of monarchs they won’t ever see, the underwater sound of the mouths of small fish chewing the living coral reefs that they will never hear."(Kindle Locations 2191-2192). 

It's a tragic world but somehow sometimes also funny; it strangely makes me think of Carl Hiaasen's hilarious stories in very similar settings -- like swamps and run-down apartment houses. When the air conditioning goes off, civilization goes with it. Even when Goff's women run away to France or to a Northern State, they can't escape their Florida identity.

In one story, a mother is left in the Florida wilderness with her kids. She writes

"I made scrambled eggs with a vengeful amount of butter and cheddar, also cocoa with an inch of marshmallow, thinking I would stupefy my children with calories, but the calories only made them stronger." (Kindle Locations 779-780).

A different story features a woman who escapes her usual life to live briefly in Normandy with her two small sons. She takes them for something to eat in a shack on the windswept beach; her drifting thoughts go from the food to her distant future:

"There, protected by a lufting sheet of clear plastic, she orders three buckwheat galettes with cheese and egg, and one salted caramel crêpe for dessert. At home they eat sugar only on holiday or in emergencies— she knows it is a poison; it can make you fat and crazy and eventually lose your memories when you are old, and she has a severe horror of being a stringy-haired cackler in the old-age home; she has boys, she’s not dumb, she knows that sad obsolescence will more than likely be her fate if humanity even lasts that long..." (Kindle Locations 2350-2353).

Milkman by Anna Burns.

The narrator of this book reminds me of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus her strange doppelgänger. So sensitive that life just gets in their way. So fearful. Rubbed so raw. So unable to deal with a very difficult present.

In Milkman, the present is really difficult. The unnamed narrator lives in an unnamed town that's torn by violence between two unnamed religions. She has a "maybe-boyfriend," sisters and brothers-in-law, other relatives and friends, and all of them live in a world of tight and somewhat unnamed expectations. For example, maybe-boyfriend has a friend who is interested in cooking, and would like to be a chef. What this means:

"... male chefs – especially of little pastries and petit fours and fancies and dainties to which one could level the criticism ‘desserts’ and which chef here was a maker of – were not in demand and not socially acceptable. Contrary to other chef parts of the world, a man here could be a cook, though even then he’d better work on the boats, or in a man’s internment camp or in some other full-on male environment. Otherwise he was a chef which meant homosexual with a drive to recruit male heterosexuals into the homosexual fold." (Kindle Locations 492-496).

I haven't finished reading Milkman, because I find it a struggle to read it and face the narrator's problems. I promise to finish it soon. (UPDATE: I finished it. It gets better and better in the second half!)

What I plan to read next:
There, There by Tommy Orange