Tiny Bubbles

Have you met my new friend Irene? She is evidently coming up for a visit this weekend so we're all aflutter getting ready, even though she's really not pleasant company. The sidewalk chalk and bubble blowing supplies are now in the mudroom's "summer fun" bin, all and sundry outdoor furniture crammed into the enclosed back porch, we've laid in a supply of wine, and I consider us as prepared as we're going to be. As I type, there is a light, but steady, summery rain. This we don't expect to continue for long. Bring it, Irene.

I started a convo over on our Facebook page on the benefits of having a bit of home-prepared food on the canning shelf when faced with these kinds of events. I'm on record all over the place here as being firmly in favor being ready for things, distinct from being prepared, which has taken on a somewhat sinister and aggressive anti-community feeling for me these last years, but even so...I don't know. Did you read The Poisonwood Bible back in the day? Remember the cake mixes hauled all the way to wherever in Africa and the bugs? I think about it. All the time. Doesn't stop me from whipping up another batch of pickled hot peppers or brandied blackberries, though. I guess we all cope in our own way.

Moving on. I'm reading another new cookbook this weekend, Andrew Schloss' Homemade Soda. Now, I really like soda (or pop or soda pop or, in the shoes of Xerox or Kleenex, coke). I really like it - it's a flaw in my locafoodievore armor that allows everything from Orangina (interestingly, people who appear horrified when they encounter me clutching my daily Diet Coke seem to have no trouble at all forgiving me an Orangina or two) to Jolt (I used to love warm Jolt right from the can) to frill-free raspberry tonic from the whatever grocery and darn near everything in between. On this point I am neither ashamed nor repentant, and I do not seek input, thank you for your concern. Flavored bubbles are fun! And delicious! I am not particularly brand loyal and will buy whatever is on sale, although I have a slight preference for Diet Coke. My first morning in Taipei last month I keened with delight at finding a Coke Light in the minibar. At three American dollars, it was money very well spent and after the second morning housekeeping started leaving me extra. I loved those women.

I come by my tastes honestly. When I was a pre-teen (this is what we're calling 'tweens now, yes? 11ish/12ish?) my mother started me on Tab as a way to divert my enthusiasm for grape Kool-Aid (and, ever mindful of my figure, its calories, too). You don't see Tab much anymore, but I can recall clearly it's lemony metallic sharpness and, although I don't precisely miss it, I remember it fondly). Later, when I had my own money, I started buying Jolt by the case. Despite it's tagline promising "All the sugar, twice the caffeine" my parents looked the other way figuring that any jitters I experienced would deal with the stuff they'd rather I not consume.

At one point in my childhood, my mother bought a contraption designed to make sodas. The idea was that you'd bubble up some home tap water and somehow incorporate a flavored syrup and - voila! - soda. Or rather, pop. I didn't start saying soda until I came to college in Philadelphia. Anyway, I don't recall the machine being used more than once or twice and the device ended up on a shelf above the washing machine for some time and is likely still in my parent's basement, unloved and (mostly) forgotten. But look! Homemade soda is back! The more things change, I suppose.

Enter Homemade Soda. I really have no desire to actually make my own soda so cannot explain why the book seemed so compelling. A good chunk of the text is dedicated to instructing the reader to add tonic water to juice or various flavors of simple syrup, something I file under "duh". But then there are true recipes dedicated to using sodas in actual (definition: flexible) foods. My own great-grandmother was devoted to basting her Easter ham with 7-Up, so who knows. And then there's chocolate Coca-cola cake, a recipe my mother made exactly once ever but which I recall with perfect clarity 30 years later (why did I never make a Jolt cake, I wonder?). Soda obviously has more Proustian implications than we recognize.

Whether I actually produce something out of this book remains to be seen. That it has prompted a host of remembrances and made me wistful is completely unquestioned.

Pulse, Finger On

I’ve long enjoyed the online cookbook purveyor formerly known inexplicably as Jessica’s Biscuit. I bought an Elizabeth David compendium from them years ago – much loved but heretofore unused in any actual cooking application – and have spent hours perusing their paper and e-catalogs. Hours. I’ve always appreciated their forays into the novelty, too, in the form of insect cookbooks (which I would neither purchase nor even peruse, although I respect its position in the world) or an entire cookbook on sous vide (my conviction: the idea is irredeemably dumb). So, you know, a fan.


Lately I’ve been more interested in the site’s “new and notable” (henceforth N&N) section as a barometer of trends about which I might not have been aware (meaning any/all of them). For example, I’ve read in multiple places recently that cupcakes are on their way out as a fashionable dessert and that we could look to pie to take the number one place in our sweets-loving hearts. Based on the number of popsicle books gracing the summer shelves, though, I’d say that pie needs to wait a bit. I’ve made a few pops in my time, but none very impressive. Mostly, my cold dessert achievements are in the ice cream realm. There, too, I am apparently a piker. A number of ice cream-related books appear on the N&N.


I don’t remember how I came to have Kimchi Chronicles on my library hold. Nevertheless there it is and I’ll be picking it up this weekend. Aside: There was a very sketchy Korean restaurant down the street from our house in Charlottesville from which we would, once or twice a month, pick up bulgogi and spicy rice cakes. When I say “we” I mean my husband because telling you that the place was sketchy doesn’t really communicate that the place was sketchy, and so I refused to enter. The food was good, though, and we’ve missed it terribly these last five years so I thought I’d figure out how to make the rice cakes at least. For a nice change of pace, I must be on the bleeding edge because I spy three books covering Korean cuisine on the N&N.


I’m also nicely surprised to find that N&N has quite a few books featuring Spanish food, given my recent adoration of Claudia Roden’s Food of Spain. Other than tapas and paella and maybe gazpacho, Spain gets short shrift in the food buzz world, so I’m kind of glad to see five books on the lsit. There a number of aspect of Spanish life we’d do well to adopt, plancha is not the least of them.


Then see The Sweets of Araby and Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume and 150 Tagines. Saffron! Honey! I really, really would like a gander at each of these books. Can we draw any lines between them and current events? Why the enduring fascination with that part of the world? Is it that it holds so much of our history and future? I don’t know. I’d like to find out, though. Also: honey.

Oh, and canning! How could I forget? Being as I’ve been here in my little corner of the ‘tubes for more than 9 years now and these days you can’t swing a scalded tomato without hitting a canning blog, it’s not like I should have been surprised at the number of new home preservation books out and about. I wonder if any of the authors started with blogs. Did I miss the brass ring, do you think? No matter, some of these look really interesting but…I don’t know. I have my favorites (that is: the first two I ever bought, plus the Complete Book of Home Preserving that Ball sent me a couple years ago) and, call me sentimental if you must, but I seldom find a reason to pick up new ones. Always nice to see what people are up to, though. And? Five canning books in the N&N (not to mention a hipster-populated spread in Bon Appetit) surely means that the trend has hit maturity and any minute now we’ll be able to buy used jars at a deep discount from the folks who kicked their day jobs to open artisanal pickle companies.


These days, my cookbook acquisition budget is woefully inadequate. Luckily, browsing the N&N and learning that I'm not always missing out on the bleeding edge is still free.