16,480 words

From great failure comes great wisdom.

– someone, somewhere, probably

It is now December. November has come and gone, and, if you were paying any attention, someone you know probably attempted to write a novel.

I’m talking about NaNoWriMo (or “National Novel Writing Month” for the uninitiated). It’s a big, online writing challenge that has been happening annually since I was in elementary school. The goal is to complete a 50,000+ word novel over the course of thirty days…which, if that seems impossible to you, don’t worry. I totally agree.

“But, Jen!” comes the inevitable cry of the supportive masses. “You’re such an amazing writer!”

To which, I will predictably respond with an awkward facial contortion and some meek acknowledgement of the fact that I can, indeed, string together a sentence.

Wordsmithing skills aside, NaNoWriMo is also an exercise in letting loose, and that is where I struggle. The people I know who have mastered the challenge have learned to quiet the voice inside their heads that checks their fingers on the keys, that convinces them there is no merit to moving forward until every single word falls precisely into place.

(And, here, our narrator demonstrates her problem, having considered the literary merit of both “checks” and “precisely” far longer than necessary.)

This year, for the first time, I decided to take a stab at the 50k word challenge. I was feeling inspired by a book I had just finished, and I surprised myself one morning with the seed of an idea. I had been feeling a bit down about the fact that I hadn’t written a story since my freshman year of college, and I was ready for an excuse to get back at it. I’m a very competitive person. I love challenges. If anything was going to motivate me to turn off the TV and set my fingers to typing, it was this or bust.

At least…that’s what I thought. Despite constantly telling my friends that what I was writing was not supposed to be good, that I would be thrilled just to finish the challenge, I could not–so to speak–walk the walk. I was immediately discouraged by how stiff and unkempt everything was turning out. Instead of moving forward, I spent more time rereading and editing what I’d already written. Hours would pass with only a word or two added to my count.

Less than halfway through the challenge, having fallen 4,000 words behind, I threw in the towel…but not before becoming absurdly invested in the characters I had created. Like the unfinished novels of my youth, these new characters have flitted in and out of my dreams. I developed hijinks-y side stories for them. I drew their faces (terribly) in my journal. They will remain special to me, even as they remain anonymous to literally everyone else in the world.

Their story will probably never be told, but I feel like I should give credit to the 16,480 words I managed to churn out before my computer rage quit Microsoft Office in the middle of last month. I’m going to pretend like I finished my novel, like it was picked up and published to rave reviews. I would go on a book tour, of course. All my favorite YA authors would be there. They would say I was an inspiration. They would want my autograph. As I’d take my book and prepare an inscription, I would be distracted by the synopsis on the back cover. I might smile nostalgically as I read:

“Eskis is a region long known for its luxurious fabrics, but only the mysterious master dyer, Santo Corelli, can turn those fabrics into a rainbow. When Corelli’s apprentice, Nico, disappears with the secret for brewing the perfect colors, it is up to sixteen-year-old Emery Davis to find her friend and protect him from his master’s rage and their rival’s greed. This new tale of adventure and intrigue carries you deep within a corrupt society full of dangerous secrets and just a hint of magic.”

Obviously, that’s all a daydream, but I figured I would post an abridged version of what may have been my masterpiece for interested parties to enjoy, mock, and/or print off and burn for warmth… Spoiler alert, tl;dr, &c., &c. Here goes…

my harry potter

It was a Monday evening, and I was settling into bed. It wasn’t early enough to be falling asleep, but I knew I wanted to be under the covers, and I knew I wanted to take my glasses off. There’s not much I can do after that. Removing the wire frames from my nose after a long day allows me to sink comfortably into a pillow, but disqualifies me from watching TV, scrolling through my phone, and pretty much anything else you want to be doing with your head half-buried in down…but not reading. Thank goodness I can still read lying sideways.

On this particular Monday, I found myself with a familiar book in hand. For all intents and purposes, I could describe this as an ordinary book and, here, my story would be done. But, to me, this book is far from ordinary.

The book is paperback, and its corners have long since been worn and rounded from use. The spine is covered in wrinkles, each crease a faint reminder of when I let pasta boil over, or forgot I was filling the bath, and had to quickly lay the book on its face to avert disaster. Its pages are soft and easily torn. On the cover, though faded by the sun when I left it on the front seat of my car for a week, are a pair of hands, cupping a mysterious, round stone.

This is not the first time I’ve read this book.

This is The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. This is my Harry Potter.

We were driving to Florida, and I was bored. I was nine years old, so I was young enough to have no patience, and old enough to know I shouldn’t make a game of kicking the seat in front of me.

“Here,” my mom probably said with a hint of annoyance as she dug through a green, canvas bag that was full of library books. “Shut up and read this.”

I didn’t shut up. I sighed audibly and grabbed the book out of her hands. It was wrapped, like so many library books, in a sheet of plastic grown opaque with overuse. I pulled open the cover, and I started to read in an obnoxious voice…

I didn’t know how long I had been in the king’s prison. The days were all the same, except that as each one passed, I was dirtier than before…

At some point, my petty, preteen revenge dissolved into genuine interest. I quit reading out loud and dove head first into a narrative that took me someplace unexpected. I was an avid reader long before that moment, and so I thought I had it all figured out. I’d read Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and a fair number of Tamora Pierce and Anne McCaffrey books as well.

Something about this book–don’t ask me what–felt different.

Perhaps I enjoyed the scrappy inner monologue of anti-hero Eugenides. As a nine-year-old know-it-all, I certainly identified with his haughty, unbridled sarcasm that had not yet sharpened into wit. I liked his gruff, obtrusive presence, his loud, open-mouthed chewing. I imagined he was my age (although, I revise this opinion with each rereading), and it excited me that he seemed smarter than all the adults. This is, of course, what any smartass tween aspires to be.

But there’s also the landscape. The world of The Queen’s Thief is small, but brilliantly laid out, from seas of olive trees, to wide, fertile floodplains, to barren wastelands. Pieces of scenery don’t exist purely for show. They don’t disappear after the author has flexed her muscles and displayed her descriptive prowess. If you’ve seen the Hephestial Mountains once, you can be certain they will be important later. The country the characters traverse throughout the course of the story becomes almost a character itself.

The Thief is a little, winding adventure that feels big because of the power of its author’s pen. It is a down-to-earth fantasy, populated with scholars, ambassadors, and thieves. It reads like a history, with just enough myth and magic to keep you on your toes. It was not recommended to me by a friend, nor was it one of those milestone books every young person is expected to read. It came to me as fatefully as things appear and disappear in the series, so quietly I did not recognize it for what it was.

I was much older–newly twenty and studying abroad in Ireland–when I learned The Thief was actually book one in a series. I found my current copy of The Thief in a little shop in Galway called Charlie Bryne’s, next to two others with the same cover theme. I honestly could have cried, kneeling there in front of a bookshelf full of teen fiction. Galway did not yet feel like home, and so to see a story so special to me in an unfamiliar place was like a balm to a bout of homesickness I had not expected to feel. Was this fate again? (If you have read the series, you will know the workings of its gods/goddesses and understand why I wonder…) I bought all three books and carried them with me as I gradually became more comfortable in my temporary home.

I cracked open the series again when I moved to Cleveland. I had just learned there was a fourth book released, and I decided to start from the beginning. I was bored and lonely, and desperate for a distraction. I devoured the stories, as usual. When I had finished all there was to read, I found myself online, hungry, searching for more. It was then that I read Megan Whalen Turner’s biography:

My local bookstores right now are Loganberry Books in Cleveland and MacsBacks in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

What.

What.

Whaaaaaaat?!

I almost died right then and there. It was that same feeling you get when you’ve been dreaming of someone and you run into them in line at Starbuck’s. Megan Whalen Turner, who I had idolized and attempted to emulate since I was nine years old, had a home base right here in Cleveland, Ohio! Maybe it wasn’t so bad here! Maybe I would finally write the novel I’d been dreaming of and be just like her.

(As amazing as the revelation was at the time, I forget this fact frequently, and have missed every single promotion she has done in the area. Have the gods deserted me?)

Thick as Thieves is the most recent addition to the Queen’s Thief Series. Seven years separate its release from the last book, and I can say it was a worthy wait. I checked it out from the library and finished it in less than 24 hours, sacrificing sleep for wide-eyed wonder. (I still read by flashlight under the blankets. I find it keeps me young.) It is a testament to Megan Whalen Turner’s narrative abilities that, despite zero inclusion of my favorite characters, Thick as Thieves did not leave me disappointed. My only complaint is as cliche as they come: I want more.

I call these books my Harry Potter because they enchant me time and time again. My books are the first thing I unpack in any move, and this series is always the first to go on the shelf. Always. They may not have inspired generations of kids to love to read, and I have missed every single release date (probably because there are no news stories or lines that stretch around city blocks), but they are beautifully written all the same. The Queen’s Thief series is a hidden gem, as quiet and mysterious as the plots it contains. It dazzles, despite (and, perhaps in someways, due to) its lack of fame. The characters are strong, and Turner maintains a solid grasp of the plot throughout her stories. I would highly recommend this to any lover of young adult fiction.

feminism is not your bandwagon (or: ads that make me cry also make me uncomfortable)

Growing up, I was in love with advertising. No cable meant that, oftentimes, the best thing on TV were the commercials. Sunday mornings and sick days spent on the couch were prime times for catching up on the world of consumerism. I’d spend entire mornings watching infomercials, imagining what life would be like if my family had a blender that could blend roof shingles, or a special pan that doubled as a panini press. Pretty much everything I know about classic rock has come from the ten-second clips of concerts they’d play on those hour-long ads for CD box sets. While most kids were memorizing Pokemon stats and *NSYNC lyrics, I was memorizing prescription drug names and fast food jingles.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of evenings spent with my little brother after school, flipping channels to get to the commercial breaks. We’d make a game of it. Sometimes we’d play The Price is Right, trying to guess the number and price of payment installments for an item, or the value of the special gift that you’d get if you’d call in the next 12 hours. We’d keep a running tally of who could name each brand before the logo or tagline appeared on the screen. We were pretty good at it, too. We were like little Tai Fraisers, singing along to the Mentos commercial in Clueless. We knew that Lunesta moth like we knew the Cialis bathtubs.

I stopped watching commercials for fun when I moved out of my parents house. I haven’t owned a television since, and most online streaming services have either eliminated advertising or offer an option to skip them after a mere few seconds. When I do turn on a TV, I barely register the ads. I’m usually vaguely shocked when I discover that what I knew as a fibromyalgia treatment is now used as an asthma drug, but otherwise I’m more focused on where my show left off. Still, every once in a while, a commercial will cross my path that completely diverts my attention. These are usually posted by a friend on social media or mixed in with movie trailers before the feature film. More often than not, they’re pushing some form of “female empowerment.”

#LikeAGirl by Always

Recently, I was sitting alone in a dark theater, waiting with a greasy bag of popcorn for the previews to start so I could see Moana. The lights dimmed, the “silence your cell phones” message faded to black, and then it happened. The ad opened with a flood of daylight and the pounding of pink sneakers on pavement. As the camera zoomed out, it captured women putting their bodies to work, running up and down streets, jumping rope, punching stuff. The constant beat of footsteps set the rhythm for a female voice, reciting a poem of strength. The overall message, “I am woman; hear me roar,” was impossible to miss.

By the end of the 60-second spot, my mascara was already running.

Real Beauty by Dove

This was not the first time an advertisement had made me cry, nor would it be the last. Dove, with their commercials featuring women feeling confident in their bodies, has brought me to tears for over a decade. Those Pampers commercials about motherhood around the world are worse than onions, and the Like A Girl campaign by Always just plain squeezes my heart to the point of bursting. A few years ago, Pantene released an ad in Korea about perceived female bossiness that required at least a dozen tissues. The list is infinite.

Besides making me snot all over my shirt sleeves, all of these commercials lit a fire in my belly. They made me want to stand up, and cry out, and put my foot down, and… and… and… and… and what?

Buy stuff?

That’s when I realized that commercials that make me cry also make me uncomfortable.

Never underestimate the power of woman, says another ad. But that power was, and is, underestimated in America. Or, rather, it is only estimated in terms that can be manipulated at the point of purchase

– Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

I came across this quote yesterday as I was finishing a chapter in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique on the role of advertising in pushing young women towards suburban housewifery. The chapter, called “The Sexual Sell,” features numerous interviews with advertising consultants about the process of identifying the struggles and afflictions of American women, and how they spun brands as panaceas for the “problem that has no name.”

Ironically, advertisers seemed generally to recognize that women’s emptiness had to do with the boredom and meaningless of housework; yet, instead of imagining a world where a woman could be more than a wife and mother, they concocted a narrative in which housewife was the most honorable, most creative role a woman need ever fill. This new cleaning product makes mom a scientist, picking new wallpaper makes her an artist, working a fancy, electric appliance makes her an engineer… The more glamour that was attached to a housewife’s role, the more hollow women felt at home…and the emptier a woman felt, the more likely she was to buy silverware or baking mix or a new sofa to satisfy the innate human need to create.

(As an added layer, the ads were also spun to capitalize on a woman’s guilt, making the product about the good of the family, so that women need not feel selfish for buying a thing to fill the void…)

A Man’s a Boss, A Woman is Bossy by Pantene

As I finished the chapter, I began thinking about all those advertisements that have made me cry. We’ve certainly come a long way from the 1950s, but is advertising a different game? What are these companies saying when they tell me to stop apologizing, when they tell me to love the skin I’m in? Is the message about my confidence or selling a product? Has feminism finally won over advertising? Or has advertising hijacked the female empowerment bandwagon as a way to, again, make consumerism a point of superficial prestige in a society that has, in many ways, moved beyond the feminine mystique of an earlier age?

If I want to love my body, will buying a certain brand of soap make that easier, or will it simply fill a fleeting role in sating my psyche? Once the soap is gone, will I have changed, or will I need to buy more to prove that I am as empowered and body positive as I want myself to be?

Do these commercials solve anything or are they a part of the problem?

Always a Bridesmaid by Listerine

I don’t know the answers to these questions. For every Miki Agrawal there is also a Janet Champ. All I know for sure is that advertisements are, at the most basic, atomic level, about pushing a product. Shinier hair alone won’t change the discrimination women face at work. Buying stuff isn’t the only way to feel empowered or to show yourself love. But I also know that advertisements are powerful vehicles of societal messages, and it’s likely a good shift that so many companies are chasing down the bandwagon. So, I suppose I’ll just have to go on crying with a critical eye when tampons tell me to love my period and sneakers tell me I’m a goddess.

I suppose I can live with that.

The Wooing of Lucy Stone

Now Harry, I have been all my life alone. I have planned and executed, without counsel, and without control. I have shared thought, and feeling, and life, with myself alone. I have made a path for my feet which I know is very useful…and it seems to me, I cannot risk it by any change… I have lived alone, happily and well, and can still do it… My life has never seemed to me, a baffled one, only in hours that now and then come, when my love-life is consciously unshared. But such hours are only as the drop to the ocean.

– Lucy Stone to Henry Blackwell, 1854

The first time I used an online dating site was in high school. In one of the cruelest teenaged acts I would commit, I created a fake profile so that I could join a few of my peers in mocking a young teacher behind his back. He was 24; we were 16. We thought we were so clever, revealing the latent desperation in his swagger. We thought he was such a dweeb. We did not yet recognize the crystal ball of his profile for what it was.

It was almost a decade before I would log onto OkCupid again. I had just moved to Cleveland. I was sitting alone in the dark, absently clicking through pictures on Facebook, looking for a me that didn’t exist–perfect hair, decade-appropriate outfit, cool background. For the benefit of virtual strangers, I spun half-truths like an expert. “I’m great at being silly and tripping over air,” I typed. “I love Game of Thrones,” and, “Everything goes better with beer.” To the casual browser, I appeared charmingly vacuous. Harmless. I got a lot of messages. Most of them just said, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Three years, two platforms, and some choice unsolicited pics later, I have finally lost my mind. It happened a few days ago, after I had a surprisingly sustained conversation with a man about his new tank top. “What color is it?” I asked. “Green,” he replied. A few minutes later, he sent me a picture, mostly of his flexed arms, with just enough of the shirt visible that vanity could be denied. “Yup,” I responded, obstinately refusing to acknowledge the elephant biceps in the room. “That’s definitely green.”

And then I threw my phone to the foot of my bed and silently screamed for ten whole minutes.

I often turn to history to help contextualize the present–“a sister’s hand may wrest a female pen”–but I had never before thought to apply such a panacea to my love life. After all, what could a Victorian lady have to say about the ennui of modern dating culture? As it turns out, I have more to learn from my historical heroes than how to weather politics. Enter: Loving Warriors: Selected Letters of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, 1853-1893.

When Lucy Stone met Henry Blackwell, she was 31 and building a solid career of speaking for abolition and women’s rights. In an Antebellum twist on an unfortunately persistent trope in every woman’s life, her critics anxiously awaited the day when “a wedding kiss” would “shut up the mouth of Lucy Stone.” She had been skeptical of husbands since she was a teenager, and marriage was the last thing on her mind when she entered a hardware shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, looking for supplies.

Henry Blackwell was 24 years old at the time, a businessman like his brothers, but desperately seeking to reconcile his desire to leave a financial legacy with his reform-minded soul. He had five sisters, most famously Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S. He was immediately smitten with Lucy Stone, and seeing her speak a few years later in New York solidified his affection. “I decidedly prefer her to any lady I have ever met,” he wrote to his brother, “always excepting the Bloomer dress which I dont like practically, tho theoretically I believe in it with my whole soul.”

Bloomers, a radical (though much maligned) sartorial choice

He immediately started writing to her, with her consent, about every aspect of his daily life. He opened most letters with a description of his surroundings, coolly segued into a discussion of civil rights, and then closed with an apology for writing so much to such a busy person. Her responses, though less prolific, followed a similar pattern. He carried her letters with him when he traveled until they practically disintegrated in his hands. Lucy, while “generally thankful for pen & ink,” admitted that she hated them in her current separation from Henry.

Their strong personalities shine in their letters. Lucy–strong-willed and frank–kept her missives short and to the point. Very rarely do her lines stray towards poetry or romance, and her love caused her to hold him, perhaps, to a higher standard than most. “With much love,” she closed one [adoringly] chastising letter, “and the hope that, as we know that we are not perfect, we must strive to become so.”

For his part, he was so full of passion, humor, and eloquence that no amount of paper could possibly contain it all. This dearth of space did not hinder his pen. He simply turned the paper from portrait to landscape and wrote over what he had already written. It is incredibly annoying, and I am unbelievably grateful to the tortured grad student that transcribed this madness:

Fig. 1: A Researcher’s Hell

But I digress. Very early on, Henry Blackwell began describing to Lucy Stone his idea of marriage, in the hopes that she someday might amend her revulsion towards the practice, if not for his sake, then for her own.

My idea of the relation involves no sacrifice of individuality but its perfection–no limitation of the career of one, or both but its extension. I would not have my wife drudge…while I found nothing to do but dig ditches. I would not even consent that my wife should stay at home to rock the baby when she ought to be off addressing a meeting… Perfect equality in this relationship…I would have–but it should be the equality of Progress, of Development, not of Decay. If both parties cannot study more, think more, feel more, talk more & work more than they could alone, I will remain an old bachelor & adopt a Newfoundland dog or a terrier as an object of affection.

– Henry Blackwell to Lucy Stone, 1853

Knowing that she felt more comfortable conversing in person, he made every effort to meet her on her speaking tours. Their first “date” occurred after he discovered she would be passing through Niagara Falls to attend a women’s rights convention in Cleveland–a manageable trip from his home in Cincinnati. Eagerly, he penned her a request to meet her in Niagara and then accompany her to the convention. Her response was painfully lukewarm, but Henry still raced to Niagara and had the time of his life, even speaking publicly on women’s rights for the first time.

I…am very willing that you should be there too… I think you know me well enough to put the right construction upon my consent to meet you at Niagara. I am glad of the friendship of the good whether they be men or women… But believe me Mr. Henry Blackwell when I say, (and Heaven is my witness that I mean what I say) that, in the circumstances I have not the remotest desire of assuming any other relations than those I now sustain. I would incur my own heavy censure, if by fault of mine, you did not understand this.

– Lucy Stone to Henry Blackwell, 1853

Though we may never know what passed between them in Cleveland, the tone of their letters shifted almost immediately from friendly to intimate. She wrote very little of “Mr. Blackwell” to her mother, but she began addressing him as “Harry” in their personal correspondence. As for Henry Blackwell, one need only look to his reminiscence of the event one year later. “I was with you at Cleveland,” he wrote. “I stood with you in the dark cool night overlooking the Lake–with Charles Burleigh & Antoinette–your hand in mind & the great roar of the waves coming up & the winds sweeping over us–& Charles quoting poetry–while I was living it.”

At this point, I was screaming into the book for Lucy to just accept him already because my heart couldn’t take it anymore! But, of course, she didn’t. As their attraction grew more obvious, Lucy grew more distant. She even went so far as to claim that she “instinctively recoil[ed]” from the thought of marrying him. The fear of losing the happy life she had built for herself seemed too great to overcome. It’s heartbreaking the abuse he took in pursuit of her affection, but nothing she wrote could deter him.

I know that the argument is not necessarily that you should marry me. That is again another question. You say you do not love me enough to do so. Then I say–wait until you do. But do not resolve beforehand against marrying me. See me & think of me & give me a fair chance of being loved by you. You cannot love by your simple will any more than you can see. But you can let yourself love or prevent yourself from loving just as you can open, or shut your eyes. Dear Lucy, love me if you can. I will endeavor to give you no cause ever to regret having ever done so…

– Henry Blackwell to Lucy Stone, 1854

It took two years of constant correspondence before Lucy Stone finally consented to marry Henry Blackwell. Excitedly, he wrote her asking if they might set the date his 30th birthday, but also expressed his wish to defer to her on every point in planning their upcoming nuptials. “I do not want you to fetter yourself one particle for my sake,” he wrote, fearing she might get cold feet. “I do not want you to forgo one sentiment of independence, nor one attribute of personality.” He knew what pain it brought her, even without reading the wedding invitation Lucy sent to Antoinette Brown to “help in so cruel an operation as putting Lucy Stone to death.”

Dear Lucy–we know each other & we know that we are one. It was not for nothing that my heart leaped towards you & yearned for you when I first saw you in our store six years ago…but dear Lucy I am not at all anxious that you shd promise to love, honor & cherish me, for I know your heart. I have no preference for any particular form, or place. My home is in you–my marriage is already solemnised.

– Henry Blackwell to Lucy Stone, 1855

As for the ceremony, it was a small affair on May 1, 1855, undertaken in protest against “such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.” Henry Blackwell married his true love; her identity remained in tact. When they retired to their room (an event she feared almost as much as the wedding itself), Henry slipped quietly into bed without waking her.

Throughout their lives, he proved true to his lofty sentiments. The first time Lucy wished to attend a conference as a married woman, she asked for his permission. He said he could not give it, and advised her to ask Lucy Stone instead. “I cannot get him to govern me!” she wrote Susan B. Anthony, happily. Together they raised one daughter, Alice, who grew to be just as strong-willed as her mother. They lived happily for almost forty years, separated only by Lucy’s death in 1893.

Draft of their marriage protest, 1855 (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University)

So…what? When I look at my love life up to this point, I cannot help but feel discouraged. Yet, I have begun to find hope in darker moments. Superficiality breeds superficiality. If I’m done appealing to boys who only want a girl to ooh and ahh over their work at the gym, then I need to let my feminist flag fly. No more the meek woman who lets a man call her a communist for thinking health care is a universal right. No more the bland statue who spends more time taking selfies for boys than discussing sexism and white privilege. If a man doesn’t love me for my brain and my passion, then that man doesn’t love me at all. I’m sick of changing myself, diluting myself, for the fleeting gratification of simply anyone telling me I’m attractive.

Someday, I will meet my Henry Blackwell, my perfect person who will find themselves as enriched by my light as I am by theirs, someone who can be patient despite my reluctance, whom I will love (as Lucy did) with “the capacity of 20 women.” Until then, don’t look for me on Tinder. You won’t catch me preening over flirty chats. I’ll be in the library, nose buried in a book, reassembling my dignity.

My doctor told me to stop hosting intimate dinners four four (unless there are three other people)

Ironically enough, working in a restaurant has only convinced me further that food is a learning curve I will never master.  Not only am I useless in a taste test, I legitimately find it impossible to handle food without making some hilarious (or dangerous) mistake.  I look back with such fondness on the time in Ireland when our apartment’s knives were too dull to slice through the chicken and the raw meat got stuck to my fingers in such a disgusting way that I was reduced to hysterics as I crouched on the floor.  How could I ever forget that joyous occasion on which I set a pot of beans on fire?  Or that other time when I splashed hot oil on my eyelid?  I can’t remember a time when when my friends and I haven’t shared a good-natured chuckle over that day when even my tofu-chopping was criticized by a passing peer…

So, one may wonder why, after so much unfortunate kitchen blunders I decided to invite three other people to share my cooking on Friday evening.  Well, you know us Oberlin students.  They keep telling us we’re fearless.  After two dreams involving cooking accidents (one in which a friend was arrested for not wearing a hairnet while making finger sandwiches, and another where I nearly poisoned that same friend’s baked tofu as he pulled it from the oven), and after spilling a quarter of a vat of sour cream all over the place at work, I figured it was time to face my fear.  Enter: my friend Móna’s book.

(Seriously, check out her blog, because this woman is unbelievably wonderful, and I’m so lucky to have met her while I was abroad!)

The Chef & I by Móna Wise chronicles her amazing life, from meeting her husband, to adopting and fostering her four children, to her passion for wholesome, comforting, local cooking.  Anyway, since a love of good food informs so much of Móna’s narrative, it would only make sense that she would include recipes in the latter portion of the book.  I went over to her house for dinner near the end of my semester in Ireland, and, let me tell you, it was beyond heavenly.  I was pretty sure I would never be able to attain that level of brilliance, but I was nonetheless inspired to try at least one recipe from her book.  Mussels and anything with ingredients I couldn’t even begin to pronounce may be out of my league, but I was determined to make the portobello fries with a tomato-basil dipping sauce.  It was just mushrooms, chopped, slathered in stuff, and fried.  And I’d fried stuff before.  (See: burning oil on eyelid story.)  I was so confident in my ability to make this appetizer that I invited people over for dinner before I’d even gone to the store… Below is the adventure that followed.

Basil-infused olive oil:
1 small bottle of extra virgin olive oil
(am I the only one who really likes when Rachael Ray calls it “Ee Vee Oh Oh”?)
appx 1 cup of fresh basil leaves (with the stems)
3/4 – 1 diced onion
2 heads of garlic ~ unpeeled and chopped in half (yes, I was skeptical, but nothing bad happened.  Even if tossing two unpeeled heads of garlic in the mix was incorrect, no one died.)

Basically, you just toss all this into a pot and let it boil until it’s dark brown.  Then you strain it, let it cool, and funnel it back into the bottle where it will exist for your culinary convenience until it’s gone!  I don’t know what olive oil tastes like on it’s own, so I guess I’m a poor judge of whether I did this correctly, but, if nothing else, I just boiled olive oil with some stuff in it for a little while and then funneled that same olive oil back into it’s bottle… If nothing else, this activity might be deemed character building?

i put a basil leaf in the bottle for aesthetics because i got bored waiting for it to turn dark brown

Tomato-basil sauce:
1/2 cup of this new basil-olive oil you’ve just brewed
2.5 cans of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp of black pepper
salt to taste
some fresh basil leaves
a bit of butter
1 clove of garlic (this was my addition, since I found one laying on the counter)

You want to heat up the chopped tomatoes and then add the olive oil.  Stir it around, but also trust that you’re doing okay even if the tomatoes don’t seem to be cooking down right away.  A very wise friend of mine told me while I was trying to weasel my way out of learning to sautee onions that you shouldn’t fear food.  Even if you don’t do it perfectly, it’s generally going to taste fine and no one will know but you.  So, I’m imparting that morsel of advice on to you.  Don’t fear food.  Just roll with it.  Once you add the oil, add some basil and the butter, and garlic, then season as you see fit throughout the rest of the cooking process.  It’s pretty straightforward.  Not much to screw up, but it did end up a bit oily, so I think I may need to start using actual measuring cups in future…

presentation is everything, which is why i put it in a tupperware for this photo

Portobello fries:
6 large portobello mushrooms
salt & pepper
flour for tossing
egg wash (4 eggs in a bowl, beaten, with a splash of milk)
2 cups of bread crumbs

Slice the mushrooms into thick wedges, sprinkle them with salt & pepper, then flop them in the flour.  Once they’re coated, slap them in the egg wash, making sure that the egg soaks through the flour.  Then bury them in bread crumbs and set them on a tray to dry for a few minutes.  (Cooking is so active!)  While you’re doing this, have a pan with a few cups of sunflower or conola oil heating on the stove.  Once the oil’s hot, drop the breaded ‘shrooms in the oil and let them fry until they’re brown and crispy.  Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ve already miscalculated the amount of breadcrumbs you will need and have no idea what to do with the extras.  (Suggestions?)  Now, if you’re exactly like me, while you’re worrying about this, you will forget that you have oil heating on the stove and your house will fill with smoke.  This would not have been a problem if friends weren’t coming over to judge the hell out of my saucery.  As it was, we threw open all the windows and doors, so the fries actually cooled faster than the friends arrived.  I was a little sad, but nothing caught fire, so A+!

yum?

sexy food blog pic ahoy!

My friends arrived and we all sat down to eat.  I made some Annie’s mac as an entree to have some form of protein to bulk up the meal, and there was (of course) some cheap wine that went splendidly (or not) with the whole meal.  It was a brilliant night, and just what I needed after a week of misery.  Once again, cooking, although it is a constant worry in my life, has simultaneously filled my life with meaning where before it was filled with…a comfy couch and an overheating computer.  So, listen up, Future Miserable Jen!  Don’t just sit around moping on the couch that swallows your tiny ol’ body!  Get up, take a stroll to the grocery store, turn on some jams, make yourself a wholesome meal, and invite some friends to share it with you.  Nothing could be better…

And can I just mention very quickly for the record that I, Jen Graham, made almost all of this by scratch and no one died?

I think the next project might be salmon topped with mango salsa.  A bit ambitious perhaps, but stay tuned!