Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

James Lee is an Asian-American who grew up in rural, 1940s and 1950s America ostracized and bullied for being the only Chinese person any schoolmate had ever seen. Marilyn grew up in the south, daughter of a teacher of Home Economics. Marilyn's mother wanted Marilyn to be a proper southern belle, but Marilyn wanted to be a doctor. Only it's the 1950s and Marilyn is derided by teachers and professors who believe science is too hard for girls. The two outcasts find one another at Harvard, where else?, marry and move to Ohio when James' promising career at Harvard is derailed because he is the "wrong kind of person." Marilyn is pregnant and does not graduate. Their dreams crushed, they raise four children in a small town in Ohio As the book opens, the children are as isolated, friendless, and lonely as their parents; the 16-year old daughter is dragged from the bottom of the town's lake, the victim of an apparent suicide. Marilyn, James, and the children are

Nils Shapiro, yes, a Jewish private eye living in Minneapolis, is asked by the Edina police department to assist in the investigation of a murdered housewife whose body and entire house are smothered in vacuum cleaner dust. Detective Shapiro comes across as a caricature of every other hard-boiled investigator: he's snarky, has trouble with women, drinks, lives in a crap-hole of an apartment, and is a loner in addition to being lonely. Moreover, the author's detailed descriptions of Minneapolis are not terribly original -- it's really cold and snowy -- and excessive: it seems like every pothole is worth mentioning. Nevertheless, the mystery of who killed the housewife, why, and how they managed to fill an entire ranch house with enough dust to obliterate any useful evidence is actually quite good. Goldman is originally a television writer and he puts his skills to work to keep the book's action moving forward with compelling urgency. He has two more books in the serie

My daughter Leah is an accomplished sourdough baker so when she came to Meadville to visit for a weekend, she and I set up a Breadsperiment. In one weekend we baked eight loaves of bread using two different starters (Meadville and Cripple Creek), two kinds of whole wheat flour (King Arthur vs. freshly milled hard red winter wheat), and two baking methods (steam filled oven vs. covered cast iron dutch oven). We used identical formulas, making every loaf with 50% whole wheat flour (King Arthur or freshly milled) and 50% King Arthur Special Patent white flour. That is Meadville white flour starter on left and Cripple Creek whole wheat starter on the right. Then we held tastings. Day 1 loaves, all made with King Arthur flour. Day 2 loaves made with fresh milled hard red winter wheat, baked in a steamy oven. All four loaves made with freshly milled wheat, oven baked (top), cast iron (below), one side is Meadville starter, the other is Cripple Creek. I have always

Leonardo painted the two most famous paintings in the world: The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, but I think what I have always found so fascinating about Leonardo is his breadth of genius. Leonardo designed ideal cities, studied optics, advanced the world of anatomy (by dissecting scores of cadavers, human and animal), accurately explained why the moon shines and why you can see portions of the moon that are not lit beyond its crescent, drew up plans to divert rivers, created entertaining court spectacles with flying machines and realistic dragons, planned military devices such as armored tanks, chariots with scythe-bearing wheels, and massive cross-bows, figured out why the sky is blue, how beams of light refract as they enter the eye and how to use that information to create paintings that would look real when viewed from any angle. He engaged in architecture, geometry, urban planning, civil engineering, sculpture, geology, and in many ways presaged the invention of science at a

From the moment Luis Alberto Urrea begins reading his novel (I recommend the audio book) in Mexican-American Espanglish every character in this huge family jumps to life. Big Angel, the family patriarch is dying of cancer, but instead of becoming morose, he passes his days recounting the joys of his life: working, his wife's skinny legs in stockings, oysters, his family. After attending his mother's funeral, and arriving frustratingly late ( Real Mexicans are not late!, he bellows ), he readies himself for his own birthday fiesta. Brothers, children, Tios and Tias , grandchildren too numerous to count, girlfriends and boyfriends in every generation, mariachi bands, folding tables bearing too much food, and a decorated cake from El Target arrive bringing with them family conflicts, simmering alienation, and the committed love of four generations. 

At the end of May I traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark to give a two-hour lecture on sourdough bread at Meyers Madhus . Mad  is Danish for food so Madhus is Food House, and Meyers is Claus Meyers (here is his Wikipedia entry ), one of the founders of Noma , at one time the top rated restaurant in the world. Two days before my presentation I handed some smuggled starters from my kitchen to the baker in the apron. I am so sorry I do not know his name, because within 48 hours he managed to expand my starters -- Cripple Creek, Colorado (1893, whole wheat) and Russian Rye (1960) into several loaves of the most delicious bread I'd ever eaten. The fellow with the beard is Jonas Astrup and together they were the most wonderful hosts. A few of the loaves made by Meyers Madhus using my smuggled Cripple Creek starter. In addition to making breads, he prepared a large vat of each starter so that guests attending my lecture could take some home. Of the fifty people that came, I'm figu