Writer Zen Garden

From CR Blog.

Borders bookshop has a “Real Lives” section. Waterstones ups the ante with “Painful Lives”. Amazon’s catch-all is the more enigmatic “True Endurance and Survival”. But earlier this week I found myself in the “Tragic Life Stories” aisle of WHSmiths. After taking in that, yes, a whole section of shelving had actually been given over to this subject, it struck me that while each book pertained to be a traumatic tale of an individual, they were marketed in such a way as to look entirely the same. Unlike the covers within the nearby Crime section, where even the most conventional might feature a gun, a knife, or something vaguely noir-ish; within Tragic Life Stories there is, apparently, no need to differentiate details. Each one is a tragic tale; each one has the same cover: a child’s face and a scrawled, handwritten title.

While the genre itself isn’t particularly new – the book said to have launched this market, Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It, came out in the mid-90s – WHSmiths have seemingly only carried a Tragic Life Stories section since the start of last year. But now “misery lit”, the industry term apparently coined by The Bookseller magazine, is big, big business.

And the repetitious design aesthetic is there for a reason; namely, that the people that like this stuff will know what to look for. The title, usually handwritten, often scrawled, has something of the confessional about it; while the supporting image of an aggrieved child looks out with doe eyes (though rarely is this, of course, the actual victim or author – models are frequently used).

Esther Addley, writing on the subject in the Guardian, put it succinctly: “the volumes invariably carry a washed-out close-up of a particularly pretty child’s face on a pale background, with the title of the book in handwritten script. As Peter Saxton, biography buyer for Waterstone’s [says]: ‘White cover, swirly writing, big-eyed child. These are the visual clues that tell prospective buyers that they are going to be in their comfort (or discomfort) zone’.”

Addley also goes on to look at the nature of the titles of the books themselves: “In the UK at least, these increasingly follow one of two paths: the dramatic past participle (Wasted, Abandoned, Damaged) or the more discursive, directly heartstring-tugging phrase (Daddy’s Little Girl; Don’t Tell Mummy; Please, Daddy, No).”

But there are signs of a growing backlash against Misery Lit. While authors who obtained book deals and, indeed, notoriety and sales through their stories of pain and misery have been exposed as fakes (see JT LeRoy and James Frey’s efforts), there have recently been even more high profile exposés: Kathy O’Beirne’s memoir, Kathy’s Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalene Laundries was recently revealed as fictitious; as was Misha Defonseca’s, Surviving With Wolves, which in a crude nod to Frank’s writings was billed as “the most extraordinary story of World War II”.

Interesting indeed. But, not a section I’ll be running to next time I’m in my local Borders, I think.

Traditional Christmas Cake and Fruit Pudding

I awoke this morning to the thought “I must give Kat Oxley the Christmas cake and Pudding recipes I promised her months ago, and it will be my blog for Friday 16th.”
I awoke fully and thought, “I can’t blog that” then thought, “Of course I can.”

Some might say I am months too early, but in reality I am not.
These recipes have ingredients that may be unusual or difficult to get and I may have to supply more information or even supply some of them; for the more adventurous cooks brave enough to take up the challenge. The cake and pudding can be made up to 6 – 8 weeks ahead as long as brandy or whiskey, are used in the mixture. The alcohol gives the finished cakes their long storage life and very rich flavor.

The reason I offered Kat these recipes in the first place is because these types of celebration cakes are not typical Christmas fair everywhere in America, or so Kat and Evilynne told me. And the cakes and puddings are so delicious, I wanted to share them.

Traditional Fruitcake

From the brandy-soaked fruit to the touch of spice, this classic Christmas cake has it all.
Serves: 30
Prep: 30 minutes (plus 6 hours macerating & overnight cooling time)
Cooking: 3 ½ hours

Ingredients:

500 gms sultanas (dried grapes)
1x375gm pkt raising, coarsely chopped
3x100gms pkt mixed glace cherries, coarsely chopped
1×300 gm pkt currants
250ml 1cup brandy
Melted butter, to grease
250gm butter, at room temperature
155 gm (3/4 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
4 eggs, at room temperature
115gm (1/3 cup) breakfast marmalade
300gm (2 cups) plain flour
75gm (1/2 cup) self-raising flour
1 tspn mixed spice
Blanched almonds, to decorate
80ml (1/3 cup) brandy, extra

Method:

1. Combine the sultanas, raisins, cherries, currants and brandy in a large glass or ceramic bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside, stirring occasionally, for 6 hours to macerate.

2. Preheat oven to 150 degrees C. Brush a round 22cm (base measurement) cake pan with melted butter to lightly grease. Line the base and sides with 2 layers of non-stick baking paper to reach 6 cm above the edge of the pan.

3. Use an electric beater to beat the butter and sugar in a bowl. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition until combined (the mixture may curdle at this stage – this is due to the high proportion of eggs to butter and doesn’t affect the result). Add the marmalade and beat until well combined. Add the combined flour and mixed spice, and fold until just combined. Stir in the sultana mixture. Spoon into prepared pan and smooth the surface. Tap the pan on the bench top to settle the mixture. Arrange the almonds overt the top.

4. Wrap the outside of the pan with 3 layers of brown paper, rising slightly higher than the baking paper. Secure with kitchen string. Bake, covering with tin foil if necessary to prevent over browning, for 3 ½ hours or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

5. Pour the extra brandy over the hot cake. Wrap the pan in a clean tea towel and set aside overnight to cool completely. Serve.

Traditional Plum Pudding

With this custard-coated steamed pudding on your spoon, your Christmas feast is complete.
Serves: 12
Prep: 20 minutes (+ 6 hours macerating and 5 minutes resting time)
Cooking: 4 hours

Ingredients

350 gms raisins, coarsely chopped
300 gms sultanas
1×300 gm pkt currants
185 ml (3/4 cup) rum or brandy
Melted butter, to grease
200 gm butter, at room temperature
200 gm (1 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
4 eggs, at room temperature
140gm (2 cups) fresh bread crumbs
(made from day-old bread)
115gm (3/4 cup) plain flour
75 gm (1/2 cup) self-raising flour
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1tsp ground cinnamon
Bought, vanilla custard; warmed, to serve.

Method:

1. Place raisins, sultanas and currants
in a glass or ceramic bowl. Stir in the rum or brandy.
Cover and set aside, stirring every few hours, for 6 hours to macerate.

2. Brush a 2Litre (8 cup) capacity pudding basin with melted butter to grease. Line the base with non-stick baking paper.

3. Use an electric beater to beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the breadcrumbs, combined flour, nutmeg and cinnamon. Add the raisin mixture and stir to combine. Spoon into the prepared basin. Smooth the surface.

4. Place an upturned heatproof saucer in the base of a large saucepan. Fill one-third of the saucepan with boiling water. Bring to a simmer over low heat.

5. Cut a 30cm-square piece on non-stick baking paper and a 30cm-square piece of foil. Place the paper on top of the foil and fold to make a wide pleat in the centre. Place over the basin, foil-side up. The double piece of kitchen string under the rim of the basin to secure foil. To make a handle, tie a double piece of string loosely over the top of the basin. Scrunch the paper and foil around the rim so they don’t get wet.

6. Use the handle to lower the basin onto the saucer in the saucepan. Add enough boiling water to reach two-thirds of the way up the side of the basin.

7. Simmer, covered adding more boiling water when necessary, for 4 hours or until a skewer inserted into the of the pudding comes out clean.

8. Set aside for 5 minutes before turning out onto a serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve with warm custard.

And after typing this up, I realized why I don’t cook these delectable dishes myself…what an enormous amount of work. I guess if you are an adventurous cook, they will appeal to you. If not, hide these recipes way in back of your recipe file and take them out once in a while and remember where they came from; hopefully with an affectionate smile!

With Love,
Byz 🙂

Just the other day, I heard that my Jr. High English teacher passed away. I hadn’t thought about this woman for 20 years, but I find myself sad, just thinking about her passing. The world has lost a truly great teacher.

I didn’t always think she was so fantastic. When I found out that she was going to be my 7th grade Language Arts teacher, I was actually disappointed. Mrs. Miller was old – probably in her early sixties at that time – and she had a reputation for being the toughest teacher in the school. She expected you to do what you were supposed to do, and she didn’t accept excuses. Her class was hard. She taught grammar, spelling, and reading, and she demanded that no matter what else was going on in our hormonally imbalanced, adolescent minds, we must always honor the English language.

She didn’t use the standard text books, or follow the normal curriculum. We read books, magazines, and newspapers. We wrote essays every week, and whatever spelling errors were found in those papers became the next week’s spelling test, and heaven forbid you misspelled those words again. We were expected to tutor 3rd graders who needed assistance with reading or English skills, and we would have to research lesson plans and come up with teaching tools to help the younger children learn. But what stands out most in my mind about Mrs. Miller’s class was the way she taught grammar. She made us diagram sentences.

Our early forays into these diagrams consisted of simple sentences taken out of books or newspaper articles, but as we got better at it, the sentences became much more complex. She would have us diagram sentences out of financial contracts, or the fine print located in the bottom of an ad. She taught us that if you took the time to figure out what was being modified by each clause, and if you understood the object of each preposition, you could make sense of the most technical and seemingly unintelligible paragraphs.

I was lucky enough to have Mrs. Miller as my teacher two years in a row. She always pushed us to expand our minds, and never limited her class to things that were solely the property of the English Department. The project that I remember most from her class, was diagramming the Declaration of Independence onto those huge rolls of paper that you never find outside of a school. We ended up covering the walls of an entire hall with those diagrams. I have taken many history classes since then, and none taught me more about the mindset of the founders of our country than I learned in Mrs. Miller’s English class.

While I was thinking about this post, I googled sentence diagrams, and found that Mrs. Miller was not the only person crazy enough to try diagramming the Declaration of Independence. I was able to find an example to share with you of what the first sentence from the preamble looks like when it is diagrammed.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

There were never many teachers like Mrs. Miller around, and in this world of teaching to the test and No Child Left Behind, there probably are fewer still. But I hope that at some point everyone encounters a teacher like her. Someone who challenges you. Someone who encourages you. Someone who you remember for the rest of your life.

Thank you, Mrs. Miller. I will never forget you.