I brought it to the beach and struggled with it a bit at first, having been out of practice reading classic literature and critical reading in general. I kept at it, mainly from lack of options, and decided to approach it much like I did law school. Back then, I couldn’t read a paragraph without a pen in hand. I underlined, marked, circled, and took notes along the margin of my casebooks so detailed there was little need for me to write out briefs (but I did).

For the first few paragraphs of Persuasion, hell, the first few pages, I used a mechanical pencil to underline while I read for no grander purpose than to slow down my eyes and mind enough to comprehend some of the text. Soon, my efforts were rewarded. Reading critically, it turns out, is like riding a bike.

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion. –Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 1

I chuckled. That was funny. Even better, I caught the joke! Not long after that, I started to get into the story and the characters. I couldn’t put down the book I spent over ten years trying to read. And then, Captain Wentworth.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. –Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 23

Hello there, big boy.

So I got to thinking, maybe there were other great books I was missing out on because I was afraid of the hard work it might take to read them, that the part of my brain I needed to read literature had long ago turned to mush. I decided since Persuasion was good, so might be many of the other books I had collecting dust. That didn’t stop me from buying a few more books in Lake Tahoe when I stumbled across a bookstore going out of business, but that’s actually part of the story. I bought those books on the condition they became part of my yet to be named Unread Library. A few weeks later, I pulled the trigger on my plan and committed to it here on the blog. It was the best thing I could have ever done.

My critical reading has improved. I’m not up to where I was in college, but I am close. Actually, maybe I am better because I have 15 years of life experience to bring to the table. I find that I am able to understand the themes from an emotional perspective as well as a critical one. I value more what I am reading because I can relate to it better.

I’m constantly inspired. Captain Wentworth, with all his impassioned speeches, ended up inspiring a number of posts here, as many of you know (here is the first). My Compositions series is in large part funded by the reading I do from my Unread Library. Notes for novel and short story ideas litter many of the pages, too.

I feel better about myself. I’m not a dumb girl, but as one of two stay at home moms in a large circle of professional women, I sometimes feel a bit…insecure. Reading literature makes me feel smart, or at least like I am doing something to better myself.

A little more than six months after starting the project, I have read 12 of the 45 books in my Unread Library. I’ve also read a few books off the shelf from the library and some I bought with birthday money, but for the most part, I’ve stuck to my shelves. Not everything I read from the shelf was fine literature, some of it was downright tawdry, but they were fun to read nonetheless. That’s something else I learned. Reading the classics is a lot like drinking a fine wine. There are layers and notes to the work, and the reading can have its own special procedure. All of that is to be expected and has its rightful place in my life but, I have to say, every now and then it sure does feel good to sit down and crack open a cold beer.

The skies were dark. The house was gray. The day never really seemed to start. Snuggling in front of the televison seemed like the natural thing to do. My computer circled the drain and took with it a year’s worth of photos, including the first two weeks of images for this project. Silver lining? My unread library is thinner.

But, oh, how those wet and cold days come with a price. Mikey and I spent most of January tossing viruses back and forth.

Midway through, a break. A day at the park. Warm sweaters. Strong winds. A very large duck. A very, very nervous mama.

We didn’t sell our car, and are considering attaching a bullhorn to the roof and proclaiming the benefits of a used Ford in good condition while we cruise all the right neighborhoods. It might work.

I baked a cake, and then another.

I went to a party with a nicely wrapped present.

We celebrated 11 years.

In January we did everything, and we did nothing. It was dreary and cold and gray, until the sun came out and bleached everything white. It’s a maddening month, the kind with a slow march that thwarts the desire for something new and fresh and right now, please. It’s January, and it’s over.

*********************

This was a color story. Please leave a link to yours in the comments, if you are so inclined. Otherwise, will you join me in February? The theme is scarlet. A month of red, pink, and everything in between around your home, your town, or your inspiration folder. Stuff you make, stuff you buy, stuff you photograph. No pressure. (Do it.)

I am both stubborn and stupid. Only I would refuse to give up on an orange cake, a cake that, when placed in a bakery, would receive the same treatment as a knock-kneed asthmatic during team selection in P.E. I don’t need to ask you when the last time you looked at the clock at 3:30pm and sighed, wishing for a large slice of orange cake. I know the answer: never. No one ever pushed back from an Excel pivot table and said, “Damn, what I would do for a slice of orange cake!”

But I persevered. I had three trees worth of oranges to use up, and I wasn’t about to see them rot (like I did last year). I researched  conversions and in my first attempt did some complicated density-ingredient-analysis. We all know how that turned out. This past week I decided to simplify everything and use metric. Out came the scales and bowls. Two hours later, I had an orange cake sitting on the counter.

That makes me stubborn. What makes me stupid is that I don’t like cake. So after all this baking and sampling and researching and scrapping and baking I can with confidence declare that my orange cake tastes…like cake. And orange. Yay?

Yay. Not because I suddenly grew to love cake, but because the boys loved it and I loved the sight of a homemade cake next to their school pictures and a vase of (what else?!) Rosemary. Years ago, when we were doing our kitchen remodel, I told The Mister I wanted our kitchen–our entire home, really–to look and feel like warm cookies and milk. Two happy boys and a slice of orange cake isn’t a bad compromise to make.

Doña Petrona Orange Cake

adapted from El Libro de Doña Petrona, edición 81

I’m amazed at the color of this cake. I don’t know if it’s because I used fresh orange juice and zest, but it really does have a lovely citrus glow to it. The original recipe called for a simple glaze icing, which is nice, but my boys love chocolate. I couldn’t resist such a classic winter combination.

The metric measurements are as presented in the book, with the exception of salt and vanilla, both of which are my additions. The U.S. measurements are from various online calculators. I’m confident with all of them except the flour. If you batter looks loose, try adding more flour by the tablespoon. The original recipe called for the eggs separated and the whites beaten to soft peaks. I’ve come to find out this is a technique James Beard used to lighten pound cakes. I’m lazy, and didn’t want to clean any more bowls. I mixed in the eggs one at a time after creaming the sugar. I may try it again separating the eggs. Then again, I may never bake an orange cake ever again.

For the cake

200 gr. | 14 tablespoons butter, softened
200 gr. | 1 cup sugar
420 gr. | 3 cups sifted cake flour
4 eggs
1 cup orange juice
the zest of one orange
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the hard chocolate glaze

5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 cup bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips (depending on how sweet you like things)

Cake:

• Heat oven to 350º
• Butter and flour (or Pam up) one bundt cake.
• Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl.
• Add vanilla to orange juice in small measuring cup.
• Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer or large bowl.
• Add one egg at a time, mixing completely before the addition of each egg
• Add flour mixture and orange juice mixture, alternating in thirds, ending with the flour mixture.
• Fold orange zest into batter.
• Plop batter into bundt pan and smooth the top, if necessary. Bake for 45-55 minutes. Start checking at 45 minutes. I let mine go without checking to 55 minutes, and you can see it’s over-baked on the bottom.

Glaze:

In a small saucepan, combine sugar, butter, and milk. Boil, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, and stir in chocolate chips until smooth. Immediately pour over partially cooled cake.

We celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary on the 15th. How is it possible that so much time has gone by? How is it possible that I am almost 40? I swear, I feel so much younger than I am, and that’s not to say I think 40 is old. I don’t, but I remember when I did. I don’t feel much older than I did then.

The other day, Joanna posted about a pretty aquamarine ring that could be used as an engagement ring. Then she asked everyone to comment on their relationship status for fun. Two things occurred to me. One, my parents had a box of loose aquamarines in the 80s in various shapes and sizes. If I can get my mits on that box, I can have a ring made as a present to myself for doing something great, with “something great” to be defined at a later time. Like Justice Stewart once famously said, I’ll know it when I see it.

The second thought to occur to me happened after I read the first 300 or so comments. Almost everyone who answered was dating, engaged, or married less than 4 years. At 11 years, I felt seasoned and tough, like a cube steak. I also felt old, like maybe the internet is for people 32 and under. Not really. There are plenty of people online my age. Right? Successful people? People besides Dooce and Pioneer Woman? Because sometimes I feel like the older sister of blogland. Of course, maybe I should try reading blogs in my demographic. Heh.

Look at me with my stream of conscious blogging. Must be all the Virginia Woolf. While I am at it, I’ll ask a few more questions. Because I’m nosy and it’s Friday.

Favorite blog niche right now? These things change for me, and I’m sure it’s the same for you, too. Right now, I’m really into design blogs. This happens to me at the beginning of every year. I get obsessed with my house and making it better. True to form, I am eating up design posts like they’re chocolate and peanut butter. I want to find a new narrative blog to love, but so far I’m coming up dry. Any suggestions?

Color Stories. There have been a few people who have started their own, or said they would love to do their own. It sounds like fun, so I’m thinking about doing a link party at the end of the month where we can all link up to our color stories. It wouldn’t have to be your photography, in case you are nervous about that sort of thing. I’ve seen people create a color story from etsy items, rooms from their inspiration folders, favorite foods, whatever. Would you like to do something like this? If enough people are interested, I’ll figure out how to do that linky thing where all the pretty pictures pop up.

Whew. I think I’ve rambled on long enough, don’t you? Have a great weekend, everyone.

[End stream of consciousness.]

If I wasn’t the type of person who enjoys a challenge, I would be worried I bit off more than I can chew with Doña Petrona. Converting the recipes from metric to US standard is more difficult than I imagined. I tried a pizza dough recipe earlier in the week using metric measure and, for some reason, the dough didn’t rise. It’s possible this is because of the weather. I have soapstone counters that hold onto cold, of which we’ve had plenty. The flour was cold, the equipment was cold, and the room was cold. The yeast may have had trouble blooming. Who knows.

I decided to start out in metric or find a way to convert to US standard using a system that accounted for the differences in density across the ingredients. For example, because mini marshmallows, flour, and sugar each have their own density, 100 grams of one isn’t 100 grams of the other (mini marshmallows, 10 cups; flour, 4 cups; sugar, 2.5 cups). I found a site called gourmetsleuth that seemed to take this into account. I decided to try it out with an orange cake recipe from Doña Petrona’s cookbook because, hello, it’s January in California and I have three trees heavy with fruit.

It didn’t work out. According to gourmetsleuth, I needed 3 cups of flour. But was that three cups scooped from the bag, or 3 cups spooned into a measuring cup? That’s what I don’t like about volume measure. I went with scoop, and my dough was far too thick and stiff. Three teaspoons of baking powder converted to 2.6 teaspoons of baking powder and, as you can see from the picture, I think I needed at least the full three teaspoons.

I’m not blaming gourmetslueth entirely. It’s an odd cake recipe, a combination of basic cake and chiffon. The four eggs in the recipe are separated, like a chiffon, but instead of oil you use butter, like a basic cake recipe. The whole point of separating eggs and using oil is to give a (chiffon) cake as much height as possible, where butter adds weight and richness. So separating eggs (height) but adding butter (weight) seems counter-intuitive. Why not just add the eggs whole, one at a time? I stuck to the recipe, just in case I was missing something.

Nope, not missing something. The cake ended up dense and flat, like a pound cake. Rather unattractive, in fact. I admit, I was bummed. I wanted to impress you with something lovely and delicious, and I didn’t think this was it. I whipped up a quick orange glaze, poured it on top, and called it a miss. I’ll keep trying because I’ve got plenty of oranges!

The good thing about living among men is that even a bad cake is good cake. They ate it up and often asked for seconds during the week, and I can’t blame them. The flavor of the cake is outstanding. You can taste the orange, but it isn’t cloying like some fruit-based cakes. It’s worth trying again, if only to see how it tastes when done correctly.

So are there any bakers out there? What do you think happened? If you have any tips on how to convert from metric, or why 3 teaspoons of baking powder converted to 2.61 teaspoons, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I didn’t plan to continue this series into the new year, but I couldn’t resist posting this picture, even though uploading it crashed my computer and left me with a black screen for three hours.

Speaking of unstyled lives, you can’t go into the weekend without reading this. Reading it prompted me to reconsider the end of this weekly series.

Doña Petrona (June 28, 1896 – February 6, 1992) was Argentina’s answer to Julia Child and Martha Stewart. From the 20s to the 80s, she was the domestic expert in the eyes of millions. To this day, her massive cookbook entitled El Libro de Doña Petrona remains #3 on Argentina’s bestsellers list five decades after its initial publication. As a newlywed, my mom bought me edition No. 81. I think the publisher is on edition No. 102.

My first brush with La Doña came not from the T.V., an old family cookbook, or from research. It came, appropriately enough, from an insult 28 years ago in my mother’s kitchen. Like Child and Stewart, Doña Petrona had a bit of a personality. She had a commanding presence, one never more evident than in her cooking shows, where all of Argentina watched her lord over her poor assistant, Juanita Bordoy. I may have been ten years old and trying my hand at a pancakes recipe. I may have been bossing my mom around, asking her to fetch me this and that. I may have moved not a muscle to help her fetch said this and that.

She may have dropped a bag of flour on the counter, somewhat roughly, and said, “I AM NOT YOUR JUANITA!”

She may, to this day, call me La Doña when I am in the kitchen.

I may be very, very bossy in and out of the kitchen.

But I will neither confirm nor deny.

When my mom gave me my 81st edition of the book, I decided I would prepare all the recipes. Then I realized it was in Spanish and used metric measurements. All of a sudden, the idea of a decorative cookbook sounded fabulous. I decided to wait for the English version. It’s been 11 years. Sixty years if you count the original publication date. Something tells me an English translation isn’t going to happen. (If I am wrong, and I would love to be wrong, please let me know!)

This means I have no choice but to crack this beast open and cook. I’ll translate the recipes and post them here with standard measure, even though I am now a fan of metric. I’m shooting for one recipe a week, and because the cookbook is the size of a door stop, I’m keeping it to recipes I can afford to make and am willing to eat. Sell aspic somewhere else, Doña. I have my Spanish-English dictionary from college (also decades old–I think it was my mom’s college dictionary), an apron, and family willing to eat anything homemade. All I need is a beleaguered domestic servant and I am good to go! Better call my mom and see what she’s doing on Thursday.

I couldn’t resist. Here are some excerpts from Doña Petrona’s T.V. show. Some moments of awesome to note:

1. The way she makes the Pan Ducle (Pannettone) completely by hand like it’s nothing.
2. The way the announcer breaks in and gives the recipe in the second video. Life before internet! There is no downloading of recipes. You sit your butt in front of the T.V. with a steno pad, a pencil, and a quick hand.
3. The 1960s typeface.
4. Juanita Bordoy’s patience. Or subservience. Yes, it is indicative of pervasive elitist attitude and a clearly defined class structure unfortunately quite common in Latin American countries, but damn. I don’t know how Juanita doesn’t dump a bowl of flour on Doña Petrona’s head.
5. Can you hear the difference in Spanish spoken in Argentina? Listen to to “y” and “ll.” It sounds like a zzh. Instead of “yo me llamo” it’s “zzho me zzhamo.”
6. I’m fascinated by the way Doña Petrona refers to her audience as “Señora” and uses the formal Usted. It’s as if she is talking to the housewives personally, but with respect and formality. This isn’t chit-chat among friends today, but her show was heralded for it’s “folksy” and approachable tone in the 50s and 60s.

Happy New Year! Are you ready to resume life as usual on this first (rainy and cold) Monday of 2011? I am not. I’m having to prod myself into working, as is always the case when I take a break from this space. I’m sure in a week or two I will be back in the swing of posting regularly. Until then, I think I will devote much of this week to sharing my plans for the blog this year. My hope is that once I am done writing about what I am going to write about, I will have something to write about. Zing!

Last year I dabbled briefly in what I called color stories, or monthly pictorials of the Inland Empire grouped by color. It was a short-lived project, one I put to the side once I stopped writing for Inland Empire Family. Although the decision to leave Inland Empire Family was sound (I am open to writing for other websites if it is a paid position or comes with tangible benefits), I found myself missing my monthly pictures. I’m bringing them back with a few changes.

I’ll still be summing up the month by color. This time, I plan to inject personality into the post by including a brief summary of our month as a family. My motivation is completely selfish. I’m not a very good parenting blogger. I’m a good storyteller, and I like to think I am creative, but when it comes to journaling the everyday, I hover at mediocre or, more accurate, insecure and unsure. I have a hard time believing anyone would be interested in our family history (baseball sign ups! homework! visiting family!) when everyone is busy creating a history of their own. My hope is that I will be able to compose a snapshot of our specific family history that I will enjoy years from now in a format that is accessible and interesting. That has always been my hope with my blog: to tell stories specific to our family that reflect the universal themes we all experience. Here’s hoping it doesn’t suck.

To reduce the odds of suckage, I made sure to plan out the year’s color stories as best I could. That’s the secret, you know, to starting and finishing a blogger series. Organization, organization, organization. If I have learned anything, it’s that editorial calendars aren’t just for magazines. If you are a blogger planning a series, do yourself a favor and plan it out through the project’s duration. Don’t assume you will have time to figure out what you are writing about three months from now. Assume you won’t. Assume your life will continue as it is now: busy, hectic, and full of good intentions. I didn’t plan out my color stories last year, and I found myself struggling later on in the year. Several times I found a color that would have been perfect for one month had already been used, and since I wanted each month to have a different color, I was stuck. It was a problem I could have easily avoided by planning out the series ahead of time. A dumb mistake, but I learn quickly.

Here is my color story calendar for the year. Is it anticlimactic to lay it all out beforehand? I haven’t decided. At the very least, it should be fun to see how well I was able to predict the themes and colors for each month. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I spent several hours last night agonizing over all the colors. Decisions aren’t really my thing, you see. I eventually figured it out, and a reader named Andrea took pity on me on my Facebook page and gave my colors fancy names. (Thanks, Andrea!)

2011 Color Stories

January | Wool
The grays and creams of the first month of the year. The weather is making this one easy, as you can see.

February | Scarlet
Reds of all sorts seemed like a good fit for a month most often associated with romance.

March | Daffodil
The first flower of the year usually pokes its yellow head out of the ground this month, although I can’t imagine anything yellow with all this cold we are having.

April | Grass
Surely it will be warm by April. I hope to see plenty of greenery and at least one picnic. Also, if green would like to appear in the shape of money, I would have no objections.

May | Jacaranda
California’s famous(ish) Jacaranda season is starting up. I expect purples, lavenders, and everything in between.

June | Peacock
Pretty blues to mark the beginning of summer.

July | Silver
Ray Bans, men’s watches, and casual jewelry against a California tan.

August | Cotton
School starts again. Pressed oxford shirts, fresh paper, and the bright white of new shoelaces.

September | Russet
Here come the orangey reds of fall…but not in California. This is our hottest month of the year. The only thing orangey-red around here will be the sun, which will feel like it’s suspended 3 inches from our noses.

October | Cauldron
Halloween! Ghouls, ghosts, and the beginning of early nights lend to a month shrouded in black.

November | Cider
Topaz, caramel, and the brown of loamy earth. Maybe? Here’s hoping. It’s California, after all.

December | Gold
Our church uses gold and green Christmas decorations. It is always so beautiful, and this year only compounded my obsession for brass and gold.

Well, that’s it. What do you think? If you live in the Inland Empire and can think of a locale that fits in, let me know. There are a pair of royal blue doors downtown that I am dying to photograph, and I can’t believe I have to wait until June to do it.

My gallery wall is progressing slowly, hampered as I am by a small budget, a large wall, and a fixed streak of indecisiveness. Part of the problem lies in the scads of design blogs I read, each one better than the next. I read Trina of A Country Farmhouse, and I want white and sparse. Then I’ll see an interesting collection of art and I am back to square one.

I may be all over the place, but I know I am framing Nico’s painting and adding it to the maybe temporary gallery wall. I exclaimed my love for it the second he pulled it, roughly, out of his cubby. Right then, I promised to frame it and hang it up with the rest of my special art. The mom next to me looked at me and said, “Wow. You are a nice mom, aren’t you?”

Maybe. Or maybe this first school painting will hang on our walls and serve as a reminder of an attitude I hope to adopt. Creativity reigns. Feelings matter. And the passion and courage of youth shouldn’t fade.

p.s. You’ll have to excuse my poor corn plant. Two of the three are dead thanks to last spring’s vacation to Florida. It normally sits between the picture windows and I think the sun cooked it. The tallest one is doing fine, and actually has new growth. I need to re-pot it, but I don’t know if I should (or can) buy two smaller, individual stalks to keep him company. I know they like to be a bit root bound, so some friends might cheer him up.

I’m looking forward to the break next week will bring.

Last Thursday started at 3:30am with a sick Nicholas. His stomach was upset, repeatedly, until 3:30 that afternoon. Then came the fever and all that other stuff. He was better by Sunday. This bug is really going around. I’m sure many of you have gone through the same thing.

On Saturday I had to come up with a post idea for Windows Phone 7. And, as silly as it seems, I can’t even describe how stressed I was about it. I wanted it to be something that could stand alone, and after 4 weeks of tossing around ideas I still had nothing to write about. It ended up working out, thank goodness. I had more fun writing and photographing that post than any other here on the blog, even if some people didn’t get it.

But as fun as it was, I also threw out my back. I should have used a tripod for a few of those images (like the sculling one) but I didn’t. Instead, I positioned myself awkwardly and bent using my waist instead of my knees. Stupid.

Tuesday brought my usual “morning after stressful event” migraine.

On Wednesday the school called me to pick up a pukey Mikey. As these things usually go, there was a life lesson wrapped up in a mundane event. At Mikey’s school the kindergartners and first graders have assigned partners from the seventh and eighth grades. These partners act like guides and mentors throughout the year and babysitters during mass. Mikey has had the same partner for two years. He reveres him. Eighth graders look impossibly important to someone under four feet.

Mikey ran to the bathroom, but didn’t quite make it. The teacher’s aide found him outside the bathroom, embarrassed and confused, and had him sit down on a bench while she had the front office contact me. Mikey was sitting there contemplating life when his partner walked by on the way to the bathroom.

“Hey, Mikey, did you throw up?”

“Yes. My mom is coming to get me.”

“Aw, man. That’s too bad. I hope you feel better, okay?” And he patted Mikey on his little shoulder.

This is the story how Mikey told it to me. I wish I was a strong enough storyteller to describe Mikey’s face during the retelling. His pale little lips wrapping around each word slowly, like he was committing to memory what was, to him, an important event. The way he paused after he was done, like he was once again replaying the events in his head, and the way he looked up at me with weepy eyes after the “I hope you feel better” part and pinched his lips together like it was all too much.

“When he said that, mama, it made me feel good, like I was important.”

Heart. Melting. I forget that they are little humans with emotions just like my own. Sometimes they aggravate me, sometimes they make me proud, and sometimes I am overwhelmed by everything I want for them. I do a poor job remembering that they feel all the same things, too. They suffer from pride and revel in accomplishment; feel shame and take comfort in affection; get angry, then forgive. Amazing. I felt lucky for the opportunity to realize something that should have been obvious.

On Thursday my luck ran out. I threw out my back again, although I’m not sure how. Checking email? Buttering bread? Pressing the automatic lock button in my car? My day-to-day is fraught with peril. There’s no telling what did it.

Today, Friday, I have a funeral and a pizza party.

I’m really looking forward to the break next week will bring. I might have already said that.