Archive for the ‘The Author’ Category

Birthday brownies

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Today we’re having a birthday party for my daughter, who is turning two. TWO. Half of me is in complete denial about this; the other half is self-medicating with chocolate and sugar.

My daughter is opinionated and shy and fierce and funny (so funny) and verbal and stubborn. She’s a lot like me, and utterly unlike me at the same time. One thing we will probably always share, however, is a passion for brownies. (I realize this is hardly unique; who are these people who claim to dislike chocolate, anyway?) So for this birthday bash, we’re having brownies instead of cake.

As soon as I finish up this blog post, I’ll be baking a double batch of my longtime, all-time favourite brownie recipe. These brownies are good enough to make you weep. They’re also brilliant because they use melted butter, cold eggs, and cocoa powder instead of chocolate, so they’re perfect spur-of-the-moment brownies. You can also make it gluten-free by directly substituting any GF flour for of wheat flour. We like teff but really, anything goes.

Alice Medrich’s Best Cocoa Brownies (from Bittersweet, 2003)

  • 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (natural or Dutch-process)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 2 cold large eggs
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2/3 cup walnut or pecan pieces (optional)

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F. Line the bottom and sides of an 8″ square baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang on two opposite sides.

Combine the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a medium heatproof bowl and set the bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir from time to time until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth and hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in to test. Remove the bowl from the skillet and set aside briefly until the mixture is only warm, not hot.

Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one. When the batter looks thick, shiny, and well blended, add the flour and stir until you cannot see it any longer, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes with the wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir in the nuts, if using. Spread evenly in the lined pan.

Bake until a toothpick plunged into the center emerges slightly moist with batter, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool completely on a rack. Lift up the ends of the parchment or foil liner, and transfer the brownies to a cutting board. Cut into 16 or 25 squares.

There are a lot of brownie recipes out there, but this is the one I’m prepared to stand by. How about you? If you love brownies, what’s your go-to? And if you are one of the unicorns who really doesn’t care for chocolate, please speak up!

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Furnishings for the Middle Class

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Hello, friends. This past weekend, we learned that Turk’s, our favourite antique-y store in Kingston, is closing. We’re really crestfallen because over the years, we’ve ended up buying most of our furniture there. Turk’s (est. 1902 by J. Turk) filled an important gap in Kingston: older wooden pieces in decent condition. They were never serious antiques (there are some scarily high-end antiques dealers in town), and thus they were often in our price range. Our decision-making process went like this:

1. We need X. Can we make one, thrift one, or do without? If no, proceed to Turk’s.

2. Is there anything cool at Turk’s? Yes, there is always something cool at Turk’s.

3. Do we really, really like it? If no, return to step 2. If yes, approach item with caution.

4. Does it smell musty? If yes, return to step 2. If no, find price tag.

5. Is it the same price (or less) as an X from Ikea? If yes, purchase. If no, return to step 2.

I’m so sad to see the end of this era. But as we were poking around in a mist of nostalgia (Turk’s has some vinyl and a few books, too), Nick found an amazing (and ridiculously appropriate, given the circs) book for me! It’s called Furnishings for the Middle Class: Heal’s Catalogues, 1853-1934. I am beyond excited to have a bound volume of so much mid- to late-Victorian aspiration, complete with prices and illustrations. I could read it all day.

What’s immediately intriguing about the catalogues is that they tend to begin with the least expensive items: “Plain Beds for Servants”, for example, or a White Beech Bedroom Chair. You have to keep reading before you get to things like the “‘Princess Maud’ Suite, painted white, with Louis XVIth enrichments, consisting of 3ft. Wardrobe with Plate Glass Door, 3 ft. Dressing Chest and Glass, 2 ft. 6 in. Washstand (Marble Top), Chamber Pedestal, 2 Chairs” for £10 10 0 (that’s ten pounds, ten shillings). And I’m now restraining myself from typing out even more furniture descriptions. Instead, here’s an advertisement from the end of the century.

I also found a photo of the interior of Turk’s as you walk in, here. Yes, those are the original pressed-tin ceilings. Farewell, Turk’s. And thank you for everything.

 

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On nosiness

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

Hello, friends. I’m very sorry I forgot to blog last week! There was definitely something missing from my week and I couldn’t figure out what it was, but when I logged in to WordPress this morning, it hit me. I’m a dolt. A dolt without an excuse. But I’m here now, and I want to talk to you about being nosy.

My name is Y. S. Lee and I am a Nosy Parker. This pure, unadulterated nosiness was one of the many things my mother used to scold me for, as a kid (I wonder what she word she was substituting when she said “Parker”? Probably something quite different.) And I haven’t really changed.

I want to know everything. I want to know how much money supply teachers at my son’s school are paid, what an acquaintance’s surgery (discussed by 2 people as I passed by) was for, how many people are involved in digging up the main intersections downtown, why the man in front of me at the grocery store bought 60 chocolate bars (I counted: KitKats, Mars Bars, and Coffee Crisps. Twenty each), what that couple in the car parked outside my house is arguing about (it’s intense), how much it actually costs the City of Kingston to issue a parking ticket (which costs something like $16, so what do they actually make after all the admin?), and a couple of dozen other things. And that’s in the time it took me to drop off my kids at school/daycare, buy some vegetables, and come home.

It’s exhausting, being this nosy. Socially inhibiting, too: I live in fear of the day that my internal sensor/censor starts to fail on a regular basis and I begin asking entirely inappropriate questions of better-mannered strangers. I’m going to be That Crazy Lady, the one who makes everyone cringe when she walks into a room.

Put another way, I’m going to turn into a four-year-old. My son entered his “why?” phase on the day he turned two, pretty much, and it’s never actually let up. Every day, he barrages us with hundreds of questions about people, animals, the natural world, social conventions, and anything else that skips through his brain. A friend of ours came over one day, I left the room for a few minutes, and when I came back, this friend’s eyes were bulging out of his head. And really, the only difference between my son and me is that I’ve learned to repress my instincts.

The main side effect of unbridled nosiness? I think it’s why I’m a writer. I’d love to hammer out this theory with you, please: if you’re a writer, are you impossibly nosy? And if you’re a fellow Nosy Parker and not a writer, how does your nosiness work itself out?

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The Year of the Snake!

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

Hello friends, and Happy New Year! Are you celebrating the Year of the Snake?

Before Nick and I had children, I would often go back to Vancouver to see my extended family for Chinese New Year. That’s all in the past, I’m afraid: can you imagine dragging a couple of little kids 5000km each way, just for a short holiday? Oh, the jet lag…

Still, I’m sad that my young children won’t have early, fond memories of the holiday parties, the feasting, the family time. We do our own small celebration in Kingston and I imagine they’ll be nostalgic about those memories, but it’s not really the same.

Funnily enough, though, my son’s school is creating its own celebration. Today in his kindergarten class, one of the teachers is cooking dragon noodles; there will be red paper envelopes with lucky money (a chocolate coin) inside; and my son and I baked almond cookies to share with everyone, to symbolize a sweet year.

And this is one lovely place where my far-flung family and my current community meet: in my mother’s recipe for Almond Cookies, which she’s made every year since I can remember. Here it is.

Almond Cookies

9 oz flour
6 oz butter
4 oz icing sugar
2 egg yolks
2 oz ground almonds
Almond essence
Vanilla essence
.
That’s the entire recipe, as written! They were cryptic in the olden days.
.
Clarifications:
- I use whole spelt flour and granulated sugar with no troubles
- I don’t measure the “essences”, but a 1/2 teaspoon of almond and 1 tsp of vanilla seems about right
- You need whole, blanched almonds for decoration, 1 per cookie.
- The recipe makes about 3 dozen small cookies.
- This is a crisp, subtle cookie. If you’re looking for a super-sweet, ooey-gooey, over-the-top cookie, you’ll be disappointed. If you love shortbread and almonds, though, they’re utterly addictive.
.
Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350F. Butter two or three baking sheets, or line them with parchment paper.
  2. Cream together the butter and sugar, then beat in the egg yolks, almond extract, and vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and ground almonds. Add the flour to the butter mixture. The dough should be stiff.
  3. Roll spoonfuls of dough into 1-inch balls, press a whole blanched almond into the top of each cookie, and arrange on baking sheets. These don’t grow much, so they can be 2 inches apart. Bake for 9-11 minutes, until pale golden.
I hope you enjoy them! We certainly do.

 

 

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The cure for perfectionism

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

Hello, friends. Yesterday, my four-year-old was on the brink of tears because the picture he was drawing failed to live up to the picture in his head. I watched him and thought, “Oh, my darling. You too?”

Don’t get me wrong: I am very glad and grateful to live in a world filled with perfectionists. I wouldn’t have the courage to drive a car or heat my house or, generally, live my life, if the world were maintained by the casual and the feckless. Still, I feel for the boy.

We had a chat about how even talented artists can’t always create what they see in their heads, how professional musicians can’t always play what they hear inside. And I mentioned, casually, that I can’t always write what I want, either.

It was oddly liberating, admitting that to a child. It was useful, too, articulating what’s been bogging me down with Rivals in the City. And because I was talking to a child, I had to frame it gently. And that was perhaps most useful of all: the quiet, matter-of-fact acknowledgement that even a finished work will be imperfect, will not quite attain the vision I had for it. And that’s acceptable, too.

I offered my son a parent’s clichés: effort counts; practice equals progress; if you give up, you’ll never find out what you’re capable of. Banal as I sounded to my own ears, I thought the clichés were right, too.

How about you, friends? Are you perfectionists, or happy-go-lucky approximators? How do you deal with perfectionism?

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A little hiccup

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Hello friends, and apologies for the lack of blog post this week. We’ve undergone a small obstacle course of lesser ailments for the past week, which culminated in an impromptu urgent-care visit this morning (we thought the 4yo might get appendicitis for Christmas, but it’s just gastro – oh joy!). Today is my second-last day of childcare before the holidays start, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to dive into Scrivener now.

2 thoughts, before I pretend that the internet does not exist:

1. I love publicly funded healthcare. Love. It.

2. Blissful Holidays!

I’ll see you here next week, on Boxing Day, with my favourite books of 2012.

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Negotiating with tradition

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Hello friends! We celebrate Christmas in our house, and we’re still figuring out our traditions. I come from a family whose only tradition is to not have any traditions (even the Christmas tree was hit-and-miss throughout my childhood, and I doubt we’ve ever eaten the same Christmas dinner twice), and my spouse, Nick, is from a family with very strong, sentimental rituals. He and I have talked about what kinds of traditions we want to cultivate. The problem? Our lives are so hectic right now that it seems as though every year, we crash-land in the middle of December with no fruitcake, no lights, and the vaguest of plans to get a tree “soon”.

We have to get our act together.

So this morning I was thinking, what are the most important Christmas traditions for our family? Clearly, we’re going to have to be selective, this year. For me, it’s about a special family meal that we look forward to each year. There will be small menu changes, but it’s not going to be Chinese food one year, followed by Italian the next. For Nick, it’s about the tree and the excitement of Father Christmas for little kids. Following in his dad’s tradition, Nick will create tiny reindeer hoofprints for the kids to find on Christmas morning, as evidence of Santa’s visit. For our four-year-old, it’s all about the gingerbread house, aka an excuse to eat unlimited amounts of Smarties and buttercream icing. And our littlest one is just learning about Christmas, which means she’ll be very forgiving of any amount of last-minute holiday anarchy.

As the kids grow, become more independent, and develop interests of their own, our traditions will evolve. We’ll get to the Christmas baking, the crafty ornaments, the homemade Advent calendar, the big Christmas party – one day. In the meantime, we’ll focus on our dearest rituals and enjoy them to the fullest.

What are your favourite, most-loved holiday traditions?

P.S. There’s a nearby family farm that raises heritage-breed bronze turkeys. The birds roam outdoors, get lots of sunshine, eat organic food (and bugs), and generally have happy turkey lives. We’re all set – for 2013, that is. Yes, we’re waiting on a turkey that hasn’t even been born yet. We are going to be SO ready next year!

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Writing a book is not like having a baby

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

That’s stating the obvious, isn’t it? Yet for the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of references to “labour” and “birth”, to “midwives” and “newborns” – and these people aren’t talking about tiny humans.

This complaint may sound grumpy and petty; it’s not intended that way. I’m not disparaging the thousands of hours of hard work that go into either enterprise. Having chosen to engage in both, it’s only reasonable that I also love them both. But when we overuse this analogy, it deflates the delicate, consuming, enormously frustrating, and endlessly rewarding disciplines of both writing and child-rearing.

Writing is both easier and more difficult than having a baby because:

1. It fits into your schedule. If you don’t create time to write, you don’t write! (Try putting your colicky infant on hold that way…)

2. It hones skills you were already good at. I’m a voracious reader and I excelled in English all through school – a thoroughly typical profile for a writer. The things you learn daily as a writer tend to be subtle and they make you a slightly better craftsman in small but satisfying ways. The first diaper I ever changed, though? On my newborn son’s tiny, flailing, slippery bum, while I was stunned by opiates, full of stitches, and tethered to an IV pole. Why hello, learning curve.

3. Babies grow, develop, and become ever-more-interesting individuals. Your published book will always contain that typo you missed on p. 187.

4. A published book never grows less beautiful. Children become adolescents.

5. When writing, you are the boss. When parenting, you are a teacher/social worker/butler/wallet.

6. When writing, I am recognizably and consistently myself. When parenting, I am sometimes my own enemy, but more often I feel inspired to be a better human being.

What do you think of the book/baby analogy? Did I miss anything?

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Monsters of entitlement

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

Hello, friends. I’ve been reading a light, slick, funny book of cultural observation and enjoying it very much. And it’s a – gasp! – parenting book. Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction in terms?

It’s Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman (in the UK, it’s called French Children Don’t Throw Food). It was published earlier this year, to a predictable squawk of gossip, defensiveness, and some reluctant concessions that Anglo-American parenting is imperfect. (This review is somewhat typical – much more about the reviewer’s own experience than about the book.) It seems that we don’t like to think about a parenting culture that’s not “child-centred”.

What I loved about this book (and which I haven’t yet seen mentioned in a review) is Druckerman’s distillation of what seems to underlie what she calls French parenting. It is the assumption that babies are small people with an immense capacity to learn, right from the beginning. Amazing! Druckerman traces this attitude all the way back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1762 book Emile, or On Education.

In practice, this means that instead of reorganizing their lives around children’s desires, French parents start to teach children how to be rational members of a society from a very early age. Instead of “discipline”, they talk about “education”; instead of “development”, they use the term “awakening”. They take pride in being strict. They allow children immense freedom within a strong framework of rules. They speak politely to babies, because babies are individuals, too.

To me, this doesn’t sound uniquely French. As my friend S at Waldorf Yarns observes, it’s familiar to Waldorf parents (S gives a sample list). S also theorizes, “I can’t help but wonder if some of what is presented as ‘the French’ way of parenting may be European and may have infused into Waldorf education before it was transplanted into our corner of North America.” I’d just add that Druckerman’s “French” parenting also sounds a lot like Maria Montessori’s philosophy of education. It’s no accident: both Waldorf and Montessori education  are founded upon the idea of respect for the child.

As you can tell, I’m a believer. Do I think French parenting (or any single method or ideal) is perfect? Mais non, pas du tout! But it’s a beautiful, rational, and sane starting position that gives me hope that we can raise thoughtful, compassionate citizens, not monsters of entitlement.

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A Bear in the House

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Hello friends, and Happy Hallowe’en day! It’s cool and raining here in Kingston, and we’re all very grateful that Hurricane Sandy lost momentum before getting here. It’s strange to think of so many communities still without power, still scrabbling for basic needs, while we here contemplate costumes and candy. It’ll be a bittersweet Hallowe’en, for sure.

I thought I’d show you what I’m up to this morning: finishing up a costume for a four-year-old who wants to be “a big brown bear”.

The ears are still waiting to be attached. Then all we need is brown pants, some black eyeliner for a nose and whiskers, and the roaring can begin!

I hope you have a Hallowe’en that’s memorable for all the best reasons.

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