All There Is To It

Life May Just Be One Big Wave of Chocolate Mousse

Not that I would ever make chocolate mousse, but I'm sure Julia Child was the Mistress of such. This post isn't really about Julia Child. Being who I am and raised where I was, I never got into Julia's particular brand of the art of cooking. My friend, Pam Madsen, though, just connected some dots on her blog, The Fertility Advocate, in that way she does -- bringing together seemingly disparate ideas and people and events, alluding to the ever-reconfiguring human web.

Seems Pamela is a big Julia Child fan, so she was eager to see the newly released "Julie & Julia". The draw for Pam isn't so much the cooking part, or even specifically the great chef's infertility. It's the fact that Child was a whole package, and the movie presented her thus.

Famous people, celebrities, are almost inherently one-dimensional to us. The lurid tabloid details titillate us, though the balancing affect of a story's 'other side' is sometimes, frankly, boring. But to our bigger brains, the complexity of human nature and the unfolding events that seem to swirl around us make far more interesting stories than any single aspect, no matter how outstanding that one grain of persona seems at first glance.

Pam and I both share a fascination with the "bags of soup" (thanks, Jason, for that label) that we call 'people'. There's so much going on there, inside our visible shells. It's not that any of us always likes each ingredient, but the end result, the final dish, is the treasure.

Here's to dotted lines, between longing and contentment, and all the intriguing spaces between the dots...

Better Late Than Never: Out of the Frying Pan

I’m going to cut to chase here. It’s been about two years since I received a copy of Gillian Clark’s Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef’s Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal.

Being another single mama, I’m hoping Gillian understands the delay. But I’m not holding my breath.

Gillian Clark is a savvy, ambitious business-minded woman, so she might be a tad miffed at how long it finally took me to write down my thoughts (which she hopefully won’t think are now mulled to the point of fermentation.)

Ms. Clark doesn’t let life get in her way (like I do…) She is a matter-of-fact character who doesn’t indulge in self-pity. With those traits, she’s created her own little food empire in the Washington, D.C. area, first with Colorado Kitchen, and recently with The General Store.

Gillian Clark’s food, though, is all about the warmth of family. Her recipes, laced through the tale that begins with her failing marriage, are simply real (and pretty simple, too, thankfully.)

So far, our house has tried Gillian’s “Best Mashed Potatoes Anywhere,” “Braised Cube Steak,” and her signature “Carrot Sage Soup,” which is also mentioned in this blog by Washington Post’s Kim O’Donnel. All three recipes are good reasons for Clark’s success in the competitive D.C. restaurant market, and there are far more dishes we’ll be trying from the book.

Reading Gillian’s memoir at night brought me back to a time when I wrote letters, in long-hand on lined paper, back and forth with a good friend in another city. The Lone Mom in me connected with the author’s fear and dread, the what-if’s, the exhaustion, the whittling down of priorities to a fine point to match the available resources. Even on nights when I could barely keep my lids open, Out of the Frying Pan beckoned from my bedside table. From the three stacks of topics ranging from religion to care-giving to humor to food, it was Gillian’s voice that reached out like the best kind of friend, the only one who really “gets” you.

I just love happy endings, especially when getting to them takes an awful lot of hard work. I just wish that I lived near enough to go have some of that friend chicken and lemon chess pie made by the Chef, herself.

You can read more about Gillian Clark’s life and her book in this review/interview at The Sister Project.