Shonna's Marjorie Project/Blog

This, an unexpected nod from my husband. We are a good team. As a person who avoided team sports for her entire life, 12 years of team-play is impressive.

Where are the Marjorie recipes? 05/01/2012

Where are the Marjorie recipes? Where are the Marjorie recipes?

I could make loads of excuses, like taking a new job. Or juggling client work. Or the food writing that's been fascinanting me. (And the subsequent gym membership to combat the effects of food writing.) Or the April work with Maine Women Write, helping to promote Show Me Good Land. Or the reluctant efforts to paint/update/de-clutter our home.

I've been planning a special birthday surprise for my niece's summer birthday, and planning a California trip to watch Alex and Sara get married this summer, too.

Those second (and third?) manuscript drafts, as well.

All have kept me out of my kitchen. I miss it, but in place of elaborate Marjorie recipes, I've been making loads of Caprese Salad. It's veg-friendly, delicious, super-quick, and a staple on the Milliken-Humphrey summer menu. If you stop by our house, you are likely to be served a plateful of this. With crusty bread. Mmm.

Caprese Salad
1) Big, juicy, heirloom tomatoes. Get the expensive ones, in a rainbow palette. Chop them up in chunks.
2) Fresh mozzarella. Get the little balls, in water. Or a big ball. (Don't use shredded in a bag.)
3) Aged balsamic vinegar. Like this one, at LeRoux Kitchen. Good balsamic makes all the difference, and a little bit goes a long way, if it's the good stuff.
4) Fresh basil.
5) Salt and pepper, to tast.

And that's it. Chop, mix into a bowl. Marjorie never listed this recipe in her books, but I suspect she would have, had she tried it. It is that good.

Challenge: What adjustments do you make when life gets busy?

Vacationland 04/19/2012

When TIME published Steve Rubin's series of photos (exhibited at the drkrm gallery in Los Angeles from April 28-May 26), my immediate thought was "I need to meet this photographer."

There is much debate online about whether his images exploit the subjects and perpetuate negative stereotypes about rural poverty, but I say no. I see families, I see community, and I see connection in his photographs. Most importantly, I see a piece of Maine that I recognize.

In fact, I see the Maine I wrote about in Show Me Good Land. These are my characters, or their cousins, without a doubt. Rubin does with images, what I attempted in prose.

Well done, Steve Rubin. Well done. I hope when you return to Maine, I have the opportunity to meet you.

Many thanks. 04/10/2012

Two things. First, I will be at Kennebooks in Kennebunk this Thursday, April 12 at 7 pm. Feel free to drop by, as the event is free and all are welcome!

Second, thank you to Howard Frank Mosher, who absolutely made my day. I was gifted some wise professional advice many years ago, the gyst being that if I ignore the good stuff that's written about me, it makes any bad stuff easier to ignore. Wise words. Books and writing are largely subjective and life is short. I am happy if you like my words, but it's okay if you don't. (There are books I didn't enjoy reading, too.)

My book is little. It was meant to be. But, when my words prompt a reader to react in such a poignant way--when that reader really gets what I was trying to achieve, it feels fantastic.

Challenge: Write a note of appreciation, because this made my day:

Maybe there's something about Aroostook County, Maine, that Rhetta Ballou,
the 35-year-old heroine of Shonna Milliken Humphrey's wondrous first novel, Show
Me Good Land, doesn't understand. If so, however, I can't imagine what it might
be. Though she fled "The County" 20 years ago, and currently works as a
university research fellow, Rhetta is still, at heart, "just an Aroostook County
girl." So when her mother summons her home to attend the bedside of a cousin
near death from a methamphetamine-induced infection, Rhetta hops in her car and
heads north. Most of Humphrey's story unfolds through Rhetta's recollections
during her ensuing 6-hour drive from Portland, up into the land of pointed fir
trees, rushing rivers, sandy potato fields, and endlessly intertwined families.

What Rhetta comes to understand best, as, one by one by one, she confronts
her often-hilarious, yet always-tragic, memories of her incredibly extended
Ballou family, is her own inextricable ties to the remote northern New England
frontier that, like it or not, shaped her into the wonderfully
independent-minded yet emotionally vulnerable person she has become. She may
have left behind the interminable winters, the mud season that passes for
spring, the hardscrabble labor of the annual potato harvest, the high-school and
small-town cliques and class-warfare, the family feuds, even her conflicted
feelings for Emmett Pratt, a decent and sensitive local mechanic now wrongfully
accused of a local murder. But as she approaches the town she left two decades
ago, she, like Emmett, realizes that she is still "sewn into its fabric," and
always will be.

This beautifully-written and deeply affecting novel reminds me of the
place-based, character-driven southern fiction of William Gay, Tom Franklin,
Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Shonna Milliken Humphrey's Show Me Good
Land, for my money, is the most exciting first novel on the American literary
scene since Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. I'll return to "The County" with her as
many times as she wants to take me back there. Anyone who thinks that "the
novel," as we've known it for the past several centuries, is dead or dying
should read this fine book. I loved every page.

Changing Things: Grocery Shopping 04/07/2012

For nearly twelve years, I have prepared at least one homecooked meal for my husband and myself every day. This is my contribution to our shared life, and it is a task that comes easily to me. I love recipes, and I love food. My kitchen is tiny and cluttered, but it is a Zen spot for my creative energy. That half hour in the evening? The one where I chop, bake, and sizzle while my dog is on guard for scraps that drop?

It is a mediation, of sorts. I feel grounded, creative, and happy. Also, I love grocery shopping. (The trick is getting to the grocery store on a weekday, early afternoon. People hate grocery shopping, I suspect, because they go at the worst possible times.)

So when Travis and I recently shifted roles, with me taking on more of our household's income generation, he offered to tackle the weekly shopping.

"Sure," I said. "That would be awsome."

I never expected to miss grocery shopping as profoundly as I do, but there it is. I miss it. While it is interesting to see the results of his shopping logic (four pounds of fresh salmon?), I miss the adventure part. What is on sale? How can I change ingredients to meals?

As I grapple with the whole idea of gender roles, power dynamics, and a weepy nostalgia for the time I no longer spend in my kitchen, Travis suggests that I'm overthinking it.

"As much as I love your cooking, I love being able to pay our bills so much more."

This is true, too. I suppose.

Challenge: What do you overthink? What activities tap into your creative energy? What chores do not feel like chores?

Self-Promotion Files 03/27/2012

Show Me Good Land is a quiet book. It was intended to be. A quiet book for smart readers.

The drawback to this strategy is that quiet books do not generate frenzy. They just don't, and that's okay. It has been a year since the book's release, and to mark that anniversary as part of the Maine Women Write effort, I will appear on the MBPN radio show "Maine Calling" with Keith Shortall this week. Thursday, March 29 at 12:15, live.

Here is a link to the show.

Public radio listeners are my demographic. They tend to get the concept of the book more than many other groups, and I am grateful to be part of their programming.

RECIPE: Perfect Blueberry Muffins 03/18/2012

When Marjorie Standish bills these as perfect blueberry muffins, she's not using hyperbole. This recipe yields a consistent, tasty blueberry muffin each time I bake them.

Marjorie makes the recipe complicated, when really, I just mix the ingredients all together in a single bowl. The trick, I think, is the lemon juice.

Again, just dump it all into a bowl.

And then into a muffin pan.

425 degree oven for 20 minutes or so.

And yum. Yum, yum.

Challenge: What is one element of your life that is consistently satisfying?

Eulogy for an old yellow cat. 02/25/2012

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Lambert was extraordinarily good at napping.

A headline from The Onion once read “Forward thinking cat shits outside the box.” My husband and I often laughed about this until our new kitten expressed this exact same sense of forward-thinking onto several pages of my husband’s sheet music.

Sheet music, I observed. Get it?

Today’s post is about grief because our yellow cat died yesterday. Twelve years is respectable for a cat, especially a cat plagued with issues: obesity, skin condition, ear crud, fleas, and kidney problems. In addition to the physical, our cat was also surly and antagonistic. Imagine, I said to a friend, an enormous bully who commandeers the food bowl and drags his dirty bum on the bath mat. The friend returned in kind. “I had no idea you were living with my brother-in-law.”

This cat acted so bad, my husband and I began singing songs about him. Power ballads, Broadway, and one Electronica version that still makes me laugh. Inspired, my husband hung onto a blues riff, and that blues riff eventually became the title track of his first solo recording project “Yellow Cat Blues.”

(If you want to hear the song, this is the Spotify link.)

The anecdotes in the song are all true, and Travis has been a staunch advocate of this cat—often the only advocate in our house.

So when the cat pooped in the tub every time we had guests, and when I rescued the dog from the humiliated corners he was cowering in, and when I swore every time I did laundry in the basement and found the cat squatting beside-not in-the litter pan—it all came with a sense of resignation.

He earned his orange “use leather gloves” sticker on the front of his veterinary record file, and I was not amused. We brought this cat to the vet more than any of our other cats, combined. And just when I would reach my breaking point of “This cat must go,” my husband would note that nobody else would take such a rotten cat. He was right.

And that’s just about when the cat would heft all 16 pounds of himself onto my lap and purr. He would purr loudly, like a chainsaw, and he would root into my fleece pajama bottoms while I stroked the sweet spot between his eyes. I’d watch his ears with the tiny little tufts of fur at the tips, and my heart would soften. Then he’d roll over, and I would rub his massive, obese track of belly for another hour.

It was a tenuous relationship, but I loved him because this cat was ours.

This is the vintage, retro red velvet chair that Lambert destroyed.

Most people know that Travis and I had a blushing, two week courtship. When we first moved in together, we adopted two kittens. I suffered more stress about these cats than about the entire relationship. We could always break up, but with the cats, I was committing to be responsible for something’s life until it died.

I took that responsibility seriously, so when the yellow cat, in the span of two days, began to have difficulty breathing and moving—when he refused all food and water, I made the appointment. I made the appointment, but my husband drove him. For the first time in his life, the cat did not resist the carrier. My husband held him during the exam (probably cancer, said the vet, definitely dying), and then he held him during the process.

My husband was glad I did not go. He wanted responsibility for just his own grief in that moment, and he didn’t want me to see him upset. I understood.

Travis went above and beyond for Lambert's comfort.

The world is divided into people who appreciate pet eulogies and people who do not. I want to remember our yellow cat because for 12 years, he traveled with us. He saw us through the beginning of my relationship with Travis, he inspired songs, he made us laugh, and during the difficult times when I swore he’d pooped his last tub poop, he brought us together. You can’t choose family, Travis would say, you just have to love them through it.

A day later, the house feels empty. I claim my crazy cat lady status with this observation, but the three remaining cats don't feel like enough. Three cats, when there once were four, feels inadequate.

Our cat was a big presence in our life, but he impacted others, too. The soldier who turned up after one of Trav’s shows to tell him how often he listened to that first cd when he was stationed in Iraq. Our wedding guests, treated many years ago to a spontaneous, yellow cat-inspired song tribute of “There’s nothing like drinking from the toilet.” Condolences from friends as far away as Israel, Australia, and Greece—all who understand the impact of a pet’s death. The bar owner who was so kind when Travis cancelled his show. He'd lost a dog this week, too.

Lambert used to fall asleep, mid project.

During his life, our cat inspired music, made people laugh, brought us joy, and forced us into tolerance. Upon his death, he inspired compassion and sent that compassionate ripple into the universe of our friends and family.

That, I think, is the highest sort of life for a cat.

So rest in peace yellow cat, you were one of the good ones. We will see you on the other side.

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RECIPE #18: Toll House Cookies, Marjorie-style. 02/11/2012

Marjorie liked to editorialize, and I do, too. Note the "ORIGINAL" poised above the recipe. There may be other recipes for Toll House cookies, but this is, according to Marjorie, the first.

The implication, naturally, is that first equals best, and I am not sure that I agree. In running, prizes, and position at the DMV line, absolutely. But, I would never call my first attempt at making soufflé the best-tasting. Same for kisses, parallel parking, and manuscript drafts. Some things just need re-visiting and practice.

She continues to editorialize throughout the recipe, and even disputes the claim on the chocolate chip bag. "Although you will find the recipe for these cookies on the package of chocolate bits, stating that it is the original recipe, it is not this recipe. This is the one that was printed on a long-ago package and it is the original recipe-really."

Marjorie also likes to moralize. "Toll House cookies should be crispy and brown all through." You can just tell that Marjorie liked her cookies the way she liked them, and her own Toll House interpretation was the standard for all subsequent cookies to be judged.

(For what it's worth, life is extraordinarily better when you banish should, would, could, and ought from your mindset and vocabulary.)

I am right now imagining Marjorie clucking over the many times I have made the recipe on the back of the Nestle bag, thinking I was keeping close to tradition. "Bless her heart," I imagine her saying.

So, I was very excited to try this recipe. Ingredients into a bowl, and knowing how easy it is to overeat cookies, I halved the recipe.

Mix into batter.

Add chocolate chips.

Drop onto greased cookie sheet.

Et voila. "Et voila" is French for "Yum, they are finally done. Let's try them."

(Not really.)

Marjorie was right. These do not taste like a chewy, gooey Toll House cookie. They are decidedly crisp on the outside, with a spongy cake-like middle. Very, very tasty, but not a bit like the thick coffee house variety. Less sweet, too, which I appreciated. Not better or worse, in my estimation, just different.

My husband though, he saw a winner.

"Just like my Nana used to make."

And that, gentle readers, is what makes them the best.

While I was tasting the cookies, Tobie stepped quietly into the camera frame. It is a gratuitous pup shot, for sure, but isn't he adorable?

Challenge: What is one thing that you consider a gold standard, by which all others must be measured?