October 2018

The Last of the Summer Herbs

Yesterday I went out one last time to snip herbs from my garden. A few more sage leaves; some oregano, as soft and shapely as a squirrel’s ear. Then three woody spikes of rosemary, and the last of the spearmint.

I dry herbs in the simplest manner possible: in bowls and colanders set out on the kitchen counter or on the dining table. Sometimes I strip the leaves first; at other times I wait until the stalks have dried and the leaves are easy to crumble from them. I store dried herbs in the same glass jars my mother saved her herbs in; a source of solace not only in the memory of these same jars lined up in her kitchen, but in the act of saving some of the very same herbs she gave me years ago as cuttings.

My mom’s herb garden was compact but ornate. Lined with granite cobblestones, it was divided diagonally into sections organized around an ornamental fountain and a narrow cross-shaped walkway, and in it she grew dozens of varieties of herbs, many of which she divided or took cuttings from to start me on my first herb garden. For several years I grew herbs in a round garden divided into sections like the spokes on a wheel, but because our garden is currently too shady for most herbs to thrive at ground level, over time I have shifted my herbs to containers grown on the various balconies and decks of our house, where they thrive in sunlight or dappled shade according to their needs, and where I can commune with them all the hours of the day.

Every year the variety of herbs I grow increases: this year’s plantings included basil, lemon thyme, sage, oregano, marjoram, tarragon, pineapple sage, parsley, cilantro, dill, mint (spearmint and a potent, large-leafed mint labeled ‘Mohito Mint’ at the garden centre), rosemary and chives. And while in past years I have simply mourned the loss of my garden with the first frost, after my mother died I resolved to preserve as much of the summer as possible. Last year I dried half a dozen varieties of herbs, and managed to save just enough lemon thyme and tarragon (the herbs I use most in cooking) to last through the winter, but this year I made batches and batches of basil pesto, a batch of mint jelly, two batches of lemon verbena jelly, dried everything else I could to store in jars, and hung lavender to scent the house in winter. Tomorrow I plan to make chive butter, and then I won’t have to weep over the first hard frost.

Next year I plan further expansions to my herb garden. More lemon thyme, basil, parsley, tarragon, cilantro and dill for sure; and for the first time in a decade I would like to grow borage, an herb I love not because it is useful in cooking (it is mainly a medicinal plant), but because its drowsy heads of star-like purple flowers attract clouds of bees. More lemon verbena. More mint. More of everything, as soon as it becomes possible to set new plants into the warming soil on a spring day.

But in the meantime, harvesting and drying the last of the summer’s herbs is a kind of prayer, and every time I use these herbs during the winter it will be in thanks for the gift of the growing season and in faith of light returning to the hemisphere.

 

 

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A Read of The Girl’s Own Annual (1907-1908) and an Inadvertent Critique of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls (2016).

At the 2018ย University College book sale I bought this 1907-1908 volume of The Girl’s Own Annual, a bound compilation of the preceding year’s weekly issues of The Girl’s Own Paper.

The Girl’s Own Paper was a weekly and, later, monthly, publication produced between 1880 and 1956 for older girls and young women. Its founder and first editor, Charles Peters, is described as having sought “to foster and develop that which was highest and noblest in the girlhood and womanhood of England.” After Peters’ death late in 1907 (an In Memoriam is printed in the 25 January 1908 edition of the Paper); his successor, Flora Klickmann, saw the Paper through the First World War and the important social changes that followed, including women’s suffrage. Scholarly work on The Girl’s Own Paperย notes that Klickmann’s editorial influence became apparent early on, especially in the form of an increasing (if somewhat ambivalent) emphasis on the changing roles of women in the early decades of the twentieth century.

At the same time, even under Peters’ directorship (at least in the volume I have), women, their lives, well-being, interests and work are valorized in ways that seem to go beyond commonly received late- and post-Victorian notions of the proper place of women. I found it both a surprise and delight, for example, to discover an article titled “How to Become a Lady Librarian” in a 1908 issue of the paper. The article notes the scarcity of training and opportunities for women librarians in England, and laments that even well trained women “have been unable to find employment at the same rate of payment as men.” It goes on to indicate the proper rates of pay women librarians may reasonably expect, and makes suggestions about where to obtain training, including at the London School of Economics. At its close, the article lists “public libraries controlled by women,” among them Manchester College at Oxford.

“How to Become a Lady Librarian” is far from the only article offering career advice. “A New Employment for Women” offers recommendations on obtaining training and suitable employment for teaching hearing impaired children. It also indicates the salary range a qualified teacher may expect to be paid. Another article, “A Strange College for Women Workers,” describes bee farming in detail, including set-up costs, and observes, “[i]t would take more nerve than the average “mere man” possesses to allow from 25,000 to 30,000 bees to roost on his bare arm and make themselves at home; any yet, at the Luton Bee College, women students think nothing of this performance.” “How I Became a Lady Doctor” describes one woman’s progress into the profession; in it the author, Doctor Penelope Smith, concludes that the greatest difficulty facing qualified women doctors is not ability but unequal access to hospital experience: “To gain a wide experience hospital practice is absolutely necessary,” she writes, “and it is in the deficiency of opportunities for this practice that women are placed at a disadvantage as compared with men; not in the training, nor in their capabilities for mastering the details of their profession.” An essay on portraitist and illustrator Marcella Walker describes her work (exhibited at the Royal Academy, reviewed in the Academy Review and published in the Illustrated London News) as a rebuttal to those who “assert that women have no originality, and merely follow and copy men in art.”

Swatting at much more than a tennis ball.

The volume is still, of course, evocative of its era. Young women are urged to take care of their skin, lest it become reddened and wrinkled with work. Readers are invited to participate in physical activity, but (horrors) not in any way that might masculinize them. An otherwise charming illustration of a woman playing field hockey, for example, has the admonition captioned to it: “Avoid all excess in the field games which are suitable only to sporting men.” Every woman pictured is white (although The Girl’s Own Paper was circulated throughout the Empire), in good health, and visibly representative of her upper class (or upper class-aspiring) upbringing. The amassing of a “White Trousseau” receives treatment in a number of issues, as does an ongoing series called “How a Girl Should Dress” (properly, with full skirts and gloves and enormous hats; restrictive, and yet: how I long to have at least one similar costume).

While browsing the Annual, I have felt wistful for two reasons. The first is that my mother would have loved it. We shared a fascination with the sometimes ephemeral traces of everyday life found in old newspapers, letters, paper crafts and magazines, and would spend hours poring over all these sorts of documents whenever they came to light. This Annual is one of the richest such resources I have encountered in years, and I wish so much that we could share it. She would have loved the quirky essays (and their quirky titles), like “Methods of Travelling Used by Women from Early Times Down to the Present,”ย “Fire-Lighting Without Sticks,”ย “Insects Mentioned in Shakespeare,”ย “Familiar British Seaweeds,” and perhaps especially, “Book-Binding for Girls.”

The second reason I feel wistful while reading the Girl’s Own Paper is because, despite its implicit snobbery and adherence to vastly outdated conventions, there is also something empowering in the articles and stories in its pages. Women, it says repeatedly and in many different ways, have value. Women’s pursuits and work have worth, whether they involve sewing, cooking, writing, playing music or caring for others–or pursuing higher education and working in demanding fields. An older girl or young woman reading its pages would have reason to feel encouraged, not only by the things articles suggested she could do if she chose, but by the histories of other women who have done them, too.

Annuals featuring improving stories for girls have fallen mostly out of favour, even in the United Kingdom where they could once make a publisher’s year, but some months ago I received a copy of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (Penguin Random House, 2016) to give to my daughter. The book was received with wild enthusiasm by reviewers, spurring a sequel, but in our household it was met with a muted “meh.” The book is subtitled “100 Tales of Extraordinary Women,” and this, I think, is at the heart of the book’s problem. It is not that the women profiled are not extraordinary, and it is not as if this kind of book is not desperately needed: it is.

But even its dedication makes demands of its young readers: to be rebels, first of all. And immediately afterward, it suggests that the things girls do already are not enough: they must “dream bigger, aim higher, fight harder,” and live with the conviction that they are “right.” Most of the women profiled in Rebel Girls are wonderfully chosen, and I do love the profile of American Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But the narratives return, over and over again, to how extraordinary they were or are, and how unusual their accomplishments. Very few of the narratives directly invite the reader to consider herself capable of doing the same kinds of things. Sadly but perhaps revealingly, one of the few stories that does so is the one about Virginia Woolf, which discusses her depression and acknowledges the possibility that even rebel girls might sometimes be sad. Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek is quoted as saying, “You are beautiful. It’s okay to be quirky. It’s fine to be shy,” — but her important message seems to be drowned out by so many injunctions in the other stories for girls to be aggressive, competitive and attention-seeking. After 200 pages of superlatives, the reader is, at last, invited to “write your story,” but it seems to me that by this time, after so many pages of genius, originality and victory, especially those in which systemic barriers to women’s flourishing are subsumed beneath narratives of individual strength, more than a few readers might feel deflated. I certainly did, and I am an exceedingly determined person who has beenย standing for something for nearly three decades. My daughter liked the book, but found the stories hard to relate to.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girlsย reminds me of the response to the 2016 all-woman remake of the popular 1980s filmย Ghostbusters. Although the remake was fun to watch, it was essentially mediocre; basically on par with most remakes, and slightly better than a typical sequel. But public response tended to be sharply divided between those (whose testicles seemed to shrivel at the sight of a woman wielding a proton pack) who insisted it was the Worst Film Ever, and those (mostly women) who insisted upon its virtues. It seemed impossible for anyone to simply say out loud that it was a fun but essentially mediocre remake–because women in film, like women in public life, cannot afford to be mediocre.

In this context, the overwrought exhortations of “extraordinary” women’s greatness in Rebel Girls seem to me to undermine the book’s very good intentions. Indeed, ultimately the book’s message seems somehow indistinguishable from diet and ‘wellness’ marketing campaigns exhorting girls and women to be ever thinner, sexier, more feminine–and ever more obedient to always arbitrary, always external injunctions about how they must look and live. It seems to me, especially in the era of the ‘crisis of the mediocre man,’ that women should not always have to overcome the social (and political and economic) deficit of being women in a sexist society by being deemed geniuses, heroes, winners or leaders. Very good women actors should be able to star in mediocre films. Ordinary girls and women should be counted, too, whether they are ‘rebel girls’ or not.

This is something, oddly enough, that The Girl’s Own Paper seems to have gotten right more than a century ago. Despite its conventionality and essential conservatism, its pages reinforce the perspective that every girl, and every woman–not only those deemed “extraordinary”–is special and has worth, and that every girl and every woman has the capacity to stand up for herself, and for others, and has the right to contribute to both private and public life and to make herself heard in both worlds.

I suppose I am hopeful that the Rebel Girls franchise will eventually get to the point of unpacking some of the contradictions in its narratives. On the way, its authors could do worse than read a century-old volume or two of The Girl’s Own Annual.

A Read of The Girl’s Own Annual (1907-1908) and an Inadvertent Critique of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls (2016). Read More ยป

Eggplant Stuffed Conchiglie with Zucchini and Spinach

Eggplant stuffed conchiglie with zucchini and spinach is my favourite dish. It emerged out of a double need: first, to create a delicious, meaty-tasting vegetarian dish, and second to fulfill all the nutrient cravings I feel during the colder months when good fresh greens are harder to obtain.

The combination of eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and spinach is very healthy and wonderfully hearty, especially when combined with a carbohydrate like pasta, and topped with melted, gooey cheese. The savoury goodness is likely to convert (or at least subvert) most people who claim they do not like eggplant, or zucchini, or mushrooms, or even spinach, because they merge into a rich flavour that amounts to much more than its separate parts.

This dish is a little labour intensive to prepare, but is worth it for a weekend dinner or gathering. It is worth making the tomato sauce from scratch because the flavour is richer, and there are no preservatives and less sodium to contend with (it also takes less than five minutes to prepare). Stirring garlic and (lemon) thyme with olive oil and frying it before mixing it into the vegetables adds depth to the dish.

I do save work by using a small jar of commercial tomato pesto sauce (President’s Choice Splendido tomato pesto is excellent, and widely available at Toronto-area No Frills grocery stores, and probably further afield as well; in the winter I use it as a base for quite a few pasta dishes — and suspect I’m not the only one, because in the middle of the winter it tends to sell out quickly). And I never salt and drain eggplant as many recipes suggest, allegedly to reduce bitterness. I’ve read it is not necessary to do so with most eggplants, and mine have never turned out the slightest bit bitter. I also don’t peel eggplant (or zucchini, or pretty much anything else); most of the time, I think doing so is unnecessary and wastes nutrients (and fibre, for those so concerned).

This dish had its origins in a vegetable lasagna recipe published in The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook (by America’s Test Kitchen, 2015). The original recipe included squash, which I love in almost any form but do not find works well in a lasagna or pasta dish. One weekend day last winter I had a craving for eggplant and spinach, and decided to use the original recipe as a base for invention. I used conchiglie because I am not a huge fan of lasagna noodles and because my first experiment with cannelloni ended in frustration (those things are hard to stuff!). Two things I’ve retained are the tomato sauce recipe, which is excellent, and the suggestion to mix garlic and thyme with oil to saute and then stir in with the softened cooked vegetables.

In the colder months I make this dish at least once every couple of weeks. It’s wonderful at the end of a cold day, and I don’t think anyone who has tried it has not loved it.

Print Recipe
Eggplant Stuffed Conchiglie with Zucchini and Spinach
Prep Time 40 minutes
Cook Time 25 to 40 minutes
Servings
Ingredients
Prep Time 40 minutes
Cook Time 25 to 40 minutes
Servings
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, stir together canned diced tomatoes (crushed tomatoes work well, too), fresh basil (and/or other fresh or dried herbs, such as tarragon), 2 to 3 cloves of crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes. Set aside.
  2. In a small dish, mix together olive oil, 2 to 3 cloves of crushed garlic, and thyme or lemon thyme. Set aside.
  3. In a large pot filled with water, boil conchiglie until cooked al dente, about eight minutes. Drain and set aside to cool.
  4. Chop eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, and onion. Saute together in olive oil in a large skillet at medium heat until softened and cooked, about ten minutes. Open up a space in the middle of the skillet, and pour in olive oil infused with garlic and (lemon) thyme. Heat mixture until garlic is softened and oil is aromatic, about one minute. Stir together vegetables with garlic mixture. Stir in pesto sauce. Stir in spinach until wilted. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat.
  5. Into a large, shallow baking dish (a lasagna pan works well), pour 1 to 2 cups of tomato sauce. Pour in 1 cup of table cream or milk and stir together with the tomato sauce.
  6. With a spoon, fill each conchiglio (jumbo pasta shell) with some of the eggplant vegetable mixture and set in a single layer into the baking dish, open side up. A full package of conchiglie (jumbo shells) filled with the vegetable mixture should approximately fill a typical lasagna dish. Dot shells with remaining tomato sauce, and top with shredded mozzarella (and/or cheddar and/or Parmesan cheese). Add salt and pepper to taste. Top with additional herbs (fresh basil, lemon thyme, tarragon) if desired. Bake in oven at 400 degrees until cheese is melted and dish is bubbling, 25 to 40 minutes. Cool and serve.

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