A Season of Super Soup: Curried Butternut Squash Soup (week 2)

My family isn't too terribly picky about food.  Sam doesn't like spinach and Hope doesn't like mushrooms and that's about as far as the flavor dislikes go. For some reason, though, soup doesn't get the love it deserves in our house.

If I make something traditional: chicken noodle, vegetable, tomato.... they'll eat it.  But they only eat it once. Leftover soup doesn't appeal to them in the least.  Conversely, I think soup -- like chili and spaghetti sauce -- gets better after it hangs out in the fridge and all the flavors meld and intensify.  Apparently I'm a weirdo.  They also don't care for strange soups; only easily identifiable soups reminiscent of popular Campbell flavors get their vote (which is strange, because Sam loves Thai soups and Vietnamese Pho). 

Well I get tired of chicken noodle.  I want something different and since I will be the one eating leftover soup for lunch every single day, I get to pick the soups (not to mention, I'm the only doing all of the shopping, chopping, and cooking).  This week was a me choice:  Curried Butternut Squash Soup.

It is absolutely heavenly.  As a plus, it not only is chock-full of butternut squash goodness, but it also has Granny Smith apples.  Healthy, spicy, and delicious.

Apples, celery, and onions browning in a bit of butter.  Between that and the freshly roasted butternut squash, my kitchen was smelling awesome!

I didn't change a thing in the recipe, except that I didn't put cheese on top of the soup.  I'm thinking about trying this same recipe, but replacing the butternut squash with sweet potato.  I have a picture of the soup in progress, but I couldn't get an attractive picture of the after results.  Visit the Cooking Light website here for a delicious picture of the soup.   

Because I didn't adapt this recipe in any way, visit the link above for the recipe.  I don't like to type out unchanged recipes due to copyright issues.  Let me know what you think.  I thought the soup smooth but kicky (like me). 

Previous Super Soups:

Week 1 -- Chicken Stock

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

I've had The Little Stranger on my giant TBR pile since it was published in 2009.  I've been saving it for the perfect moment and The Estella Society's read-along, hosted in conjunction with Carl's RIP challenge, provided that perfect moment.

OH MY FREAKING LORD THIS BOOK WAS SUPERB!!!  I devoured the novel while making numerous notations and underlining like an undergrad English major. In fact, I'm only supposed to post about the first half of the novel this week.  Nope. Gonna post all my thoughts here at once.

The novel involves an impoverished aristocratic family (the Ayres), a doctor (Dr. Faraday), and a dilapidated English manor (Hundreds Hall) that may or may not be haunted. 

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER-TASTIC POST AHEAD!  If you haven't read The Little Stranger then quit reading this post and get thee a copy of the novel straight away.... oh yes... you must cease reading this post; I'm about to spoil the entire damn story.

I was shocked when reading reviews of The Little Stranger on GoodReads; the book has only garnered just over an average of three stars and a great many of the reviews were less than stellar.  "Trudging."  "A second-rate Susan Hill."  "Dull."  "Stereotypical."  "Bored to tears."  WTF? Were we even reading the same book?

I think the crux of the frustration with other readers is that "nothing happens."  What they mean by "nothing happens" is that this is not a stereotypical ghost story, the plot isn't neatly resolved, good and evil are not easily defined, and the evil in the house -- The Little Stranger -- is never explicitly named.  In other words, one must work at this book, read carefully, consider sources, paint together a picture of events, and then draw conclusions and hope that those conclusions answer enough questions for you to sleep at night.

Who is the Little Stranger?  I am 99% confident I know the nefarious evil in the house and I will attempt to narrow down my 500 billion examples of "proof" to a few broad indications.  Okay....super spoiler ahead:







Dr. Faraday is the Little Stranger.

My book is underlined beyond belief and I have so much to say.  I've tried to narrow this down to several broad reasons:  1) Sarah Water's writing style, 2) other books reflected in this novel, 3)the tradition of the unreliable narrator, 4) historical indicators, 5) Dr. Faraday's psychology to prove my assertion.

Sarah Water's Writing Style:
In Affinity and Fingersmith, Waters gives her readers historical thrillers.  I raced through Affinity and Fingersmith and with both novels I thought I knew what was going on. Surely everything had been presented to me.  I was there with the characters the entire time.  I saw it all.  I watched for contextual clues.... and then WHAM! out of nowhere the plot shifts and I learn I didn't know everything.  I only knew what characters wanted me to know and I only saw certain perspectives and events. However in Affinity and Fingersmith, Waters does end neatly: deceptions are illuminated, plans are discovered, and as I read on I learned that what I thought was previously happening actually represented something different.  In The Little Stranger the reader never gets that neatly tidied ending.  I didn't get to experience a montage of "what really happened."  It just ended and I had to rack my brains to figure out what it all meant. Figuring out what it all meant was achieved with....

... Remembering other books reflected in the novel:
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, We have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James,  Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels.  Many elements of these novels are found in The Little Stranger, but I'm going to focus on one element found in each one of these novels....

....The Tradition of the Unreliable Narrator: 
As a reader, I think we like to assume we can trust the narrator.  After all the reader only gets a narrator's interpretation of events and as a result the reader is totally dependent on the narrator.  If you read The Little Stranger and implicitly trust the narrator, Dr. Faraday, then there is certainly something paranormal going on.  What other explanation could there be?  All the tapping, whispers, and mysterious smudges, and -- most disturbingly-- Mrs. Ayres experience in the nursery must have something supernatural as an explanation.  But let's think about that.... it seems that she is either mad or haunted.  But.....Dr. Faraday mentions several times that he is drugging her with a light sedative and her eyes remain "glassy."  Do we know that it is a light sedative? Isn't it peculiar that the person Dr. Faraday is doctoring most ends up going mad?  Isn't also strange that he went ahead and did the autopsy and luckily didn't find traces of poison that SOMEONE ELSE could have given Mrs. Aryes?  The reader could believe that Dr. Farady was only giving her a mild sedative and that there was no further damage to her internally.  After all, what possible "gripe" could Dr. Faraday have against the Ayres... Oh wait, that entire post-World Wars demise of the landed gentry and rise of the middle class.  I think it is important to look at historical indicators to the conflict ....

.... like shifting social classes:
After the World Wars, the aristocratic British found their resources low, help was difficult to retain, buildings and land were in disrepair from a lack of money, the violence of war, and the billeting of soldiers.  The middle class resented the aristocracy and also wanted to join it.  Why should one only be born to greatness?  After serving in war next to lords, a doctor or footman or stable boy may want a chance to "make" it.  Dr. Faraday -- from the very beginning -- covets Hundreds Hall.  He ditches his slang, achieves an education and strives to be equal to the gentry. He is acutely aware when someone is looking down on him because of his class (and it usually leads to something bad happening to the Ayres) and reacts with passion, disdain, pride, and cruelty.  Conversely, he believes himself to be worthy of being in a higher class.  He doesn't want the abolition of the upper class, he wants to join them.  He is angry at Caroline, Roderick, and Mrs. Ayres when they are doing chores, or look slovenly, or act outside the sphere of class propriety.  This is one expression of Dr. Faraday's screwy psychological makeup. Yes, the reader must exam....

....Dr. Faraday's Psychology:
I could list 900 instances (and this is not that hyperbolic) of Dr. Faraday's being a delusional psychopath.  He forces himself slowly on the household, those who threaten to sell or leave Hundreds are eliminated, he constantly struggles with an unnamed "frustration", he manipulates the truth for alleged good purposes, he renders the Ayres dependent on him, he collects items from Hundreds and displays them as trophies, he exploits his trusted role as a doctor and he has unexplainable blackouts in which he dreams he was at Hundreds....  The best illustration would be a few of the quotes from Faraday I underlined:

"I told a mixture of lies and half-truths, hoping to seer them from the facts."  (236)


"'I told you before, I'm a nobody.  People don't even see me half the time.  They see 'Doctor'.  They see the bag."  (276)

"I suppose they had come to  rely on me, and liked feeling that I was on hand, ready to drop in, if I had to, in response to a telephone call." (301)

"My mind would go softly across the darkened miles between us, to slip like a poacher through the Hundreds gate and along the overgrown drive, to nudge open the swollen front door, to inch across the chequered marble; and then to go creeping, creeping towards her, up the still and silent stairs."  (335)

"I wanted to catch hold of Caroline and shake and shake her, until she saw reason."  (469)

I left out some very illuminating quotes that are too embedded in the tale and knowing Dr. Faraday's thoughts, or his interpretation of events, would ruin some of the thrill.  There are also numerous instances of other characters remarking about feeling persecuted by something malevolent and questioning what or whom they could have angered to this extent.  Periodically a character will make an allegation towards Dr. Faraday by stating that he is a "no one," of "pirate stock," and they repeatedly ask -- sometimes jokingly and sometimes not -- how did Dr. Faraday insinuate himself into the family so quickly and completely?

Dr. Faraday is able to solicit dark secrets, steer people from the truth, manipulate feelings, and adjust his emotions to fit his plans.  He is at his best a sociopath and at his worst a delusional psychopath.

This all leads back to the the title, The Little Stranger.  The term is first mentioned in the latter part of the book by another doctor; Dr. Seeley states: "Is that so surprising, with things for that family so bleak?  The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all.  Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners.  Let's call it a -- a germ.  And let's say conditions prove right for that germ to develop -- to grow, like a child in the womb.  What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps: a Caliban, A Mr Hyde.  A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away:  things like envy, and malice, and frustration...."  (389)

Dr. Faraday is a stranger to the Ayres by class.  He is outside of their world but he envies their privilege, he is frustrated by class condescension, and angered by his inability to possess Hundreds and the social respect he feels he deserves.  It harkens back to his first creeping into Hundreds: coming to the kitchen with his mother, convincing a maid to take him upstairs, slipping away from the curtain which was to hide him, advancing boldly towards the intricate plaster border on the walls, and then mutilating the house in a desperate attempt to "own" a piece of it.  As Dr. Faraday describes this event, "...in admiring the house, I wanted to possess a piece of it -- or rather, as if the admiration itself, which I suspect a more ordinary child would not have felt, entitled me to it." (3)

Personally, I feel like an evil, crazed man bent on destroying a family and possessing a house is WAY SCARIER than a ghost.  Ghosts aren't real, psychos are certainly real.  The Little Stranger pretends to be a ghost story; what better way to make a reader vulnerable and malleable to the suggestions of a trusted doctor?  In fact, the reader nearly faces the same fate as the doomed Ayreses: frightened, haunted, confused, doubting truth and all the while an insidious man is ensnaring the reader in a realm of half-truth and contrived madness.  Dr. Faraday wins.  The Ayreses are removed.  The reader is baffled and Dr. Faraday walks through Hundreds at his leisure, in a way owning a physical representation of this desire for status.

This is a book that I think will deepen with each re-reading and I look forward to visiting The Little Stranger again in the future (with the door locked and all the lights blazing of course).

Readerly Rambles: 09/05/2012

What I read:  I had promised that The Marriage Plot would get an entire post, but that was a lie... or, rather, a misrepresentation.  I am too immersed in my current reads to spend a great deal of time on writing reviews, but more on that later.  Here is a wee-review of The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides. 

I really thought I would hate this book.  I enjoyed The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, but I was hesitant to pick up Eugenides' latest.  My fear was that it would be a novel about spoiled twits having loads of sex while playing at being intellectuals and name-dropping like the most obnoxious "pretentious coffee shop boy" you can imagine.  Well... it is about spoiled twits having sexual romps and name dropping theorists, writers, and philosophers like nobody's business.  However, it is also about much, much more than that.  In the hands of less skilled author, this plot would have been mind numbingly obnoxious.  Lucky for me, Eugenides is a powerful writer; ah yes, the prose is strong with this one.

The novel is set in the late 1970s - early 1980s and concerns three young people -- Madeline (an English major with a love for Victorian literature), her friend Mitchell (a Philosophy and Religion major), and Leonard (a brilliantly well-rounded biology major).  The title of The Marriage Plot comes from Madeline's theses on marriage in the novels of Austen through Eliot, but is also a metaphor for Madeline's life as a woman academic in the late 70s.  Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar has recently been published, feminist literary criticism is growing, and Madeline struggles with balancing her life in academia with the pressure she feels to be a caring, selfless companion.  Yes, shades of The Bell Jar all over the place.  How does one marry a career and what's socially expected of women?  Madeline is smart, but she knows she isn't the unfeeling, cerebral academic and feels that her love of Victorian literature -- based on a love of the characters, plots, and writing -- doesn't jive with the current academic climate.  It is such a "girl" thing to love Jane Eyre for the story and not as a novel to be theoretically ripped to shreds and dissected by every school of literary criticism.  Madeline can sense the pressure to be dismissive and cynical of everything, but she still keeps up her love of literature.  She also sacrifices a great deal for Leonard because that is what one does for love, but her desire to be an independent scholar of literature and caring for a very brilliant, but very ill, biploar man places her in a position of having to choose between her career and her relationship.  Eugenides excells at capturing the conflict many women -- even today -- struggle with: the balance between career and home life.

Mitchell and Leonard are also equally rich characters.  Mitchell goes on a post graduation journey to Europe and eventually to India with a friend.  He is exploring religion -- and very serious about it -- and all the while pining for Madeline.  Mitchell struggles with wanting to devote himself to some higher power and empower himself to be a better person, yet he still struggles with the fact that he is a human and has human impulses and weaknesses.  For example, he bails on volunteering at one mission when he realizes he will have to clean up a grown man's feces and, of course, Mitchell is disappointed and humiliated with himself. Mitchell also yearns to be free of sexual lust, but as a young man he finds it nearly impossible and he is appalled by his inability to control his thoughts.  Leonard lands a post at a famous research facility, but his bipolar medication is at odds with his intellectual pursuits.  When he is medicated he is slow, sluggish, and lacks his brilliance.  When not medicated the brilliance returns, but at an emotional cost.  Leonard, too, struggles with aligning his dreams of research science with his medical limitations. 

Essentially Madeline, Mitchell, and Leonard are struggling because they are intellectually precocious, but lack emotional maturity or have other barriers (such as mental illness) that prevent them from achieving their dreams as they expected.  I think that this is certainly a near universal truth for most college graduates.  I may have this feeling because I remember being bright in college but an absolute idiot with emotional choices at 22 (my what a difference 10 years makes) and I work at a university and constantly encounter students who are very smart, but hampered by relationships, self-esteem issues, struggles with parents, and other concerns.  Yes, one can read and understand Kristeva, write a thesis on Dostoevsky, read Flaubert in French, and still weep over a bad break-up while eating a jar of peanut butter, get drunk and make out with an jerk, or argue parents over living with a boyfriend. 

Eugenides' ability to write such complex characters really made the story real.  I sympathized with the characters and wanted to beat the youthful egoist out of them.  The skill to write such humanly real characters takes a deft writer with keen observational powers and Eugenides certainly rises to the occasion. 

What I'm reading:  I am absolutely gobsmack in love with The Little Stranger.  I've marked my copy up with all manner of notes and I cannot wait to finish this book.  It is so so so good and I'd say it is Waters best novel.  I don't want to do anything else -- like write blog posts -- I just want to READ!

I'm also steadily working through Gone with the Wind; I'm enjoying it -- especially from a feminist perspective.  Scarlett is not a proper Southern Belle and I like her ballsy independence, but I'm most intrigued by the descriptions of life for Southern women.  Subservient, self-sacrificing, and managing entire plantations, yet most women are encouraged to eat little, swoon, and act like an air-headed ninny.  Also big on the yuck factor is that fact that Scarlett is 16 and Rhett Butler around 35 when he first "notices" Scarlett.  Ewwww... but then again, this is common for that time.  I also have an issue with the language.  I know it is historically accurate, but my skin crawls every time I read racial slurs.  It makes me uncomfortable, that whole my ancestors once owned other humans really bothers me. 

And, of course, my Harry Potter reading is trucking along.  I read a few pages before bed at night or while the kids are playing.  I'm still reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone and loving it as much as the first read.

What's Up Next:  I plan on finishing Waters, the first Harry Potter book, and the first section of Gone with the Wind this week.  Then I will start cracking on the second Harry Potter book, maybe pick-up a graphic novel or two, and plug away at the second section of Mitchell's tome. 

Happy Reading!

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten (erhm, Twelve) Fall TBR List

Today's prompt -- top 10 fall tbr reads.... I cheated and picked 12!

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters -- I am reading this one right now for the Estella Society's read-along.  I'm absolutely loving this book.  I've put it off for several years because I was waiting for the perfect time to read it.  Overcast, grey September days (despite the humidity) are perfect for this creepy psychological thrill of a book.

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton -- I love children's literature, dragons, and Victorian novels... Apparently this is all three in one novel?!  A family drama of Dickensian proportions and borrowing heavily from Anthony Trollope, this book is about a dragon family "red in tooth and claw."

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy -- I found this novel while searching for ILL books in our stacks.  I hadn't heard of this Hardy novel and, intrigued, I read the back of the Penguin volume. Compared to the novels of Wilkie Collins, Desperate Remedies concerns a young woman who is a lady's maid of a shady woman named Miss Aldclyffe.  The book promises a "...intrigue, blackmail, illegitimacy, adultery, false brides, horrifying revelations and murder."  YES!

The Haunted Dolls' House by MR James  -- MR James writes the scariest ghost stories EVER.  I will be reading these at night to experience the full creepiness, but I've learned not to read MR James when my husband is gone.  Poor Sam will have to grow accustomed to sleeping with my bedside lamp on. 

The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill  -- Susan Hill's latest creepy book, Dolly, won't be published until early October and I don't know when I'll be able to get it at a library.  I found this book via good reads and I realized that it is a Susan Hill ghost story I haven't read yet.  Something about rainy nights, travel, explorers, a ragged boy, and some creepy something behind a curtain (sorry, Sam, you'll have to check the curtains too). 

Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon -- I read Lady Audley's Secret last year and I really enjoyed it.  This novel is along the same vein -- a Victorian sensation novel concerning bigamy.  I thought I'd give it a whirl. 

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale -- I was riveted while reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and I look forward to reading this non-fiction book about a Victorian divorce complete with a secret diary filled with passion. 
 

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell  -- I read North and South in 2010 and haven't picked up another Gaskell since... I can't really say why.... I love Gaskell.  I'm planning on reading this chunkster on my Christmas break.

The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin -- Yes! More Victorian scandal.  I'm reading this because I can't wait for the film and my interest in Nelly Ternan was piqued by Tomalin's Dickens biography I read earlier this year.

The Solitary House by Lynn Shepard -- Normally I am hesitant of books that rewrite or borrow characters from literature, but I have to say the reviews intrigue me.  This is mystery novel centers on characters from Bleak House and especially focuses on the elusive and unlikable Mr. Tulkinghorn. 

Locke and Key,Vol. 5: Clockworks by Joe Hill -- This is the first comic series to really grab my imagination since Fables.  It is dark and creepy and wonderfully intriguing. 

The Warden by Anthony Trollope -- I've heard this isn't the best of the Barsetshire novels, but I'm eager to read them all and, of course, I must start at the beginning. 

Loads of good reading in store!  Once again, thanks to the Broke and the Bookish for hosting!

A Season of Super Soup: Chicken Stock (week 1)

I've been insanely busy this weekend.  Sam was booked up with tattoos (yay!) and so it was pretty much just me and Atticus at home all weekend as Hope was visiting her grandparents.  I made chicken pot pie Saturday night, ham and mac'n'cheese on Sunday night, and right now Apple-Cranberry pork loin is simmering in the crockpot (can you tell I'm eager for Autumn?).  In addition, I also made two batches of chicken stock for the freezer.  I had intended to photo document the entire process, but I had a toddler in the kitchen and while cooking I was singing "Rubber Duckie."  I can only multitask so much.

So here is a very basic recipe with some pictures here and there; oh yea...and I don't really measure:

Chunky chops are fine

 Basic Chicken Stock (adapted from Cooking Light)

• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
• a few dashes of dried parsley
• a shake or three of dried thyme
• two pinches of dried rosemary
• 4-5 lb of chicken (a whole fryer or pieces)
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped 
• 1 tsp of minced garlic ( I use the type in the jar)
• 4 bay leaves
• 2 large onions, peeled and quartered
• 4 quarts cold water

Straining... see all the color (ahem flavor) sucked out of the veggies?  The flavor is now in your broth. 

Wash and chop your veggies.  Throw 'em in a big stock pot. Rinse and pat dry the chicken and then throw it on the veggies.  Add the water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low; simmer 4 hours.  Strain through a colander into a large bowl; discard the veggies, salvage the chicken!  Cool stock to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate 6 hours or overnight. Skim fat from surface; discard fat.  Store in freezer bags or containers for easy use.

Pre-chilled and skimmed broth. 

After my chicken cooled I deboned it and used some in biscuit-topped chicken pot pie.  I have some in the fridge waiting for me to make chicken salad.  The flavor gets sorta sucked from the veggies while making stock, but I'm always appalled when recipes advocate throwing the chicken away.  Dear Lord have they seen the price of meat!

Another hint, anytime you have vegetables that are looking a bit "sad," just throw them in a freezer bag and pop them in the freezer.  Fennel, parsnips, celery, carrots, etc.... all can be thrown in the broth.  I'll be using this broth as a base for a lot of the soups I'll be making the next few months.