Category Archives: other blogs, podcasts, and websites

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Goat cheese biscuits

This post doesn’t have a clever title, partly because I couldn’t think of one, and partly because I figured the phrase “goat cheese biscuits” would sell itself.  This is a follow-up to my review of Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life around the Table by Shauna Niequist.  Last Saturday morning, a small contingent of our book club (only four of us could make it) gathered at the lovely home of one of our members, the same one who got us the free copies of the book, to share brunch and our thoughts on the book.  Maybe because what we were doing (eating) was for once related to the book topic, and maybe because we’d all read the book, we actually managed to carry on a sustained discussion about the book for, like, at least ten minutes.  (What normally happens in our book club is that somebody introduces a discussion, it peters out quickly, and we talk about other things until somebody awkwardly revives the topic of the book.  All this is fine with me; it’s a club, not a literature class.)

Each of us chose a recipe from the book and brought the result to share.  Although we didn’t know ahead of time what the others were bringing (well, I did; I got to cheat because I was the person who sent out all the emails about this particular meeting), the four dishes turned out to constitute a perfect, (mostly) healthy yet comforting meal for a quiet, overcast Saturday morning in the summer.  We ate Bacon-Wrapped Dates, Robin’s Super-Healthy Lentil Soup (I forget who Robin is, but she’s probably one of Shauna Niequist’s many friends), Goat Cheese Biscuits, and Gaia Cookies (named for a cafe, though you are perfectly free to imagine yourself as an earth goddess when you eat them).  The consensus was that all of these recipes were delicious, relatively simple to make, and versatile–for example, the dates would perform equally well as an appetizer at a fancy dinner, and the cookies could function as either a dessert or a breakfast.  You can see pictures of the food in this post by another book club member, whose blog is a lot more fun than mine.

I made the biscuits.  I think it would be ungracious of me to post the recipe here after receiving the book for free from the publisher, but you may be able to recreate it, or something like it, on your own, especially when I tell you that you’re basically taking biscuits and putting goat cheese in them.  I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that, but those are the essentials.  I thoroughly enjoyed preparing, eating, and sharing these biscuits.  My whole apartment smelled like butter while I was baking them (that’s another hint), which usually means something good is underway.  I do want to give you one modification and one piece of advice in order to enhance your goat cheese biscuit experience.

The modification: Niequist says that if you make golf-ball sized balls of dough, you’ll get about 12 biscuits.  I’m thinking Niequist isn’t a golfer (which surprises me; see my review), because I got 17.  Maybe she meant to say “baseballs.”  My point here is that you don’t need to skimp; make your biscuits a size that you would actually want to eat, and you won’t run out of dough.

The advice: Please reheat your biscuits before enjoying them.  They are okay at room temperature, but they are best when the cheeses (hint!) are melting.

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Another schizophrenic post

Hi, this is Tess. I just want to say, in the interest of full disclosure, that I’ve just been sorted into a house on Pottermore, and the Sorting Hat has placed me in Hufflepuff. Needless to say, I feel a bit conflicted about this decision. I have no problem with Hufflepuff. I like Cedric Diggory. I like Professor Sprout. I like black and yellow (for a variety of reasons). And I don’t believe all the slander about Hufflepuff being a house for duffers. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, the sorting has thrown me into a quandary about a lot of things–major things. Like my Ravenclaw scarf. And my identity.

But I should clarify that while Tess Stockslager may be a Hufflepuff, Penelope Clearwater is still a lifelong Ravenclaw. And therefore, nothing essential will change about this blog. So you can ease your minds about that, dear readers.

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Ghosts by Gaslight

Last night my brother Mark and I went to our second Gaslight Anthem concert, this one in downtown Raleigh’s tiny Lincoln Theater, a perfect venue for getting up close and personal with rock and roll.  On the way home, I remarked that I’ve noticed that The Gaslight Anthem’s songs are constantly referring to ghosts.  Mark added that they tend to write about radios a lot as well.  I’ll let Mark treat the symbolic valences of radios (maybe he could do that on his podcast, Does Anyone Really Need to Hear This?), but let me give you a few of my thoughts on the ghost imagery in the Gaslight canon.

First of all, it’s everywhere.  Here are just a few samples from last year’s album Handwritten:

  • “I danced with your ghost” (“45”)
  • “All of our heroes were failures or ghosts” (“Biloxi Parish”)
  • “I already live with too many ghosts” (“National Anthem”)

I’m sure a thorough or even a cursory listen through the catalog would turn up many more examples.

Invariably, these ghosts aren’t spirits of dead people returned to complete unfinished business.  In the Gaslight Anthem universe, which looks a lot like a Christian universe much of the time, the dead go On (to echo Albus Dumbledore).  This is very clear in the masterful requiem “The ’59 Sound” (“when we float out into the ether/into the everlasting arms”) and in “Biloxi Parish,” one of the few almost cheerful songs on the new album (“when you pass through from this world/I hope you ask to take me with you/or that I don’t have to wait too long”).

No, the ghosts in The Gaslight Anthem’s repertoire are memories–not mere memories, for as the songs heart-wrenchingly demonstrate, memories are powerful and, far too often, malevolent.  I can think of only one example in which ghost imagery is positive, and it’s “Biloxi Parish” again.  In that song, which I think is highly romantic, I don’t think the line “I will eventually haunt you” is meant to be sinister.  But that’s the exception.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the main theme of all of TGA’s music is figuring out how to go on living in the shadows of a devastating past–the shadow of a failure of a father, the shadow of a burned-out New Jersey factory, the shadows of girls named Virginia and Maria.

The ghost references go all the way back to the first album (“like I was a ghost in your dreams” in “Red in the Morning”) and are used to convey a number of different ideas.  For example, “Old Haunts” (which I always thing of as The Gaslight Anthem’s more depressing answer to Bruce Springsteen’s already-sad “Glory Days”) is about people who voluntarily become ghosts by refusing to move forward, always falling back on “if you’d have known me when.”  Even when they’re not using the word “ghost,” The Gaslight Anthem are singing about ghosts: “Keepsake,” the saddest song on the latest album, is about exorcising those angry memories–or, to use the song’s own metaphor, burying them deep at the bottom of a river.  Another theme addressed without explicitly employing the ghost imagery, though the allusion is certainly there, is the determination to avoid creating haunting memories for others.  This is why the speaker in “The Spirit of Jazz” asks so earnestly, “Was I good to you/the wife of my youth?”

If all these ghost lyrics were accompanied by minor keys and funereal tempos, they would be maudlin.  But many of The Gaslight Anthem’s most haunted songs are among their loudest, fastest, and most danceable.  Part of this, I think, is defiance: Hey ghosts, you can’t stop me from playing rock and roll.  But also, maybe–I don’t want to presume to read something that isn’t there–maybe there’s also some hope for what we’ll find after we hear our “favorite song one last time.”

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Oscar Resistance 2013

As you know if you followed my blog last year around this time, I have a love-hate relationship with the Academy Awards.  I love discussing them, watching them with friends in a party-like atmosphere, and competing with my family to see who can predict them the most accurately.  This year, I have a new activity to love: watching as many Oscar-nominated movies as possible in one weekend with my friend and fellow blogger Allison (allisonscoles.wordpress.com) and some other friends.  Here’s what I hate: the Academy’s narrow and outdated ideas of what a nomination-worthy film looks like.  I also bear a pointless hatred toward the practical constraints of an awards show; I wish every good movie that came out in the past year could get a nod.  Yes, the ceremony would be really long, but I would watch it!

Over the past week, I have gone to the local second-run theater to see three movies that will not be winning any Oscars this year because they weren’t nominated.  Even though I didn’t plan this “Oscar Resistance,” as I’m now calling it because it sounds AWESOME (cue that song by Muse), it will serve as a nice counterpoint to the above-mentioned event, Allison’s “Moviepalooza.”  And now I’m going to tell you about the movies I saw.

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I saw this on strong recommendation from my two siblings and my mother, none of whom are teenagers.  So I figured it wouldn’t be just a cliched teen angst movie, and I was right.  All of the main characters are in high school, but the problems they face–and this is a movie, like most good movies, about people with problems–aren’t unique to teenagers; they’re human problems.  As you can probably guess from the title, one of those problems involves finding a few people you can feel comfortable with, so that you can be okay with not “fitting in,” whatever that means.  If you’ve never faced this problem, you are one of a very few fortunate people, and you probably won’t get this movie.  If you have faced this problem, whatever your age, this movie will probably make you cry.  The carefully chosen songs on the soundtrack are a large part of that; so is the excellent acting.  Logan Lerman broke my heart (I mean that in a good way).  And if, like me, you’re a Harry Potter fan wondering how Emma Watson will fare playing an American Muggle, have no fear; she’s great.  But I do have to admit that when her character, Sam, admitted to completely bombing her SATs, my first thought was that Hermione would never do that.

2. Here Comes the Boom.  Okay, look.  I know this movie doesn’t deserve a single Oscar nomination.  But neither was it a complete waste of my time.  There is an in-between, you know.  Some movies don’t want to win Oscars, and that’s fine.  I do have a slight beef with the way Here Comes the Boom was advertised; it was made out to look like a zany comedy, and it was actually more of an inspirational teacher movie plus an inspirational sports movie, with some zany comedy thrown in.  As with most films from the above-named genres, I was asked to accept a few improbabilities, but Kevin James as a mixed martial arts fighter was actually not one of them; the guy has muscles.  Who knew?  The other notable cast member was Henry Winkler as a somewhat pathetic but lovable and very funny baggy sweater-wearing music teacher.  Between the teachers in this movie and Paul Rudd’s character in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I was just full of inspiration for my first week of spring classes.

3. Hitchcock.  Now here’s a movie that may have been trying for a few Oscar nominations.  In fact, Helen Mirren was deservedly nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as Alfred Hitchcock’s talented and long-suffering wife, Alma Reville.  Probably the reason why this film ended up flying under the Academy radar is that it isn’t a DRAMA.  There were no tears, no screaming (except when one character was getting stabbed…in a shower)–it was actually a pretty conventional love story between two people who share thirty years of marriage.  The context in which the love story takes place, however, is rather unconventional: it’s the making of Psycho, complete with quirky actors, cantankerous censors, and some trippy magical-realist scenes in which Hitchcock (you can call him Hitch; everyone in the movie does) voyeuristically observes and converses with Ed Gein, the real-life, significantly less sympathetic (mainly because he isn’t cute) version of Norman Bates.  I believe my own familiarity with Psycho helped my enjoyment of Hitchcock, but my aunt and cousin with whom I saw Hitchcock had never seen Psycho and still had a good time.  (Oh, if you’re worried about spoilers, you may want to avert your eyes frequently.  But seriously, Psycho has been out for 53 years; you have no excuse.)  As the title character, Anthony Hopkins does an excellent job, as always.  Even putting his acting aside, he deserves some props for gaining an alarming amount of weight for this role.  (I thought the Academy liked that kind of stuff, altering your appearance and all that?  But maybe they didn’t want to be seen to condone obesity.  Heaven forbid.)

Well, this post is entirely too long.  I apologize.  I invite you to join the Oscar Resistance by watching some recent films that didn’t get the blessing of the Academy.  And remember, you can be part of the resistance and still go see the nominees–I’m going to see Les Miserables next week.

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A year with Penelope

My dear readers–as of yesterday, this blog is one year old!  In celebration of this milestone, I invite you to revisit some of our favorite (your favorite and my favorite) posts from the past year.

  • My most viewed post of all time: A review and listening guide of Mumford and Sons’ first album, Sigh No More.  Hmm…maybe I should do one for Babel.
  • Post that elicited the most interesting comment: After I jokingly suggested that Penelope Clearwater Revival would be a great name for a Southern-inflected wizard rock band, a commenter who’d Googled the phrase wrote to say that she had started recording music under that name!
  • Several readers’ favorite post: Some of my most loyal readers told me that they enjoyed this zany stream of consciousness about pandas, punctuation, and Coldplay more than any other post.
  • Facebook fun: My blog made a social network appearance when my mom shared this post about two of the loves of my life, Samwise Gamgee and Neville Longbottom, on her Facebook page.  Next time you see something you like on my blog, I’d love it if you shared it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or a personal website!
  • Christmas cheer: Now that advent has begun, you might like to check out some posts from last year on Harry Connick Jr.’s When My Heart Finds Christmas, Handel’s Messiah, and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

I’d like to thank you all for a wonderful year.  I wouldn’t keep this blog going if I didn’t know that you were out there reading it.  Please let me know what topics you’d like to see me address in the coming year!

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podcast plug

A great podcast you should be listening to if you aren’t already: Does Anyone Really Need to Hear This? The Official Mark Stockslager Podcast. Despite the unpromising title, Mark really does say a lot that’s worth listening to. There’s really no main topic, but a number of themes have emerged over the course of about ten episodes; comedy, movies, The Walking Dead, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Bruce Springsteen are a few of the dominant ones. Even if you’re not into all of that, you’ll enjoy Mark’s self-deprecating humor, random vocal impressions, and refreshingly unorthodox point of view on a few of those topics.

You can subscribe or listen to individual episodes for free at the iTunes store. I recommend that you subscribe, but if you don’t have time to listen to them all right now, listen to tonight’s episode. Yes, this is shameless self-promotion–I guest-starred on tonight’s show. Mark and I reveal our top ten movie scores and top five main movie themes (musical themes, that is), plus a lot of honorable mentions.

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Read these other blogs.

I did not expect to find inspiration for my blog from a tutoring appointment I had to cover today.  The tutee, a native Korean speaker, wanted me to check her blog posts to see whether they sounded like idiomatic English.  I fell in love with her blog, banquet365.blog.com.  Despite its title, My Continual Feast, it’s not exactly a food blog, though she does occasionally include some pretty delectable-looking descriptions and pictures of her culinary creations.  In general, “feast” here should be understood in a metaphorical sense.  It’s a feast consisting of notes from friends, watercolor Christmas cards, Central Virginia foliage, good dreams, and a beloved cat.  It’s a feast, in short, of all God’s blessings.  Looking at her blog made me a bit embarrassed of my long, sometimes pretentious posts.  When I showed her my blog, I wished I had included more pictures, more recipes (told in narrative style), fewer words.  (She did say she would use my blog as “homework” to practice her English reading comprehension…not exactly what I envisioned when I started it, but at least somebody is getting some use out of it.)

This is another blog that inspires me: allisonscoles.wordpress.com.  The author of this one is a native English speaker, a very articulate one, but she manages to keep her posts simple and lovely, and people actually want to read them the whole way through.  I want my blog to be more like these two that I’ve mentioned.  Maybe that will really happen; maybe it won’t–after all, I’m me, not them.  But you can probably expect a few changes over the next few weeks.  Meanwhile, you should start following these other beautiful blogs.