I hosted a Mad Hatter's tea in our garden today: colorful food, mismatched dishes, table linens and clothes. Instead of a hat I wore my wig! Idyllic weather, good times with family and friends.
I am very glad to see 47, and I am glad I'm so much better off than I was a year ago.
Click through to Flickr to see the rest of the photos, including shots of my husband, mother, brother and my children.
The menu was mostly inspired by Mark Bittman's instantly famous list of 101 simple salads.
We're having a good time hanging around Northern California, within two hours' drive of our home. River road along the levees to Sacramento, day trip to Point Reyes National Seashore, poking around Benicia State Recreation Area beach.
Point Reyes National Seashore
We also drove along the Sacramento River levee system to visit the city of Sacramento, staying on the waterfront for a night.
Keep on enjoying your summer, everybody, and stay cool and serene!
Sharon Astyk at Casaubon’s Book defends domesticity - even for intellectuals.
the idea that these things are fundamentally split - that the life of the mind happens at the computer, maybe in the garden, but never, ever, while folding clothes, seems wrong, and kind of demeaning to all of us, male or female, who would rather not have the laundry piled up on the floor.
I think the choice not to find domestic life interesting is, in fact a choice. That is, I don’t find that laundry or dishes are inherently less interesting than, say, the annual business report - we have decided they are, but because we have done so, there’s probably actually much more to be said about how to do the dishes quickly and well, or how to manage laundry well than has been. The reality is that these things matter - they take up our time and energy and money, and the flow of those things - resources, time, personal and fossil energies, are important. I keep waiting for permaculturists to start writing books about domestic management, because I think this is territory insufficiently explored and of a great deal of use. Until they do, I’ll put it on my agenda.
I have been following Sharon for almost two years, not just because she is a peak oil "doomer" and permaculturist, but because she's as interested in domestic life as she is in literature and economics and the environment. She is an imperfect domestic goddess, like me - not Martha Stewart by any means, but concerned with the laundry and the getting of food and cleaning of cobwebs.
PS I decluttered the living room today and I just feel so happy every time I walk in there. Mission: declutter every room of the house, and keep 'em that way.
I'm twittering random links, none of which have to do with the Middle East. I do have other interests (although reading Bolano's 2666 makes me think I need to write Gaza 2006 into this novel, along with Ain el-Hilweh 1982)
Food security in your town, by Bob Waldrop via Sharon Astyk.
You don't need a million to retire well.
Procrastination hack: (10+2)*5. I did this today, wrote 1,400 words or so (more, but I'm counting fiction only, not bitching, kvetching and moodling).
Fifty writing tools. The later ones look really good.
Not linked: Family storytelling night at my kid's public school. Hokey magic show, free pizza and raw veggies and juice, book giveaways. The kids were SO EXCITED. I really savor these simple down-home pleasures with the children at the public schools: the fall harvest festival with goofy games and costumes, the winter concerts with singing and poems, these family nights.
Writing group after storytelling (I didn't bring my kids, natch). We finished talking about Bolano's 2666, then read to each other from our latest work. Our host made a Mediterranean soup with feta cheese; others brought bread, salad, cheese and fruit. And CHOCOLATE. I am so fortunate.
Photo by Barre Ludvigsen, 1995
Yesterday Phil Weiss posted a report from Jeffrey Blankfort that recounted the devastation of Ain al-Hilweh during Israel's war on Lebanon in June, 1982. That invasion was one of the biggest crises of my life, and I sent Weiss a strong note about it, which he asked me turn into a post:
Mondoweiss: Americans who wonder 'why they hate us?' should consider Ain al Hilweh in Lebanon.
View of Ain el Helweh and Sidon from lower Mieh-Mieh. Photo by Leila Abu-Saba, 2008
Crunchy Chicken discusses making your own yogurt.
Here is the old-fashioned Lebanese method for yogurt-making I learned from my father. I remember he taught all our American friends to do this back in the 70s. I watched him and did it myself as a young teen. Still do every once in a while.
The Lebanese way to make yogurt involves no yogurt maker, cooler, thermos or any special equipment.
First organize your yogurt container. A glass or ceramic covered bowl or crock is best. I like those Corning or Anchor Hocking glass casseroles with glass lids, but a sturdy plastic container would do. Boil water and rinse the clean container and lid, let air dry.
Scald enough milk to fill the container - that means heat milk until bubbles form at the edge of the pot. Don't let it foam over, or heavens forbid burn it! Let cool until you can hold your (clean) finger in the milk for the rapid count of 10. About 110 degrees Fahrenheit I believe, but I never use a thermometer. (Update: Google is our yogurt making friend. Kitchen science link below says cool to 112-115; it will reach 110 when you add the starter).
Pour milk into your prepared container.
Stir up some yogurt in a cup. Let's say about a half cup for a half gallon of milk. This is the starter, which in our village we call the "rowbih." I pour a little hot milk into the yogurt, too, to bring it to temperature. You want to "break" the yogurt curds. Use a yogurt with live cultures, and don't use one that has pectin or gelatin (or anything else) added.
Then stir the starter into the hot milk and put the lid on. To keep yogurt warm, set container on a folded blanket or towel, and then wrap it up with old blankets, parka, whatever will keep it nice and warm. Let sit for 6 to 8 hours.
Over the years Americans have suggested all manner of ways to keep the yogurt warm. A haybox, if you already use one, seems like a simple solution; also I suppose a styrofoam "cooler" would also work but I have not tried this. If you already have a warming method you like, go for it. Personally I would not keep yogurt in an oven warmed to 200 degrees (F) for 6 hours - what a waste of fuel. But people do.
The yogurt should look firm and have solidified bubbles on the top. When it has set, refrigerate.
The kitchen-science, USDA-approved method. Includes non-fat dry milk powder, which many people can taste and don't like. OK it tells you to use a double boiler which makes it impossible to scorch the milk. Whatever.
For bonus points, make yogurt cheese (lebneh):
Take your fresh yogurt, leaving some aside for another starter, and put it into a sterilized muslin bag. Add salt. Tie the bag shut and hang it from an olive tree branch. (Or your sink faucet, or anyplace else it can drain. Or put it in a colander).
Let drain until it's the consistency you like, from gooey to solid. Turn out onto a plate and drizzle with olive oil. Serve with olives, tomatoes, mint, cucumbers, and pita bread. Or eat unadorned with bread. But must add good olive oil.
Alternative draining methods I have seen include using coffee filters, layered cheesecloth or even paper towels in a colander.
Your own olive oil from the tree where the lebneh drained would of course be optimal but even Lebanese can't achieve that too often. Most of them buy their lebneh in plastic tubs like the rest of us, these days.
Um-Camille listened to my aunt's song (see previous post, "Ma Tante") and told me she also had a song for me.
The first verse means roughly "Because of Leila I learned to love the night." (Leila means night...) She chats with me a bit, then sings a second verse which I don't really get, except that it's an ode to refugees who return (mhejireen), expatriates, and Lebanon. It also includes some wordplay on "zeleftoona" which I don't understand at all, but I *think* was intended as a nod to her daughter Zelfa who was sitting with us. Would any Arabic speakers reading and listening please enlighten us?
The chat includes her lament that her voice has gone. She used to have a beautiful voice, she says, and I try to assure her in my clumsy Arabic that it is still beautiful.
In looking at the pictures of her, I remember that she said to me: "You are one of us, Leila, you have our eyes, eyes just like ours." During this whole trip strangers kept telling me I looked foreign, Russian or Swedish or German. They said my friend Laura looks more Lebanese than I do. Chemo has taken away my eyelashes, my wild Arab hair, my black bushy eyebrows, even my cheekbones. But looking into Um-Camille's eyes, which look like my father's eyes, I saw that she is right, I have the eyes of our clan, and I am grateful that she told me so.
Just now on the radio (Fresh Air with Terry Gross) I heard a snippet of an American woman's story about her custody battle with her Arab ex-husband.
I'm certain that there is more to Deborah Kanafani's memoir than "I unveil the terrible way Arab men treat women" but boy, that's sure what I heard driving down the road. Maybe it's all true - for her.
But I wonder if my own story, about my feminist Arab father, would ever get a book deal or air time on NPR. It's not about scary Arab men oppressing their women and children, you see. There's no conflict, no villain, and it doesn't fit the story that sells books in America.
My father was a feminist before he came to America. He was strongly influenced by the new ideas roiling the Arab world in the nineteen-fifties: nationalism, yes, and socialism, and democracy, and the rights of women. He was determined to modernize his country, his people, and he believed that making women equal members of society was part of that. In his personal life, he tried to get his parents to keep his youngest sister in school. Later, he paid for his orphaned niece to go to a very good private school, giving her English skills which helped her support her family during the upheavals of the civil war.
When he went to America for graduate school and met my American mother, Dad found that some of his ideas were too forward for the USA in 1959. He didn't think women had to get married before having sex, for instance. My mother disagreed. Since he respected her - and all women - he didn't force his ideas upon her.
When they married, he encouraged her to start graduate school right away. She did, but decided she really wanted to have babies. So she had me, and very soon after began teaching part time. Fine with Dad. Mom always taught and did other work throughout my childhood. Then after my younger brother and I began school, she went back to grad school for her masters degree and then Ph.D.
This was the 1960s. Some of my readers don't know what America was like in the 1960s. It wasn't all hippies and Gloria Steinem. The college professors in my parents' circle (all men, with wives who mostly stayed at home and didn't work) were rather traditional fellows. My dad ruffled a lot of feathers among his colleagues, because he insisted on doing laundry, caring for us kids, and cooking meals. One of his friends got very offended when my dad bragged too much about washing his socks, and how he (Dad) washed his socks by hand and made them last a really long time. (My dad was eccentric about being thrifty) The friend told my dad that he was causing problems in the friend's marriage, because HIS wife was wondering why she had to do all the laundry?
When my mother got her Ph.D. my dad completely supported her in her career goals. We were always clear in our house that my parents made all decisions together, that they each earned money and contributed to the family finances, and that they were autonomous people who worked together in partnership as well.
Much later, in the 1990s, my mother got a teaching position at the American University of Beirut, and my dad retired from his job earlier than he had planned. He went to Beirut with her and basically kept house so she could do a very demanding job. He cooked and dealt with the daily details of life. His egalitarianism persisted - they were living in an apartment hotel, with daily maid service, but my father insisted on doing the dishes himself, before the maids could come in. He didn't want the maids cleaning after him.
As a young girl growing up, I was told that I should study and go to college and have a good career. In fact, when I did badly in algebra in 8th grade, my father got upset, because he said girls in Lebanon didn't have the same chances I did. He helped me with my homework, natch, but he also let me know that it was really important to him that I do well. He tried to be supportive of me, even when I careened about being a slacker American bohemian. Later in life, when I settled down and began putting together a more normal, grown-up career, my father encouraged me. He was so happy when I went to grad school (at age 42). He believed everybody deserves a second chance - and a third chance too.
Oh yes, and when my cousin N, a girl, wanted to come to America to study, even though she wasn't married or even engaged, my father welcomed her. N's father, my beloved, departed uncle Adib, was also enlightened, and sent N to us to get her college education. Most other fathers in our village would not do the same. The war in Lebanon had made it too dangerous for her to commute to Beirut to university, so he took the risk of sending her across the world. N became a successful computer engineer, and later married a great guy. Now her daughter is a recent college graduate with a terrific job in corporate America, climbing the ladder. This is normal now, but thirty years ago it was new, for Americans as well as Lebanese. We have to give credit to men like my Dad, who adapted with the times, and encouraged their wives and daughters to succeed.
There are more stories I could tell, but they're all positive, about what a mensch Dad was, how much women loved him, how he loved women, how he was a big hit in the lesbian community in North Carolina where they lived for years, how he loved and respected my mother. Oh yes, and how he told all the Lebanese male immigrants why they ought to help their wives with the housework, and support them in developing their own careers. It got through, to some of them, more or less.
That's it. That was my dad, the Arab feminist. The picture shows him on my 44th birthday, just after he received the diagnosis of the lung cancer which killed him two months later; he stands behind the tabbouli he insisted on making to celebrate my day.
Do you think Terry Gross will put me on Fresh Air with a story like that? Probably not. There's no story there, the editors would say. Just some guy doing the right thing by his women, a little ahead of his time. Plus he's an Arab. Who wants to know about feminist Arab men? Doesn't sell papers.
Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
Indispensable - I use it all the time, and give it as presents to brides, young people starting out, etc. Not for vegetarians only - hence the title - a great resource for anybody wanting delicious recipes for vegetables, grains and legumes. Great sauces and salads, too.
Claudia Roden: Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon
Excellent in-depth cultural and social essays on three major cuisines; the recipes include the standards as well as unusual dishes, and the photographs are gorgeous. A great gift book - the Dove asked for and got it for Christmas.
