Recently Read

Recently Read: Be Ready When the Luck Happens

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If you’re looking for a good book, I highly recommend Ina Garten’s memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens.” I truly enjoyed it and felt inspired enough by it to write this post. It’s one of those books where you’re sorry to see it end. But luckily, Ina Garten aka “Barefoot Contessa” is still around and we can enjoy more books from her and her wonderful recipes.

While reading, I was reminded that when my friends and I cooked for our dinner club, Ina Garten’s recipes were a group fave. And reading about her life made me like her even more!

It’s so interesting how when looking back over a career, the parts of it usually seem connected and even inevitable. But when you see how decisions were made and things happened in real time, it can seem quite random.

Her career was definitely not inevitable at all. If she weren’t so brave, curious and up for any challenge, things could have gone in a million different directions.

She was a policy wonk in Washington, D.C. before deciding to randomly buy Barefoot Contessa, a specialty grocery shop. She always loved food and entertaining and worked extremely hard on whatever captured her attention.

One of the things that I loved most was how she would always go back to a favorite saying by her husband, Jeffrey. “You never know your good breaks from your bad ones.” What seems like bad luck at first, can end up being good. And the opposite also holds true. We never know until some time passes.

Reading this book makes me want to get her first book, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which  celebrated its 25th Anniversary, with updated recipes!

And speaking of anniversaries, today is my 20 year blogging anniversary! While I don’t blog as much as before, it’s pretty wild to think about all that has happened in 20 years. It’s truly a different world.

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Image: Amazon

Recently Read: Mirrors in the Earth

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This picture is from just a few weeks ago, and oh how things have changed! Now, most of the leaves are gone from the trees. A few leaves are still hanging on though.

A few months ago, I read an amazing book called Mirrors in the Earth, by Asia Suler. In that book, I learned that there is a word for this phenomenon called marcescence. What a beautiful sounding word!

As someone with many plants at home and who is always observing plants and trees in nature, I have often seen those few leaves, hanging on despite strong winds and wondered how they were still there. As I learned from the book and what I’ve seen in life, nature can be a funny thing.

Yes, sometimes comedic, but sometimes miraculous. Things that seem like they shouldn’t be, often are and continue to be. They persist and resist. Nature has the ability to heal itself. Not that all is well with Mother Earth.

As someone who often experiences eco-anxiety, because of climate change, I felt a great deal of relief and reassurance from reading her book. It’s the kind of book that I plan on reading again. Initially I borrowed it from the library, but I may buy it, so that I can refer to it over time.

Also, so that I can help support the author. She lives in North Carolina and her town suffered devastating losses after flooding from Hurricane Helene. For the past several years, I’ve purchased flower essences from her wonderful apothecary. Now it’s destroyed and under mud. It’s hard to comprehend this destruction.

But destruction also signifies birth. Every ending is another beginning. Sometimes “darkness is that of the womb and not the tomb,” as stated by Valarie Kaur. Some plants need the destruction of fire to flourish. Isn’t that amazing? When I first learned this many years ago, I was stunned.

Fires and floods have battered humanity since the beginning. But we’re still here. There are seasons for everything. A quote from Mirrors in the Earth, adds an additional perspective.

“Just like the hemlock perched between two boulders, we came into this world knowing how to live between a rock and a hard place, to straddle this gap between what is dying and what is being born. Open yourself to the bridge that you are, and we can all cross from one side of this torrent to another. This is not the end; it is the beginning. Who you are is the gift you were meant to bring to this Earth, and your presence here is exactly what is needed for this great rebirth.”

As we approach the second term of a presidency that so many of us do not want, it gives me some comfort to think that we are the people who are needed for this time.

Recently Read: You Were Born For This

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Born For This

The plan wasn’t to finish You Were Born For This in one sitting, but the reading just flowed.

So much of my life, certain events and themes, struggles and luck were obvious and maybe inevitable after looking deeply into my chart. What an awakening!

We all like to think that we have control over our own lives. We do to a certain extent. But luck and chance play big roles as well.

I needed this book in my twenties. But if it had been available then, I wouldn’t have had the familiarity with myself to receive it in the same way. I’ve never read a book with such ease and felt such gentleness towards me as the reader.

After reading some books, I’ve gotten the feeling that they really could have been essays. However, the writers got lucrative book deals. Maybe because they had a big audience. Then they had editors who massaged the hell out of that essay to make it into a book. But it really wasn’t a book and it did not feel genuine or respectful to me as the reader.

As a writer, Chani Nicholas is the exact opposite. While reading, I felt that she was rooting for me and thinking about how I might feel as I journeyed through my life reading her words. Nicholas wrote You Were Born For This as an act of kindness to her audience.

If you are even the least bit interested in astrology, I recommend buying You Were Born For This. I’m always one for borrowing books from the library, but this book is different. It’s more personal.

To get the most out of it, you need to download your chart from her website. Then use that information to fill in the pages as instructed through the book. You’re then guided through your Sun, Moon, Ascendant and Its Ruler. These are the three keys to a chart.

Most of us are familiar with our Sun sign. That’s the most basic part of our chart and determined by our birth date. I’m a Virgo, but that’s such a small part! The Sun represents our life’s purpose.

The Moon represents our physical and emotional needs. My Moon is in Scorpio.

The Ascendant and Its Ruler is our motivation for living and steer the direction of our lives. The Ascendant is also known as our Rising Sign. Mine is Taurus and the Ruler is Venus. Venus is all about seeking love, beauty and pleasure. I feel this deep into my bones. This blog is literally my attempt to notice the beauty all around and share it. It also feels like home to me.

But wait, there’s more! Just like with real estate, there are different houses and location matters. The placement of certain planets together in one house, near each other or opposite others changes things dramatically.

The luminaries, the sun and moon, are placed well in my chart and act together helping me live out my life’s purpose. Jupiter, trines my Sun, offering some protection and luck. As a kid and throughout my life, I’ve been good at winning contests.

Jupiter is also in the same house as my Ascendant which magnifies my impact on the world. Nicholas gives the example of “a bombastic laugh” and people tell me that they always remember my laugh.

Some of my life’s challenges I see in my chart too – a Scorpio Moon is not easy. She says that I will be called to “dig deep” and “transform … pain into purpose.” Sometimes that feels like the story of my life. Seeing my chart, it’s definitely part of it.

She says, “Scorpio deals with death, loss and transformation, sometimes having the Moon in this sign speaks to not only experiencing these issues in childhood but also having them as part of your professional interest or expertise.”

When I was a child, almost an entire generation in my family died and I remember being quite aware of the loss. Also when I was a child, the town’s grade school building had structural damage, so I attended school for a couple of years at a Catholic Parish. We had recess out in the back and quite literally played among the graves. As a freelance writer and lawyer, I’ve written about end of life issues.

I could go on and on, but if you do the work on your chart, you will find You Were Born For This endlessly fascinating and return to it over and over again. Because really, it’s all about you.

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If you’re interested in another book that I recently read, take a look here.

Recently Read: A History Of Chowder

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While I haven’t done any chowder tastings lately, I did read a book about its history.

A History Of Chowder is a tiny, tiny book that dives deeply into all things chowder.

Boston Magazine says that “clam chowder (even cheffed-up clam chowder) will always have less sex appeal than fried chicken.”

Maybe that’s true. But does it matter? Is the comparison even fair? Chowder is a comfort food that reminds us New Englanders of home.

The book says that it’s not clear who created the first bowl of chowder, but does provide the earliest published chowder recipe.

Dated September 23, 1751, it’s actually a rhyming poem! Below is part of the recipe.

First lay some Onions to keep the Pork from burning,
Because in chouder there can be no turning;
Then lay some Pork in slices very thin,
This you in Chouder always must begin.
Next lay some Fish oer crossways very nice
Then season well with Pepper, Salt and Spice;

Because chowder began as a soup made at sea, it was first considered to be a masculine food. It was made by men, for men and consumed with rough manners. While this makes sense, I had never thought of chowder that way.

As different ingredients are added to chowder over time, it changes and who eats it expands. Regional variance also start happening — particularly the addition of milk and cream by some and the addition of tomatoes by others. It seems like New York and Boston never agree on anything!

A good portion of the book also analyzes how chowder ingredients are intertwined with the colonial past of this country. History brings its remnants forward. And the next time I do partake in a bowl of chowder, I will see it in a bit of a different light.

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Photo: Amazon

Recently Read: Enter Helen

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Book cover showing picture of Helen Gurley Brown sitting on a stool, wearing a red dress.

Just recently, I finished reading the book Enter Helen, by Brooke Hauser. I wanted to make sure that I wrote about it before too much time passed and I never got around to it. Which has happened with many books. Far too many books.

Enter Helen is about the life of Helen Gurley Brown, the woman who made Cosmopolitan magazine what it is today. I had no idea that before she took over Cosmo in the 1960s, it had been a literary magazine. Boy did she change it!

The magazine was suddenly all about the young single woman in the city out on the prowl looking for men. But also about fashion, style, food, work, money, travel and more. She modernized the lifestyle magazine for women after making a career for herself writing books about the same demographic. It’s impossible not to think about the appeal of Sex and the City, when reading about Brown’s life.

While Brown had never been an editor, through connections she got the job and succeeded in bringing the magazine to heights it had never seen before through a lot of hard work and determination. Sadly, it was also because she wasn’t always a stickler for the truth. Making up sources and/or compiling several people into a fictional person wasn’t a problem for her. She knew how to get advertisers and how to sell. As a freelance writer, it was especially interesting to read about the inner workings of a magazine.

By any means necessary was her motto — in my opinion in interpreting her actions. In her early life, she had no problem using sex when it got her money, work and status. She had fun and didn’t care if the man was married either. Brown didn’t consider herself pretty, but was a charmer and used her charms to get what she wanted.

Her life story is told within the context of its time. The women’s movement is the backdrop of much of the book, along with commentary by Gloria Steinem. Brown and Steinem had a complicated relationship fraught with tension based on their different takes on how women should “be” in the world.

It was quite interesting to read and surprising to see how their careers and lives crossed. Steinem did freelance writing for Cosmo and even appeared as a model. They were so different, yet had so much in common. Especially with Steinem co-founding Ms. Magazine. Quite interesting to note that both of these magazines are still around, when so many magazines go out of business.

After reading the book, there are many things that I don’t like about Brown. But I have to respect her and her accomplishments. Enter Helen is well written and researched — a truly fascinating read. I highly recommend it. A great book to add to your summer reading list!