The Book: 

As someone who once posted a scoreboard in the kitchen with the statistics Squirrels 3, Jim 0, this book had me before I even cracked the cover. And when I did, meeting Veblen Amundsen-Hovda was a treat. How can you not love a woman who makes retching sounds like she’s being strangled on the phone to telemarketers before hanging up on them? There was so much for me to love in this book, starting with the name of Veblen’s street in Palo Alto. Tasso Street was named after a sixteenth century Italian, mentally ill poet, Torquato Tasso. And what’s more fun than a dysfunctional family?  Why, TWO dysfunctional families, of course. And the squirrels. Right after Paul proposed with a big honking diamond, (so not Veblen’s style) the squirrel that had been watching them looked at her as if to tell her, “I was cut loose from a hellish marriage, and I want to meet muckrakers, carousers, the sweet-toothed, and the lion-hearted, and you don’t know it yet, but you are all of these.”

Veblen is named after Thorstein Veblen, an American economist and sociologist who was famous as a witty critic of capitalism. Veblen coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption.” Melanie, Veblen’s mother, and a huge presence in her life, was a Veblen scholar with some secrets. Veblen (the woman, not the sociologist) had come to realize that instead of looking for a love affair all those years, what she really sought was a human safe house from her mother. Veblen writes of her love for her namesake, “because he lived true to his beliefs, and committed not a hypocritical act in his life.” About Paul, her fiancé, she wonders. “Was it possible to love the contradictions in someone? Was it all but impossible to find someone without them?”

The book is about Paul and Veblen’s journey as a couple. Throughout most of the book, I thought she and Paul were horribly mismatched, but a squirrel-induced catastrophe intervened, transforming Paul into Veblen’s soulmate. Yay. She deserves one. (We all do.) I love all the philosophical musings and the descriptions of Veblen’s natural world. Nature is very much a character in the book.

THE BEAUTY:

Veblen has a very personal and unique relationship with the natural world, that is evident in her interactions with the outdoors. When she first laid eyes upon what was to become her house, “It was a warm night in September, that night… she crunched the sycamore and magnolia and locust leaves on the sidewalk. Just before she reached the end where the street met the arroyo, she passed a small house so overgrown with vines that the windows were no longer visible. The yard was neck-high with weeds and ivy and morning glory, and in the gentle air of evening she heard the flap of a tarp on the roof, laid over the old shingle.”

Sycamore                                  Magnolia                                                             Locust

Later, after Paul proposed and met Veblen’s mother and stepfather, “Spring had come. Bright-headed daffodils elbowed through the soil, yellow acacia fanned the rooftops, humming with trains of bees.”

    
Daffodils                                                                      Acacia

THE FOOD:

When Veblen first took Paul to meet her mother and stepfather, Linus, Melanie made an artichoke casserole with Asiago and bread crusts for lunch. Here is my version with some  chicken added to make it more of a main course than a side dish.

Chicken Artichoke Casserole
serves 6

3 cups chicken, cooked                                              1 tbsp olive oil
¼ cup green onions                                                   1 ½ cups Romano cheese croutons
1 cup red bell pepper                                                   1 cup Asiago cheese
1 container Alfredo pasta sauce, 10 oz.                  1 can artichoke hearts in water
½ cup mayonnaise

Heat oven to 350º F. Spray 11 x 7 inch (2 quart) baking dish with cooking spray. In 6 inch skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add bell pepper and green onions and cook 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally until bell pepper and onions start to soften. In large bowl. mix remaining ingredients except croutons. Spoon mixture into baking dish and top with croutons.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Sprinkle with additional sliced green onions before serving.

THE BOOK: 

Alexander McCall Smith’s work is my guilty reading pleasure. Thankfully, he is a prolific writer with several series going at once. I began with The No. 1  Ladies’ Detective Agency with protagonist Mma. Ramotswe, then moved quickly into the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, followed by the Isabel Dalhousie series, 44 Scotland Street, and finally Corduroy Mansions. Then there are the stand-alones, but I won’t go there now. Each time a new book is released, I feel like I’m taking a vacation with my fictional friends, and when I finish a book, I miss them, as though they are real. This latest installment of the 44 Scotland Street series did not disappoint. It had everything I have come to love from this author: cultural references, literary references, real places and events, ruminations, meditations, digression, philosophical discourse and moral dilemmas. The substance of this post will be an excerpt from the story that encapsulates the examination of the ordinary things of daily life that give our lives meaning. So many times when I read a McCall Smith book, I pause, and say, “Yes. I know what you mean. I feel that way too.”

A pair of occupants of 44 Scotland Street, artist Angus Lordie and his bride of only a year, Domenica MacDonald, have been invited to a reception to mark the appointment of the coming year’s Artist in Residence, to be held at the City Chambers on High St. At first Angus doesn’t want to go, and questions why they were invited in the first place. Domenica reminds Angus of his reputation as a portrait painter, suggesting that perhaps the new artist in residence has an interest in portraiture. Angus pooh-poohs that notion, asserting that nobody is interested in portraiture anymore. Nonetheless, they accept the invitation. The following excerpt, of which I have left out some detail, takes place at that reception. Domenica has left Angus to get them some wine, encouraging him to seek out someone to talk to. The excerpt begins as Angus turns to make his way through  the crowd that had thronged at the entrance, and I’m calling it “A Moment of Mystical Insight.”

“On the other side of the room, from the windows facing north, a view of the city revealed itself: spiky rooftops, stone crenellations, angled expanses of dark grey slate, all touched with gold by the evening sun. His artist’s eye caught the view and made him stop for a moment where he was, halfway across the room, and stare at what he saw. And for a moment he felt a strong sense of delight in belonging to this place, this city that vouchsafed to those who lived there, and to those who came in pilgrimage, sudden visions of such exquisite fragile beauty that the heart might feel it must stop. And it was his; it was his place, his home, and these people about him in a brotherhood of place, sharers in the mystery celebrated there, right there, in the City Chambers on that summer evening.”

[When Domenica returns with the wine, he tells her he just had an extraordinary experience, somewhat embarrassed. He says, “I felt as if I was being filled with something. I felt an extraordinary current pass through me.”]

“It can happen at any time,” [Domenica] went on. “We can be anywhere – out in the street, at home, climbing Ben Lawers, anywhere…and suddenly it comes to us, a sense of being at one with the world. Or it can be a sense of suddenly feeling a current of life that simply fills us with delight or warmth or…It can be anything, really.”

“You know that Auden had just such an experience? He uses it in his poem A Summer Night, but he described it later, in prose. It was when he was teaching at a school. He went to sit outside with a small group of colleagues, under the night sky, and suddenly he felt just what I think you felt a few moments ago. He had what amounted to a vision of agape, that pure disinterested love of one’s fellow man that so many of us would love to find, but never do. And he said that that the glow of this stayed with him for some days. Imagine that, Angus, you’re sitting in a deckchair under the night sky and you suddenly realise that you love humanity. Imagine that.”

He could. Now he could.

[Domenica] “Why are people so unkind to one another, Angus?”

“Because they don’t open themselves to the feelings that banish unkindness. Because when a vision of agape comes to their door they keep it closed.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Exactly.”

Happily, I too, have had moments where I felt that energy that Angus described. It usually happens in a place known for its beauty or connection to the spiritual or religious. I’m blessed to have lived on a lake for the last eleven years of my life, and have felt a close connection to the world while looking at a sunrise or sunset, or at an egret, kestrel, hawk, or heron in flight. The images are usually too fleeting to capture, but leave my heart filled with great calm and peace.

THE BEAUTY:

In the excerpt above, a view of Edinburgh at sunset is the catalyst that stirs Angus to experience a feeling of love for his fellow Edinburghers. Here is a photo from myplaceinprints.com, called “Rays Over Ramparts,” that suggests the majesty that overwhelmed Angus.

THE FOOD:

In Irene’s absence, Nicola, Bertie’s fraternal grandmother has come from Portugal to assist her son, Stuart, in caring for Bertie and his baby brother, Ulysses. In one of their conversations, Nicola tells Bertie about Proust and madeleines. Madeleines were mentioned in the last Isabel Dalhousie book as well, so it’s time to offer up my recipe for this literary cookie.

Gourmet Madeleine Cookies
Servings: 20

Ingredients:
• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, cooled slightly

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375º F. Generously butter and flour pan for large madeleines (about 3×1¼ inches).

Using electric mixer, beat eggs and 2/3 cup sugar in large bowl just to blend. Beat in vanilla, lemon peel and salt. Add flour; beat just until blended. Gradually add cooled melted butter in steady stream, beating just until blended.

Spoon 1 tablespoon batter into each indentation in pan. Bake until puffed and brown, about 10-16 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. Gently remove from pan. Repeat process, buttering and flouring pan before each batch. (Can be made 1 day ahead.)

Dust cookies with powdered sugar. A spread of your favorite jam or jelly enhances these cookies. I’m partial to homemade raspberry jelly.