The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

18. How is Madame DuBarry like a cauliflower?

 After a wait of almost six months, I finally scored a copy of Craig Claiborne's New New York Times Cookbook (copyright date: 1975; a very good year indeed) from PaperBackSwap. The Soups chapter was fairly thin, but fairly interesting-looking.

One that caught my eye was titled, in true old-school haute-cuisine style, Crème DuBarry. At first blush, it's a fairly standard cauliflower soup: pureed vegetable/stock base, finished with milk and a little cream. What caught my attention was the name. I'd just learned that Potage Crécy,or carrot soup, got its name from the site of a particularly nasty battle during the Hundred Years' War. Claiborne's terse headnote for this soup explained: "No one knows at what point... cauliflower and the Comtesse DuBarry, mistress to Louis XV, became eternally associated. But on any menu, a dish bearing the name DuBarry indicates the invariable presence of cauliflower."

Compare that dry bit of culinary minutiae to this far livelier snippet from the explanation given at one of my favorite food blogs, The Old Foodie:

The beautiful Jean Becu, Comtesse Du Barry was guillotined on this day in 1793, in her fiftieth year. She did not go quietly - weary and accepting - like Marie-Antoinette. In her last hysterical moments she wept and pleaded with the executioner for "Encore un moment, monsieur le bourreau, un petit moment". A sad and undignified end for a beautiful woman who had had an undignified beginning as an illegitimate seamstress but – thanks to her great beauty - rose to enjoy a powerful and extravagant life as a courtesan and the last mistress of Louis XV.

(Read the rest of the fascinating story here.)

So this delicate (honestly, as written, a little overly so) soup is forever linked to the altogether indelicate image of a middle-aged French aristocrat pleading for her life. It hardly seems fitting for such a mild (honestly, as written, perhaps a little too mild) dish.

This recipe is not exactly what I did with the soup, but rather what I would do if I were to make it again--there's a bit more punch and maybe a bit more appeal to post-1975 culinary tastes. (It also cuts out a couple of steps in Claiborne's recipe that seem, in retrospect, unnecessary.) It's a nice base recipe, though, and I'm looking forward to trying several more of Claiborne's soups... especially the Billi Bi, a cream of mussel soup that was a one-time signature dish at Maxim's in Paris. (Looks like that soup could well be the occasion for another historical digression.)

(And be on the lookout, soon, for an altogether different cauliflower soup: one with plenty of sauteed onion and garlic and ginger and some nice homemade curry-style seasonings. Maybe next week.)

Crème DuBarry
Serves eight

1 Tbsp butter or olive oil
1 small to medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
One large cauliflower, cored and broken into large florets, a few florets reserved (maybe 2 to 2.5 pounds? Claiborne's original recipe called for 3 pounds and I think that was a little too much.)
1/2 cup raw rice
1 tsp salt
3 cups milk
1/2 tsp nutmeg, preferably freshly ground
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper (start with less, then add more if you like it)
1/2 cup heavy cream
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Heat butter or olive oil in a soup pot over medium-low heat. Add onion and cook, stirring frequently, until onion is translucent, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, one minute more.

Add broth, cauliflower, rice and salt. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes, or until cauliflower is very tender. Shortly before simmering time is finished, chop the reserved florets roughly and steam or microwave them until barely tender (like 2 minutes in a steamer).

Remove from heat and allow to cool for a minute or two. Puree with an immersion blender or, in batches, using a food processor, If using a food processor, rather than pureeing the last batch perfectly smooth, pulse it until it's still got some texture to it.

Return puree to pot. Over medium heat, whisk in milk, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Bring just to a boil; remove from heat and stir in cream. Taste for salt and pepper and sprinkle chopped reserved cauliflower overtop before serving.

(And one quick note: If you had some pesto hanging around for some reason, and you were to drizzle a swirl of the bright-green stuff over each bowl of this soup, I have a premonition that the combination would be both lovely and thoroughly appetizing.)

Historically speaking, or my kids in a nutshell

So in the interests of attaining cultural literacy, the boys and I watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure tonight. Yes, possibly one of the stupidest movies of the '80s, but still fairly entertaining.

Afterwards:

Me (thinking this would be a fine opportunity for the boys to show off some of their homeschooled history whizkidishness): "So if you guys could go back in time and pick anyone you wanted to bring to the present with you, who would it be?"

Fisher: "Besides Baron von Richthofen? Ummm... probably Alexander the Great... and Pompey... and Joan of Arc, she's a pretty cool historical figure."

Rhys: "How far back in time does it have to be?"

Me: "I don't think there's a limit... who were you thinking of?"

Rhys: "Uncle Pete."

(To which he added, about 15 seconds later, "And Dinah*.")

*my parents' late, much-lamented pound-puppy wonder dog

In a world...

...without children, or at least without mine, what would I be doing? Unimaginable though it may seem, this scenario is the current Thinking Parents blog prompt.

Long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I roamed the D (history) section of McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz, I spent an awful lot of time thinking about medieval Scandinavia. So much that I wrote a long, long paper on Viking/Scandinavian influences on medieval Irish art. (It wasn't very good.) So much that I taught a class called "Vikings and Medieval Scandinavia." (It was pretty good, and a hell of a lot of fun.) So much that I wrote another paper on a hypothetical excavation plan for a hypothetical thirteenth-century cemetery. (It was pretty good, too, despite the fact that my partner completely flaked out on me, grrrrr.) So much so that my purest and truest desire was to go to grad school and get my Ph.D. in medieval studies. I was primarily interested in the program at Cornell, though the Yale program was also pretty tempting, UCLA's had a great reputation (Jesse Byock! Rock on!) and the Stanford program was right in my backyard, figuratively speaking.

So, if I hadn't gone and gotten myself knocked up, I might well have become an Official Academic. I'd be spending my days surrounded by stacks of musty library books and mustier graduate students; my summers rifling through mustier-yet manuscripts in the collections of various universities in various far-flung exotic lands (York! Oooh!); my nights tap-tapping away on exhaustively well-researched fantasy/historical novels in the vein of Guy Gavriel Kay, which I would have to publish under a pseudonym so as not to taint my Serious Scholarly Reputation with something as low and tawdry as, y'know, popular fiction.

Also, I'd probably have more books, more cats and more of a drinking problem.

So what would you be doing, were you sprogless and fancy-free? Check out some other interesting responses here.

*Edited to add: Damn. It seems like I'm the only homeschooler in the whole wide world who wasn't really technically planning on having kids. Seriously. Wow. Do I feel like a bad parent now. Um... kids, if you're reading this, which you shouldn't be: even though I had no intention of having you, I'm sure glad you're here now. You guys rock. And you're probably way more interested in all things medieval than 94% of my undergrad students would've been anyway.

**Edited again to add a link to Janet D. Stemwedel's thoughts on the difficulty, or near impossibility, of simultaneously balancing motherhood and an academic career. I especially like this part:

My mom told me a story about going to her 20th college reunion some years ago. She was struck by how many of her classmates seemed only to be able to have two out of three at a time of career, marriage, and kids. The women with solid marriages and careers had opted out of having kids. The women with careers and kids seemed not to have been able to make marriages work. And the women with kids and happy marriages could maybe squeeze in a job, but nothing they described as a career.

What do you think?

You bring questions, I bring answers...

...you bring cake, I bring tea. And we'll all snuggle up together in the cloudy dark and, as promised, I will tell you about what you wanted to know, but maybe not enough of it, and maybe too much, and I might mention the wrong bits and leave the wrong bits out.

Anyway: it looks as though most of you are interested in hearing about homeschooling, and also about red wine, and even cats, and there was one oddling among you who wants to know what I'm wearing. (Doc: jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt with a black t-shirt over it. Socks, no shoes. Foxy!)

So, duly:

Homeschooling, our routines thereof, and our political opinions pertaining thereunto.
"Routine," unsurprisingly, is not a word upon which our family particularly thrives. We have really nothing resembling a daily routine, but we do have something of a weekly rhythm.

• Monday. Miss Eryn, our capable and game-for-anything nanny (Yes! We have a nanny! Two days a week! So Mama can work, and Papa can work too!) arrives at 10 a.m. sharp. This is the one day of the week when, without fail, the boys have some "book work" to do. Fisher works in Wordly Wise, a vocabulary development program that he doesn't seem to hate too much, and Rhys works in Explode the Code, a phonics-ish program that he actually seems to enjoy. Each boy does a little bit of math. Fisher usually has a puzzle, a brainteaser or a page of standardized test prep to work on. During the term at Village Home, Rhys has a few pages of homework for his Math Fun-damentals class. Once their workbook stuff is completed, they usually go to the park/the zoo/the coffee shop where Eryn works/for some other entertaining excursion. Sometimes they do science experiments. Sometimes they hang around and play with Legos. Eryn is here until 4 p.m., and after she leaves, the boys and I just kinda hang out depending on how much work I still need to get done.

• Tuesday. A day of flux and adaptability! Which usually means that I have lots of work to do, the house needs to be cleaned (Tuesday is sheet-washing day) and the boys are pretty much left to their own Lego-centric devices all day.
   
• Wednesday. Miss Eryn returns! Today, the boys have classes at Village Home: Rhys' are math and "Messy Science," Fisher's are Nature Detectives (with the indomitable Miss Misty!) and art. Afterwards, they pretty much always go to OMSI for a couple hours of science-based fun.
   
• Thursday. More Village Home, this time in the company of Mama! We listen to audiobooks on the way there and back again; right now, we are listening to (and thoroughly enjoying) Gombrich's A Little History of the World. I can tell the boys are paying attention because now they pretend to be such figures from history's great pageant as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Spartacus and Nero. (Guess who always has to be Nero. I need to get that kid a fiddle... no, I don't think we need anything burning.) How come nobody ever wants to be Lao-Tzu? Each of the boys has a fantastic multi-age, multi-disciplinary class today; Rhys' focuses on countries of the world, while Fisher's theme last term was holidays & celebrations around the world. Fisher also has a drama class which involves indescribable amounts of silliness... but he loves it, and he's got to be silly sometimes, right?
   
• Friday. A day of jolly family togetherness! We usually go to the library on Fridays--usually to the North Portland branch, but sometimes all the way down to Central Library. The boys inevitably bring home stacks of Calvin and Hobbes books, plus oodles of nonfiction on whatever their current object of obsession is. (Currently for Rhys, it's Vikings and animals. For Fisher, World War I. For both boys, ancient Rome, especially Pompeii. We've spent the last couple months reading aloud the Roman Mysteries series at bedtime, and hey, who doesn't like plaster body casts and pornographic murals? No, we haven't looked at the pornographic murals together. That's for Mama and Papa only.)

• Saturday & Sunday. These days used to entail extra-jolly whole-family togetherness, but Jim is going to be working every weekend starting in April, so the boys and I will be left to our own devices. Whatever shall we do?

I realize, after writing this down, that our "rhythm" sounds remarkably loosey-goosey... and yeah, maybe it is. But one of the greatest things about homeschooling is the freedom it offers to put aside schoolishness and all that entails--textbooks, tests, attendance sheets and grades--and focus instead on learning whatever, wherever, whenever we choose. And we will wax poetic about all that stuff after the jump, 'cause there are lots of accompanying pics. Also some more stuff about cats and wine.

Happy Prohibition Repeal Day!

On December 5, 1933, after thirteen years of what Herbert Hoover called "the noble experiment," Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Prohibition Repeal Act. His signature officially ended the reign of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which had prohibited "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes."

Though anti-alcohol activists and temperance societies (most famously, the Women's Christian Temperance Union) had predicted that Prohibition would usher in a new golden age, free of poverty and vice, the opposite proved to be true. Organized crime, a minor concern in even the densest urban areas before the 1920s, became a major force from coast to coast. Gangsters and thugs acquired a new glamour, and "the feds" became objects of fear and contempt. Prohibition did little to curtail drinking, especially among young people and fashionable society. As Al Capone said, "When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality."

After thirteen years of spiraling crime rates, and with the Depression weighing heavily on American society, even former ardent Prohibitionists such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had become disillusioned with the movement and its failures. Rockefeller wrote, "When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognised. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before."

Roosevelt campaigned on a platform of economic and social reform, including the promise to repeal Prohibition. He kept his word, and the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified just a year after his election. A long national nightmare was finally over. The Constitution, by virtue of its flexibility, had been adapted to correct a serious mistake.

Yet even today, seventy-four years later, the Prohibitionist mindset persists in America. This is the thought pattern that continues to bring you such winning ideas as abstinence-only sex education, mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and opposition to needle exchange and condom giveaway programs. Apparently, Prohibition wasn't a serious enough failure--or, more likely, our historical memory isn't good enough--to teach us that outlawing personal vices does little or nothing to get rid of them. Rather, it simply drives them underground, creating a shadow economy and underground culture which are made all the more damaging by their secrecy.

But enough of the serious politicizing. Join me today in raising a glass to FDR and the end of Prohibition... and enjoy these alcohol- and temperance-related tidbits while you're at it.

Best old-school style drink: the Sidecar. Invented in Europe near the end of World War I, it offers the irresistible opportunity to drink up like a flapper. It's a simply delicious blend of sprightly spirits. Just combine equal amounts of Cognac (or brandy), Cointreau and lemon juice, and serve up in a martini glass with a well-sugared rim. (Thanks to Chelsea, of the late lamented Cafe Biltmore tapas bar in Grand Junction, for introducing me to this tasty treat!)

The Women's Christian Temperance Union, despite their rather unfortunate focus on Ridding the World of Vice, was actually a pretty cool organization in some ways. They promoted civic involvement and suffrage for women and managed to get many middle-class housewifely women interested in the fight for women's voting rights. Their early leader, Frances Willard, was a fire-breathing Methodist who, after many years spent crusading for temperance, had a change of heart and decided that unbridled capitalism, rather than drunkenness, was at the heart of the world's evils. Then she moved to England and shacked up with Lady Henry Somerset; and, one hopes, developed a nose for fine claret and port. Rock on, Frances; I hoist my glass to you.

The WCTU lives on! Now "the oldest continuously extant non-sectarian women's organization in the world" (per their Web site), they are still seriously down on drinking. And smoking. And pornography. And, sadly yet unsurprisingly, gay rights. They were alive and well in 1962, too, as this extraordinarily funny article from Time makes clear. (The "hour of social freedom" is a ritual I predict my household will not adopt.) Now, they're just kind of a low-rent Concerned Women for America. Except I think the WCTU still only allows, y'know, actual women to join.

Good places to celebrate Prohibition Repeal in North Portland: Billy Ray's Neighborhood Dive (or, as Jim and I call it because of the large neon sign out front that is the only verbage about the place: "Tavern." The most metal bartender in PDX works here.) on MLK and Sacramento. Lupa on Mississippi (I've written about Lupa before, yeh?). The Florida Room on Killingsworth (my brother: "There are a lot of lesbians in here." Me: "Yep.").

How we're celebrating Prohibition Repeal, since we have neither a babysitter nor sufficient funds, yet still possess a backlog of tasty wine: A 2005 Seghesio Cortina Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, I think.

Hooray for democracy and rationality! Cheers, y'all.

Tid-bits

• "Party People": Parliament's most boringest song. (Which is kind of like saying that you went to Rick James' most mellowest party, but hey, whatev.)
• Speaking of parties: nobody threw one like the Hellenistic Alexandrians, apparently. During a giant civic procession staged in the 270s by Ptolemy II, "...[A]ctors and masses of women joined officials...dressed as satyrs in a show which included scenes of Dionysus' drunken return from India, the figure of Alexander, and an enormous gold phallus, 180 feet long, covered with ribbons and tipped with a large gold star."* Where, oh where, can I hire one of these last for our next holiday bash?
• Rhys: reading. "Go, Dog. Go!" remains a favorite, joined of late by the Word Bird series... and, of course, Lego Magazine.
• Fisher: reading (nothing new) and drawing up elaborate plots for the robo-mechanical domination of the world (also nothing new). He's cranked through the Harry Potter books again--he and Jim are reading them simultaneously--and he's now revisiting the Lemony Snickets. Any suggestions on how to get him to pick up a book he's not already read would be most welcome.
• Science marches on: A fossil of a Miocene whale--possibly of an entirely new genus--was unearthed by a group of amateur paleontologists along the Oregon coast last week.
• Most fun quote from a hip-hop song ever: "Whoop! Whoop! That's the sound of the police." Just try to stop saying it.
• Dangerous diversion: creating your own free ringtones with Audacity. Jim is now the proudish owner of brand-spanking-new "Paranoid Android" and "Knives Out" ringtones, while I kept it simple with Beck's "Truckdrivin' Neighbors Downstairs." Now I just need to find someone to assign it to. 'Cuz it's not quite good enough to dethrone Amy Winehouse's "Rehab," which earns me a funny look every time my phone rings in the grocery store.
• How you know your kids are getting properly exposed to D&D: Rhys comes upstairs and asks "What's the difference between an ogre and a troll?" Fisher grabs the Monster Manual and says "Let's find out."
• Halloween: Fisher is a bandit. Rhys is a... well, can you guess?
  
  All costumery 100% homemade, which rocked. Thanks, Papa, for being the wardrobe master! Hooray for UHU glue, which bonds plastic cups to cardboard box with notable success!
• Never rains but it pours: Should probably return to pursuit of deadlines, which I've been composing this post by way of avoiding.
• Eternal bloggery: I want to write a brief monograph on the topic of Constraint as a spur to Creativity. Would you read it?

*Robin Lane Fox, "Hellenistic Culture and Literature" in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ancient Greece and the Hellenistic World.