shutitdown: taking one for the anecdote
May
12, 2008 When I was in elementary school, I found my two favorite authors the same way. Both of them had covers drawn by Edward Gorey, a gothic-style illustrator who is best known for his morbid work detailing the gruesome deaths of children. We had an anthology of his work at home, which I would pore over, aghast, and have since stolen from my parents.
John Bellairs and Joan Aiken both had Edward Gorey drawings on their covers, and I bought both of their books initially based on this fact. As a hopeful writer, this sort of frightens me, because I've been told that writers have almost no input on the covers of their books. Especially for youth, the covers are more important than anything else. John Bellairs wrote spooky mysteries about orphaned boys exploring gothic New England and there was a fair amount of magic involved, but spooky magic, not geeky magic. I re-read two of them while I was home, and they weren't as great as I had remembered, but were still pretty wonderful. I remember in around fourth grade that I used to come home from school and make myself a pot of Top Ramen and read John Bellairs. I had some theory about these two things going well with one another. Despite slightly matured taste in both literature and foodstuff, I can't say that I was wrong.
Joan Aiken was my favorite author as a child, hands down. So much so that when I was thinking of moving to London, I had a serious look at real estate in Battersea because of her book titled Black Hearts in Battersea. I'm not kidding. Aiken wrote fiction for children that imagined an alternate history of Britain under the rule of James II. As a California-educated tot, this was my first and practically only exposure to the English monarchy, and was very confused in later life to learn that the Hanoverians had won and that the Romans never invaded the Americas.
In retrospect, Aiken's books were so rich and wonderful that I'm shocked that so few people my age had ever heard of her. Maybe it's an America thing, but I've never met anyone that has read her books. In fifth grade I got a copy of The Stolen Lake and after hurdling through it, wrote on the inside cover, "The Best Book in the World" and my name with a flourish. I even went on our local radio station's book show, on the week that they featured kid's books to review The Stolen Lake. I remember having my mother coach me beforehand on the pronunciation of "Aiken" and "Dido Twite," the main character. In my head, I had been calling her Dee-do.
I've re-read Aiken's books, and I still love them. Just a few years ago she released two more in the same series, The Wolves Chronicles and somehow I found out and got them. I pre-ordered the last one. I didn't even realize that Aiken was still alive, but was delighted that more of these books were coming out. It was only this week, when going through my childhood books and doing some subsequent Googling that I found out that she had passed away before the book I had pre-ordered was released. This made me sad. I loved her books so much that I wish I had written her a letter telling her so, or sent her a recording of my radio plug for the series. Somehow I managed to write to Corey Haim and join his fan club, but not to Joan Aiken.
During my time-wasting, I also found a picture of Aiken, and she looks very different that I think I would have imagined, but absolutely perfect. She looks like a tough-talking, no-nonsense English woman who would write books for children that were absolutely beyond their comprehension and yet completely and utterly absorbing and thrilling. I'm going to read The Stolen Lake again, and then on to my next favorite, Dido and Pa.
I just looked up this series on Amazon and saw that although most are out of print in the US, they are all currently in print in the UK. Which is, of course, great news for nerds like me. Most interestingly, some of theme appear to be really popular on this side of the pond. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is even taught in schools over here! The sad news? They've given them all new, matching covers and done away with the Edward Gorey drawings that had originally lured me into the series.
Links:
Joan Aiken, John Bellairs and Edward Gorey
Wikipedia - Edward Gorey
Wikipedia - Joan Aiken
Wikipedia - John Bellairs
Guardian Article about Joan Aiken
Black Hearts in Battersea
The Stolen Lake
The Wolves Chronicles
Dido and Pa
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Posted byLina at 10:47 AM
File under:
reading
May
06, 2008 The more obvious ones, like Harriet the Spy and Encyclopedia Brown I got from R.I.F., Reading is Fundamental. Once a semester or so this program in school would give everyone a free book. I still have some of these. I read recently that they're ending this program, which is sad. For a lot of the kids in my school, this was probably the only time anyone ever bought them a book. Luckily, my mom used to take me to the local bookstore and let me run around and pick out books all the time. Luckily, I was part of the petit bourgeois and was semi-literate.
When I was in third grade or so, I read Cheaper by the Dozen. I remember that I picked it because the reading level was fifth or six grade, so I thought it would make me look smart. Even at eight, I was an asshole. I loved that book so much. I remember when I read the follow-up, Belles on Their Toes, there's a post script that says that one of the dozen children, Mary, died of diphtheria at the age of six and how horrified I was. The descriptions of the bobs and 20s fashions fascinated me. At the, I hated my brother and loved the idea of having a bunch of older brothers who wanted to help make me incredibly popular.
I read all of the Nancy Drew series at the library, and there were dozens and dozens. I read the originals and even started into the new series that made Nancy a little too modern for my taste. I remember her hair being described as "titian," a word I've never heard before or since.
I think I probably read read every middle grade book in the library. When I think about how much I read then, as compared to now, my head spins (not literally). Now, I read a book every six months or so. This is mainly because Google Reader has taken over all of my free time, filling it with tales of nipple slips and other salacious celebrity gossip.
Other books that I read during that time were delivered to my house in big brown grocery bags from the daughter of my parents' friends. Vida was older, cooler, and had new wave haircuts. I read every book she gave me. This was the path to coolness. One was The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids by Stanley Kiesel. This was the most unbelievable book ever, and there isn't even a listing for this guy on Wikipedia. I'm bringing this back to Dublin to re-read, because I suspect that much of it was beyond me. It was the darkest, most ridiculous piece of children's literature, ever.
(Big Alice is a girl who was raised in the wild by wolves or dogs or something, but has come back to help the kids win the war against the adults. Mr. Bullotad is the muscled, bullying gym teacher. Here, they are in an epic battle that Big Alice is winning.)
excerpt:
At some period in the past, during the times that Big Alice was given the privilege of participating in human, cultural affairs, she had been exposed to an Appreciation course. That experience had left an indelible mark on her mind.
endexcerpt
* Didn't know what an entrechat is? It's a jump in ballet during which the dancer crosses the legs a number of times, alternately back and forth. I remember looking this up in the dictionary and giggling wildly when I read this book.
Absolutely effing hilarious. And as usual, I didn't actually get to the two authors that I had started this post intending to write about, but I'm too sleepy right now. To be continued.
How I found my favorite middle grade books
I've been in California for the past two weeks, and no trip to to America is complete without me spending some time rooting around in my parent's garage, looking at all my old stuff. I've been reading a ton of my favorite books from when I was short. My tastes spanned the gamut, much more so then than now.
"Na-chin-skee! Na-chin-skee!" she abruptly began to yell.
Mr. Bullotad was red as a beet and gulping great breaths of air. "What? What?" Mr. B. gasped. He was ready to collapse. "Na-chin-skee what?
"Na-chin-skee! Do Na-chin-skee!"
"Oh my God!" cried Mr. Bullotad. I never saw Nijinsky!"
"Na-chin-skee! Do Na-chin-skee!" continued Big Alice, moving closer.
"I never saw him, I tell you!" screamed Mr. Bullotad, tears in his eyes.
Big Alice opened her mouth and displayed her canines.
Mr. Bullotad executed a beautiful entrechat.
Posted byLina at 02:26 AM
File under:
reading
May
02, 2008 A lot of people I know that didn't go to college like to point out incorrect uses of "literally" and "ironic." They like to say that Alanis Morrisette's song wasn't actually about irony. Rain on your wedding day, they say, is just bad luck. This did not occur to these people on their own, most of them heard it on talk radio during morning show drive time. Morning show hosts are exactly the sort of people that love to talk about this sort of thing. I like belittling morning show hosts because they are more successful than me. I like writing things on my blog about how dumb other people are because it makes me feel smart. Literally.
Isn't it ironic
People who constantly complain about people who use "literally" or "ironic" or apostrophes incorrectly bother me more than the offenders themselves. People blog about this a lot. Any time they hear someone say something like "my head literally exploded" they blog about it because it makes them feel smart. This makes me think they probably aren't that smart, because if they were, they wouldn't have to point it out like that.
Posted byLina at 06:15 AM
File under:
writing
April
19, 2008 Lollo has a sort of grandmotherly role in my life, whereas my actual grandmother takes more of an angry older sibling or frenemy-like position. Whenever I see Lollo she tells me how beautiful I am and compliments my intelligence, my ingenuity, my figure and anything else that might be in my general vicinity. My grandmother, on the other hand, tends to only mention these things in me when noting how deficient they are, or if I had been lucky enough to be gifted such a trait, in pointing out how I've royally screwed it up.
The last time I was in New York, my brother and grandmother and I took an hour-long cab ride to Lollo's assisted living facility. After 45 minutes, my grandmother insisted we leave. As we walked out my grandmother said acidicly, "Get enough compliments in there?" I'm not sure if this is a sign that she genuinely believes that compliments directed towards her grandchildren are an awful thing, or if some small part of her realizes that perhaps she should be the one that thinks my brother and I are amazing. What's particularly nice about Lollo loving me is that as a non-relative, she doesn't have to. As we were getting back into the cab to take us straight into rush hour Manhattan traffic, I realized that if my actual grandmother were just a friend of the family, I would never make this journey for her.
Wisdom is meant to be passed down from generation to generation, wizened old women telling the offspring of their offspring knowledge they have picked up along their journey, secrets they have learned to lead a better life. On our last visit, I was confessing how I used the New Yorker as a barometer of my worth--the more I had piled around the house unread, the more filled with self-loathing I become. I rarely have less than three waiting insistently at my kitchen table, and have, at times, it pains me to confess, gone up to as many as eleven. I half-heartedly try and blame this more on the international mail system that often brings two or three of the weekly issues on the same day than any shortcomings on my part. Lollo raised her non-existent eyebrows at me and said in a strong Austrian accent, "Something I have learned is that you don't have to read every article of every New Yorker. I used to try when I was young. There just isn't enough time."
Piles of magazines and surrogate grandmothers
Lollo is one of my grandmother's friends, I think. I'm not sure exactly what our relationship is to her. It's definitely not blood; her delicate frame makes me think of a baby bird that you might accidentally crush when you hold it in the palm of your hand, and lays waste to any possible confusion about her relationship to my sturdy, big-boned family. Nonetheless, she's been in my family since before I was born, and as a child was regularly given gifts that were either made by her, or intended to encourage some sort of artistic behavior on my part. She is in her nineties, originally from Austria and is a painter. She calls SUVs, HIVs.
Posted byLina at 04:03 PM
File under:
my dysfunctional family
April
11, 2008 --Lifehacker is like, the best site ever. I realized this long before I realized that it was created by an awesome girl who used to sit a few desks down from me at my old job. This has made me depressed. Why? Because I'm bitterly jealous.
--When I heard that Heavy Metal Parking Lot was being released on DVD, I was delighted. (Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a 1986 documentary that interviews fans in a parking lot before a Judas Priest concert.) Then I heard about Neil Diamond Parking Lot and I was really excited in a sort of post-ironic way, and then I felt a little sick. Then I took a nap.
--The New York Canon: Books From Norman Mailer to Rem Koolhaas, 26 works of lapidary New Yorkitude.
--A tribute(?) to my old neighborhood, The Tenderloin. This site is amazing, it really captures the essence of one of the most horrific places in America. I look at these pictures when I'm writing and it inspires me. To bathe. This was the neighborhood that I once got mugged by a topless transgendered woman who was holding a hammer and had 2 henchmen with her, also carrying tools. I sort of miss it. I mean, where else would you get a story like that?
Some links
--On a food blog I found a link to Elyse Sewell. Well, actually a video of Elyse Sewell eating a live octopus in Korea. I like this girl, I thought. Then I found out that she was a model from America's Next Top Model, and I was sort of disenchanted. Then I read her blog and she's hilarious and now I really hate her.
Posted byLina at 09:56 PM
File under:
interweb
April
07, 2008 Right now, I'm working on my teen novel and decided that I couldn't really get in the mood unless I listened to all of the dumb albums I was listening to when I was 17, so I spent the better part of the last hour looking for my ex-boyfriend's record "Hell Bent for Rehab" and Let Them Eat Jellybeans, an album that would be described as seminal by some, and semenal by others. Other things I've decided I need to listen to before I can even begin considering writing another word: Pixies - Doolittle, Surfer Rosa and Bossanova, Fang - Landshark and Where the Wild Things Are, Skinny Puppy - Rabies, Bad Religion - Suffer, Jane's Addiction, GG Allin - Hated, TSOL - Code Blue, and sad to say it, Rancid - Let's Go. What am I forgetting, guys?
Procrastination and punk
I've recently realized that I spend the majority of my life doing one of two things, either rooting around in my purse looking for something or other, or procrastinating--usually about writing. For example, that last long post about my writing class was actually meant to be a post about how I'm fairly certain my writing teacher hit on me, but I never got to that part because I was trying to "set the scene," if you will. I just can't ever get around to the things I mean to do.
Posted byLina at 09:21 PM
File under:
writing
March
28, 2008 They just released the line-up for the big Ireland festival, and of course there's always a lot of excitement and even more whining and grumbling over the choice of acts. One of my pals spit out a pearl of wisdom paraphrased:
The gigs are incidental. Mainly they just get in the way of the craic.
Booking holidays
I just booked two weeks off of work. I have not taken a two week vacation since I started working. I can do this now, because I live in "Europe." I'm very excited because I've decided that since I am in "Europe" and rapidly approaching middle age, I should check out the festival scene before I lose my edge. There's a Barcelona one at end of May that I'm considering, but think maybe my two weeks, starting in Croatia with be enough to keep me sated.
Posted byLina at 12:59 AM
File under:
music, world travel
March
24, 2008 The writing class is a bizarre place. The writing class goads people into writing if only by giving them material in the form of absolutely ridiculous classmates. Thus far, I've held myself back from blogging about these things, because I'm always too much of a pansy to write about current events in my life for fear of discovery. I have a paranoid suspicion that everyone I know secretly reads my blog, despite 99% of the humans I interact with having no idea that it even exists. This is much like the problem I developed around the age of thirteen, when I was convinced that this boy that I had a crush on could see me all of the time, no matter where I was or what I was doing. This served to make bathtime especially uncomfortable, but got me to stop picking my nose.
In college, one of my classmates in a writing class was so unbelievably uncomfortable-making that words defied me at the time to describe her here. The class was young adult novel writing, and we were all writing very thinly-veiled books about ourselves. Hers, however, was painful in its obviousness, as it was about a girl of mixed race with a learning disorder, same as the author, as she had been proud to explain to the class on her first day. She was one of those people who you could just tell would spend way too much time in the gym locker room naked. Like, fixing her makeup and hair before she had gotten dressed and not bothering to cover herself with a towel because we're all women here, right? But at the same, you could just tell that she was secretly hoping someone would say something to her so that she could be indignant about how badly she was being treated. Her writing was sort of like that too.
The quality of the prose I'm willing to write off to the learning disability, but the content was sort of jaw-dropping in its narcissism. The main character was a younger version of my classmate in all aspects, except better looking. "Ayana was not fat, nor was she thin. She was just right." Ayana's creator, however, was sort of a fatty, but you could tell it was the sort of thing that she fixedly would refuse to admit because she was "just right." This is, let me emphasize, completely different than the I've-got-a-few-extra-pounds-but-go-fuck-yourself attitude that I myself sometimes adopt and which I believe is completely acceptable. This sort of personality type relies on stating the world is one way, a way that they are really good looking and never at fault, when the rest of us can so clearly see that the world is not that way. Then they sit around and wait for one of us to finally say something, to finally get to the point where we just cannot go on listening to how the earth or flat or how the sky is red and to point out how the world really is, so that they can use it as more proof of how horrible people treat them.
The character in her tales, Ayana, suffered persecution at the hands of her un-understanding classmates, a martyr for mixed race children with learning disabilities everywhere. And that's why I really shouldn't be blogging about was absolute drivel this girl was forcing me to read, because it's sort of horrible to be abusing this poor, self-satisfied girl who probably has been given a lot of grief in her life for being different and so obviously proud of that fact. Were her character fat, I think, I could have forgiven a lot more.
My current class has one of the same type in it. He's writing a book about his struggle with bipolar disorder, which if I'm being honest, is exactly the sort of book I like to read. Of course he's managed to take all of the fun out of it, and made what should be an interesting and terrifying life story completely uninteresting. He's a huge, angry looking man, who cutely refers to himself, and all sufferers of the disorder, as "polar bears." Last week he came into class and, having decided that writing a novel was too hard--keep in mind that this is a class entitled "Finishing Your Novel"--that he would write an instructional manual instead, based on a pamphlet that he had picked up at a doctor's office that he kindly provided us with. As the only person in the class capable of either giving or receiving constructive criticism, I questioned the purpose of re-writing a pamphlet but including no new content. The information is already out there, I said, everyone already knows how to find it. What they don't know is your story, and that's probably more interesting for everyone to read. The polar bear nearly blew a gasket and, shaking the binder he had so neatly organized and numbered over the past few weeks, shrieked like a petulant child "But I've worked so hard on this!"
A week later, he came back with a personal essay that he was going to include in his polar bear manual. The personal essay was interesting, in the way that people writing about how shitty their lives are is always interesting, at least, that's what I bank on here, but the overall tone was so irritating that for once, I was actually forced into silence. The point of his essay was that he was a victim of this disorder, and that most everything he did and does should be excused for it. This is exactly the sort of thing that were he writing "fiction" like the rest of us, one of us would finally raise our hands and say "Is it intentional that your character is coming off as a selfish, self-absorbed fucktard? Because, like, if that's intentional, you've done a really great job."
However irritating I find this guy and his subsequent angry comments on my work--he clearly has not forgiven me yet--I can't help but hear that high-pitched screech "But I've worked so hard on this!" as I'm absorbed in my work. I've finished the first draft of my novel and am now in the tedious process of re-writing it, trying to force it into some semblance of order and narrative. There are things in it that I know don't work, but I'd rather try and find a way to write around them rather than just scrap them completely. My re-write has become about just adding more and more, and taking nothing away. I can't cut that paragraph or scene, I've worked too hard on it, my inner polar bear rages. So now I'm trying to learn to let go, both in my book and my life.
Writing class
In my writing class, my teacher is constantly telling us how we are all going to get published. "I can't believe I've got a class of so many good writers," he exclaims. I eye him suspiciously every time he says this, because I can't believe that he could really be saying this in earnest. If he's serious, I can no longer trust him. If he would say things like, "I expect that at least one or two of you will have agents in the next five years, and might well get a shitty book deal out of it," I'd have more hope for myself, because at least I could talk myself into believing that I'm one of those few. As it stands though, I feel like I'm competition in the Special Olympics where we're told, sweaty and spastic as we cross the finish line, "You're all winners!"
Posted byLina at 04:26 PM
File under:
writing
March
22, 2008 "Tonight Lina and I were talking about the old, old days when girls weren't taught to read, and she said, 'I'd die if I couldn't read! Reading's the best thing there is! If there weren't any books in the world I'd write a thousand pages!'"
1000 pages
My mom found this in a letter she had written to my grandmother in 1985.
Posted byLina at 04:59 PM
File under:
my dysfunctional family, writing
March
21, 2008 Yesterday, one of my co-workers asked me if Jews celebrate Easter. I looked at him skeptically. He couldn't be serious, but of course, he was. They don't actually have Jews in Ireland, I've realized.
"We don't. We sort of see it as the nullification of all of our hard work." Now it was his turn to look confused. "Well, we had just gone through the trouble of killing Jesus and all," I explained.
Most days now, I forget I'm in Ireland. I don't even hear the accent a lot of the time, which saddens me. Days like today, though, remind me of what a strange, religious country I've landed in. The other night one of my close friends admitted to me (after marinating herself in wine) that her parents had met under unusual circumstances; her father had been a priest and her mother, a nun. I suspect that even by Ireland standards, it's a noteworthy "how we met" tale, but I was flabbergasted. These are not the kind of stories I would hear in America.
Good Friday
Today is Good Friday. This is, I've learned, a big deal in Ireland. It's one of the only days of the year that one cannot buy alcohol, resulting in a dipsomaniacal Holy Thursday, the shelves of the off-licenses pillaged by Irishfolk hoarding as if they were about the face the Great Depression, terrified that they might have to face an evening dry. And today, the pubs are all shuttered, and as every other storefront is a pub, the face of Dublin has become joyless, somehow. Luckily, the one-day prohibition makes it a big day for house parties and illegal raves, so with a little work, one can still manage to keep reality at bay.
Posted byLina at 11:58 AM
File under:
assimilating
March
18, 2008 --Garrison Keillor in a review of 'Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy' by Eric G Wilson .
This got a chuckle out of me--just substitute the word blog for book and we've got a winner. If I updated more often would you visit more?
Melancholia as a force for blogging
"To argue for melancholia as a force for creativity prompts the question, Why isn't this a better book, since the author is so miserable?"
Posted byLina at 02:02 AM
File under:
writing
March
12, 2008 Max: are you going to make out with [him]
It's sort of true
Discussing a (very) young man with my brother:
Lina: i don't think so
Lina:i don't need men to make me happy
Max: you need them to make you unhappy
Posted byLina at 09:36 AM
File under:
conversations with Max
February
14, 2008 Check out my Valentine's Day Compilation. The theme is sort of like, reciprocal love. I'm totally into that. It's so hot.
1. I Will Follow Him - Little Peggy March
Fate...The Compilation
2. Obsession (Special Dub Mix) - Animotion
3. Every Breath You Take - The Police
4. Give Me Your Love - Junior Murvin
5. You'll Be Needing Me - Nino Tempo
6. Following - The Bangles
7. Climbing Up the Walls - Radiohead
8. The Stalker - Green Velvet
9. Dust (Rocque Wun Remix) - Recloose Feat. Joe Dukie
10. I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - Diana Ross & The Supremes
11. Run For Your Life - Nancy Sinatra
12. Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley
13. Infatuation - Rod Stewart
14. One Way or Another - Blondie
15. You Belong to Me - Carly Simon
16. Need Your Love (Live) - Cheap Trick
17. Private Eyes - Darly Hall & John Oates
18. I'm Your Puppet - Jimmy London
19. You Belong to Me - The Duprees
20. All Strung Out - Nino Tempo & April Stevens
21. The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get - Morrissey
22. Fate (Tynneterje Edit) - Chaka Khan
Posted byLina at 11:07 PM
File under:
dating and romance, music
February
13, 2008 I love Dublin
I guess it's finally hit me, but I'm pretty sure I'm having a love affair with Dublin. I've been saying that I love Dublin for a long time. Every time I get in a cab, which is often (I'm still a lazy American, after all), the driver asks me where I'm from after hearing my accent, and then asks me what I think of Dublin. This is not the time you want to complain about how you have to go sit in the immigration office for 4 hours every six months or point out that in America you can call other mobile phones for free rather than paying 20 cents a minute to call someone a And now I'm not lying anymore--other than the weather, I love Dublin. I love the people here. They're hilarious without seeming snotty in that particularly British way. I love how nice everyone is, it constantly surprises me. I love the way people talk and their accents and the language they use. I love the buildings and the brightly painted doors and the way things here are so old and beautiful. I love the countryside; it looks like a poster of what Ireland is supposed to look like, except it's completely real. I love how everyone here has been forced to take Irish dance--Riverdance, to you and me--lessons. I love the knackers. I love the taxi drivers. I love that people from all of the world are moving here in droves because they love it too. I love my friends. I love the Asian grocery stores. I love the way people are so old-fashioned about really silly things and don't even realize it. I love the way boys drink tea. I love that I live in a cottage next to a canal with swans and ducks. I love the history. I love the perpetual feeling of oppression. I love the way all of the good stereotypes are true. I love the scene most of all--there's more going in the disco/italo/electro scene than in places like New York or San Francisco. I love going out here. Parties here aren't over by 3am, they last at least two days, minimum. I love the fun, there's loads of it.
A short break for positivity - I love Dublin
I think my SAD lamp must be working, because I just posted a very chipper entry on my friend Rene's site, ilovethisworld.com. I've realized that I tend to post all of my happy thoughts on that site (note that I post rarely) and my bitchy thoughts on shutitdown. So I've decided to plagiarize myself and post it here as well.
mile km away. So I always say "Other than the weather, I love it here!"
Posted byLina at 10:18 PM
File under:
assimilating
February
07, 2008 Ingredients:
Directions:
To cook: Test the griddle or frying pan for correct heat by sprinkling a few drops of water over it. They will "dance" when it is right. Heat the griddle or frying pan over moderate heat. Grease lightly with butter. Use a 1/4 cup measure to dip the batter onto the griddle or pan. Cook until the cakes are full of bubbles and the undersurface is nicely browned. Lift with a pancake turner or spatula and brown the other side. Serve immediately with plenty of butter and warm maple syrup.
The last one about pancakes
Made the Fannie Farmer pancakes (nee griddlecakes) last night. A day late, but they were freaking fantastic. I hadn't made pancakes since my pancake/waffle/crepe phase in Oakland, which was short-lived, but intense. After a plateful of these bad boys, you'll understand.
1/2 cup milk
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 egg
1 cup all purpose four
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Put first three ingredients in mixing bowl and beat lightly. Sift together remaining ingredients. Add to the milk mixture all at once. Stir just enough to dampen the flour. Add more milk, if necessary, to make the batter as thick as heavy cream. Makes 6-8.
Posted byLina at 11:59 AM
File under:
cooking
