Musing it up, cracking self up

It is a spectacularly beautiful day today, so gorgeous that I didn't even mind the forty years it took to walk Percy to our neighborhood CVS and back because he is, as a kennel once told us, "extremely interested in exploring scent."

That is a dog-lover's way of spinning "your dog doesn't want to exercise but rather stick his nose onto the remnants of other animals' (or his own if we pass the same spot twice; smart dog) pee for as long as you'll allow."

A most-appealing tinge of fall is in the air; that slightly crisp chill that causes you to put on a long-sleeve t-shirt before heading out to get the paper and bring the kids to school. It'll dissipate by noon but it's not a mirage. It's the sort of weather that makes everyone love fall and want to bake apple pies and feel nostalgic for who knows what. And it's the sort of weather that never lasts quite long enough.

I'm having the same reaction that I do when spring lets you know it's coming: as if I am a biannual cleaning tornado, I am roaring through my home today. Watch out tchotchkes! Watch out "special papers"! Watch out pretty much everything! 

Also, I have to stay home today to wait for a signature-required package that I did, let me tell you, stay home all day yesterday waiting for but which, natch, came just after I left to get the boys. 

I will prevail today, FedEx. I will get that package. Which is not even for me. #husbandlovestoshop

Bygones. A butterfly just flitted past my window, Percy is snoring contentedly, Nutmeg is MIA (surely trolling the 'hood for who knows what) and I am literally laughing my ass off at a wildly intelligent, priceless exchange going on in a friend's Facebook feed about this video. 

Also I'm laughing because my new tennis racquet arrived and just look at the label!! #freetime #crackingownshitup

Wilson loves Em and Rogie

I'm also laughing because "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers" is again making the rounds. It's spit-out-your-drink funny. On par with the annual haters guide to the Williams-Sonoma catalog. Seriously, go improve your day and read it.

My cold is mostly gone, although were I not in such a good mood I think I'd admit that it's not as improved as I wish it were, the Pope is in town, and in addition to the tureens of soup I've recently cooked, I've also made some delicious other stuff, not least the elephantine kale salad I just made for lunch. 

Seriously, it looks as if I have (or will have) a problem.

My Cameron's smoker box was just waiting to be rediscovered, and I happened upon it just after buying some King salmon the other day. Fortuitous. I spooned some hickory shavings inside and then smoked the fish until it was taut and mahogany-colored but still perfectly moist and tender. Sublime.

Peach and tomato season is rapidly coming to a close, so we had a last round of my favorite salad creation of the summer: Tomato, Peach, Chèvre and Herbs with Apple Vinaigrette. Also sublime. 

Last night was taco night, I'm finishing up yet another plum tart (duh) ,and who knows what this evening will bring, not least because I have literally spent three hours on Facebook today. It's possible we'll have cereal. Actually, that's impossible. But maybe waffles and fried eggs.

OK, I have to go so I can fully commit myself to this giant salad, but I want to leave you with yet another hilarious tidbit. This message, courtesy of my darling Oliver, was written last night in response to an "attack" by Jack who is a really terrific big brother 96% of the time but wasin an epically irritating mood yesterday.

What is POSD and why are the fighters smiling?

Likely you need some translation. 

School is
closed
because
Jack hit
my ear. And he pushed
me down.

Clearly Oliver is a beginner in the spelling department -I mean, in what world are SGOL and POSD school and pushed?- but I love A) that he closed the school he created in and runs out of his room and which no one has yet attended as punishment and B) his accompanying picture with clear action lines provides helpful context. 

I'm still cracking up. Jack was in hysterics too.

When life gives you a cold, perfect your chicken soup

For two reasons, one a stupid rookie mistake involving packet pick-up and the other my craptastic cold, I missed the Navy 5-miler yesterday. Can y'all even believe it? I'm still disappointed, not least because I'd been prepping for months. 

I didn't sleep well on Saturday night and feel certain I wouldn't have run well or felt particularly terrific afterwards. I'm trying to channel my approaching-40 zen about this, but I admit that I'm glum.

That said, my crew started family tennis lessons on Saturday which we found insanely fun, Jack's baseball team won its game last night, and because the kids returned to school and I still feel under the weather today, it seemed a mighty fine time to perfect my homemade chicken noodle soup.

I took meticulous notes while cooking this morning so that I could share with you what will now be our family's chicken soup recipe. You can now find it here: Chicken Noodle Soup, Best.

There is such a lovely economy in chicken soup. Use all of the carrots and celery, every bit of the chicken. Out of fairly humble ingredients comes an elixir.

If you are so inclined, and I do hope that maybe you are, please buy the best-quality chicken you can. Think of your chicken roaming a farm, flapping its wings and eating bugs and seed and so forth, growing strong and flavorful as it does so. Your soup, body and any ailments will notice the difference and will thank you profusely.

I myself purchase spring chickens at the farmers market in March/April or, once I've run out of those I then stock in my chest freezer, buy Step 3, 4 or 5 chickens at Whole Foods or another reputable butcher. The Step ratings signify the treatment, food and life the chickens have had prior to being slaughtered. Your average supermarket chicken did not live or die well, and I just can't go there.

I also like to use homemade chicken stock which I make and then freeze in 4-cup portions every time I roast a whole chicken. The skin, bones, tendons and fascia makes a great base for stock, and the flavor of your soup will be all the better for it. If you don't want to make stock, or don't have any on hand, buy a good quality one.

Your produce and spices are important too. Carrots should be bright orange and require a bit of elbow grease and a sharp knife to cut. Celery should be a vibrant green, and please don't toss the leaves; they'll enrich your soup. Use a juicy yellow onion that is in no way desiccated or sad. Lemon zest brightens everything, including this soup, so have a nice fresh lemon on hand.

The three spices that I use in my chicken soup are bay leaves, cinnamon and allspice. They provide a savory, slightly sweet depth that complements beautifully the schmaltzy goodness gained from the chicken bits.

Please love yourself (or your family or the friend for whom you're making this) even more by using extra-wide egg noodles as the noodle in your soup. Egg noodles bring the comfort factor of good chicken soup to the next level. Pour them in with a generous hand, and you won't regret it (although you must remember that they'll sponge up quite a bit of your broth so don't go too nuts OR have extra stock or water on hand if the liquid level in your pot gets low).

Cook your soup slowly, at least an hour, hopefully two, until the chicken starts to fall apart, joint by joint. Little bones, or even larger ones, might escape the skeleton. This is fine; don't remove them until the end because they'll continue to add depth and flavor, even once disembodied. Indeed, removing the skin and carcass is your last step before skimming egregious fat from your broth. 

Get out a lovely bowl, a deep one, and ladle in some soup just for you. If you haven't already, give thanks to your chicken and the time you just lavished on your self and this meal. Enjoy. Better health will be yours soon.

An added bonus? This is a one-pot meal!

The Girl in the Spider's Web: a review, no spoilers

A bit of history: the Millennium trilogy

Did y'all read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and/or any of the subsequent two works in Swede Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy? I loved and devoured each book (the final two being The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) and waited with baited breath for the Swedish films staring Noomi Rapace (who brilliantly portrayed troubled, punk, genius hacker Lisbeth Salander) and Michael Nyqvist (a perfect Mikael Blomkvist, a Swedish journalist).* 

What did I love so much about these books? Where do I start?! 

The entertainment value is off the charts. Are Larsson's books National Book Award winners? No, probably not. Do they hook you early and keep you racing through the pages, one after another into the wee hours of the night? Yes. Emphatically yes! 

In the vein of top-notch Swedish crime writing, the books in the Millennium trilogy are well-written and suspenseful and the characters complex and well developed. Full of fault and foible but also brimming with courage and authenticity, the protagonists, primarily Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, are characters that you can't help but love and root for. The antagonists are sordid and gross, individuals who are sick, weak or who've sold their souls in a lusty chase for power or revenge.

But their match-ups are never simplistic, dull black-and-white affairs. On the contrary, you often hang by a chilling thread.

Larsson, a Swedish journalist who focused on right-wing extremism, wrote these books in his spare time. Just before his untimely death in 2004 from a heart attack at the age of 50, he apparently reached out to several publishers. The Millennium trilogy was published posthumously, starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Larsson's title in Swedish was, simply, Men Who Hate Women) in 2005. It quickly became a worldwide sensation, and the third in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, was the most-sold book in America in 2010.

The Girl in the Spider's Web

After Larsson's death, his widow (by Swedish common law) and his father and brother (with whom, it's purported, he was somewhat estranged) disagreed vehemently about who had rights to Stieg's work, that already published and that found in his files. 

Discovered was what many consider the next book in the Millennium series. But this outline is not what Swedish journalist and crime writer, David Lagencrantz, uses as the foundation for his attempt to carry on the Millennium series: The Girl in the Spider's Web. Indeed, Lagercrantz did not have the blessing of Larsson's widow, Eva Gabrielsson, but only that of Larsson's father and brother.

In any case, as soon as I saw that Lagercrantz's book was out (via the Sunday New York Time's book review), I ordered it. Nervously but enthusiastically. 

If you bothered to read Scarlett, the sequel (that word in this context drips off my lips with disdain and dramatic air quotes) to Gone With the Wind, you will fully understand my nervous skepticism about Spider's Web. Hell, if you loved Raiders of the Lost Ark and were sure that your memory that The Temple of Doom was horrible beyond belief was wrong and so watched it again to check yourself, only to find that you again wasted two hours of your life, you will also get my worry that Lagercrantz's effort would fall terribly short.

Two days after placing my order, I ripped open the just-delivered Amazon box and jumped in. One hour ago, not a week after said box-ripping, I finished the book. 

I am so sad to have done so. While Lagercrantz's understanding of Lisbeth Salander seems incomplete, his portrayal of her disappointingly unfamiliar in some respects, and several elements of this story entirely too neat and tidy, Spider's Web is, overall, a fine continuation of Larsson's trilogy.

I had trouble putting it down, missed it when I wasn't obsessively reading, fell back in love with Blomkvist, and was on the edge of my bed more than three times. We meet an important character who's only mentioned via memory in the previous books, and we learn a good deal more about Salander's tortured past than Larsson shared.

Salander is not the main character in this book. Instead, Blomkvist takes center stage, perhaps because Lagercrantz has a better feel for him. The Larsson to Lagercrantz transition in writing Blomkvist is the most seamless element of Spider's Web, in my opinion. Lagercrantz's new characters are, for the most part, well-developed as were Larsson's which is a proud feature of Scandinavian crime writing as I understand it.

I didn't find this book as bullet-proof and tight as Larsson's, and the Knopf print-run from which my copy came had at least three typos which always drives me bonkers. But overall, I fully enjoyed living with the indomitable Lisbeth Salander and the sexily imperfect yet honorable Blomkvist for a few days more.

I won't be disappointed if a fifth book is offered to us sometime in the near'ish future.

---

*If you don't want to read the books but do want to know the stories, please DO NOT under any circumstance see the American cinematic effort in which Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig attempted but failed to inhabit the rich characters of Salander and Blomkvist. You must, instead, see the Swedish films which are brilliant and subtitled.