'Famous Wives' in Fiction

I feel like I have perpetual piles of books waiting for me to read

Over the past five months, I have read multiple excellent novels about “famous wives.” (I was surprised to discover (although I probably shouldn’t have been since one can find lists of just about everything on the Internet) that this is somewhat of a subgenre and that there are lists online of all the “famous wives” books.) I thoroughly enjoyed each of the books I read. I started with The Paris Wife a book I had wanted to read since I first heard about it in the NY Times book review. Anyone who knows me personally or has read this blog (and 99.9% of my blog’s readers fit into the first category :)) knows that I love Paris with all of my heart. The Paris Wife tells the story of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife – Hadley Richardson – and their time together in Paris. 

I love the cover of this book and its title!

While living in Paris in the first half of 2007, I read four Hemingway books: his memoir about Paris, A Moveable Feast; and then his novels The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms. I thought most of them were good but I especially liked For Whom the Bell Tolls. In the years since, however, I’ve come across a few critical commentaries of the book (and Hemingway's books in general)that make me wonder how much I would like the books today. I have so many books I want to read, though, that rereading Hemingway just isn’t a priority for me. So while I wonder if my opinion of him and his books may be different today than it was seven years ago, I accept that I’ll probably never know.

In addition to reading Hemingway in Paris, I also went to the café Le Select (I only went there once as I found other cafes more to my liking) which he was known to frequent, and was thrilled when my friend L. showed me a plaque on a little street off of Place de la Contrescarpe which declared that Ernest Hemingway had once lived there. I understood Hemingway’s appreciation of Paris because I loved it too and therefore was of course super interested in reading this fictionalized version of his life there from Hadley’s perspective.

Hadley and Hemingway in 1922

The Paris Wife was a quick read and one I would recommend. I loved reading about Paris and their life together and Hadley was a fairly likeable character. That said, I am actually more interested in Hadley’s life after she and Hemingway divorced than in their life together. I think that’s because Hemingway was presented as everything to Hadley and it got a bit boring after a while. After I read The Paris Wife, I found out about and then read a book called Mrs. Hemingway, which had four sections, one for each of Hemingway’s wives. While I still enjoyed this book, it was my least favourite of all the “famous wives” books I read mostly because, with the exception of Martha Gellhorn – Hemingway’s third wife and an accomplished writer and journalist on her own – the other three wives were presented as utterly devoted to Ernest Hemingway with no other interests outside of him. The best thing about the book was learning about Martha Gellhorn and being intrigued by how Hemingway went from being married to his second wife – who made him the centre of her world – to Gellhorn, who very much still had a life of her own even during their marriage. I suppose the point of Mrs. Hemingway (and it was a fairly short novel so there wasn’t much room to offer more than a vignette of each wife) was to show the wives’ general relationship with Hemingway.  However, I feel like the author missed the chance to delve deeper into these women’s lives outside of Hemingway and also to paint a more nuanced picture of what life was like for women during these time periods. Perhaps though the author’s point is that Hadley and Fife (Hemingway’s second wife) really did not have interests outside of their husband.

My least favourite of all of the books mentioned in this post

Z A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald came highly recommended to me as a birthday present from A., and did not disappoint. Zelda and her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald are mentioned in The Paris Wife and Mrs. Hemingway (similarly Hadley, Fife and Ernest Hemingway are mentioned this book) and so it was nice for Zelda to have a novel all of her own. Zelda is presented as multifaceted and her own ambitions, her mental illness, her husband’s career, insecurities and drinking problem are all explored with skill and sensitivity.

 Loving Frank was an excellent novel – really engrossing and really interesting. The book is about a woman named Mamah Borthwick who ends up having a years long illicit affair with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Mamah is a feminist and struggles throughout the book with finding fulfilling work, with her feelings towards Frank, her role as a mother and her relationship with her children, and the role of women in the first decades of the 20^th century in general. When reading a review of either Z or The Paris Wife someone mentioned this book and I am so glad she did as I had never heard of this book and may not have read it. In some ways the title of the book is a misnomer as while Mamah and Frank’s love story is at the heart of the book, the book is much more about Mamah’s journey as a woman in the world. Of all the books mentioned in this post, this one just may have been my favourite.

My favourite

 The Aviator’s Wife was the last ‘famous wife’ book I read and a terrific read. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, is a very interesting and complex woman. Like Mamah in Loving Frank, Anne contemplates her role as a mother and her relationship to her children, and has her own ambitions to write and to do more with her life. At times, Anne’s feelings towards Charles were reminiscent of Hadley’s or Fife’s towards Hemingway but this only served to show how one person could have a myriad of contradictory feelings at one time. I finished the book wanting to read Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book A Gift from the Sea which shows how much I enjoyed the book.

I love the cover!

To conclude, I liked the 3 non-Hemingway ‘famous wives’ books the most because they showed the wives (or lovers) as complex women in their own right grappling with issues of autonomy within a marriage, their own career ambitions versus supporting their husbands’ career ambitions, their roles as mothers in general, and in relation to their roles as wives, and much more. These wives all expressed their own opinions and navigated their lives in a time period when women had to fight for rights women fortunately have today. Reading about their struggles, ambitions and ideas was both fascinating to me and inspired me.

Granola: A Personal History

I love granola. It is my favourite thing to eat in the morning and has been since I left Toronto for Berkeley back in August 2002. Before the fall of 2002, my breakfast of choice was Shreddies. I ate them plain (I never have liked milk on cereal, or by itself as a drink) with my fingers and continued doing this whenever I came home on breaks from Berkeley. I don't do this with any other cereal but for some reason I just don't feel Shreddies need a spoon.

The only cereal I eat without a spoon

I tried lots of different varieties of granola over the years until the summer of 2010 when I visited E.'s cottage and tried some of her mom, A.'s, homemade granola. Until this point, I don't think it had ever occurred to me to make my own. A.'s granola was really good but it required a fair amount of effort because it had a lot of ingredients. Nonetheless, I diligently bought all of these ingredients in early September 2010 - just after I'd moved to Montreal - and made my very first batch on Labour Day. This granola had oats, lots of nuts, but then pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds and called for honey and maple syrup. I can't remember if there was anything else but it was a lot. I liked this granola quite a bit but I could never figure out how to make it cluster together so I'd have those perfect clusters of granola that are so delicious and satisfying to eat. Anyway, I made this granola consistently until June 2011 and I enjoyed it. Then I left Montreal for two months and took a break from granola making (back to Shreddies) and when I returned in September 2011 I realized I just didn't have the energy or time or really desire (because if I'd wanted it badly enough I could have found the time and mustered the energy) to make my own granola anymore. So I switched to Nature's Path granola and went on my my merry way.

Except! I kind of got sick of Nature's Path quickly and even though I ate it for about two years, I never really liked it that much. I then went through a few months period where I tried out a bunch of different granola brands but just couldn't find out that stuck. It was unsatisfying. Then last October, D. and I visited L. in DC. She offered me some of her home made granola and it was so good - so much better than what I had been eating the previous two years - and convinced me I needed to give making my own another go. L. sent me her recipe but I never actually made it because before I had the opportunity, I received my copy of The Smitten Kitchen cookbook which I had ordered. My new cookbook arrived soon after we got back from DC and in it was a recipe for granola that looked so good and so simple I promptly made it and have not looked back since. (In general I really recommend this cookbook and the whole Smitten Kitchen website.)

An excellent cookbook

I have adapted the recipe to my own tastes as SK only used walnuts but I like lots of other nuts in it too. SK's recipe also called for toasted wheat germ; even after googling it, I still don't really know what wheat germ is and decided my granola could do without. Finally, SK's recipe includes dried fruit which is to be put in at the end. I've never been a fan of dried fruit (except dried mango which does not go well in granola) and I definitely didn't want to include it in my granola.

Here is my version of the granola. If you desire a smaller batch, you can halve my ingredients.
Ingredients & Instructions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
In a big bowl, mix:
6 cups of old fashioned oats
2 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut
4 cups of nuts (I use a variety of walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, cashews but the sky's the limit)
4-5 tablespoons of olive oil
sprinkle some cinnamon (as much as you like)
1 cup of maple syrup
2 egg whites (beat them until frothy and then pour them on the mixture last and mix them in well with the rest of the granola.)

Her's what it should look like

Spread mixture over tin foil covered baking sheets. Bake for 25 minutes and then open the oven and turn the pans. But do not touch the granola itself. Bake for another 20 minutes. Take out of oven and quickly put a spatula underneath the granola to loosen it from the pan but to maintain the clusters. Let cool for 15-20 minutes (or longer) and then place in storage containers. Then enjoy, preferably with yogurt :)

Just out of the oven.

What I like so much about this granola compared to A.'s granola is that this one has less ingredients and just feels so much simpler to make. It really takes no time to mix it up (it's the baking which takes a while but even that isn't so bad) and is just so delicious. D., my parents, my sister-in-law all love it and I bet you will too. This one is also good because it actually bakes into clusters. For the longest time my granola was never making clusters but L. taught me not to mix up the granola during the halfway point of baking (most recipes tell you to do that and so I was doing it) and also to stick a spatula underneath as soon as the granola comes out of the oven. Using these tips has yielded cluster full granola for me :) If you're considering whether to make homemade granola or not, try this recipe (or try the original one from which it's derived if you're into wheat germ and dried fruit) and be ready to never want to make another granola recipe again :)

Here's what mine looks like at the end.

Weather Woes and other weather related thoughts

Just last week I read online that the Great Lakes were only declared ice free on June 11^th this year – one of the latest dates for the ice to finally melt in years. Perhaps this explains why it has taken me so long this year to accept that winter is really over and that summer is now on. (Another reason is that spring seems to have lasted about a day. One morning trees that just the day before had been bare were now bright green, like Cinderella transformed into a princess with a whoosh of her fairy godmother’s wand.) This winter was the worst and solidified my reliance on the Weather Network’s website. While waiting for my kettle to whistle each morning, the first website I checked was the Weather Network’s. Checking the weather became such a normal part of my day that I am still doing it (albeit not as the first website I visit each morning), eager to know whether it will rain and spoil the sunshiney days I consistently hope for.

Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and her magic wang

On the second last day of May and the eve of our departure from living near Lake Huron, D. and I drove out to Sauble Beach to finally, at the last possible opportunity, see one of its famous sunsets. At the horizon, in the exact spot where the sun dipped below the water, we could still see a line of ice. As the sun went down, orange light shimmered and gleamed on the ice causing a glare much worse than the normal glare of the sun. I drove out to Sauble alone around 6 pm one day at the end of April and walked along its mostly deserted beach. I could still see big chunks of ice floating not too far from the shore. I imagined an obstacle course of ice stretching all the way to Michigan. Maybe someone was also walking on a deserted beach in Michigan at that same moment, contemplating the ice and imagining leapfrogging across it all the way to Ontario. 

The sunset we saw was more orange and there was less ice but this picture gives the general idea

I used to think it was cliché to talk about the weather; that bringing it up in conversation meant I had nothing else to say. I don’t think that anymore. In fact, I now like talking about the weather and bring it up not for lack of anything else to say but because I like the subject; I like to hear what other people think about it, how cold they thought it was, how much they, too, yearn for summer, what their favourite season is, etc. etc. When I studied in Santiago in the first half of 2005, I was surrounded by the southern hemisphere’s fall when all I wanted was to be in springtime. A girl in this class I took on Neruda and Mistral – Chile’s two most famous poets – which had almost exclusively third year abroad students told everyone that fall was her favourite season and so she was happy to have two in one year. I felt glad for her but also envious, as she was finding happiness in one of the aspects of Santiago which was most bringing me down. I still think of that nameless girl (I can sort of hazily still picture her but never knew her name) on days I am most disliking fall. A.’s favourite season is fall too. I don’t understand it but I find it comforting. At least some people are happy in the season I find the most difficult.

Late fall at its finest and what I most dislike

A client of my dad’s married a weather woman from TV. They met at the grocery store after he recognized, and then approached her. This all happened when I was a kid and I always thought it was so cool. I loved how he recognized her, how the weather brought them together, and I thought – and still do – that being a weather woman is such a cool job. Despite the majority of one’s job consisting of pointing to projections and big swirley storms on the screen, it seems very glamorous. 

A friend of my brother’s, N., is a weather woman on the Weather Network and is broadcast across Canada. She sort of just fell into the job; she’d hosted a show on a cable network and then that led to a job with the Weather Network.  She’s really taken to it though and is studying online for a masters degree in meteorology from a university in Mississippi. (Not sure why it’s from a university there – maybe it is one of the few schools to both offer the degree and offer it online). I loved learning that N. and many of her colleagues are studying for (or already have) their masters in meteorology. It makes the job I found so glamorous as a kid even more sophisticated – now that I know brains and studying of weather patterns is involved too.

Tea Time

My earliest memories of tea involve drinking it on an airplane, with my dad, headed west. It was a small cup filled with tea and milk and sugar. Whenever I had tea on airplanes as a kid I would always put two little bags of sugar into it, and liked tea more for its milky sweetness than anything else. In December 2003, not long before finals were to start, L. invited me to her parents’ house in Marin County and the first thing her English mom did upon our arrival was give us cups of tea. We always drank a form of black tea there, usually English Breakfast or another like that (I also liked Orange Pekoe and Darjeeling), and would put lots of milk, and instead of sugar, honey. Tea, and drinking it at L.’s house while escaping whatever drama was preoccupying us in Berkeley, was always a comfort.

This is how I used to drink tea - with lots of milk and sugar.

Yet despite liking tea, for both its taste and comfort, I wasn’t a regular drinker. I rarely bought any or made it myself and would usually only drink it on airplanes or at L.’s or if offered at someone’s house. That all changed this past fall when I had a really bad cold and almost completely lost my voice. I was home in Toronto for the weekend and my dad suggested I drink some of his white tea. I found the white tea in our cupboard, make a mug of it and decided I liked it very much. It has a fairly light taste that is easy to drink. I was also cognizant of the health benefits of tea and so decided I would start drinking some more regularly. From mid-October until Christmas, I drank a cup of white tea (specifically I buy President’s Choice organic white tea – I have also had Twinings’ White Tea and I like that a lot too) every morning. Since then I have also completely stopped adding milk, sugar or honey to my tea. I only drink tea (any kind of tea) black now. I think it was my dad's influence.

Here is the white tea I like

This past Christmas, D.’s mom gave him a tall turquoise coloured mug from the tea company Davids Tea which came with its own strainer for loose leaf tea. D. and I then went to a Davids Tea in Toronto and D. bought some tea leaves. He bought organic cream of earl grey and blueberry jam tea leaves. The cream of earl grey is one of the best teas I have ever tasted. After one mug of it, I was hooked. I always liked earl grey, even though I only ever drank it sporadically, but this cream of earl grey is absolutely delicious. It has vanilla in it, which makes big difference I think. After I made it through the bag D. bought, I went out and bought my own tin of it. I have since finished that tin too but I had also bought some chai tea from Davids Tea at the same time as I bought the cream of earl grey, which until now I’ve barely touched. I’ve had cups today and yesterday though and while the tea is good, it’s not exactly memorable. I miss the cream of earl grey! However, I’ve told myself I need to drink all of the chai before I buy any more cream of earl grey. This is a position I am not sure I can maintain.

Here it is! It's just so good. Try some...

Before this past January, I had never made loose leaf tea before, always only using tea bags. I like how easy it is to dispose of tea bags – no mess, no need to scrape the leaves out of the strainer. But now that I am obliged to use loose leaf in order to drink cream of earl grey, I quite like it. I still find cleaning out the strainer annoying but I have to admit that (though this sounds cheesy) there’s something more authentic seeming about making tea from leaves. Update: I wrote the above before I was on the Davids Tea website last night and discovered that they sell their own tea bags specifically for their loose leaf tea. I will have to buy some of those and then I’ll have the option of using the strainer or not.

It has been fun experimenting with new tea flavours over the past few months (D. always buys random teas from Davids Tea). I think at this point though, with the exception of the odd cup of blueberry jam tea, I am pretty set in my tea drinking ways. I like having white tea approximately 3-4 times a week and cream of earl grey the other 3 or 4 days. I long to get back to this as soon as I make it through the chai tea sitting on my shelf.

Something fun about discovering how much I like tea has been discovering tea accessories. This was mostly sparked by drinking loose leaf tea and by D.’s mom giving him that mug for Christmas. Seeing that mug and its strainer and the loose leaf tea reminded me of how in July 2010 I went to this tea store called Teaopia (it was subsequently bought out by an American chain called Teavana) and bought my dad a glass teapot and some loose leaf tea for his birthday. My dad, it seems, prefers tea in bag form, and so the teapot sat unused for much of the past three and a half years. (And perhaps he prefers a single cup versus an entire pot). I then decided to claim it and from January to March of this year made many pots of cream of earl grey. Unfortunately, the teapot cracked. Pretty much from when I started using it I worried it would crack. Glass is so fragile. D. and I have seen enough of our wine tumblers and wine glasses break or crack when we washed them that I pessimistically figured it was only a matter of time before the teapot cracked. After it cracked (and then actually broke apart…) I had to decide whether I would buy another glass teapot or a non-glass teapot. I love the look of glass teapots and I love seeing your tea just waiting to be drunk. That said, I decided against another glass teapot as I figured it may just break again. Instead, I got a teal bubble teapot from Davids Tea (see picture below) and I really like it. The description on their website says it is the teapot of your dreams and so far it has been great. D. also surprised me with a glass tea mug from Davids Tea and so far it has been perfect and hasn’t shown even the slightest hint that it might crack. I’ve actually been using it more than my teapot because I often don’t feel like an entire pot all by myself in the mornings. I need to have a tea party and use it!

 

Maybe it will be the teapot of your dreams too?

Here is the glass tea mug (with strainer) I have and use all the time.

Before I close, I do have to put in a little paragraph about the delicious mint tea in lovely little glasses served endlessly at the café in the main mosque in Paris. A girl I was friends with in Paris, (yet another) L., introduced me both to the café at the mosque and then to this Moroccan mint tea we could buy at Franprix (the ubiquitous Paris grocery store – although let it be noted that I had to go to several different Franprixs around Paris before I finally found one that had that tea in stock) – which was the closest we could get to replicating the tea from the mosque café at home. I made it at home sometimes (and brought a box back to North America with me) but eventually stopped. Somehow it had lost some of its allure and served only as a reminder of how much I missed Paris. Although the mint tea at the mosque is so (some would likely say too) sweet, I love it. And every time I return to Paris I make sure to visit the café and drink some of it. Now that I love other teas so much though, it really does seem quite like a totally separate drink as the sweet mint tea has little in common with the black and white tea I drink now.

This is the mint tea at the cafe at the Paris mosque

In closing, I am very glad I have discovered how delicious and wonderful a drink tea is. It has added a lot to my mornings and I am very glad it is now part of my daily routine.

I can't wait to have a tea party!

A Guide to Hand Creams

Dry rough hands

Hand cream used to be an exclusively winter thing for me. I would buy the really strong and concentrated Neutrogena and put it on regularly throughout the winter to provide relief to my rough unhappy hands. Things changed (on the hand cream front, and of course in other ways too) once I met D. Along with many other things, he brought into my life a love of hand creams. Suddenly we had a collection of hand creams that all smelled really nice, and that I found myself using no matter the weather outside. Now, every night of the year - winter spring summer and fall - I put on hand cream before going to bed.  Occasionally I put it on in the morning too. We have so many to choose from that it's always fun to pick which one I will use. This winter my hands haven't been as bad (read: knuckles and skin regularly so dry and rough to the point of occasional bleeding) as other winters. And that is not because it is warmer where I am now as it has been an extremely cold winter here. I think my less dry/rough hands must be the result of using hand cream throughout the year as opposed to just in the cold months.

I like blogs and articles on the internet (or in newspapers) where the writer does product reviews. They are fun to read and look like they would be fun to write! So I decided to do a similar thing on my blog with hand creams. Below you will find pictures, descriptions and stories related to all the hand creams currently sitting on my dresser. Here goes, in no particular order:

Body Shop Honeymania Body Butter

I absolutely love the Body Shop's Honeymania scent/line, especially this body butter (which I really only use as hand cream) and its bubble bath (one of the best bubble baths I've ever used, and I've used a lot). The smell is wonderful - light and subtle, just perfect. It is slightly sweet and overall very pleasant. This is one of my favourite hand creams, mostly for the scent. It also goes on easily but I mostly love wearing it because having my hands smell like honey is lovely.

One of my favourites - Fruits & Passion Blueberry Hand Cream

D.  and I really like the store Fruits & Passion. Their candles are particularly nice. We used to go to the store on rue St Denis in Montreal a lot. In Toronto, they have a shop in the Eaton Centre but it's quite small and nowhere near as good as the one on St Denis. Anyway, at the one on St Denis they would always have really good sales and this hand cream was on sale once. It seemed good and I liked how the description said it contained 'Wild Canadian blueberries" so I bought it for D. I, however, pretty much took it over as I just really really liked it. I love the smell. It's a quite strong blueberry scent and just smells great. The hand cream also goes on smooth and does not leave your hands feeling sticky. I really recommend this hand cream!

Body Shop Blueberry Body Butter Special Edition

I feel like whenever I see 'Special Edition' on something, I need to buy it :) Hand cream wise, this product (like its sister Honeymania body butter) is easy to put on and very nice. In addition to the Special Edition factor, I mostly bought this body butter because I love the Fruits & Passion blueberry hand cream so much and so wanted to try out a different blueberry scent. While I do like this one, it is a bit more sour (but not strongly sour) than the F & P one. I prefer the F & P smell but this smell is good too - quite light -  and it definitely grew on me to the point that I use it fairly often.

Herbacin Hand Cream aka Green hand cream

I had to look at the bottle to find out the name of this hand cream. I just think of it as the green hand cream. I love the design and look of the bottle - the daisy on the green background looks very nice. R. gave me my first bottle of this for my 28th birthday and since then (so two years and approximately 2 months) I am still using it (although finished that original bottle so bought more) and still really liking it. Ever since R. gave it to me I feel like I always see it in drug stores. It has a very sweet and comforting smell. I really like this hand cream and feel certain it is one I will always use.

Unlike other Burt's Bees products, this hand cream did not blow me away

I love Burt's Bees products. I use Burt's Bees face wash every day, and I love their peppermint body wash. I bought this hand cream thinking it would be really good. However, it has been a disappointment. It is almost scentless, which I don't like. I like scents! And I just didn't feel it did a lot for my hands. It is labelled as the 'Ultimate Care Hand Cream' but other hand creams have been way better for me. I would not buy it again.

The gold standard in fixing extremely rough hands

 In terms of scent, the bottle makes clear that this hand cream is fragrance free and that is very true. The consistency is very thick and concentrated and only a little of this hand cream goes a long way. I stick with this hand cream because it has proven itself winter after winter and has done wonders on my at times very rough (to the point of bleeding) hands. As I wrote above, ever since I discovered other hand creams I definitely use this one less (and really only in the cold months) but it definitely is my go-to when my hands are at their worst.

I like this one and am sad it's almost done

I bought this hand cream for D. in a little touristy shop in a small town on New Zealand's South Island which I visited in the first days of January 2013. While D. liked it right away, this hand cream grew on me. It has a unique, quite strong smell which I now actually like quite a lot. Its special ingredient is manuka honey; I am not sure how that is different from other honey but I think it's native to New Zealand. Our bottle is almost done and that'll be it so we use it pretty sparingly to stretch it out. Just after I typed that last sentence, however, I decided to google this hand cream and lo and behold (!) it's available on American Amazon. So I guess if we decide we really still want it, we can order it from there. That does make me feel better because I figured once it was done, that would be it and I was a bit annoyed with myself for not buying two bottles when I had the chance.

Hand cream from Lush

K. gave me this hand cream (along with some cool bath products) from Lush for my birthday this year. Its consistency is much more liquidey than the others. Its smell is quite chocolatey, which I was surprised to find that I liked. I usually thought I only liked chocolate smells in things I eat or drink but this hand cream has proven that thought incorrect. The label on this little pot of hand cream features different organizations that help animals. K. just told me that she recently visited a Lush store in Vancouver and inquired about getting the Save the wild Cheetah organization she is a part of on the label.

That's it for my hand creams. If you're reading this and feel like leaving me a comment telling me some of your favourite hand creams, please do! I always love getting recommendations and hearing about other people's favourite products. I wish you a pleasant spring with lovely smooth hands :)

Soft hands undoubtedly caused by hand cream