Nom de Plume

My last encounter with Jincy Willett led to this deep and insightful review. Fortunately, The Writing Class fared a little better; I enjoyed it. Amy Gallup, once a celebrated author, hasn’t written in years–that is, if you don’t count scribbling on the margins of really bad student writing from the workshop she teaches at the local community college or her lists of strange words that she posts to her blog late at night. Business is as usual: there’s a new crop of workshop attendees with varying degrees of talent, the woman who has taken her class five times already is back; and Amy settles into the comfort of teaching. Only all of a sudden, one person in the class is doing malevolent things to the others in a sneaky, underhand sort of way. And then there is a murder. It’s one of them. Who is it? Who is next to be murdered? And how does Amy and her students handle it?

Okay, I confess; I figured out who is was pretty early on; there was only one person it could be. Still, it didn’t detract from the story at all, which was mystery, writing advice, and the story of Amy who slowly lets herself be drawn into a community and writing again after a long, dark and very depressing existence.

• Think it’s about time for me to take a shower and hit the road for a meeting? Yeah, me too. #
• Two new soaps: 1) may chang and laurel; 2) vetiver, ylang ylang, violet leaf absolute and clary sage #
• 9 more book reviews and I’m up to date. See, I AM trying to keep the blog current. #

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In my abandonment of all things blog, I stopped posting new soaps quite a while ago. The obession, however, continues. Particularly as I have more virgin coconut oil than I know what to do with.

The backstory is this: About a year ago, I came across a Craig’s List post for really cheap VCO, contacted the seller … and then never did anything about it. About a month ago, she contacted me and said she was giving it to me. She’s up in Lynnwood; it was as good an excuse as any to hit the Korean Spa. Plus, if the oil turned out to be rancid or something, I wouldn’t be bitter about the drive. To be completely and totally honest, I can’t quite tell whether it’s rancid or not. It could be on the edge … or it could be just very strong smelling … or it could be on the edge … You get the point.

However, it soaps just dandily.

And I have been soaping just dandily too. Behold! A drawer of beauty!

Among other, older soaps that I can’t remember what’s in them, we’ve got:
Coffee Rose (rose fragrance & coffee butter)
Rosemary, ylang ylang & basil
Ahoy Matey fragrance (this is a dupe of Acqua di Sale that smells exactly like the original–I love it)
Ylang & vetiver
Patchouli, ylang, pepper, palmarose & pine
Citrus & anise
Melted dragon’s blood resin with palmarose, copaiba balsam & amrys
Carnation blend (ylang, clove & black pepper)
Rose and oakmoss

And that’s not all … oh no … that’s just what is CURED.

Here’s what’s curing now:

May chang & laurel
Springerle (butter CO2, anise, benzoin resin & clove)

A weird canteloupe fragrance that I got in a fit of reminiscencing about some body wash I used to love; alas, it’s retch-worthy.
Cocoa absolute & peppermint
Something … I can’t remember
Clary sage, ylang, vetiver & violet leaf absolute

So.

I know there are a couple people to whom I promised to send soap and never did. Mea culpa! I promise this time. Remind me. Or if you just want some. And I know you. That would seem obvious, but apparently not.

Yes, you read that right. Tallow. As in rendered beef fat.

I’ve never used tallow in soap, though I have used lard. Lard makes WONDERFUL soap. (And before anyone gets skeeved out, if you’ve ever used Dove or Ivory, you’ve used animal fats in soap.)

I got tired of buying lard in the plastic tubs; it’s not all that cheap and it’s got BHT and all sorts of other stuff in there to preserve it. So the next logical step was to render my own. Problem: It’s a little hard to find pig fat to render. Bob’s Quality Meats–a fabulous butcher in Columbia City–offered to order me a 60-lb. drum. I think that might be a little extreme.

However! Safeway butchers will just give you beef fat if you ask for it. They look at you funny (as do the cashiers when they see this big bag of fat), but it costs nothing. And these days, with the economy as it is, I’m all about soaping on the cheap. Plus, how best to recycle? They would just throw it out. So right now, I have a pot full of beef fat, water, and salt simmering on the stove. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Sammy Brady lives a quiet life in a small Illinois town. Sequestered from the rest of the world for reasons both of his making (a hinted-at tragedy in his past) and not of his making (his homosexuality), his basset hound Stump is really the only living thing he has–until his recently widowed neighbor barges into his loneliness with a loneliness of his own. Together, they build a dog house modeled after a ship, at which point Sammy is interviewed by a local newspaper writer–the great nephew of the young man he loved as a teenager, the person who died, the person whose death he hugs to him as his fault. His neighbor’s granddaughter appears, his long-lost brother with a mysterious connection to a militant organization resurfaces, and Sammy is drawn into a slow, inexorable descent into his past as his world widens enough to include other people.

This was a gorgeous, gorgeous book. It is lovingly written; we are drawn into characters that if real, we wouldn’t look at twice. I loved this. Highly recommend.

I’ve been meaning to read this for ages and ages, but just finally got around to putting it on hold at the library after a jaunt to Elliot Bay a couple weeks ago, where it was still being touted as as a staff pick. For those living under a rock the basic story is this: Woman teetering on the brink of 30 and stuck in a dead-end job decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year and blog about it. Woman gets huge blog following. Woman discover self while losing her mind trying to hit the deadline. Woman MAKES the deadline–and gets a book deal.

So you can see that of COURSE I wanted to read it, even though I don’t have a huge blog following and am never going to get a book deal out of the random, rambling mess that is Nom de Plume. I particularly wanted to read it because I am working my way through a Madhur Jaffray Indian food cookbook. (Slowly, that is.) Actually, I’ve been cooking a lot lately, and I’m getting to be a decent one. But anyway.

Julie and Julia was fun. It was a good book to read last night as Xanax wended its way through my system. (I won’t bore you with my anxiety issues, only to say that I was so relieved to learn that I am not about to have a heart attack and that pharmacology is a wonderful thing.) Her descriptions of food and cooking are wonderful; I particularly remember one passage musing about liver and how it’s something you have to give yourself over to. But her descriptions of her lack of a sex life, her wacky friends, her dead-end job, and so forth weren’t nearly as riveting. And this was the problem for me: The book was too much like a blog. Or rather, it was too much like a blog that was padded with personal details to make it into a book. The only thread of continuity was the food. Everything else seemed kind of random.

Part of me feels churlish for not just adoring this book–as she puts it, Julia Child saved her life and it’s wonderful beyond measure that she was able to quit her temping jobs and write full time (and there’s no question the girl can write; she’s funny and articulate). Still, when all is said and done, and the book covers closed, and I have moved on to make two batches of soap (may chang and laurel for one; vetiver, ylang ylang, violet leaf absolute and clary sage for the other), my reaction is, “Eh.”

• On hold for a conference call … still waiting …. still waiting …. still waiting …. #
• Sorry for all the test blog posts…Wordpress 2.7 was causing me grief! #

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