Better Late Than Never

A Mess of Books + Holiday Recipes

Hi! It’s been a minute. First, I was too despondent to write post-election. Then I got so overwhelmed by my own inbox filling up with newsletters (99% of them gift guides) that I felt like I didn’t want to contribute to the more-ness. Sometimes we just want less.

But the fact is, I’ve been reading and cooking up a storm, and didn’t want to stay away too much longer, especially around the holidays, when (for me, at least) free / quiet time tends to be more abundant. After the holiday parties are over and the cookies swapped, there’s a spaciousness to grab hold of. This precious time is one of my favorites for long books and comforting meals. Below, a taste of each.

Read

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, pub. 1994
Buy: Your local used bookshop or Thrifbooks.com

Since we last spoke, I finished the final two parts of The Country Girls and can confirm it’s a two-thumbs-up holiday vacation read – in terms of being a sprawling three-parter following the same two characters from childhood through, well…death (I prefer my holidays with a dose of despair). After that I jumped on the Ina bandwagon with the rest of the globe and listened to her audiobook (my second ever!), Be Ready When the Luck Happens, which she herself reads and which goes down easy. What I wouldn’t give to be 70-ish, living in a shingled estate surrounded by hydrangeas, cooking for my (exclusively gay) friends, wearing the same shirt every day. After the election I decided to fully obliterate my brain with another meringue-light audiobook – Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe. Listening to Nina, with her soothing British accent, read her memoir of abandoning Cornwall for London, post-divorce, at age 60-something, might not have made me smarter but definitely made me smile. I subsequently read The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop for my book club, which I both suggested and ended up despising (lol). Too verbose! The story simply didn’t hold up to the promised drama. And we all hated the narrator. I balanced out the book blahs with Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood, which had been on my list for years and WOW. It’s one of the most eccentric character portraits I’ve ever read and made me respect Lockwood even more for coming from where she did and ending up where she is. But the book that stuck with me the most over the past six-ish weeks is The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.

I keep a massive Notes app in my phone that includes books I’ve read and an ongoing list of books I want to read; I pull up the latter whenever I’m in a used bookstore. I have no idea how The Stone Diaries ended up on the list, but I randomly stumbled on it at Open Door Bookshop in Rome last month and promptly purchased it for 6 euro. Written in 1993, it won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Books Critics Circle Award in 1995 (it was published in Canada first, then the US, hence the two-year discrepancy). Carol Shields published her first book at age 40 (it’s truly never too late); she was prolific, churning out dozens of titles before her untimely death at 68. This book – a fictional biography – is a marvel. It hooked me from the first line and I voraciously tore through it while simultaneously wanting to linger on every word.

Divided into chronological chapters (Birth, 1905; Childhood, 1916; Marriage,1927; Love, 1936; Motherhood, 1947; Work, 1955-1964; Sorrow, 1965; Ease, 1977; Illness & Decline, 1985; Death, 199-), it opens with the birth of our heroine, Daisy Goodwill, in Manitoba, Canada, and follows her throughout her life; the chapters are narrated by other characters in Daisy’s world. This is the story of an ordinary woman, but amounts to so much more than that. Daisy faces loss from the moment she enters the world, and we follow along as she makes the decisions expected of a woman growing up in the first half of the 20th century (marriage, kids) – all with a backdrop of unexpressed / repressed sadness. Daisy doesn’t have the language to comprehend her grief, and that results in a sort of muting of the self. She seeks happiness and fulfillment in a world that isn’t designed to care if she finds it. Shields’ precise prose lulls you into the type of reading stupor that can have you locked in for hours on end. It’s a gorgeous study of interiority, domesticity and womanhood, and deserves to be read again and again.

Eat

I hosted my second annual Friendsgiving this year and it filled my heart to the brim. The menu was, um, extensive. The prep list was days long. But the actual cooking felt so easy and satisfying, and I was honestly happy with every single dish (rare!). I highly recommend making one or many of these for any upcoming holiday extravaganzas, or just dinner at home for yourself.

Friendsgiving 2024 Menu

apps

*crudités, potato chips & anchovy magic

*shrimp cocktail & pimentón aioli

*Henrietta Inman’s buckwheat-oat-hazelnut ‘tart’ with roasted tomatoes, whipped ricotta & thyme (Henrietta is one of my all-time favorite bakers — check out her books!)

mains

*shaved Brussels sprouts salad with Asian pear, shallots, and walnuts that I candied in maple syrup, pimentón, tamari and garlic powder

*big chicory salad with Lyle’s vinaigrette

*coconut-creamed greens

*Alison Roman’s (INCREDIBLE) squash gratin (my first time making gratin?! Never not eating grating again for the rest of my life)

*pimentón-roasted carrots

*Bayou Saint Cake cornbread (holy fuck, is this good) with salted butter

sweets

*dark chocolate olive oil mousse (a staple in my kitchen, adapted from a recipe I learned while cooking at Moro in London so it’s way less sweet and refined sugar-free)

*Amy Chaplin’s almond cake with maple-roasted apples (fantastic – and zero dairy, gluten or refined sugar)

*Moro’s yogurt cake (another delicacy from my kitchen days…truly delicious and special, and can be served at any temp!)

Here’s to a happy end of 2024. I’ll be back once more with my full year of reading and a recipe recap. Now get cozy, eat well and bury yourselves in books!