Improvised Dinners + Marriage Plots

Roasted Celery Root and Blood Oranges + The Good Mother

Firstly: Happy birthday, RER! I can’t believe it’s been a full year since I started this newsletter. Thank you all so, so much for sticking with me. I can’t tell you how grateful I am! Here’s to another year of reading and cooking on repeat. Also, while I have you: Is there anything you’d like me to write about, food- or book-wise, coming up? Anything you want me to cover that you’re curious about? Drop a note in the comments and I’ll do my best to abide!

Below: An '80s book filled with femininity and freedom, and a dish that took me by surprise. 

Read

The Good Mother by Sue Miller, pub. 1986
Buy: Booksaremagic.com or special-order from your local bookstore

I picked up The Good Mother at Bart’s Books in Ojai, one of my favorite bookstores in the world, knowing nothing about it but loving its premise, title and the fact that it was published in the '80s (my birth decade). Being a “good mother” is very much in the Zeitgeist, from magazine articles to countless books waxing poetic on the topic. What I love about this book is that a) it’s a novel, not a memoir, so you can just relax into the fiction of it b) it takes place in the '80s, a time many of us look back on as simpler, though the same core issues were present; discussions of morality never go out of style! c) it isn’t trying too hard to prove a point; Miller lets her main character make mistakes and allows you, the reader, to judge for yourself whether you find her behavior unsavory. Nothing makes my heart sing more than a free, self-sufficient, intrepid woman (cue the dancing scene in An Unmarried Woman); add drama, self-discovery, and a rich inner life and I’m putty in your hands. 

This was Sue Miller’s very first novel (she most recently authored Monogamy, with dozens in between). Apparently it spent months on the New York Times bestseller list, a list I care nothing about but for some reason makes me happy she was on – I feel like this one could’ve easily slipped under the radar and gone unnoticed. Our main character, Anna, is a 30-something woman in a dull, sexless marriage to Brian, a straight-laced lawyer. Their daughter, Molly, is 4 years old when they decide to amicably divorce. Brian immediately remarries a co-worker and moves to D.C. Anna, single and with mostly-full custody, relocates to a tiny Cambridge apartment with barely enough room for her piano. She gets part-time work at a lab working with rats; the rest of her time she spends teaching piano, raising her young daughter and trying to rebuild her life and sense of self. 

Anna recounts her childhood in myriad chapters throughout, lending her personhood a richness and depth: a painful adolescence with her enigmatic, repressed mother; summers spent in Maine at her mother’s parents’ house, aka “camp,” replete with a misogynistic grandfather, silent, domesticated grandmother, countless cousins whose backstories have been shrouded in conservative shame. Another summer at her father’s parents’ home in Colorado where no one speaks to her for weeks on end (which, though stultifying, she ultimately finds oddly liberating).

Miller draws both Molly and motherhood tenderly. Oftentimes children are loosely sketched, but Molly jumps off the page with humor and delight. Anna is a sympathetic, warm maternal presence, and reading about the two of them buddying around is a joy. They both need and provide for each other. Soon, the duo becomes a trio with Leo Cutter, a raffish artist and Anna’s lover. He spends more and more time with Anna and Molly, favoring their apartment over his illegal loft, and – despite all signs pointing otherwise – turns out to be a loving, kindhearted father figure. More importantly, he ushers Anna into a new phase of sexual awakening. For the first time she’s able to experience pleasure, to truly lose herself, without shame or guilt. She adopts Leo’s loose style of living: they’re comfortably nude around Molly, allowing her into private spaces (shower, bathroom) and speaking to her about the body in a straightforward, candid manner. Anna slowly sheds the remnants of her upbringing and comes into her own.

But this Edenic way of living can’t last, and halfway through the novel, Anna receives a phone call from Brian that results in a Kramer v. Kramer-esque custody battle. Anna is forced to grapple with the morality of certain decisions and their impacts on Molly – it seems her newfound freedom has come at a cost. The trial – told in strikingly realistic detail – makes for gripping reading. Miller adroitly sheds the levity of the first act, leading us into the throes of a drama where the stark black-and white nature of the legal system is juxtaposed with the grey area of seemingly innocuous decisions. Our Anna, who we’ve come to love and want to protect, faces losing everything: Molly, Leo, motherhood, freedom. You’ll have to read to find out how it ends. 

Eat

This dish came together when I was attempting to use up multiple sad vegetables that had been lingering in the fridge: a nearly-withered celery root and half a head of radicchio hanging on for dear life. After shaving the celery root thinly and roasting it with rounds of blood orange until it collapsed into itself, I tossed in the radicchio for bitterness and crunch. Finished with a pour of delicious olive oil and a cloud of goat gouda, it took about 20 minutes and was easily the best thing I’ve made in months. And all on one sheet tray! Celery root and citrus are waning at the market (here, at least) so get ‘em while they’re hot!

An Improvised Celery Root and Blood Orange Sheet Tray Bake
Serves 2

1 large celery root, tops removed, peeled, halved and thinly shaved on a mandoline
1 blood orange, topped, tailed and thinly sliced into rounds (reserve the top and tail for juice)
½ head radicchio, thinly sliced
Evoo
Good finishing oil (I’m currently loving Oracle)
Goat gouda (Midnight Moon will change your life)
Kosher salt
Maldon

Preheat your oven to 425F. On a small (quarter, if you have one) baking sheet, toss the celery root and blood orange with a hefty pour of olive oil. Season with Kosher salt and mix well with your hands. You want everything well-coated and glistening in order to yield the meltiest result! Roast, tossing a few times, until the root is caramelized and delicious (first it will curl; then it will relax into itself), about 20-25 minutes. As soon as you remove the pan from the heat, toss through the radicchio. Squeeze the juice from the top and tail of the blood orange over the pan, then drizzle over your finishing oil and a sprinkle of Maldon. Using a microplane, shave the goat gouda over the top so it melts into the roots and leaves. Eat straight off the sheet tray.