The Recession Kitchen

Guest Dish: Chocolate Chip Cookie as Healer by Kathi Baron

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilovemypit/ / CC BY 2.0

I’m celebrating the chocolate chip cookie. My favorite is when the chips are crunchy sweet, and the dough all around, soft, salty. But I’m not focused on the yum factor. Instead, I’m cheering on the chocolate chip cookie because it is a solution to a problem that I struggled with in writing SHATTERED.

In my first draft, I went on and on telling about how my protagonist Cassie’s family had been slowly unraveling around her. While working on it at Vermont College it was suggested to me that I start the novel with my 32^nd chapter, when Cassie’s dad breaks her violin. I cut thirty-one chapters

While I started in a new place, it was still important to convey to the reader how things had gone downhill. In looking backward, the reader has a chance to gain an understanding of why present events

are significant. Specifically, and especially, the past lends insight as to why 14-year-old Cassie yearns for her family, even after her dad demolishes her beloved Mangenot violin, even after she runs away from home.

The chocolate chip cookie became my champion.  Cassie’s memory of coming home from elementary school to the smell of cookies that her mother had just baked shows us what she has lost.

When Cassie and her mother begin to re-connect, it’s just prior to Thanksgiving. Her mother suggests they do some holiday baking together. Cassie says, “We haven’t made chocolate chip cookies since forever.” Mixed in with her words, we hear her longing, her need to do something with her mom, just like they used to do together. But her mom misses the communication, replying that she was thinking of baking pumpkin pies. Cassie becomes more direct. “But I miss your cookies, Mom;” and she thinks to herself, “And you being around.” Her mom hears her this time, suggesting that they bake a pie for Cassie to take to her best friend’s house at Thanksgiving, so her daughter will be a proper guest; and they can also bake cookies just for the two of them. Cassie pushes further, telling her mom that her best friend will “kill her” if she doesn’t bring her some cookies, too. In her persistence, we see that Cassie not only needs to do something that feels normal—baking chocolate chip cookies with her mom—but also, she wishes to make the healing real. If she takes her favorite cookies to her best friend, her friend becomes a witness to the normalcy, the healing that is occurring for Cassie.

I decided not to show the scene of Cassie baking with her mother. Instead, Cassie comes home from school the day after they baked to be surprised by finding her mom home early from work, in the kitchen. It startles Cassie. Her mom is changing.  She is coming back home, being around more, being more available. Cassie wonders if she’s in the wrong house or if she’s “morphed backward in time to when she was five years old.”

            The chocolate chip cookie is a messenger. It’s a messenger of Cassie’s wishes—to be connected to her mom, her family; a message of hope—Cassie’s hope that they can remain connected; and a kind of sharing, both with her mother and her friend, a way of validating that her family has begun to heal.

            To celebrate, I offer up my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

 

Kathi Baron is an Oak Park, IL-based writer. Her debut novel SHATTERED was released by WestSide Books in September. A release party for SHATTERED, will be held Oct 10th, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Magic Tree Bookstore (141 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, IL) . Interested in picking up the book and meeting this exciting new author? Email: Iris(at)magictreebooks.com to RSVP and reserve a copy. Oh, and Winberie's will be making chocolate chip cookies for the party!

An Earth Day Special: Tim Magner of Green Sugar Press

When I first contacted Tim Magner about featuring his Green Sugar Press at The Recession Kitchen, he warned me that he wouldn’t be much help in offering recipes. He’s not a cook.

“I’m like a lot of Americans, maybe even most Americans,” he later explained. “I don’t spend so much time on food preparation. I mean, here’s an example, right before you called I was munching on some granola.”

This isn’t to say Magner doesn’t care about where his food comes from. He cares immensely. That’s why, when he can, he buys all of his food at farmers markets.

“You can talk to the people who grow your food. For the last 10,000 years we’ve always had that. It was the last few generations when we lost that. There’s something about being able to talk to the farmer who grew your food and ask him, ‘when did you pick this? How did you grow this?’ There’s something to be said for knowing more than what we usually know.”

Magner likes to be in the know. That’s why when he started writing children’s books he decided to start Green Sugar. He wanted to know about the process, from first draft to delivering the finished book to a reader’s hands.

Part making this possible required that the Chicago-based writer keep things local, that allowed him to keep tabs on where each of his projects stood. When he needed illustrators, he found them at the Art Institute of Chicago. When he needed a printing press, he called a friend in Chicago ‘burbs.

“I like to know how everything works from soup to nuts,” he explained.

Magner has now seen three picture books through the process. There’s Earl the Earthworm Digs for His Life, which follows an earthworm as he discovers his importance. My two-year-old, by the way, loves the story and now must dig for earthworms with almost every trip into the yard. And there are N is for Nature: An Environmental Alphabet Book, an alphabet book targeted at emergent readers, and An Environmental Guide from A to Z.

None of the books preach. None speak of the evils of reliance on fossil fuels. They don’t blast factory farms or shovel guilt for the state of the fish. They simply do not offer a view of a planet gasping for a heroic generation to save it.

“I think kids should be given he chance to love the planet before we ask them to save it,” Magner said.

It’s an idea he thinks should be at the core of all environmental education, and it’s at the core of Green Sugar’s motto: “Growing Green Minds.”

Magner grew up when the environmental movement was first capturing the attention of the nation. But, he said, it wasn’t Woodsy the Owl asking him to keep it clean that made him love the outdoors.

It was diving into the lagoons at the golf course that abutted his family’s home. It was shucking sweet corn at his grandparent’s Wisconsin summer home. It was catching frogs with his four brothers and sisters.

“I think unstructured outdoor time is a really important part of a kid’s development,” he said. “Instead of going to soccer practice, maybe skip it and ride your bike to a botanical garden and wander around for a while.”

Getting into touch with our own backyards is a critical part of learning to love the planet, he continued.

“I was recently talking to a local school district [in northern suburbs of Chicago]. They were telling me about a program they are starting, a whole curriculum based around the Brazilian rainforest,” he said. “They asked me what I thought. I told them I thought it was great. All they needed to do was scrap the rain forest thing, and use the Skokie Lagoons.”

Magner believes all children should be given the opportunity to get outside.

“I was at a school on the South Side and I met with the principal afterwards and was like, ‘that backyard you have is awesome! It’d be a perfect spot for a garden and use it to teach math, science, reading, and writing. You can do it all right there!’ And she looked at me like I was crazy and she gave me 14 reasons why that wouldn’t work for her school.”

He conceded that she did have some good reasons. “There aren’t any easy answers,” he said.

But, he added, not all 14 of the answers would stop him.

The goal, he repeated, is giving kids a chance to love their planet, and this time he quoted John Burroughs.

"Knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow."

Cooking with: Gail Green

Gail Green announces she’s ready to talk. Her border collie is being entertained by a cookie ball. And just in case, she has a spare ready to go.

“We’ve got at least a minute before the second one,” she says, only half-joking.

In mid-February Green’s latest book was released by The Scarecrow Press. Titled Animals and Teens: The Ultimate Teen Guide, the book is a thorough examination of the possibilities for relationships between teens an animals, ranging from household pets to rescue organizations, to animals that in many ways rescue kids.

A true lover of things great and small, Green has written about animals in the past. In 2001, kp books released her work The Cat & Dog Lovers Idea Book. An illustrator, she is also the creator the Sweet PETatoes brand of lovable pet characters which she licenses to an array of textile manufactures, craft suppliers, and publishers.

But when her editor at Scarecrow informed her that she didn’t just want a book on familiar furry critters, she wanted a book on animals; Green had to go beyond the world of pets.

Green explains this request blew things wide open.

“There are so many career opportunities involving animals, and teens are keyed into what they want to do with their lives. So, I thought about careers people can branch into: pet grooming, pet training, veterinarians, and dog walkers.

“But when you expand it to animals, it incorporates all kinds of things. For example, I knew some teens ride horses, but I didn’t know teens could volunteer at a therapeutic riding stable, and there was one by my house. Then there are teens who ride competitively. Another teen I found is going into genetic research involving horses. And that’s just horses!”

Green wanted real teen voices to drive her book, so set out to find examples of teens whose lives where changed by animals.

Some of these examples were so ordinary many people would hardly notice them. But for the person involved, they were profound.

“One girl I spoke with has parents who are 100 percent adamant against having animals in the house. But her neighbor had a dog, and the dog was kind of neglected, so she would give the dog water, and play with him, and hang out with him when he was in the yard.

“When she was having a problem in her family, or having a bad day, she found that being with dog changed the way she was feeling. When she graduated from school, she moved, and decided to start volunteering at the Humane Society. Not only did she have a way to help animals and get her dog fix, she also found other people who loved animals.”

She also found stories about the ability of animals to heal teens.

“I spoke with a woman who has a farm in Georgia, and the juvenile judge in her county sends kids to her for community service. A lot of kids are having problems, like family problems, or problems from a lack of having a family. Some of the kids come, complete their service, and she never sees them again. But some of the kids complete their community service and then they continue.

“She told me about a boy who had experienced physical abuse and would sometimes get very angry. But he really developed a relationship with a cow. It didn’t matter if he was in a bad mood, that cow was steady and she wasn’t going to hurt him. He could trust her.”

In her reporting, Green says, she discovered a truth.

“Teens, from pre-teen on, go through very tough times. Their bodies are changing and they are judging each other. They don’t feel like they look good. They can feel like they don’t have the right clothes, or they can’t get a date, or they don’t have a boyfriend, or they don’t have good enough grades, or they think can’t get into college, or they have drama on Facebook. These kids are under so much pressure. They are so stressed out all the time.

“But petting a dog, stroking a cat, or even just watching fish in a tank can lower your blood pressure, and as we relax we can see things in a different light,” she offers.

Within that, she continues, is a message for all of us.

“As we get older we loose our innocence, the way we see the world, the way we see our parents. Animals maintain that innocence. So, when we are involved with animals they bring us back to that innocence. They teach us to live in the moment and to appreciate that moment.”

Check out Gail Green's Blog.

And don't miss her recipe for pet treats below!

Cooking with: Pamela Todd

Pamela Todd has just learned her latest novel The Blind Faith Hotel has won a Green Earth Book Award from the Newton Marasco Foundation. She opens her email to send her writer friends a note. She types one line: “just had to tell you.”

The humility is that of writer who writes to preserve that which she loves. It’s that of a lover of a great bowl of lentil soup in the winter. Raised in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s far west side, one of her earliest memories is of sitting with a small hammer and smashing open rocks.

Each crack revealed beauty tucked away by nature and revealed by a curious child.

The Blind Faith Hotel is novel about family and redemption. Its story is that of Zoe, a tween with a love of the sea and her fisherman father, who in turn is far better at wrangling sea creatures than at realizing the responsibilities of paternity. At the book’s open, Zoe’s mother is in the process of moving her family, Zoe, 17-year-old Nelia and 6-year-old Oliver, away from her husband who has left them again, this time for fleeting riches of Alaska’s crab fishery. Their destination is a family home that sits thousands of miles away on a Midwestern prairie, a place where Zoe finds trouble and a community service sentence working on ecological restoration project.

Todd rediscovered the prairie when a friend was steward of the Belmont Prairie in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove.

“We got infected with Love of Prairie,” she says. “I think it’s the kind of thing that is contagious.”

For Todd that love included tearing out part of the lawn at her own home and seeding it with native species. A year later the prairie had returned, vigorous, as if it had been just below the surface of the soil waiting to explode, but somehow unable to break through the mat of mowed grasses that held it down.