I was surprised to read that J.D. Salinger died today. He was 91 years old, so he certainly lived a long time. I think that the main reason I was surprised was because he is never in the press… he gave his last interview in 1980 (three years before I was even born) and was almost as famous for being reclusive as he was for writing The Catcher in the Rye. I said almost.

My seventeen year old self, like many other adolescents, was able to identify deeply with Salinger’s characters; their humanity, their yearning for a more authentic way of being in the world, the passions and recklessness of being very young. I haven’t re-read Salinger’s work in years, and look forward to revisiting it as an adult. I loved Holden Caulfield’s voice, but identified even more profoundly with Franny Glass of Franny and Zooey. The fact that Salinger’s characters inspired such devotion in fans was a source of pain for him, he who most wanted to be left alone, but it has also insured that the genius of his singular talent will continue to live on. That’s the beauty of the written word.

Anyway, as Salinger has claimed to be writing, writing, writing away all these years, hopefully he does have some work that can now be published posthumously. There are many articles to be found on the world wide web about his death, and the one I read is here, if you’re interested. The portrait of him is nice.

Thank you, Mr. Salinger, for sharing what you could of your life, your voice.
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Also, I’ve been wanting to say something about Haiti. I won’t post a link to sites you can visit to donate money, because I’m sure you’ve seen them/donated already. Though I’d like to say something meaningful about the earthquake and the devastation it has caused, I can’t. My heart goes out to all those touched by this tragedy, and I wish there was more I could do to help.
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In other (non) news, this is what Montreal looks like today, right outside my window. I stayed in and read some feminist/race/class theory today, which was somewhat relaxing. I also had a very good lunch, and discovered that stir-fried daikon is delicious.

I hope you’ll excuse me my rambling… I’m trying to get back into blogger-mode after my conspicuous absence. I have a few recipes that I look forward to posting, and a few books I’d like to write reviews of, but am having a bit of trouble getting it together these days. Part of the reason for this is that I haven’t been using recipes most of the time, so it makes it hard to share what I’ve been cooking without measurements and precise instructions. I find that a lot of the fun of cooking is in doing it ‘on the fly’, and that looking at food, something so simple and essential to us, as a precise science can make it intimidating, which is the last thing it should be.

I didn’t set out to write about cooking in a didactic way, since I do still see myself as a bit of a novice cook… so I apologize if this site is lacking in consistency. I hope to continue writing about food, books, and tea, and many other things that I find interesting along the way. I would like to write in a conversational tone, to flesh out my current ideas about feeding myself and feeding others, intellectually and physically.

And I do hope that you will join me.

Yesterday, I posted about Pennywort Juice, and in the spirit of that I tried another fresh herb drink. This one would definitely fall into the ‘on the fly’ category, and was certainly interesting.

This is Tia To Juice. Tia to, as you may know if you are familiar with Vietnamese herbs, is a Vietnamese variety of perilla. It is in the same family as basil and mint, Japanese shiso and Korean gaenip. It has a distinctive, herbal flavour that is hard to explain if you’ve never tried it… it’s very aromatic and fresh-tasting. No one recommended that I try this, and as far as I know it is not a known recipe. I happened to have some tia to in the fridge, so thought I’d give it a whirl.

tia to, up close and personal

I used the same method to make this drink as for pennywort juice. I removed the leaves from stems, put them into the blender, added water to cover, added a bit of sugar and blended it for about a minute before straining.

Although this herb has a very strong flavour, it didn’t come through very well in this drink. I enjoyed it, but would stick with perilla syrup, which I tried this summer and loved. Next time I feel like drinking this particular herb, I’ll make the syrup again, and will post the recipe. It is delicious, simple, and is the prettiest red-fuchsia colour.

How is your life these days?
Have you read J.D. Salinger?

love,
meg

Tags: Books, herbs, musings, Vietnamese, winter

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Books, Treats, musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.