Rainbow Trout Caught With A Willow Switch Rod

Wildhorse Creek, Idaho

Bob Griswold, handsomest cowboy in the Sawtooth’s, cut a willow branch with a knife, tied on some line and a hook, placed a bright red salmon egg on the end of the hook and let Livia drop it in Wildhorse Creek, in a pool close to the bank. She pulled out three trout. Bob made a campfire and set up a cast iron pan at the edge of it, on some rocks. Livia, bitten, went back with her willow switch rod to catch another and she did, immediately. Alone, she wasn’t sure what to do with the fish as it flopped about on the bank. Another friend, Matt, showed her what to do, and then gave a lesson in gutting the fish. Livia cleaned her own. Others caught a river char, and Leandro McPhee, on his tenth birthday, caught the longest trout of all. On a sunny bank of a creek in a valley of the Sawtooth’s, we ate butter fried fish with lemon. I thought of my grandmother 100 years ago, a six year old, in Montana, in the wilderness, fishing with nothing more than a switch, catching dinner for her mother and little sister — in what was then, for them, with no money and little food, something of a necessity.

Capers

Aeolian Capers

They are as big as South Sea Pearls, plump and juicy, the pickled bud — before it blossoms into the gorgeous white and purple spiny flower. On Salina in June I saw them everywhere, the caper bush flourishing in the dry, black volcanic soil of the Aeolian Islands. I was struck by their beauty and size, learning that they have many special powers, able to create appetite, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, fight toothaches, ignite libido, and even to magically transform into another fruit. After the bud flowers from the flower come the cucunci. Filled with the tiniest seeds, which give it texture, they are delicious too — some people even think they’re tastier than capers. (In the first picture above, the cucunci hangs next to the caper on the end of one of the flower’s purple tentacles.)

Halibut with capers

(Or any white fish — branzino (Italian seabass), orata (gilthead seabream)

Roast very simply at 400 for about 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish, with a little olive oil, big capers, cherry tomatoes cut in half, a sprinkle of salt. Serve immediately with a wedge of lemon to spritz over the fish.

I would pair with a summer orzo and a light salad.

Summer

Popham Beach, Maine

Thank You Dallas Morning News

Book review: ‘Dear Money’ by Martha McPhee

By ANNE MORRIS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

A book that begins in July on a beach in Maine certainly sounds like a summer beach read. Dear Money is more than that. Martha McPhee’s entertaining fourth novel asks serious questions about what people live for. As the title hints, money is one answer.

Click here for full review

Thank you Minneapolis Star Tribune

For the smart review of Dear Money by Mark Athitakis on Sunday, July 4 : A sharp funny satire about wealth and fame.

And thank you Mark Athitakis for having more to say on your insightful blog, American Fiction Notes.

Livia Rides With Cullen: The Borghese Gardens

Hundred Dollar Days and Gateau au Chocolat: Le Diablo

Ever since I was little girl I have enjoyed cooking. I started because I liked brownies and wanted to get to the bottom of how they were made. I would only make them from scratch and failed repeatedly. They were so hard my stepbrothers called them “rockies” and used them as ammunition for their slingshots. My determination (and failures) impressed my father. Deciding that I needed to feel success, he gave me a case of Duncan Hines brownie mixes. I rejected them because they were too easy, inauthentic. But I liked the batter and made the mix just so I could spread it between two pieces of white bread to create a chocolate sandwich — a recipe I learned from a little Indian girl, the daughter of a scholar at The Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. I can’t remember the little girl’s name but I can still taste the chocolate sandwiches her mother gave us as snacks after school.

At a French restaurant with my father, I tried a flourless chocolate cake. I liked it better than any brownie I had ever eaten and became determined to learn how to make it. For our birthdays, my father gave my sisters and me “hundred dollar days,” that was a day in which we could do anything we pleased with the money. (One sister went to the race tracks to bet on horses.) For my eighth birthday, I asked my father to help me figure out the recipe to that flourless cake. We ended up at Dean and Deluca’s in NYC, combing through cookbooks until we found a recipe in Simca’s Kitchen by Simone Beck — Julia Child’s partner. With my $100 my father bought me the book, chocolate, all the equipment and we drove home to Princeton and started making the cake. I’ve been making it ever since, have even transformed the small little thing into a massive wedding cake, big enough to feed 200.

Gateau au Chocolat: Le Diablo

A note: I altered the recipe. Beck uses German sweet chocolate. In the icing she adds coffee.

Ingredients:

6 ounces of semi sweet chocolate

3/4 cup of butter

3/4 cup of sugar

4 eggs, separated

4 tablespoons ground almond

2 tablespoons of flour

9″ spring form pan

In the top of a double boiler melt chocolate and butter. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar until pale.

Beat egg whites until stiff. Set aside. Fold the chocolate into the yolks. Add the ground almonds and flour. Fold in the chocolate very gently.

Butter and flour the spring form pan. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until the center is almost set. Don’t overcook. You want it very moist in the center, almost molten.

For icing: 1/2 stick of butter and 4 ounces of chocolate. Melt and then spread over the cake.

1986: Jenny helping me assemble the wedding cake. After icing with chocolate I covered the whole thing in whipped cream. As it happened, our Saint Bernard took an enormous bite out of the cake, a good fourth of one of the bottom layers. I started crying. Sarah turned the bitten section to the center of the cloverleaf, covered with loads of whipped cream and told me to cheer up. No one would ever know.

Empress Livia In Her Backyard

In the backyard of Augustus’s house in the Foro Romano. Yes, that’s the Coliseum in the background. She really does believe she was Livia, Augustus’s wife, in a previous life. This trip to Rome has been a pilgrimage to sites from that world of hers.

Photo credit: Cullen Stanley, godmother of the empress.

With Livia In Rome

Livia in the fountains outside of Augustus’ tomb. Augustus ruled the world and Livia ruled Augustus.

Still in the fountain with her godmother, Cullen, behind.

Livia signing a statue of Augustus left as an offering, along with others, on the wall in front of the excavation site. Livia looked up and said, “I once poisoned many men.”

I Was On The Lenny Lopate Show!

Click here to Listen!