ArcticAir of Celeste

I've fallen into one of those loops where I'm tired, but not sleeping well. Which I guess would make total sense if I just reversed the polarity. Day after day is dark and grey, with the sky like a lid on a pot. One of these days, the sun is bound to show its face again, but it may be long enough that I'll be astonished to see how far up the sky it has crept behind this veil of clouds. I know it's coming a little farther north every morning. Today is the tenth anniversary of my father's death. It's hard to believe it's been so long, but on the other hand, it seems like only yesterday.

I'm living in the usual dread as we anticipate another trip to Chicago, this time for the momentous first birthday of Aquinas. It started out seeming fairly simple, but it has become more complicated. The most complicated part is the weather. A storm system approaches. Will it arrive on Friday, covering our road with blizzardy woe? Will it come on Thursday instead? Will it pass harmlessly off to the north and make a mockery of my anxieties? No one knows. As the meme says, snow is predicted: anywhere from one to seventy-eight inches!

So let's change the subject and talk about cookbooks. When the Lumberjack was here, I made cabbage rolls for him, as I sometimes do. The kids asked me when I first prepared this recipe, and I thought way, way back to one of the few cookbooks I possessed in the olden days: The New York Times Natural Foods Cookbook. My copy was a paperback, and very badly bound as things were in the 70s, so it eventually fell apart. That was my introduction to (vegetarian) cabbage rolls. So I decided to order a used copy of it and revisit my old friend. I got a hardcover, hoping this one wouldn't be as easily destroyed. The typography and the illustrations are the same, and it just makes me laugh so much. I don't know what it was about the 70s! What a strange time! They fill me with a piquant mixture of hilarity and horror. As do these recipes. This has to be the worst cookbook ever published by the NYT. And after so much research! It even has a bibliography, full of the names of many notable quacks and cranks of the era: Adelle Davis! Gayelord Hauser! Ancel Keyes! Edgar Cayce!

So many of these recipes are so earnestly unappetizing. I was highly amused to discover a recipe for Fruit Bat Soup, just in case anyone happened to find themselves in Micronesia. I have been on Saipan, where I'm pretty sure fruit bats are an illegal delicacy, but are sometimes smuggled back from the outer islands in styrofoam coolers. But I did fondly rediscover a few old favorites. My interest in this cookbook was mostly a search for economy more than health, so I went for the easily obtainable and cheap. I remember the oatmeal pancakes with cottage cheese, the cabbage rolls (I'm pleased to see I improved this recipe considerably when I reconstructed it) and the chicken with fruit. I made us a nice dish of chicken with fruit the night the Philosopher was born, and then didn't eat it again for a long time, because it reminded me of not feeling very well! But seriously . . . Head Cheese? What in the name of all that's holy is healthy about a dish made of hog snouts and offal? Well, I've got the book now, and when the apocalypse comes, I'll be ready to provide Pokeweed Au Gratin for all!