Serendipity Books in Friday Harbor has my affection (and my $)–both last year and this visit, we combed the shelves and came away with lots of great finds.

My two favorites are the 1949 cookbook Operation Vittles and a 1914 edition of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.

Compiled by American women in blockaded Berlin, the cookbook was published halfway through the year-long crisis and is a fascinating glimpse of national identity and gender issues. It also prompted me to do some reading on the Berlin Airlift. Oh, and the recipe for red cabbage (rotkohl, ja!) looks authentic and yummy.

p. 63 Red Cabbage

6 C red cabbage (shredded)
1/2 t salt
3 T onion (chopped fine)
1 apple (chopped)
5 cloves
1 C water
3 T chopped bacon
1/4 C vinegar
4 T sugar

Cook cabbage, salt, onion, apple and cloves in water for 1 hour. Fry bacon until crisp, add vinegar and sugar. Simmer 10 minutes. Pour over cooked cabbage, mix well. –Dorothy Hawkins

Many of the recipes have stories or headings that are simply delightful–I’ll treat you to a few.

p. 15 While en route to Germany we were suddenly and permanently made conscious of Army terms. The ship’s passengers had been assigned individually to eat either at A-Deck or D-Deck, invariably separating couples, when over the P-A system came the startling announcement: “Arrangements have been made for husbands to mess with their wives!”

p. 16 The American wife was hollow-eyed from a midnight burglary followed by a report to the Military Police. Much later, a lone and embarrassed M.P. rang the bell–to check data previously given, he said. “Where do you work, Lady?” he asked slowly. “I don’t, I’m a dependent,” was her weary reply. The next question tempted the little devil inside her. “Married?” he asked.

(This is followed by a recipe for Devil’s Food Cake)

p. 20 Our men like the old German recipe for the perfect woman: “Kinder, Kirche, Küche,”–Children, Church, Kitchen.

p. 22 Some of us have gazed with jaundiced eye upon the needle-point antiques so highly prized by others, but no more! We’ve seen first hand what it is to survive a looting, shooting and bombing war, to say nothing of the frightful beating the poor things get from their owners each Spring.

p. 23 We have seen the [German] cook who accepted as inevitable the assistance of little girls in her kitchen, but viewed with horror little boys stepping off their masculine thrones to help in the cooky-making.

p. 43 The battle between electricity cut-offs and the unfinished roast has often taken a roast from an oven in one sector to the oven of another where the electricity was still on. We think a lamb roast established the record when it went in and out to a total of 22 hours baking and traveling time.

p. 48 Words were always a source of amusement, both to us and the Germans. “Haferflocken” is quite a mouthful for “oatmeal,” and our neat little “bra” bears no resemblance to “Büstenhalter.” Confusion is rampant, however, when “Schinken” means “ham,” “Huhn” is “chicken,” and “Hammel” is “lamb.”

p. 96 A late arrival at the cocktail party said, “Dry Martini,” to the waiter. The man was back in a flash with three martinis, “Eins–Zwei–Drei!”

And the final recipe is for Block-Ade, with cans of fruit cocktail joining sugar, cognac, red wine, white wine, and champagne. The recipe serves 75. Let’s hope they had lots of chances to make this one!

The book ends with reproductions of German children’s drawings of the airlift.

I love the caption on this one: “Clay sagt: O.K.!”

Die Luftbrücke.

On to what may now be my favorite book in my possession, the little leather-bound 1914 Dodge edition of Edward Fizgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, with tipped-in color illustrations by Adelaide Hanscom.

A few of the quatrains, or rubaiyat:

We’ve got a road trip coming soon, and since 80% of us are readers (leaving one little boy who likes picture books and letters so far) that means nearly 24 hours of reading time in the next 4 or 5 days.

The girls are hilariously obsessed with Feng Shui and the Chinese Zodiac, so we’ll surely find a spot for my big encyclopedia of all things Feng Shui–(and BTW, I’m totally the dragon description. S. is a dragon too, so that explains a lot of why she’s a chip off the old block, right?)

Last week I stopped in at Magus Books, a well-stocked, stacked-to-the-ceiling, might-find-anything sort of used bookstore in the U district and bought enough books to fill my backpack to bursting. I think some of those books are coming with us as early Christmas presents. I bought our current read-aloud there: The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit (scored a beautiful folio edition).

Also on the packing list:
A few weeks’ worth of New Yorkers to catch up on
The west-E study guide (I’m gonna read that one aloud until the groans drown me out)

Wish us luck and nary a moment of car-sickness!

I’m feeling sentimental. Tasha Tudor has died, and I’ve been sitting here thinking of the many heroines I’ve adored, and still adore.

Isak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen—we watched Out of Africa last night, and cried and cried. No wonder I’m feeling sentimental.

Others that come to mind:

Virginia Grainger–first owner of our house in Okanogan and the first schoolteacher in the Okanogan valley, WA.

Helen Keller

Katherine Hepburn

Audrey Hepburn

Minerva Teichert, painter, Idahoan.

Jane Goodall

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Amelia Earhart

Rachel Carson

Virginia Woolf

Good Fun:

Six Words You Never Knew Had Something to Do with Pigs is a delightful little book that we enjoyed reading at the dinner table.  The author, Katherine Barber, is clever and the content is illuminating and lots of fun for language-lovers. 

Good Gracious:

I finished Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I very much enjoyed and was good food for thought.  I read it slowly, in bits and pieces, which gave me time to digest.  At various points in the book, I was seized with a desire to move to Tonasket, join the neo-hippies and organically farm my way to bliss; become a devout vegetarian; adopt some chickens this spring and convince B. that this time they wouldn’t be that much work, really! and have happy chickens and fresh eggs; search out farms in Silverdale, Poulsbo, and Bainbridge that already perform the hard work and become their loyal customers; increase the garden space on the side yard and install deer fencing; forget vegetarianism but only eat meat that’s been humanely raised and slaughtered.  

Whew!  It’s a good book, even if it does make me feel even more like every alimentary choice I make is fraught.

Good Diversion:

Anna Quindlen’s Rise and Shine was a quick read and a fairly engrossing story.  I like Quindlen’s prose, and even if this novel disappointed compared to her others, it was a good cuddle up next to the fire on a rainy day book.  

No doubt it’s the doing of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but I’ve got sustainability on the brain.  Not done with the book yet, and no really stellar thoughts of my own, but here are two interesting sites:

Windward is a fascinating WA community founded on sustainable practices.

2Good2Toss is a WA state online materials exchange that I just discovered!