“It’s All About Me” Monday: The Book

I often refer to “my next life.”* I have plans for it. In my next life, I will start weaving sooner so I can learn more and be better at it. In my next life, I will study and work as an art conservator. And as an archaeologist. And I’ll write murder mysteries.

But I have a previous life, too.

And in my previous life, I made this:

My previous life was as an academic, a college professor, and I did what academics do. I did research and published my analysis.

My field was rhetorical criticism, the analysis of public persuasion. Think of it as literary criticism but, instead of turning my critiques to literature, I endeavored to understand how humans influence, or persuade, each other in more explicit and strategic ways.

My particular area of interest was protest rhetoric and, even more specific, protest song

In some ways, the making I did then was similar to the making I do now and in more ways it was really different.

I loved aspects of it. I loved the subject matter and feeling like I was solving a puzzle when I better understood why a song like “We Shall Overcome” struck so many chords with so many people when other, similar, songs were soon forgotten.

I enjoyed all aspects of the analysis and the learning but I did not enjoy this kind of writing. Once I had the insights, I didn’t care about sharing them, except maybe in class, with my students.

The pressure to “publish or perish” rubbed me entirely the wrong way; it seemed to strengthen my will to resist. And, back then, in the distant past of my previous life, things like footnotes and indexes had to be sorted out laboriously, without help from computer programs . . .

The whole time I was doing academic writing, I fantasized about writing murder mysteries. Murder mysteries set in an academic department at a comprehensive college in a Rust Belt city in the Northeast. Murder mysteries where the victims were pompous tenured professors . . .

The heroine of my never-to-be-written mysteries was a bright, untenured female assistant prof, super cute and stupendously popular with students, and with an incisive, agile mind, able to see patterns of speech and behavior that led to the murderers.

Sigh.

I hardly remember the me I was in this previous life, even though it’s only been 6 years since I retired and left it behind. Sometimes I come across the book and open it randomly and have no earthly memory of thinking those thoughts, let alone writing the words!

I guess it’s nice to know that this book is in reference libraries and people actually quote passages from it. I used to get a kick out of doing vanity searches in the Internet and seeing where the book showed up.

But I get much more of a kick out of the things I make now. They please me in a way my academic work never did. I’m not sure why that is, but it undeniably so.

So, it’s very clear to me what I need to be doing in my current life! Not what someone tells me I have to do, not what I am expected to do, but what I want and need and love to do.

But, enough about me! Let’s talk about you. How do you like my book?

And what about you? What will you do in your next life? Will it be the same as that which you’re doing now?

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* A note—I don’t really think I get another life, as much as I love the idea. It’s more my way of saying “woulda, coulda, shoulda”!

We Have So Much . . .

Oodles of creative energy and desire. A strong desire, the impulse to make, to create . . .

And no resources. No thread, no yarn, no fabric. Nothing to turn my hands to. I can’t imagine . . .

A lot of my recent pleasure in this complicated world comes from my poor power to make something. When I get too overwhelmed by the news, I can turn away, pick up a rainbow of pretty threads, and play. And heal.

I’m reading a book that helps me realize how very, very lucky I am to have that outlet.

The book is Homefront and Battlefield: Quilts and Context in the Civil War, Madelyn Shaw and Lynne Zacek Bassett. It was published as a companion to a 2012 show that was organized by the now-defunct American Textile History Museum. The show traveled to other museums, including Shelburne Museum of Vermont, where Don and I saw the collection a couple years ago.

The show was spectacular, using “quilts, textiles, clothing, and other artifacts to connect deeply moving and insightful personal stories about the war, its causes, and its aftermath with the broader national context and public history.”

I didn’t write a blog post about this experience, mostly because photography wasn’t allowed and the impact of the show was visual—items included the hemp rope said to have been used to hang abolitionist John Brown, quilts made for soldiers to carry with them to battle, and all manner of personal textile items—knapsacks, clothing, and “housewives”—small sewing kits made for soldiers to carry with them in order to do their own sewing repairs.

Seeing these items moved me greatly and brought the reality of the Civil War to life for me, and I bought the well-written and beautifully illustrated book so I could learn more and have the photographs of the wonderful artifacts. I would recommend it to anyone interested in textiles, domestic social history, and human resilience.

I’ve been re-reading the book lately, in another time of American upheaval and uncertainty. Sometimes, as I read, I almost envy the women left home during the Civil War—they were full of a sense of purpose and knew exactly what they could do to make a difference during difficult times. They sewed, they knit, they wove, they quilted, and they sent the product of their labor to the soldiers whose lives were made substantially more bearable as a result.

from the website of the American Textile History Museum, athm.org 

In these times that try one’s soul, as I turn my hand to weaving, sewing, quilting, I have no such sense of broader purpose. I am doing what I do for myself and my own state of mind. Making is a balm.

Yet, reading Homefront and Battlefield also encourages me to think about how lucky I am, and not just in the obvious ways—we are not engaged in a war with ourselves, I am not sending sons to battle to fight and kill their brothers. I am not burying the silver in the yard to hide it from the enemy.

I am lucky, too, in that in my need to make and to turn my hand to a job of work, I have unlimited power to do so and unlimited resources to draw from.

One of the points made in the book, and something that had never occurred to me is that, often during years of the Civil War, women had nothing–nothing— to work with.

As a result of any number of realities of war, there were no raw materials to be had. No cotton because it was all diverted to the war effort. No wool because sheep were killed to feed troops, rather than kept for their wool. A Georgia woman described the plight in her diary, saying, “There is no cloth to be had and no thread, no yarn—nor anything to do with. Time passes heavily under such circumstances” (164).

Indeed, it would.

No cloth? No thread? No yarn?? Just worry, and a frustrated desire to turn hands to fruitful labor, to make something that could help.

I have worry. But I have yarn and thread and fabric. I can sublimate my worry, my agitation, into something positive.

I read examples all the time of women channeling grief or anger or worry into their craft, turning to the soothing rhythm of knitting needles clicking or the needle and thread purring through cloth . . .

Can you imagine not having that outlet?

Advent, My Way #22

The last of the seasonal books that I haul out for Christmas is an obscure one—How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas, written by W.H.H. Murray, and published in 1890.

The book has a great deal of local appeal for those of us who live in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, plus I simply love the look of this book.

Author William Henry Harrison Murray was known as “Adirondack Murray”—during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he wrote books and gave numerous lectures that introduced people to, and popularized, the Adirondack Mountains. He is said to have coined the use of the word “vacation,” as opposed to the British “holiday,” with his urging of people to “vacate” the cities for the mountains.

And people listened. “Murray’s Fools,” as they were sometimes called, were entranced by the idea of a rustic mountain retreat and came in droves to this great wilderness on weekends, and many built seasonal “camps,” as well.

I’ll admit I haven’t read this book from start to finish. The dialogue—and there is a lot of it—is written in what is supposed to sound like a local dialect, probably French-Canadian—and reading it is like slogging through hip-deep snow. But I pick it up and admire the cover with its beautiful highlights of the drawings that illustrate passages of the book.

And I dip into the pages, reading at random, and have learned that John Norton, the trapper, has values to share with us all in the holiday season.

A cabin. A cabin in the woods. In the cabin a great fireplace piled high with logs, fiercely ablaze. On either side of the broad hearthstone a hound sat on his haunches, looking gravely, as only a hound in a meditative mood can, into the glowing fire . . .

At the table sat John Norton, poring over a book . . .

The whitened head of the old man was bowed over the broad page, on which one hand rested, with the forefinger marking the sentence. A cabin in the woods filled with firelight, a table, a book, an old man studying the book. This was the scene on Christmas Eve. Outside, the earth was white with snow, and in the blue sky above the snow was the white moon.

“It says here,” said the Trapper, speaking to himself, “it says here, ‘Give to him that lacketh, and from him that hath not, withhold not thine hand.‘

John Norton keeps his Christmas by providing food and, nearly as important, fun for an impoverished woman and her starving children. He takes time to twine wreaths of greens to adorn the pictures of “absent ones” on his walls and acknowledges, “I miss them so!” He sits before his fire and enjoys the company of his old hounds and the quiet of the wilderness.

In these ways, John Norton’s holiday is remarkable similar to many of ours, 125 years later—we miss loved ones who have died but hold them close in memory, we seek to help those in need, and we give conscious thanks for our secure hearth and home, no matter how simple.

Whether our Christmas days be many or few, when the great day comes round let us remember in good or ill fortun’, alone or with many, that Christmas, above all else, is the day for forgivin’ and forgittin’.

Advent, My Way #14

A Christmas story with all the ingredients to make a reader like me happy:

Drama in the form of a good human, willing to sacrifice all to save his friends.

A setting in a place familiar to us, and beloved.

A storm at sea.

An heroic cat who saves the day.

And a happy ending at Christmastide.

Put it all together in a book with beautiful illustrations and it becomes the story of The Mousehole Cat, by Antonia Barber and illustrations by Nicola Bayley.

This is another book I put out at Christmas when I remember, and I am always glad when I remember, to take time to re-read this beautiful book and enjoy it. It’s a children’s book and yet . . .

The book is set in southwest England, in Cornwall, in the tiny village called Mousehole. That’s pronounced “Mowzle,” unless you’re an uninformed American tourist (don’t ask me how I know this. I just do.) This is a beautiful region; we’ve been there, to see the tiny harbor at Mousehole and the wild sea beyond the harbor wall.

As the story goes, old Tom, a fisherman, and his cat Mowzer live in the town. They live alone together, their families long grown and gone.

A fishing village, Mousehole flourishes until one year at Christmas when a great storm rages for days. Mowzer knows it’s the Great Storm-Cat brewing.

The fishing boats of Mousehole cannot leave the harbor and, as Christmas approaches, the people, not to mention the village cats, are starving.

Tom tells Mowzer:

Mowzer, my handsome, it will soon be Christmas, and no man can stand by at Christmas and see children starve.

Someone must go fishing come what may, and I think it must be me. It cannot be the young men, for they have wives and children and mothers to weep for them if they do not return. But my wife and parents are dead long since and my children are grown and gone.

Because it was the same for Mowzer, and because, if old Tom did not come back, she would not care to carry on without him, Mowzer decides to join old Tom on his boat.

Mowzer and Tom set off and the Great Storm-Cat toys with them, plays with them, batters them, as a cat with a mouse, swatting the small boat around, threatening them . . . and enjoying the game.

At the critical moment, though, when the Great Storm-Cat comes in for the kill, Mowzer starts to feel “a sudden, strange sadness for him” in his loneliness, and sings to him, and purrs.

And her purring rose like a hymn to home above the noise of the Great Storm-Cat’s howling . . .

Puzzled, he paused in his howling, bending his ear to catch the strange sound. It seemed to him that he had once heard such a song long before, when he was no more than a Storm-Kitten . . .

Then the Great Storm-Cat began to purr with Mowzer, and as the soft sound grew, the winds waned and the waves weakened.

Night fell and the little boat sailed back across a slackening sea . . .

Mowzer and old Tom return to their village and find all the people and cats keeping vigil for them.

They come back with a hold full of fish. On the night before Christmas Eve, the townspeople cook and fry the fish and bake half a hundred star-gazy pies.

“Then, people and cats, they feasted together, until the hunger was no more than a memory.”

Sigh. I love a happy ending. And a sensitive, sweet cat who uses her purr to good effect.

This isn’t a traditional Christmas story. No Christ child, no manger, no Santa, no snow, no red-nosed reindeer.

But it still honors the best of humans (and cats!) at Christmas–community, compassion for the less fortunate, sacrifice, peace, plenty, and thanksgiving.

Do you know a more beautiful book for this time of year?

I Get It. Do You?

Sometimes it seems to me that there are two kinds of people in the world. No, not early birds and night owls. Not “glass is half full” versus “glass is half empty.” Not progressives and conservatives.

I’m talking about the folks who love shopping at garage/rummage/tag/yard/jumble sales and those who don’t.

Some people just don’t get it—they don’t understand the thrill of the hunt. They don’t know the sense that, sometimes, you don’t know what you want until you see it, that treasures are waiting to be discovered.

My mom and I get it. During summer, we go out “saling” a couple of days a week.

We went out this weekend, too. Our range was limited because many of our usual haunts were still haunted by the specter of escaped convicts.

We did NOT have a stellar weekend with lots of fabulous finds but we had a handful of very nice hours together and I got a few items that make me super happy.

Like this pretty book, published in 1926, and titled “Birds in Rhyme.”

I love the illustrations in the book, colorful images of a number of birds of North America.

I love the poems that accompany each bird and summarize its traits. I love that the birds’ songs are conveyed by musical notes on a scale.

I really love the cover, everything about it. I love the bright, saturated, complementary blue/green and red/orange. I love the stylized graphics in the Arts and Crafts style.

And I LOVE the fact that the cover just happens to match my husband’s current weaving project!

This one-dollar purchase made my day! What else would give me so much for so little?

So, where do you stand on the subject of garage sales? Do you get it? Or not?

Spring Senses: The Taste of Maple, in a Scone

It’s early spring in the North Country of upstate New York and one thing says spring here, more than mercurial temperature swings and dirty, muddy snow. One thing says spring even more than news of ice fishermen having to be rescued from the melting lake.

Maple. Maple anything and maple everything—that says spring.

In my continuing yearly celebration of all things maple, I offer to you possibly the best recipe for scones you’ll ever try.

It’s also probably the least healthy recipe for scones you’ll ever see but, really, how many scones could you eat in a day?

Really, that many? Me, too!

My recipe comes directly from The New Best Recipe, by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. This cookbook is a compendium of recipes for popular foods, the kinds of foods for which everyone has a recipe and none of the recipes are the same.

When there are 1000 recipes for chocolate chip cookies, for instance, how do we know which one to use?

I turn to Cook’s Illustrated. The editors comprehensively test these multiple approaches to a given recipe and seek to provide the definitive recipe for such items as pasta with bolognese sauce and macaroni salad and, yes, chocolate chip cookies.

I love this cookbook because, in a very systematic way, it identifies what the cooks were aiming for and then provides details of the different tweaks they made to achieve their goals. This all just really makes my cake bake, literally and figuratively!

The Cook’s Illustrated goal for oatmeal scones was “to pack the chewy nuttiness of oats into a moist and tender breakfast pastry, one that wouldn’t require a firehose to wash down the crumbs” (714). They provide variations for cinnamon raisin oatmeal scones and oatmeal scones with dried cherries and hazelnuts but . . .

It’s spring in the North Country of upstate New York and we’re talking maple here! These scones are tender and amazing, and so very maple.

Glazed Maple-Pecan Oatmeal Scones

from The New Best Recipe

Ingredients

1 ½ cups rolled oats (4 ½ ounces) or quick oats

½ cup chopped pecans

¼ cup whole milk

¼ cup heavy cream

¼ cup maple syrup

1 large egg

1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour (7 ½ ounces) (such as Gold Medal or Pillsbury)

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon table salt

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into ½” cubes

For glaze

3 tablespoons maple syrup

½ cup confectioner’s sugar

Instructions

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Spread oats and pecans evenly on one baking sheet and toast in oven until fragrant and lightly browned, 7 to 9 minutes; cool on wire rack. Increase oven temperature to 450 degrees. When oats are cooled, measure out and reserve 2 tablespoons for dusting the work surface.

2. Whisk milk, cream, 1/4 cup maple syrup, and egg in medium bowl until incorporated; remove and reserve 1 tablespoon to small bowl to brush scones.

3. Pulse flour, baking powder, and salt in food processor until combined, about four 1-second pulses. Scatter cold butter evenly over dry ingredients and pulse until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal, twelve to fourteen 1-second pulses. Transfer mixture to medium bowl and stir in cooled oats. Using rubber spatula, fold in liquid ingredients until large clumps form. Continue mixing by hand until a mass forms.

4. Dust work surface with half of reserved oats and flour (if needed), turn dough out onto work surface, and dust top with remaining oats. Gently pat into 7-inch circle about 1 inch thick.  Cut dough into 8 wedges and set on parchment-lined baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Brush surfaces with reserved egg mixture and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake until golden brown, 12 to 14 minutes; cool scones on baking sheet on wire rack 5 minutes, then remove scones to cooling rack and cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.

5. When scones are cooled, whisk maple syrup and confectioner’s sugar until combined; drizzle glaze over scones.

My Kind of Book

It’s a book.

It’s a vintage book.

It’s a vintage book about textiles.

It’s a vintage book about how to make textiles by hand.

It’s as if we belong together!

Embroidery for clothing

Knitting instructions for both hands

Jingoistic oddity–embroidery is identified as “American from away back”?

This is one gesture that wasn’t allowed at our house!

Tatting!

I know how many of you love knitting socks!

Pretty girls in hand knit sweaters

A gorgeous crocheted coverlet

“With her knowledge she can combine her imagination and ingenuity to create new patterns or adapt old ones and so give color and meaning to modern life.”

Rapunzel Weaves . . .

As a child, I was enthralled by fairy tales. I loved them all, from the grim and scary Grimms to the pasteurized versions from Disney.

I spent a lot of time with this beautiful book.

I knew that it was gift from my paternal grandmother; the inscription reminds me that I was eight years old when I received it.

The book has many of the stories I loved—Sleeping Beauty, The Valiant Tailor, Red Riding Hood—all illustrated by Tasha Tudor in her captivating style.

And Rapunzel. Oh, I loved Rapunzel, with her sad, lonely life and that beautiful hair. I spent hours with this illustration, absorbing every detail, enjoying the romance of it all.

Is it any surprise that, as I started a new weaving project and made the long, long warp threads into a chain to prevent them from tangling, all I could think of was Rapunzel?

And do you remember what Rapunzel did, to try to effect her escape? Her suitor brought her silk thread every time he climbed her braid to visit and . . .

Rapunzel wove. She wove a silken ladder, with hopes to use it to escape.

I won’t weave a ladder but the simple, repetitive act of weaving, of throwing the shuttle and watching the fabric grow, will allow me to escape for a bit, into memory, into nostalgia, into whimsy.

Books for Hands at Home: Joy of Cooking

I have an elderly friend who helps me in the kitchen. She knows I don’t like to cook, and she’s patient with that. She also knows that I love baking and making candy, so she’s given me some great recipes, as well as tips to help me improve.

Mostly, though, I just enjoy her style and listening to her talk. She’s funny, knows so much about setting a nice table, and what Americans like to eat. And she likes a strong drink!

My friend lives in my kitchen and has for all my adult life. Her name is Irma, Irma Rombauer. Her voice comes to me through her iconic American cookbook, the Joy of Cooking. She has been the friend in the kitchen to generations of American cooks and wanna-be cooks.

Some of you undoubtedly already know Irma, and love her. Others may have never heard of her but, if you’re an American who wants to cook or from another country and are curious about American cooks and cooking, you should make an effort to get to know her.

Irma’s book really has it all—it has history and an interesting back story, it provides insight to what it means to be American, it has useful information for every cook, no matter how inexperienced or expert, and it’s just plain fun to read. The book, as a whole, has the most distinctively “loving hands at home” tone and approach to making food of any cookbook I’ve ever seen.

An important note before I go on—there have been many editions of Joy and they vary quite widely, reflecting a changing America. They all have a distinctive, chatty tone with the exception of the 1997 edition, which was designed to have a more professional sound, with streamlined recipes. It that edition, the cookbook, to me, becomes just another cookbook. The reasons I’m giving for loving the book apply to earlier editions. Apparently the 75^th anniversary edition, published in 2007, puts the author’s voice and style back into the book.

Joy of Cooking was first published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer, a homemaker from St. Louis, Missouri. The year before, her husband had committed suicide and she was going through a difficult time, both emotionally and financially. Her children pressed her to focus on a cookbook. And what a cookbook it became!

Unlike other cookbook writers of the time, Rombauer, a “complete amateur with no official credentials . . . knew that neophyte cooks somehow learn faster in the company of a friend. This small, chic, witty, and immensely forceful woman appointed herself that friend.”  Irma Rombauer has remained a friend to American cooks throughout the generations. And, like my other friends, I call her by her first name.

The 1931 edition was self-published but by 1936, Irma had found a publisher and the book started to reach households all over America. Since then, the book has gone through a number of printings and each printing seems to have devoted followers. If you’re interested in the full story, visit the website of the Joy of Cooking Trust.

My own copy of Joy was published in 1946 and was given to my mother, by her mother, as a birthday gift in 1949. The book is beat up and shabby, with pages sticky and stained but the recipes still intrigue and guide me, especially the chapter on candies and confections!

The recipes intrigue me partly because many of them are solid recipes for food I want to make. But these days, because I can find recipes in so many places, in other books or online, I’m not sure this book would get used much if the recipes were all it had. It’s the other things that Irma brought to the book that set it apart.

I love this book partly because it’s a look into America at a certain time and place. And, with each edition, we can see a changing America. Recipes in the early editions reflected a more rural America and taught how to cook squirrel and venison and provided long, detailed guidance for canning and pickling.

In the 1943 edition, Irma included information about how to deal with the food rationing brought about by World War II and included strategies for substituting new ingredients for rationed ones. For example, she explained how to substitute soybeans for meat.

For readers looking for a modern cookbook, in the traditional style, this can be annoying. I’ve seen reviews that indict the book for “too much retro-inspired nonsense.” But, if you’re like me and love “retro-inspired nonsense” and a peek at America’s past—the world of our mothers and grandmothers—the details are all part of the fun.

And the more recent editions did find Irma keeping up with the times, as she chronicled changes in American eating patterns. She offered recipes for changing needs, like streamlined meals and the use of canned and frozen foods, and changing desires, like an increased focus on healthy eating.

Another part of the fun is that Joy is just delightful to read. In some ways, the tone of the book reminds me of today’s cooking blogs—they all have recipes but what brings readers back to certain blogs is the chatty, friendly tone of the blogger—the extras that surround the basic recipe.

Irma wrote like she was your pal, more experienced in the kitchen but not lording it over you. The recipes aren’t written with all the ingredients at the top and then a terse list of instructions but, rather, in a sort of narrative with the ingredients in boldface as you come to them. She provides extra details in the midst, like to just ignore lumps in the muffin batter, and leads the cook to completion.

Irma lets you know what she likes. She introduces a recipe that starts with two cans of condensed soup by saying, “I should like to sing a paean of praise about this . . . soup” and talks about her food mill, saying, “I am devoted to mine and shall reward it some day with an old age pension.” She also lets you know what she doesn’t like, including at least one recipe for a cake that is “uninteresting . . . but highly digestible.”

She also wins my heart because she includes lots of recipes for cocktails, including one for hot buttered rum that “has been said to make a man see double and feel single.” And she quotes Mark Twain on the subject of imbibing—“Too much of anything is bad, but too much whisky is just enough.”

And along the way, she tells stories about kings and queens and opera singers, and throws in quotes from sources as varied as The New Yorker, Noel Coward, and Gilbert and Sullivan.

But the book isn’t all quaint, old-time recipes and cleverness. It also has a wealth of valuable information for cooks at all levels. Irma includes an index that explains, in very plain words, cooking terms that experienced cooks take for granted but that might mystify a novice. For instance, she delineates the differences between beat, combine, stir, and mix. I didn’t know there were differences! And the differences between peel and pare—knowing the difference makes me feel like a real cook!

The book is great for novices, but many of the recipes are sophisticated and challenging, and Irma alerts readers to ones that are finicky or troublesome. She writes in detail to de-mystify notoriously difficult tasks like making soufflés and candy making, and her tone is always calm and patient. She will even offer advice about how to save a recipe gone wrong.

In addition to recipes, the book also includes information on all kinds of household management. She discusses how to use leftovers and how to impress guests. She provides sample menus for meals as varied dinners and picnics, tables of equivalents, ingredients substitutions, diagrams for setting a table—something for everyone!

In other words, Irma is a friend we all need. The woman herself died in 1962 but the cookbooks live on, with new editions still guided by her descendents. And lucky for us, earlier editions of the books are readily available though on-line booksellers and on eBay. Or, if you’re lucky, your mother or grandmother may have a copy, just waiting to be passed on to you.

Now that you and my friend, Irma, have been properly introduced, maybe you’ll invite her into your kitchen. I think you’ll find her a warm, wise friend.

Books for your Hands at Home: Chocolate and Confections by Peter Greweling

If you’d like to learn to make candy, for fun or profit, or simply to increase your popularity immensely since most people LOVE chocolate and the people who can provide it, you need to read a book.

And the book you need to read, and follow like a spiritual text, is Peter Greweling’s Chocolate and Confections at Home.  The At Home part of the title is critical; Greweling also has a book called simply Chocolate and Confections but, if you’ve never made chocolate and start with that book, your head might explode. It’s a lovely book but not the place to start.

When I want to learn something new, I always look for books. It’s just me. I know other people take courses or workshops, or watch YouTube videos, but I read about it. And I scare myself, sometimes, because I like the reading part so much I might just never move on to the doing!

But, if you read this book, you’ll want to move on and make the candy. The pictures are so great and the candy is SO tempting, you’ll definitely want to try it. And Greweling does such a good job of explaining that he de-mystifies the scary parts of the process—tempering real chocolate, using a candy thermometer, boiling sticky stuff at 300 degrees.

Learning to temper chocolate is where it’s all at. Greweling doesn’t condemn the use of compound coating, the so-called candy melts you buy at the grocery store or Michael’s, but, really, if you love chocolate you need to just accept that candy melts are NOT chocolate. They are a chocolate-flavored mix of vegetable fats, cocoa powder, and other stuff. Cheap and convenient, sure, but not chocolate.

So, Greweling will teach you to temper chocolate. If you can do that, you can make a lot of cool candy just by mixing tempered chocolate, dark, milk or white, with other ingredients you love and calling it bark. One of the favorite combinations I’ve come up with is dark chocolate, with a little mix of hot spices stirred into the tempered chocolate, and topped with toasted pumpkin seeds and dried sour cherries. Crunchy and unexpected, with this subtle heat . . . too yummy!

The book moves on from such simple treats to elaborate layered candy bars and molded chocolates. You can build your skills and get fancy or just keep it simple. But because it’s real chocolate and other ingredients that you love and choose, with no weird additives, simple is spectacular. Really, check this book out!

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If all this sounds good but you don’t have time for another craft, I can make the candy for you. Candy-making season at KerryCan, my Etsy shop, begins sometime in mid-September. I’ll keep you posted.