Kitchen stories
As Annie mentioned, it's a lovely little movie. All I'm doing is stealing its title.
I'm hanging out in the kitchen instead of going to hear Donald Hall read. It was a tough decision, but chocolate chip oatmeal cookies won out over The Ox-Cart Man. Sorry, Mr. Hall. I don't feel like leaving the house at the moment. At least not any more than a nice stroll and perhaps a trip to the grocery store.
So I'm in the kitchen, in the middle of making cookies from the recipe I copied out in pencil when I was about 10. The original recipe called for raisins, but why do that to an otherwise perfect cookie? There's nothing wrong with raisins, but chocolate is just so...superior. I used to have this recipe memorized. That was a great period in my life. I think baking is what pulled me through the torments of middle school. Baking and books. Those were my main activities, that and ballet. And when I hung out with friends, we baked. And talked about books. On occasion, we read the book simultaneously.
Oh, that's its own story. The Giver. Our 7th grade teacher was Mrs. Morgan, who was this breath of fresh air after should-have-retired-10-years-ago Mrs. Neuville. Anyway, Mrs. Morgan, in addition to being generally wonderful, knew that 7th graders still like to be read to, even if they don't know it. So she read us The Giver, by Lois Lowry. And oh, how I hung on every word. And Bee and I, impatient children that we were, became so desperate after a few chapters that we went to the library, checked out the single copy we could get our hands on, and spent the night at my house, reading the book over each other's shoulders. Oh the crick in our necks. But oh, how it was worth it. Back at school, we were in the know. We smiled smugly as others discussed how it might end. And we heard the story a second time.
If you don't have a Mrs. Morgan to read it to you, I highly recommend the audio book read by Ron Rifkin. It's a great telling. A great book. It gets me every time.
Okay, back to those cookies.
I'm hanging out in the kitchen instead of going to hear Donald Hall read. It was a tough decision, but chocolate chip oatmeal cookies won out over The Ox-Cart Man. Sorry, Mr. Hall. I don't feel like leaving the house at the moment. At least not any more than a nice stroll and perhaps a trip to the grocery store.
So I'm in the kitchen, in the middle of making cookies from the recipe I copied out in pencil when I was about 10. The original recipe called for raisins, but why do that to an otherwise perfect cookie? There's nothing wrong with raisins, but chocolate is just so...superior. I used to have this recipe memorized. That was a great period in my life. I think baking is what pulled me through the torments of middle school. Baking and books. Those were my main activities, that and ballet. And when I hung out with friends, we baked. And talked about books. On occasion, we read the book simultaneously.
Oh, that's its own story. The Giver. Our 7th grade teacher was Mrs. Morgan, who was this breath of fresh air after should-have-retired-10-years-ago Mrs. Neuville. Anyway, Mrs. Morgan, in addition to being generally wonderful, knew that 7th graders still like to be read to, even if they don't know it. So she read us The Giver, by Lois Lowry. And oh, how I hung on every word. And Bee and I, impatient children that we were, became so desperate after a few chapters that we went to the library, checked out the single copy we could get our hands on, and spent the night at my house, reading the book over each other's shoulders. Oh the crick in our necks. But oh, how it was worth it. Back at school, we were in the know. We smiled smugly as others discussed how it might end. And we heard the story a second time.
If you don't have a Mrs. Morgan to read it to you, I highly recommend the audio book read by Ron Rifkin. It's a great telling. A great book. It gets me every time.
Okay, back to those cookies.
posted by Jess at 11:48 AM
2 Comments:
i haven't heard the giver on tape. i'll put it on hold. i have, of course, read it myself a few times. i love the image of you and B reading it together - with one book, and yet not out loud. how sweet. that book is just fabulous. i also love that you blogged about the giver today, and independently i also had a conversation with someone about it. and then told you about that conversation, without knowing you'd blogged about it. small cirlces... this is all a pattern of very small circles i think.
What can I say...The Giver invites things like this to happen. It encourages it.
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