2013 Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball Soup

The holidays are behind us.  Our calendars-- Mayan and of modern manufacture-- have been ceremoniously turned to 2013.  We are sorting through our book collection, seeking likely candidates to donate to the annual Library of the Chathams Book Sale.  Silent Spring by Rachel Carson?  Keep.  Summer by Edith Wharton?  Definitely keep.  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell?  Keep, haven't read it yet.
   
A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore?  Don't keep, and-- quoting circa-1996 singer-songwriter Gwen Stefani-- Don't Speak of this book ever again.  Well, well, well... what have we here? 

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.

Atheneum, 1978.  32 pages. 

Food for Thought

Life is yummy in tiny Chewandswallow, where the weather comes three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It rains juice, soda, and soup.  Solid precipitation falls in the form of peas and mashed potatoes; summer storms bring heaping helpings of hamburgers.  For reasons beyond the comprehension of Man-- any Man save Jim Cantore-- the climate takes a gastronomically nasty turn, and Chewandswallow residents are faced with tough menu selections and difficult life decisions.

Hamburger Storm

Keep. Our 2012 calendar is littered with gastronomically nasty weather falling from the sky: psychotic hurricanes, raging wildfires, Hades-esque heat waves, unkind ice storms, unwelcome thunderstorms, vicious tornadoes, mammoth hail, malicious microbursts, dastardly durechos, and maddeningly occluded fronts.  No meatballs, but we do feel the wrath of Superstorm Sandy, followed by a freakish eight-inch autumn-fall of snow.  By mid-November, the streets of Chatham are lined with an impressive array of climatological and cultural detritus: towering piles of leaden slush, broken branches and fallen limbs, snapped electrical wire, mangled Obama-Biden-Romney-Ryan lawn signs, yellow police tape, forsaken Halloween pumpkins, raked autumn leaves, miscellaneous recyclables, worn-out recliners, ratty sneakers, Little Tykes cars, and the occasional toppled telephone pole.  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a timely and instructive read.
  
And so we gather for our Annual Holiday Lunch at MG’s house.  After a cursory review of the year’s weather, characterized by vehement cursing and expressions of utter dismay, we consider a recent book selection:
 

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

Riverhead Books, 2012.  371 pages.

Historical Fiction

The first time Cora heard the name Louise Brooks, she was parked outside the Wichita library in a Model-T Ford, waiting for the rain to stop... Now rain fell fast enough to slice green leaves from the big oak outside the library.  The lilacs trembled and tossed.  While we’re admiring the vintage automobile and waiting for a break in the story-bound weather, we thank JM for sound judgment regarding this well-imagined work of historical fiction, one that tags along with thirty-six-year-old Cora Carlisle, fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks, and her iconic black bob on a journey from Wichita to New York City in the summer of 1922.

Louise Brooks and Her Bob

Over the course of five fleeting summer weeks, preternaturally beautiful Louise—atrociously haughty, precociously naughty-- confounds her chaperone, expresses adolescent chagrin, charms a college boy, and dances her way to the brink of Making It Big!  Cora, of course, keeps a close eye on her impudent charge, even as she confronts deep-dark-never-discussed-dormant-for-decades domestic secrets and works her way toward Greater Liberation and Twentieth-Century Womanhood!   But enough about journeys of self-discovery and inclement weather conditions in Wichita.  Our Annual Holiday Lunch is served!

MG’s Meatball Soup

1 ½ pounds ground chuck

1 28-ounce can tomatoes

2 cans beef consommé (undiluted)

1 can onion soup (undiluted)

4 carrots (pared, sliced ¼ inch thick)

1 8-ounce can corn (drained)

¼ cup chopped celery tops

¼ cup chopped parsley

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon dried oregano leaves

¼ teaspoon black pepper

½ cup uncooked tiny bow-tie macaroni or shells

½ cup red wine

Grated Parmesan cheese

Roll hamburger into marble-sized balls and brown them.  Add remaining ingredients, except pasta and cheese.  Heat to boiling, then reduce heat and simmer 3o minutes.  Return soup to full boil and add pasta, stirring attentively.  Boil 15-20 minutes uncovered, until pasta is tender.  Ladle into festive holiday soup bowls; sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, and sip, sip, slurp, slurp.

MG observes that alternatively, this recipe can be prepared more simply by browning the ground chuck before adding the rest of the ingredients.  We would then, logically, change the name to something Dickensian like Crumbled Beef Potage.  MG urges us to use beef consommé—not beef broth— and to run the tomatoes through the food processor, all of this in order to promote full magnificence of the soup.  And finally, if we are feeling gracious and extravagant, we should add an additional 14 1/2- ounce can of diced tomatoes and a whole 14 1/2-ounce can of corn to the kettle.

The Time in Between: A Novel by Maria Dueñas.  

Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), 2011.  615 pages.

Historical Fiction

As she scoops six gracious servings of Meatball Soup, MG proposes an extravagant read for the New Year: the English translation of El tiempo entro costuras, numero-uno bestseller in Spain and international literary success.  Delicious!  Meatball Soup and a tasty book for the New Year!  Delicioso! Sopa de Albóndigas y un libro sabroso para el Año Nuevo!  We look forward to following resourceful Spanish seamstress Sira Quiroga as she departs her civil war-frayed homeland and follows her smooth-talking boyfriend to Morocco.  Sira is looking for a new life but finds herself at loose ends-- hanging by the proverbial narrative thread-- abandoned, unwell, and insolvent in the Western Kingdom of North Africa.

Schuster and Simon, aka Simon and Schuster

Due to an ironic printing error by the publishing descendants of Mr. Simon and Mr. Schuster, BJM misses The Time in Between pages 52 and 85 of the paperback.  Others will undoubtedly enlighten her as to what transpires on those thirty-three omitted pages: something pivotal, it seems, something that takes the reader from Yet what did all that matter to us, if we were already just a couple of steps away from a new phase in our lives on page 52—and Just watch out, Candelaria, watch out, be very careful—things are unsettled at the moment and I don’t want any more problems than are strictly necessary on page 85.

Sip, sip, slurp, slurp.  And now a few words from the author:

We will follow Sira Quiroga back to Spain where she looks to put more haute in her couture, designing apparel for Desperate Nazi housewives of Madrid. Before we can pronounce more meatball soup, por favor, our favorite senorita finds herself fashionably entangled with the British Secret Service.  She is cloaked in conspiracy, enfolded in espionage, swathed in political intrigue.  Aventura!  Tragedia!  Amor y Guerra!  Albóndigas!  We are sitting on the edge of our collective sartorial seats… and sip-slurping savory Meatball Soup. 

Before we get too comfortable with this lunch, however, we recall a cautionary passage from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  Everyone feared for their lives.  They couldn’t go outside most of the time.  Many houses had been badly damaged by giant meatballs….

The Secret Keeper: A Novel by Kate Morton.

Atria Books, 2012.  484 pages.
Fiction Favorites 
Savoring our soup-- prepared with small, harmless meatballs-- in Chatham, January 2013, we learn that others are similarly sip-slurping soup of an indeterminate sort in London, January 1941: Dolly handed over her umpteenth cup of soup and smiled at whatever it was the young fireman had just said... It never hurt to smile, so Dolly did, and when he took his soup and went in search of somewhere to sit, she was rewarded, finally, with a break in the flow of hungry mouths to feed and an opportunity to sit down and rest her weary feet.... 

Half a century after witnessing a shocking crime during a summer gathering at oh-so English Greenacres farm, well-regarded London actress Laurel Nicolson returns to her family home not only to celebrate her mother’s oh-so ninetieth birthday but also to confront deep-dark-never-discussed-dormant-for-decades domestic secrets.

As is her literary habit, Kate Morton explores unanticipated outcomes of youthful yearning and prologue-ish passion. In quintessential best-selling style, she superimposes dreams, duplicity, desire, murder, mayhem, larceny, and lasting love—the gamut of compelling if not entirely credible fictional behaviors—upon the compelling and completely credible historical events of our turning, turning, certainly uncertain world.

Listen!  Do you hear past and present merging effortlessly upon the pages of this splendid saga?  Sip, sip.  Slurp, slurp.  Apart from an occasional breeze, all is still, all is quiet.  A pair of white hula hoops, last year’s craze, stand propped against the wisteria arch....

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

Crown Publishers, 2012.  333 pages.

Food for Thought

Hush.  While we worry that we will read this and drown in a self-absorbed soup of self-help and self-discovery, that we will succumb to a bad case of omphaloskepsis (navel-gazing, if it’s all Greek to you), we enjoy this exploration of introverts and pay close attention to practical suggestions on how Quiet Ones among us can make themselves heard above the roaring winds of cultural extroversion. 

No Bob for Her: Emily Dickinson

Let us go in; the fog is rising, whispers extraordinary nineteenth-century introvert Emily Dickinson.  She gives voice to the latest meteorological phenomenon visited upon our doorstep: three-consecutive-days-and-nights of winter-white fog.  The Good Townsfolk of Chewandswallow know what we’re up against: There was a pea soup fog.  No one could see where they were going and they could barely find the rest of the meal that got stuck in the fog.  Wrapped in this coiling New Year's cloak, we recall the muddled suburban times of 2012, moments when we wished for sunny skies and charming playthings from the past, for a pair of white hula hoops... propped against the wisteria arch, perhaps.  Evidencing this sublimely elegant sentiment, we submit a ridiculously inelegant electronic missive from September 2012:

Not Quiet: Giant Inflatable Bouncy Castle

TO: ALL CONTACTS.  SUBJECT: WAVING THE WHITE FLAG.  AND THE WHITE HULA HOOPS.   DEAR EVERYONE: GIANT INFLATABLE BOUNCY CASTLE PARKED IN UPHILL NEIGHBOR'S BACKYARD ALL WEEKEND.  STOP.  SHOUTING BECAUSE WE CAN'T HEAR OURSELVES THINK OVER INCESSANT ROAR OF AIR COMPRESSOR 8:00AM-8:30PM.  STOP.  UNNERVED BY ACCOMPANYING CACOPHONY OF OVERLY COMMUNICATIVE, BOUNCY, HYPER-EXTROVERTED CHILDREN.  STOP.  STOP.  OH PLEASE STOP.  AND SING IT, CIRCA-1996 GWEN STEFANI:

Stale Bread Raft

Faced with unpredictable weather, the residents of Chewandswallow resolve to abandon their beloved high-caloric town... The people glued together... giant pieces of stale bread sandwich-style with peanut butter... took the absolute necessities with them and set sail on their rafts for a new land.  As we travel through the coiling winter-white fog of 2013, let’s remember to take the absolute necessities for our journey into the turning, turning, certainly uncertain world: good books, good friends, a reliable calendar, a few deep-dark-never-discussed-dormant-for-decades domestic secrets, a ladle, and the Weather Channel app for iPad.