Orphan Train

"You don't cook with Teflon, do you?"

(Some of us may, but that's beside the point.)

Welcome to the first real entry of our book club blog, Reading Between the Wines. Each month we will give a quick recap of the book and will also provide that month's recipes. We will spare you the rundown on the amount of wine consumed.

September's book was Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, and it was well received. We had an almost full house; the one missing member was scheduled to give birth the very next day, so she got a pass. Besides, she'd already learned all about the importance of a good swaddle at our August gathering.

photo credit: Goodreads

Most of us had no idea of the history of the real orphan trains. While the story unfolds in two different strands, we agreed that the older plotline (the one set in the early 1900's) was more intriguing. Orphan Train is a quick, enjoyable read made all the more fascinating by its historical basis.

Roasted Red Pepper Pimento Cheese

1 jar of roasted red peppers, finely chopped

1/2 c minced green onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 8oz block of extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1 8oz block pepper jack cheese, grated

1/2 c mayonnaise

several dashes of Tabasco sauce

1 T fresh lemon juice

salt and pepper

Serve with various types of crackers.
This recipe was rather labor intensive; grating the cheese by hand made it a little tedious, but the strength of the recipe hinges on the quality of cheese used.
It's better if made the day before and allowed to hang out in the fridge overnight.

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

2 T olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded & chopped

2 jalapeno peppers, seeded & diced

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

3 large garlic cloves, minced

3 T chili powder

2 t salt

2 t cumin

1 t black pepper

1/2 t crushed red pepper

2 t dried basil

1/2 t marjoram

1 bay leaf

1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

28 oz vegetable or chicken broth 

2 15 oz cans of black beans, rinsed and drained

juice of 1 lime

garnishes: chopped onion, chopped fresh cilantro, sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese

Heat oil in large saucepan; add onion and cook under tender. Add bell pepper, jalapeno and sweet potato; cook for 5 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook about 1 minute. Add chili powder + next 7 ingredients; stir and cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes and broth; simmer, uncovered, about 30 minutes. Stir in beans; cook 10 minutes. Remove bay leaf and add lime juice.

This isn't as labor intensive as it sounds. Tinker around with the spices to get it just right.

Cinnamon Roll Cake

CAKE:

3 c flour

1/4 t salt

1 c. sugar

4 t baking powder

1&1/2 c milk

2 eggs

2 t vanilla

1/2 c butter, melted

TOPPING:

1 c butter, softened

1 c brown sugar

2 T flour

1 T cinnamon

GLAZE:

2 c powdered sugar

5 T milk

1 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x13 glass baking pan with cooking spray. Set aside. 

In large bowl, mix the flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, milk, eggs and vanilla. 

Once well combined, slowly add in the melted butter. Pour into prepared pan.

For topping, in a large bowl mix the butter, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon together until well combined and creamy. 

Drop evenly over the batter by tablespoonfuls and use a knife to marble/swirl through the cake.

Bake at 350 for 28-32 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

FOR GLAZE: In medium bowl, mix powdered sugar, milk and vanilla together with a whisk. 

Drizzle evenly over the warm cake.

This is a hit every time. Best served warm.

Bon appetit and happy reading!

How Do We Love Thee?

One glorious Wednesday night a month, we get to go to Book Club. To say that we look forward to this night is a gross understatement. We rotate through houses, the 10 of us each anxiously awaiting the month that’s ours. We talk and laugh and sometimes cry. Oh, and we discuss a book we’ve all collectively read…most of the time; that is, most of the time we talk about it and most of the time we’ve all read it.

Our Book Club truly keeps us sane; it’s the star on our calendar, often the light at the end of a very long tunnel. In the blur of days filled with carpool and sports practices and pediatrician visits, our book club has become a much cherished oasis of “us time.”

Oh, Book Club, how do we love thee? In the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “let [us]count the ways.”

1. “No man is an island.” John Donne

Friends are one of life’s necessities. It’s quite easy to get bogged down in life and forge along, knocking things off a to-do list from sun up to sun down, enduring the mundane in a solo fashion. As effective as this may be, it’s very little fun. This circle of friends we’ve made helps pull us back in, helps to reignite our gregarious natures that are often diffused by days on end spent only in the company of little children. We laugh. Sometimes we laugh so hard that we come home hoarse. Each book club brings a new revelation about ourselves; each book club tightens our sense of sorority.

2. “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to my food.” W.C. Fields

We like to eat good food and drink good wine (surprise, surprise). Amazingly, every single woman in our book club is an outstanding cook, so there’s a delightful culinary aspect to our book club, too–a glorious vacation from peanut butter & jelly and chicken nuggets. We are also devoted oenophiles, so the wine tends to be free flowing, well-paired, and delicious.

 3. “Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.” Shakespeare, Timon of Athens. 1:1.134.

Each month finds us all with new announcements and new problems. We’ve welcomed new babies and we’ve warmed new houses. We’ve helped bury a father, and we’ve helped jumpstart a new life post-divorce. We might not see each other outside of our Wednesday night soirees, but we know we have an unspoken, unfaltering support system in each other. And in this day of obsessively updated Facebook statuses, such a stalwart presence is a Godsend.

 4. “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” Confucius

These women are some of our most favorite people on the planet, but we infrequently see each other outside of book club nights. We are all busy, busy, busy–with children, jobs, husbands, pets and multiple commitments–but Book Club holds a place of importance on our calendars. The scheduling of Book Club takes into consideration schedules of the host and of the other nine attendees who’ll be heading her way; it’s a study in calculus to hone it down to one night at one time. But we make it, hauling in our 3/4 read book or our 78% read Kindle. We read as much as we can, and we don’t chastise a non-reader too badly, particularly when we know she’s the ‘non-reader’.

5. “We’re different, but somehow we’re still the same.” Buster the Horse and Gladys the Cow, Sesame Street.

Our group of ten women does have a few things in common. We enjoy wine. And we enjoy reading. But most of the similarities stop there. We are Democrats and Republicans, deeply religious and lapsing Catholics, mothers and childless, stay-at-homers and partners in law firms. We are incredible.

We don’t always agree on everything, which makes our discussions that much spicier and memorable. We can fuss and discuss, argue and say nasty things, but in the end, we do respect each other, which is a prerequisite to staying. And the nasty comments make for great jokes in the following months.

 6. “It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t.” Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

 Though begun by a few Ivy League English Majors, we are not exactly literary snobs. We’ll read almost anything, but there’s an unspoken rule that we steer clear of poetry and grisly horror (though we did stumble upon The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). We won’t automatically avoid a book just because it has a pastel cover, but we don’t gravitate towards fluff, either. We’ve read some young adult novels, and we’ve read some older novels and, in one failed instance, tried to read a book about making of the first dictionary. Usually the host surprises us with a great find and we’re all giddy to dive in; this month’s choice is The Night Circus.

 7. “Let the wine of friendship never run dry.” Les Miserables.

We trust each other, and we’ve grown to become each others' best friends. In 10+ years, we've only had a handful of evenings where the book was a total miss, and we endured a draggy, carcass-picking conversation. But even then, we still maintain our own rules of civility. We are a group set in stone. Sure, folks come and go; people move or have new babies and have to quit. But we pick right back up and find someone even better to fill the missing reader’s slot. We all know we need each other. The thought of disbanding Book Club is not an option. We mean it when we say our book club is the best therapy ever.

If you don’t have a book club, please start sniffing around for one. It doesn’t have to be for books, per se; you could meet and discuss film, gardening, church life, bridge, whatever–just get a group of friends with whom you have only a few things in common. Read something (or watch something) and then let the dialogue flow. Don’t try to tame it; trust it and follow it where it leads you. If you truly let it, it will take you on the ride of your life, just like my Book Club has for the past 8 & 1/2 years.

Welcome to Reading Between the Wines, a blog generated from a Book Club we love “with the breath, smiles, tears of all [our] life!” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning). “Let’s celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words!” (Plautus). Since “[we] have measured out [our lives] with coffee spoons,” it’s a relief to know that several gallons-worth of those days are, have been or will be spent alongside marvelous friends. (T.S. Eliot). “You are the music while the music lasts.” (T.S. Eliot).

P.S. We duped you all into reading [a little] poetry after all! Winner-winner, chicken-dinner!