On culinary disasters and writing

I make bread quite a bit, probably because I lived in a hippie co-op in college and one of my weekly jobs was to crank out a dozen loaves at a time for midnight snack. (Note: I did not eat all dozen myself. Fifty other people lived in the house.)

Yesterday was Monday, and I noticed we were out of sandwich bread. This isn't a huge deal, as my kids don't have sandwiches every day for lunch. But it was pouring rain out, and our typical Monday-afternoon snack, Monday Milkshakes, didn't sound all that good to me. So I wanted to do tea and toast instead, and for toast, we would require bread.

I decided to try a new recipe but was only half paying attention to it. I believe the other half of my brain--the good half--was thinking about a novel I am revising.

Too late, I noticed that I'd added far more liquid than the recipe required. My dough was a soupy mess. Actually, if I'm being honest here, I thought the recipe was bad. So I added a bit more flour, and then a bit more, and a bit more. The dough was still a soupy mess, and at this point, I returned to the recipe and cursed myself for wrecking the dough.

For a minute, I thought about throwing it away. Or composting it, because that is what we do with food waste in Seattle. But then I remembered a bread recipe I haven't made for a few years--the New York Times' no-knead bread dough. This looked an awful lot like what that recipe generated. In the years since that recipe came out, I've noticed modified versions, some of which require a bit of kneading to speed up the process from 15 hours to something a bit more reasonable.

But I knew I'd used quite a bit more yeast than the no-knead bread called for. I decided to risk it, and knead less than the low-knead bread, trusting that the extra yeast would do the trick.

I knew I wasn't going to get a sandwich loaf out of it, but I figured a round, rustic loaf topped with this special pink salt we picked up in Portland would be just fine with tea.

When I pulled the bread out of the oven, my baking buddy Alice squealed with excitement. The bread was a thing of beauty. We let it cool a bit, and then I cut into it. The crust was perfect: golden and crackling. And a bit of steam rose from the bread. I handed each girl a slice just as we headed out the door to go to their ballet classes.

My terrible error turned into one of the best loaves I've ever made. Adam and I each had a buttery slice, and although he groused about the bottom crust being a millimeter too thick (picky, picky), we agreed it was a darned good piece of bread. We both went upstairs to work a bit before ballet class ended, knowing that the bread would go nicely with the pan-fried sole we were planning to eat for dinner.

I thought about the parallels of writing and cooking in general, and it struck me that the crafts of keyboard and kitchen are similar. There are certain recipes that you follow, but when things go wrong, you can get yourself back on track if you understand the fundamentals, something that comes about naturally with years of practice. When you get lucky, those errors teach you something you never knew before, something that make you a better baker.

There is, of course, a twist to this story. While Adam and I were upstairs, our dog discovered the bread. Or rather, she discovered her opportunity to eat it off the counter. She devoured the better part of the loaf before the kids made it home from ballet. So there was, alas, no bread with our sole.

But I decided to make another loaf for dinner, to go with the lamb stew Adam had been craving, a stew that I have made for many years according to a recipe that also involved a mistake. Apparently this is a pattern that I have only now noticed.

In the middle of cooking this morning, I had to change up the recipe because our pantry was almost bare (note to Adam: next time you say you're craving stew, please pick up all the ingredients at the store, not just the lamb).

I'm hoping it turns out despite the new direction I took it. I'm trusting in my palate. But I do have an ace in the hole just in case: a fresh loaf of dough rising in the oven, made according to yesterday's accidental success.

This time, though, I'll keep a closer eye on the dog.

 

 

Some news that makes me happy

I'm in the midst of a trip to New York with two fellow writers, and at the start of a lovely lunch with my editor Arthur A. Levine, I got some terrific news: He's chosen an illustrator for The Dinosaur Tooth Fairy.

I've swiped this image from Israel's site, where you should go to check out more of his work. I've never met him, but he won the grand prize for the portfolio he showed at the 2009 SCBWI conference in Los Angeles and I couldn't be happier to get to work with him.

I can't wait to see how the illustrations turn out. They're due in a year, so I'll have to be patient. But I truly don't mind, as it lets me extend my excitement about this book for a nice long time.

Meanwhile, I'm working on two more picture books I love just as much. So stay tuned for news about those. And if you have a moment, check out the Arthur A. Levine website for this season's new books. I just finished Plain Kate by Erin Bow. It's unbelievably good.

What we're teaching our kids

I read an interesting question on Facebook yesterday: Do you make your kids go to playdates and birthday parties when they don't want to go?

I was shocked at what the moms, for the most part, replied. The gist: No. They don't make their kids go. Why would they make their kids do something they didn't want to? Kids have relatively little choice about how they spend their time, so this is where they get to choose. And so on.

That sounds reasonable, right? Of course--until you stop and think about the other child.

There are kids out there who want and need friends. They reach out and invite children over. And no one says yes. There are kids who invite the whole class to birthday parties. One or two kids show up. How are those children supposed to feel? And how are their parents supposed to feel?

It's devastating, let me tell you.

Here's how social dynamics often work with children. The group wonders if so-and-so eats weird food for lunch. A powerful child comments on it. Everyone else piles on, hoping to curry favor with the popular child. Pretty soon, the kid with the "weird" lunch is sitting alone at recess, counting down the minutes until it's over.

It can happen over anything. A child doesn't wear the right shoes. His voice is too loud. Her teeth look funny. He likes things that girls like. Pick a difference, any difference.

With one of my children, the powerful girl in their group of four friends convinced the others--in second grade--to ditch my daughter at recess. They told her they weren't playing together, and that she could just go off into another corner of the playground.

"They said it with smiles on their faces," my daughter, then seven, told me.

That night, I invited the ringleader of that cruelty exercise over to a playdate. I wanted to watch how she and my daughter interacted, to see if there was anything I could help my daughter manage better. I also wanted to show her how fun, funny, and creative my child is. I wanted to support what could have been a friendship.

The mother said no. "It's complicated," she said. "I'm sure you understand."

I do understand that these things are complicated. I understand that not all children will want to play together at first. But learning to get along with others, to find what is interesting and special about each person, is a fundamental life skill. Being kind to others is absolutely vital.

And it makes me sick that so many mothers are giving their child the choice to opt out of kindness. They are wrong. Terribly wrong. This is why there is so much unkindness at school, and so much bullying. We are giving our kids the choice to reject other people.

If you want your kids to have more choices, take them to the library or bookstore and tell them they can read whatever they want. Let them choose what the family is having for dinner. Let them help prepare it. Let them choose which person they're going to be kind to.

But for crying out loud, don't make it seem like rejecting another child's friendly overtures is some sort of noble or enlightened choice. It's not. It's mean and selfish. Unless there are safety issues, it's a way to send a message to your child that you don't have to care about anyone unless it's an easy thing for you to do.

Loving other people isn't always easy. But if we don't teach our kids how to love--or at least respect--their fellow human beings when they are small, they will never learn this.

If you want to create a world where kindness is the rule, this is a good place to start. I have a much better understanding, though, of why the playground has turned into such a difficult place for so many children. We parents are letting this happen.

I love my girl

This is the face of a child who's been rejected. This is the girl who told her sister this week, "My soul is broken."

As beautiful as the face is, her heart is even more beautiful. She would give you the last dollar in her piggy bank if she thought you needed it.

The kids who exclude her and say unkind things are missing out on a great deal. They're also enabled by their parents.

I know we're all doing our best here, and that balancing a job and family and all those other things is difficult. On this, though, I hope people rethink their knee-jerk response.

Don't make it easy for your children to be unkind. Inspire them to look below the surface and discover something lovable about someone who challenges them. Teach them to be the kids who make the world a safer, gentler place for others. If this is what we want the future to be, it's our job to make that happen.

 

 

 

 

SCBWI National Conference in New York

Do you know what's outrageously exciting? This conference. If you're serious about writing or illustrating for children (or doing both!), you really need to be there, along with speakers Sara Zarr, Lois Lowry, R.L. Stine, Jules Feiffer, and Mo Willems (to name a few).

Registration opens at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, Oct. 6. There are huge advantages to signing up early, not the least of which is a shot at an intensive manuscript critique. These sell out so darned quickly.

I'll post more soon about the speakers' lineup. And watch this space for interviews with faculty. These interviews, put together by members of Team Blog, will give you a taste of what's to come of the conference.

Don't miss out!

Click here for the information and registration page.