Want to Hear About the Book or the Food?

I bustled through the door tonight after Lit Society and told G that we had the most amazing dinner. He held his hand up before I could say anything else, and remarked, "If I want to know about it, I'll read the blog." One of us is a foodie and one of us is most decidedly not.

But, you guys! The food!

This is clam and mushroom pasta in a cream sauce, garnished ever so lightly with flat leafed parsley. You might think, like I did, oh who cares about the parsley. And you would be missing out. It ever so subtly cut the creaminess of the sauce and added just the slightest hint of texture. I tell you, I don't know how Nat King Cole stays so trim. If I were married to Chef Campo, I wouldn't fit through the front door. That is a fact.   

My stunning contribution was dessert. The best and freshest pineapple this side of the Pacific, with a regular apple thrown in for good measure or extra fiber or something, and a fruit dip. Here's the thing - whip together a block of cream cheese and two small containers (or one honkin container) of marshmallow cream and you have a little taste of Heaven. You're welcome.

But, the book! It was also a winner. This was a fiction month and we read Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin.

The book is a fictitious account of the life of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindberg. A little refresher: Charles Lindberg was the first person to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean. He later married a young, very smart girl from a well-to-do family. Anne became a remarkable pilot herself, they had several children (one of whom was famously kidnapped) and became, in effect, America's first celebrities. A better word would be 'heroes', because that's truly what they were in the eyes of the nation - or what Charles was, at least - but they achieved a level of unsolicited notoriety and fame and press coverage that eventually caused them to move to England in order to escape it all.

Nat King Cole and I had a fascinating conversation about the pros and cons of the nature of historical fiction. But, that aside, the book was compelling and left us both wanting to know more about this fascinating family. I highly recommend this one.

And it led me to the next book, written by Anne Morrow Lindberg herself (she was an accomplished poet and writer - majored in Literature!), Gift From the Sea. 

It is a short book of essays about life, growing older, marriage, and motherhood. I don't think I would have appreciated it very much if I had not just read The Aviator's Wife. After reading it, though, I can say that Benjamin nailed Anne's voice, tone, and general persona in her book. Anne likens stages of life to various sea shells found on the beach, and expounds upon her thoughts. It is a book I will probably pick up again in a few years. It was very interesting, though, to read that one so shortly before reading A Room of One's Own. All these remarkable women! I do believe I'm prepared for that Feminist Thought class!  :)