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Welcome to the October issue of my newsletter, Books and Food Quarterly, in which I share one book recommendation and a recipe linked to the book.
"What's your favorite book?" Like many writers, I often balk at this question. I just love too many books! But shift the question subtly, to which books inspire my writing -- which books, when I read or re-read them, make me want to sit down and write my own book -- and I'd have to say Norman Rush's novel Mating, set in 1980s Botswana, is high on the list.
October's book recommendation pairs with a recipe for bean soup from Bostwana -- healthful, easy, and just in time for autumn, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere.
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October 2018 Book Recommendation:
Mating by Norman Rush
One of my favorite literary protagonists -- right up there with Jane Eyre and the March sisters -- is the intelligent, adventurous young woman at the center of Mating. She is an American Ph.D. student in anthropology, adrift in Botswana after her dissertation goes bust. Rather than giving up and going home, she begins a whole new pursuit, leading her into the heart of the Kalahari Desert -- and into a relationship that will test her mettle in new ways.
Mating won the National Book Award in the U.S. in 1992. I read it then, in my early 20s, and have re-read it several times since. I also taught it in a class on Women and Exile at Emory University, where most of my students seemed to love this novel as much -- or almost as much -- as I do.
"You feel like you're getting smarter just by reading this," one student said, and it's true. Mating is a luminously, unabashedly literary novel. But it's not just beautiful writing. It's a portrait of a country, seen through an outsider's eyes. It's also a romance between two intellectuals, and the story of one woman's self-discovery.
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Mating is a big, complex, ambitious novel. The kind of story you sink down into -- a world you inhabit for days, even weeks. In the quarter-century since Mating was originally published, I keep wanting to return to this world. (And every few years, I do.)
The accompanying recipe for bean soup, however, is a new find. I made my first batch last night and am savoring it as I write -- and imagining how, on either on a chilly evening in the Kalahari Desert, or in your arm chair with a book on an autumn day, such soup will be deeply satisfying.
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Mma Sakina's Bean Soup
2 cups dried lima, cannellini, or butter beans (500 ml)
2 onions, chopped
1 small bell pepper (preferably green), OR
1 jalapeno pepper (not typical of Botswana, but I added it for some kick)
approx. 1 quart of water (1 liter)
2-4 bouillon cubes: beef, chicken, OR vegetable
(you can err or the side of more, if they're low-sodium)
2 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in halves or quarters
juice of 2 lemons
salt and pepper to taste
1. Bring the dried beans to boil in 6 to 7 cups of water. Boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat. Let stand for 1 hour, soaking, before you continue with the recipe. Cook the beans in their soaking water.
2. Cook the beans for 50 minutes. Drain and rinse.
3. This step is optional: Slip the skins off the beans, and discard the skins. (This helps the beans to break apart in additional cooking, which will thicken the broth. It may seem like a pain, but I found de-skinning the beans kind of meditative to do, and I like the way it added to the soup's texture.)
4. Cook the beans (de-skinned or not) with the onions, pepper, additional quart of water, and bouillon. You can do this for 10 - 30 minutes, depending on how mushy your beans get.
5. Add the tomatoes and simmer until they are cooked through and have started to add a little color to the soup.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon juice and stir just before turning off heat.
Courtesy of Mma Sakina, Lobatse, Botswana, and Norma Johnson, Newton, Kansas -- adapted from Extending the Table by Joetta Handrich Schlabach
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And finally, a wee bit of writing news . . .
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As you may discern from these photos, I have recently finished my novel, Outsider Art. (Yes, it felt good!) "Finished it," I mean, enough to send it back to my agent this month. I believe and hope that Outsider Art is close to being ready for publication. That will be a whole new adventure to tell . . . coming to you, possibly, in the next newsletter. Si Dios quiere.
I don't have an official summary of the novel yet, but here's a "teaser," as they say in the UK:
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Outsider Art is the story of Jewel and Carlene, two young women whose increasingly competitive friendship turns violent, the summer they are both seventeen. Who will be the more successful artist and break free of their little Kentucky town? Which of them might escape via the Hollywood star who visits their town that same summer -- and becomes involved with them both? Ten years later, as Jewel and Carlene return home after a long separation, it's to confront on their shared, secret trauma.
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Thanks, friends, for being part of this newsletter -- arriving to your in-box each October, January, April, and July. Until the next time, may you read and eat well.
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