ET Marciniec

Foraging for Fabulous Fall Dandelions

2010-09-26T14:52:00Z

Attention Wild Food Aficionados:

Fall foraging forges forward, and by that alliteration I mean to say that foraging for wild food "has not yet ended" this fall, so don't put away your scissors or your plastic knives or your bare hands just yet!

Just yesterday I came across some fabulous fall dandelion greens in the Colorado high country despite its notoriously short growing season. They were growing amidst the deep, down-trodden grass at the base of willows lining an old mining road, and some were nearly as long as an arm! Up here, anywhere the miners and their mules once trod is a good place to look for dandelions. At the very least these early travelers toted the seeds along by accident. Other good places to look for fall dandelions are next to water sources in shady, protected places and any lawn in any neighborhood, provided it has not been sprayed by the owner or town/city tree-spraying operation.

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In the fall, dandelions are said to improve in quality (by decreasing in bitterness) after a frost. Here it has frosted for three days straight; hence my excitement in finding them. While I admired the giants among the dandelion leaves we found, I only foraged for the smaller ones, aiming for robust-looking, brown-spot-lacking, small dandelion leaves the size of my hand and then pulling them up from base, one or two leaves per plant. (Dandelion leaves, leaf stems, crowns, and roots are all edible, but digging them out of this rocky soil is difficult, so I took leaves and stems only.) To make sure my identifications were correct, I checked for white sap on each and every leaf stem I broke (I exaggerate slightly) seeing as there were other plants about with similarly-shaped leaves sporting serrated edges that could be mistaken for dandelion's dentated edges, especially on young leaves.

So I happily gathered a bouquet of luscious green dandelion leaves, exclaiming our good fortune and dreaming up stir fries all the while--and YOU, too, can have this experience (extreme habitats excluded) if you can just figure out where the fall dandelions are growing (and, of course, make sure your identifications are correct using a plant guide or two as necessary)!

Author's Note and Invitation:

I started this piece on foraging for fall dandelions with the intent of directing wandering wild food aficionados who stumbled across my miscellaneous, writing-about-anything website, etmarciniec.com, over to the new, foraging-only-focused-site, Wild Food Girl, where one can follow the author and her faithful sidekick on wild food missions and culinary adventures (including the occasional misadventure).

To whet your appetite for WILD FOOD GIRL stories, then, here is an annotated list and links to a few current entries:

Fall Foraging in the Colorado High Counry, which contains the story of the hike during which we found our fall dandelions, among other treats, and the exciting conclusion on how we cooked them for dinner!
Expectorating with Sticky Gumweed, an entry which might be alternatively titled, "How I Made an Expectorant Cough Syrup with a Wild Medicinal Plant and It Cured My Ailment Entirely" (I exaggerate slightly).
Jellies and Jams, My Currant Obsession - One in a series of stories about jellies and jams and the wild stuff with which I prepared them, thereby cementing my suspicions of latent homemaker tendencies. ...I mean, who actually makes jelly?

Anyway, hopefully one of these stories piques your interest, and thanks, as always, for reading:)

The Shack by Wm Paul Young

2010-09-21T16:57:13Z

After much internal debate, I decided to stop reading a book before coming to the end of it. I absolutely hate doing that. I usually consider it a mission to finish a book. But this one I ultimately had to put down.

The book is The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. My sister loaned it to me on our trip to Maine earlier this summer—brought it especially for me, in fact, to see what I’d think.

The Shack starts with an absolutely horrifyingly yet spellbinding story about a very tragic thing that happens to a young girl, and then the rest of the book (so far as I’ve read) details how her father, Mack, deals with that tragedy and an earlier tragedy in his life in the context of his relationship with God.

Truth be told, I’m always skeptical of a God story, especially one that comes across preachy and didactic as The Shack does. I understand that many people have found religious inspiration in this book, so I’d like to make it perfectly clear that my intention is not to discount, or to cast judgment on, their experiences. And, while I respect and honor religious choice, I myself am neither Christian nor a church-goer. I understand, too, that there is an ongoing debate over whether this book is considered to be heretical or revelatory. Due to my relative inexperience with Christian theology (aside from a quasi-Christian upbringing to which I no longer ascribe) I don’t consider myself very qualified to speak on the matter. I did, however, find an interesting examination of theological perspectives put forth in the book at the blog, Doxxa.

]]> From a literary perspective, then, I think Young takes an interesting approach in examining Mack’s relationship with God. Mack is invited back to the shack, the scene of his daughter’s presumably atrocious demise, in a cryptic letter that arrives in his mailbox one icy morning. Against all better judgment, he accepts the offer, creates a ruse so that his family won’t know where he’s going, and drives out to the shack once more. There, he is greeted by God the Father in the form of a big African-American woman named Elouisa, Jesus Christ in the form of an olive-skinned Hebrew tradesman, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a small, mystical Asian woman named Sarayu. To portray the trinity in this way is a creative idea, but I find the characterizations so stereotypical as to be offensive. For example, Elouisa speaks a down-home, countrified Ebonics (“We is all that you get,” she tells Mack) that makes me cringe.

After arriving at the shack, Mack has numerous talks with these various aspects of God, and in so doing, starts to come to a better understanding of his relationship with God and the personal growth he needs to make. It was in the midst of these talks that I eventually put down the book, so I don’t know how the story ends.

The sad thing is that I’ve hardly gotten through three books this summer, despite the fact that I am again unemployed. I was so good at book-reading and then blogging my quasi reviews last summer. Was it just a passing phase? Have I been so distracted by other interests? In part, yes. But the other part is that I have been stopped up, plugged in the read-hole by this beast of a book. I ran out of patience for being preached at early on, so once I got to that part, I could only read a few pages of The Shack per sitting. And yet, at the same time, I was so devoted to finishing one book before starting on the next that I didn’t start reading a new book for months. How sad is that?

It is becoming more and more apparent that my sister and I differ markedly on our ideas as to what makes a good book. Her last loaner was Twilight, about which I wrote a bitchy entry earlier this summer. But in light of life experiences, it makes sense to me why The Shack might appeal to her.

Last year, a terrible tragedy befell a family in a neighboring town to my sister’s—four teenagers targeted an isolated house and entered it at 4:00 AM with plans to murder anyone they found inside. They executed their plan upon a woman and child, and while the child survived being stabbed repeatedly, the mother did not. The father was out on a business trip at the time. Although the crime did not occur in my sister’s town, it did occur in a town both close and similar to hers—a small, rural town, the kind of place where people go to get away from big city problems and where almost everybody knows one other. On top of that—and this is the part that frightens me most—one of the teenage perpetrators lived down the street from my sister. Their back yards are connected by a ¼ mile path over a land bridge between two swampy forests; we have walked to the edge of the young man’s family’s property on numerous occasions.

It makes sense to me that when something so horrific strikes so close to home why it would give a person pause to reflect on what he or she would do and feel should something so awful happen to him or her, so this is part of the reason why my sister stayed glued to The Shack “like a train wreck,” she said—because she wanted to see how a person could deal with something so horrible, and because she wanted to understand why this so-called God would “let” something so horrible happen to an innocent child. My sister’s not religious either, but entranced by the book she was.

As for me, on the other hand, putting down The Shack was the most liberating thing I have done in a long time. I am absolutely reveling in the freedom to read other books once more. Thank God for that!

Wild Edible Plants Bloglet Born

2010-06-24T16:10:34Z

Heads up, blog readers, especially those of you interested in wild edible plants--I have an exciting announcement to make!

New Wild Food Girl site:

Etmarciniec.com is now the proud parent of a new baby bloglet dedicated solely to the topic of wild edible and medicinal plants as well as other wild food. Please oh please visit wildfoodgirl.com. (And if you want, you can join the RSS feed in the upper right corner.) I've posted two new articles already, one related to goosefoot and the other to cow parsnip. I do not intent to post any new wild food articles here at etmarciniec.com, so please make the move with me if wild edible plants is your reason for visiting this site.

What happens to the old content?

After much thought, I decided to leave most of the old articles up here at etmarciniec.com for ease of browsing, although I may set up a 303 redirect on a few of the most highly-searched pages if I can figure out how on earth to do that without screwing things up, heh.

In the meantime, thanks so much for reading and I hope to hear from you over at wildfoodgirl.com.

-Erica

Fireweed Experiment

2010-06-11T23:37:33Z

Gregg and I have found yet another tasty wild green to supplement our store-bought diet: fireweed!

Not to be confused with other plants referred to by the same common name (I found reference to one in an older wild edible plants guide), the plant of which I write is Epilobium angustifolium.

I first read about it in Gregory L. Tilford's Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West. In fact, the book's cover is adorned with a montage of fireweed flowers atop a blown-up image of a fireweed leaf, so Tilford must think highly of the plant.

]]> When mature, fireweed is known for its bright pink flowers, although it is the immature plant—the young shoots and leaves—that Tilford (and Lee Allen Peterson) recommend preparing and eating "like asparagus."

To help you to identify Epilobium angustifolium, Tilford points out that the most distinguishing characteristic is on the leaves, where "the leaf veins do not terminate at the edges of the leaves, but instead join together in loops inside the outer margins."

I found my first fireweed last year in the back yard—which makes sense, because it is known to grow in newly cleared or burned areas, hence the name, "fireweed". (Gregg's house was built just a few years back, so the the forest was cleared for the septic tank, resulting in the dry and sparsely vegetated clearing that is our back yard.) Last year there were a few fireweed plants back there, but this year I am happy to report that they are coming in stronger.

To test out their palatability, then, Gregg and I clipped two small plants—stems, leaves, and all—and cooked them like asparagus as directed. "It has a good taste," Gregg declared, his mouth full of fireweed. "It's almost meaty—like a hearty vegetable."

When I showed my friend Brian the plants, he said, "Oh those are everywhere." Really? But where?

It was difficult, but I resisted the temptation to cut down all of my own fireweed plants and cook them up for dinner. After all, I wanted to give them a chance to regenerate and take over the yard as much as possible.

And then, while looking for a different plant and when I was least expecting it, I came upon a plentiful stand of fireweed pushing its way up under a downed tree on a mountaintop near Keystone, Colorado. I quickly harvested about 15 small plants. A few days later I cooked them, stems and all, in a little water mixed with lemon juice, and served them with a side of mayonnaise along with salmon burgers. In retrospect, I think I should have cut the thicker stems off higher up, as we found them to be rather chewy, but the thinner stems were fine—and the fireweed tasted great! We both ate generous portions of it and lived to tell the happy tale.

One of the nice things about fireweed, as Tilford explains, is that the plant is high in vitamin C and beta-carotene. So now I have another yummy and healthy food in my growing repetoire of wild edible spring greens.

In A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America, Lee Allen Peterson recommends harvesting fireweed while it is still young, since it may become "bitter and unpalatable" as it matures.

I also found a reference to the plant in a black and white 1975 edition of Wild Edible Plants of Western North America by Donald R. Kirk (see link to color edition at right), which was recently reserved for my purchase by my favorite Denver used book store, The Printed Page. In it, Kirk says that fireweed leaves—both fresh and dry (Peterson says to use the mature leaves)—are good for making tea, and that the pith of the stems is good in soups. For the record, though, I have yet to try these methods of preparation.

Kirk also says that "in Europe, Fireweed was one of the first plants to appear in the areas devastated by World War II, and brightened the lives of the war-weary residents." Isn't that charming? I think it brightens up (the scar upon the earth that is) our back yard as well. And of course on top of that, it's quite tasty after all.

Stalking the Oyster-Flavored "Bluebell" Through the Wild Edible Plants Literature

2010-06-09T02:50:08Z

So many people have told me that the "bluebell" is edible, and yet, despite my growing collection of wild edible plants literature, I have found only one reference to it as a food source. Thus, much of my evidence for the plant's edibility is circumstantial.

"The leaves are awesome," said my friend Rachel Sowers, a gardener by trade, as we rode up the chairlift late season at Arapahoe Basin. "If you're camping in the backcountry you can add the leaves to a salad. They're super tasty," she said.

And Gregg's sister Wendy has a friend who supposedly "goes gaga for bluebells," but who has, on occasion, eaten enough of the small blue bell-shaped flowers to become sick.

]]> Last summer I tentatively tasted a few flowers at Gregg's behest because he, too, had a memory of eating them, even though he was unable to recall when or how he came by the knowledge of their edibility.

I found the information I sought only in Gregory L. Tilford's Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West--which, incidentally, is one of the books that Samuel Thayer (The Forager's Harvest, 2006) lists as containing "numerous statements of questionable accuracy" before also calling the book "highly useful" nonetheless.

In his entry, Tilford refers to the plant as "chiming bells" rather than "bluebells" in an effort to make a distinction between Mertensia species (the ones he says are edible) and "dozens of other unrelated plants, such as Campanula species" that are also commonly referred to as "bluebells." Even within the genus Mertensia there is a wide range of different species, including M. ciliata, M. paniculata, M. oblongifolia, M. longiflora, M. bella, and M. perplexa, to name a few. Tilford's edibility suggestions apply to all of the Mertensia species, however, of which he says the flowers and the leaves "are an excellent trail snack, but lend themselves best to a good stir-fry dish," before cautioning that they may contain "alkaloids and other constituents that can be toxic if consumed in large quantities."

Let's think about that for a minute. Even if I trust that Tilford's account of Mertensia does not contain "a statement of questionable accuracy," how do I know how much Mertensia constitutes a "large quantity," and why can I only find one reference to its edibility out of the ten or so wild edible plants identification guides that I own?

I found the lack of corroboration troubling, especially since I had already discovered a field of Mertensia bluebells and gathered about 70 small leaves in the hopes of cooking them up in a stir fry for dinner that night.

The next logical step was to conduct a search on the internet. I found a web page dedicated to Mertensia ciliata (a different Mertensia than mine) from plant-life.org, in which they state succinctly that the leaves and flowers are edible. Gregg also found a Wordpress blog by a woman in Alaska who enjoys bluebell and fireweed salad. I found similar claims on quite a few sites, but I did not find anything more detailed than Tilford's account.

Common sense dictates that in this scenario a person should play it safe and try just a few leaves or flowers, then wait 24 hours to see how he or she feels. But I had 70 leaves in my possession already (it's really only about 1/2 cup), and the last thing I wanted was for those wild treasures to wilt away in the refrigerator. So, in the end, I threw caution to the wind and fried all 70 leaves up with chicken and udon noodles for dinner despite my better judgment.

Bluebells are also called "oyster leaves" for the oyster-like taste they are purported to have. I definitely found them to be flavorful and distinct, although my experience with actual oysters is too limited to make the comparison. Gregg smiled wistfully upon tasting a raw leaf, stating that the taste reminded him of the Poconos and "the smell of the woods in the summer in the mountains."

The leaves are hearty, or as Tilford describes them, "somewhat succulent in texture." As such, they did not disappear into the stir fry but instead enhanced the flavor quite nicely. I'd like to use more next time, seeing as my portion of the 70 leaves produced no ill effects.

"This year is different," Gregg told me--or something to that effect--as we drove home from our most recent wild edible plant harvest. "Last year we tasted things in small quantities, like they were spices. This year we're getting enough to make actual dishes."

Yes it's true. I'm getting bolder with wild edible plants in my old age--bolder, or perhaps a little more reckless. Thus far, the rewards have been worth the risk. Still, the old adage, "Do as I say, not as I do" is good advice for the would-be forager, particularly those of you who are starting out in the sport.

BP, Coast Guard Refusal to Use Hair Booms Suspect

2010-06-05T13:50:34Z

Type "hair boom" into your browser and, with the exception of opinion pieces, you can read the same Associated Press article in newspapers across the country which announces the decision by BP and the U.S. Coast Guard not to use the hair booms made of donated human hair and animal fur to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf. "We foresee a risk that widespread deployment of the hair boom could exacerbate the debris problem," Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Shawn Eggert is quoted as saying.

How, exactly, would the hair booms exacerbate the debris problem?

According to an attractive fact sheet [PDF] by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "Using Booms in Response to Oil Spills," a February 2010 field test revealed that "commercial sorbent boom absorbed more oil and much less water than hair boom, which became waterlogged and sank within an hour."

Enter Matter of Trust, the 6-person San Francisco based nonprofit that has mobilized volunteers, collected 20 warehouses full of hair, animal fur, nylons, crab traps, and other materials needed to construct the booms, and yes--conducted their own tests.

]]> They found that not only did flotation improve when human hair was mixed with alpaca shearings, but that the hair booms (made of reused materials) absorbed and retained oil more effectively than the commercial sorbent booms (made of new materials, which of course cost money). And then here's the kicker: Matter of Trust wants to deploy the hair booms inside of crab traps with flotation devices that would prevent them from sinking to the bottom and "[exacerbating] the debris problem." How did the powers-that-be miss that one?

In the interest of disclosure, let me make it clear that I'm not there on the coastline of Louisiana, watching as a thin rainbow haze of oil washes ashore, the harbinger of the thick brown glaze to follow that will choke the life out of every living thing in its path. This is a layman's perspective, culled from the various resources available to me on the interwebs.

But journalist/blogger Summer Burkes is there, writing and working with Matter of Trust and Point-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana, locals to try to implement a home-spun, sustainable clean-up solution to which well-meaning folks near and far can contribute. Or at least thought they could... In addition to the outright hair boom prohibition, Summer reports that a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail are in place for anyone who goes near the oil. She has written extensively (albeit colorfully) on the topic, so I'll refer you to her blog, The Ladies' Guide to the Apocalypse, if you want to read up on it more or see the pictures of Matter of Trust's hair-boom-versus-commercial-sorbent-boom experiment, which are quite convincing. (Hair and fur absorb oil; it's why animals get coated in oil, can't get it off, and then die.)

On a side note, writing on geographically distant topics here on the blog is a new avenue for me, but I was so upset after reading about these roadblocks and what Summer calls a "smear campaign" standing in the way of a community organization's efforts to mobilize concerned citizens in the wake of this huge environmental disaster that I figured I'd put in my two sense and try to spread the word a bit too. After all, time is of the essence.

For those of us watching from far away, it seems to come down to a matter of who to trust (no reference intended)--the big corporate bay polluters, the government agencies, or the little guy who's out there in the gulf, incapacitated despite finding what might very possibly be an excellent solution to at least part of the problem.

Feel free to leave your comments.

Spring Plants I Hope to Eat Soon

2010-05-29T17:06:17Z

Plants do seem to grow slowly when you scrutinize them every day, and that's exactly what I've been doing to the few wild plants that endure the firm, rocky soil and high elevation of our backyard. I wonder if they appreciate the attention? (Probably not if they realized that I am diabolically hashing up plans to cook them for dinner...)

As a whole, the wild foods literature speaks highly of shoots and young leaves. The difficulty is that the young plants are often more difficult to identify than mature plants.

]]> As I journey boldly forth on my wild foods adventure, therefore, I am making an effort to study plants throughout their growth cycles--from the moment they shoot up--in order to develop hypotheses about what I'm looking at so that I can later prove or disprove my identification upon the plant's maturation.

This is how I approached pennycress last summer on that first fateful day, when Cattail Bob's book helped me to realize that we did, in fact, have edible wild plants growing in our yard--thus inspiring the wild edible plants diatribe of which you are now reading entry #44. At the time I successfully matched the picture with a young pennycress rosette, but since I still felt some uncertainty, I waited until I could identify the mature plant using a second picture in his book. (By the way, Best-Tasting Wild Plants of Colorado and the Rockies still rates very high on my list, in part because each entry contains 4 different pictures--one for each stage in the life cycle of a given plant.)

Now that winter has come and gone, I am tickled to find that quite a few of the plants I identified last fall are coming up in the same locations this spring. (This might not be news for those of you who garden or otherwise know plants--but it was pretty exciting for me.) And so my ability to seek out specific plants improves, because now I know where they grow. (For example, if you want to find yellow stonecrop in my area, head up the mountain, and if you want to find dandelions, head down.)

Pictured in this entry are: a) fireweed, b) thistle, and c) clovers. (I'm doing a very bad thing here by referring to plants by their common names, which opens the door for confusion, instead of their scientific names, which allows for exact identification. But truth be told--I don't know exactly what kind of thistle this is; all I know is that I tasted it last summer and I am still here to tell the tale. As always, eat at your own risk.) And, since this entry contains a very cursory introduction to the three plants pictured, you would do well to check back for future entries after I have experimented further with these plants, or pick up a few wild edible plants books to check on things yourself before eating.

On Fireweed: I found fireweed in Gregory Tilford's Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West, in which he explains that the veins in the leaf are the plant's most distinguishing characteristic--instead of terminating at the edges of the leaves, the veins "instead join together in loops inside the outer margins." Cook the young shoots and leaves like asparagus, he says. More on that after I try it.

On Thistle: Thistle is one of those plants that has a common name used to refer to a wide range of prickly thistle-looking species. Cattail Bob recommends the species Cirsium, which I actually do think is what we have growing here and what I ate sparingly last summer (the spines are a pain to remove.) Still, the plan for this season is to make a whole harvest of leaves, leaf midribs, and stalks and devise some amazing recipe for it, followed by an even more amazing blog entry.

On Clover: Brill (1994) has a 3-page entry on clovers (two different species--the ones with the red flowers and the ones with the white flowers) in which he discusses eating the flowers in various ways, but in which he calls into question the safety of eating copious quantities of leaves because of conflicting sources (see the book for the discussion). Tilford, on the other hand, says every part of the clover is edible. Since we don't have much else growing around here, I would very much like to eat the clovers--but I suppose it merits a bit more research before I jump into that one.

So with that inconclusive ending, I'd like to wish everyone happy and sustainable spring hunting! And remember, try to take only a small portion of a given plant or stand of plants so that the plant can regenerate. Please always feel free to share your observations, your trials and tribulations, and your realizations about wild edible plants here on the blog any time. We're all in this together!

Post edited and republished 6.1.10.

Japanese-Style Dandelion Green Salad

2010-05-28T12:41:57Z

I hope I'm not boring you too much with my recent dandelion obsession, but we enjoyed yesterday's dandelion green salad so much that I figured I'd post it now and give the other wild plants a little more time to grow before I start messing with them.

Since I'm referring to dandelions as "wild plants" here, it's probably a good time to mention an interesting bit I read yesterday in Samuel Thayer's book, The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, & Preparing Edible Wild Plants (2006) in a section about "The History of Foraging and Wild Food Literature." Thayer explains the way in which much of the Native American knowledge about edible wild plants was lost in the early days of European settlement, in part due to the fact that to eat wild plants was stigmatized as "savage" among European settlers. The few plants that were acceptable to eat in times of food shortage, he explains, were "dandelion, chicory, plantain, stinging nettle, curly dock, sow thistle" (and the list continues)--plants that the settlers brought with them. Thayer makes a distinction between these "quasi-wild, human-dependent agricultural tag-alongs that came from Europe" (which he says dominate the wild plants literature), and true, native wild plants.

]]> The distinction is interesting to me so I thought I'd mention it. But nonetheless, those original "tag-alongs" have been for the most part forgotten in our collective consciousness as healthy food sources on which one might depend. Tag-along or not, I'm pretty thrilled with the little yellow-flowered weed of late. Anyway, let me quit blabbing and get on to the recipe already.

This is my recipe, although loosely based on various sources I've read. It's a green salad, so it's important to wash the leaves thoroughly. I put them through a couple changes of water, agitating the water with my hand like a human dishwasher before running them through the salad spinner to dry. It makes a dense, hearty salad that both Gregg and I thoroughly enjoyed alongside our leftover potato/leek/dandelion soup of the night before. (I called it "Japanese-style" owing to the ginger and soy-based dressing.)

The Salad:
4 big handfuls of dandelion greens, chopped medium fine
2 small handfuls of spinach, chopped medium fine
2 carrots, grated
1/2 a yellow pepper, chopped medium fine
3/4 cup raw tofu, cubed
sunflower seeds or finely chopped nuts (optional)

The Dressing:
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp finely chopped pickled ginger
2 tbsp liquid from the picked ginger jar

Mix veggies. Toss thoroughly but carefully with dressing so as not to break the tofu. Top with sunflower seeds or finely chopped nuts as desired.

And that's pretty much it. It's a salad, so you could really add anything you wanted. But if I could give you a little piece of advice while I'm at it--be sure to get out there and get yourself some dandelion greens before those plants start a-flowering because it's totally worth it.

Post edited & republished 6.1.10.

Left: Samuel Thayer's book is a good read so far--less plants than most guides, but at first glance, a thorough coverage of everything you need to know about identifying, harvesting, and preparing those plants based on the author's first hand experience. Also, I find the writing to be quirky and interesting... but more on that later when I finish reading the book.

Julia Child's Potato Leek Soup, with Dandelions

2010-05-27T14:21:20Z

Potage Parmentier, or potato leek soup, is the first recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is also the first recipe that Julia Powell prepares after stealing her mother's 1967 edition of the book and embarking upon a year-long cooking project to prepare every recipe in MtAoFC, a project that became first a blog, then a book, and then a movie.

For my third book of the spring, then, I picked up Powell's Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and of course it probably goes without saying that I am finding the story inspiring, at the very least, because of my own recent forays into blogdom. Aside from that, however, I also find myself wanting to cook some of the recipes over which Julie sweats (except maybe the aspics, which require the boiling of calves' hooves).

]]> So I, too, started with the first recipe. Having never before prepared leeks myself, I sought the advice of my mother, who explained that a very thorough washing between the leaves is necessary, as leeks grow in sandy soil. (I have to say that this advice saved us from some very gritty soup.)

I found Julia Child's recipe for potato leek soup at mouthofwonder.com and followed it but for two exceptions: 1) we used olive oil instead of butter or cream (for health reasons), and 2) I added a little over a cup of finely chopped dandelion greens. To summarize: Boil a finely sliced leek together with 4 cups of peeled, diced potatoes and 1 tbsp salt for 40 to 50 minutes, adding the dandelion in the last 20-25 minutes; mash up the mixture or run it through a potato ricer (I used the food processor); put it back on the heat and add 6 tbsp cream or 3 tbsp butter (I used olive oil); garnish; and serve.

It would be unfair to compare my soup with the original, seeing as I have never tasted the undoctored version of the recipe, but it is safe to say that potato leek soup with dandelions is quite tasty, a pleasant addition to my growing repetoire of dandelion recipes. After all, dandelion greens are not only healthy, but they are also 100% free if you are willing to put in the work of identifying and foraging them from a clean location, and of course washing them thoroughly.

Unfortunately, after a second visit to the dandelion stash we found in Breckenridge, Colorado, I fear we may be in fact starting to overharvest them a bit, so it may be time to seek out other hunting grounds. Heaven forbid we steal too many dandelions!

On a related topic, in April there was a lot of buzz around dandelions in Boulder--not about someone stealing too many, but about the ethics of using pesticides on them. Daily Camera ran two stories back-to-back, the first about the Boulder Dandelion Festival, organized by a pesticide reform group and featuring edible dandelion treats, and the second about a planned protest by residents against the spraying of dandelions by their condo management company. Seriously, if I lived in Boulder, I would eat all of those dandelions (provided they hadn't been sprayed, of course).

According to Tilford (1997), the dandelion was introduced into North America by European settlers as a "food crop and medicinal cure-all." One commenter on the Boulder protest story used the fact that they were introduced to apply an argument against invasive species as a reason why the dandelion should be doused with pesticides.

It is true that we have many introduced species currently growing in North America, some of which were brought by the first foreign settlers when they came to this land. To be sure, some are more harmful than others. Some, however, are and have been very useful. Take mullein, for example--an introduced plant that was quickly adopted by native people who recognized its medicinal value (Brill, 1994).

Anyway, it seems a shame that people spend so much money each year on eradicating the dandelion while at the same time introducing pesticides into the environment--when the plant is both nutritious and delicious!

Furthermore, "Wildman" Steve Brill gives an extensive account of the dandelion's medicinal properties in Identifying & Harvesting Edible & Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places. The short list includes using the root for liver and gallbladder health as well as the for the treatment of hepatitis, indigestion, diabetes, and urinary stones. The Wildman's account is much more detailed and extensive than I have relayed here, so I definitely suggest you pick up the book or some other good resource before venturing out to treat any ailments with dandelion root--especially if mine is the only information you've read on the matter.

Thanks.

And remember, only you are responsible for using wild edible and medicinal plants safely. Once you feel you're ready, though, I do very much recommend sprinkling dandelion greens into Julia Child's Potato Parmentier.

Double Take: A Memoir by Kevin Michael Connolly

2010-05-26T16:08:21Z

I doubt I would have picked up this book on my own, but the college where I recently became an adjunct faculty member handed out Double Take: A Memoir (2009) after a two-day in-service on standardizing the curriculum (don't ask), and so I felt both touched (I am always tickled to be given books) and obligated to read it. It is the second book I've read this spring (after Twilight, that brain candy of a book). My understanding is that at some point the college will hold some sort of discussions of Double Take, so maybe I'll attend if I can get the date right. It would probably be useful to have a conversation with live book-readers from time to time, instead of always sending my thoughts out to the (largely, so far) unresponsive interwebs whilst I sit alone in my borrowed high-mountain abode, out of touch with reality, fixating too much on my purpose in life.

]]> Right...so I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Kevin Michael Connolly's memoir was that I connected with his need--and his journey--to figure out some of life's big questions. That and the fact that he is a good writer who is an overachiever with an inspiring story.

The insides of the front and back covers of Double Take: A Memoir are plastered with more than 100 miniature, square, grayscale close-ups of people's faces as they stare at the photographer/author. The photographs are from a collection of more than 33,000 images that Connolly shot in various countries around the world of people staring at him--staring because Kevin Michael Connolly was born without legs and rides a skateboard to get around.

(In his travels outside the U.S., Connolly quickly discovered that people were prone to mistaking him for a homeless person or a beggar--often handing him money and refusing to take no for an answer--a reaction that repeatedly causes him much anger and then self-reflection). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When it was first handed to me I wasn't sure about the book's cover design, but it has grown on me since then--the pale green theme is calming despite what can in some ways be a difficult story to read (Amazon only offers this cover in the Kindle version). I furthermore like the size of the book, the thin, off-white paper that feels like recycling to the touch, and the enlarged black and white photos (of people staring) on the chapters' cover pages. The chapters themselves are short, well-arranged little anecdotes that tell the story of Connolly's unique life and perspective.

My first impression of the writing in Double Take: A Memoir was that Connolly is a good writer/storyteller, especially in the first half of the book. He captures the innocence of his childhood in way that made me laugh out loud at times, while at the same time subtly depicting some of the challenges that a no-legged child might face growing up in a world that expects him or her to have legs. I was struck by how much I felt I knew Connolly after reading the first couple of chapters and how much I related to the experiences he described. Aside from the occasional mention of lacking legs, he does not depict himself or come across as "handicapped" in his stories. Take, for example, his youthful excitement at getting to pick out white hightops with black streaks--the kind all the kids are wearing--to go with the prosthetic legs of which he would soon be availed.

Kevin Michael Connolly has accomplished a great many things in his 25 short years of life (the author was born in 1985). He tried and failed, tried and failed--trials and tribulations that everybody has, only harder, for what in the first half of the book seemed like purely physical reasons but evolved into emotional reasons in the latter half of the book.

The first major accomplishment is that, after discovering a penchant for ski racing thanks to the undying support of his ever-so-colorful dad and a self-proclaimed group of Bridger Bowl, Montana "dirtbags," Connolly was invited to compete in the Mono-skier Cross at the 2006 Winter X Games--and he took 2nd place! (Skier cross is serious, by the way--five or so competitors simultaneously rocket through the same course, over big jumps, rollers, and banked turns--most definitely the stuff of which gnarly crashes are made.)

Then, after winning his X-Games silver medal, he took the prize money and traveled around the world (on his skateboard, which, in the spirit of his father's penchant for MacGyvering utilitarian inventions to support his son's perambulation, Connolly discovered to be his most effective mode of transport), to pursue a project that consisted of photographing, from his diminutive stature, tens of thousands of people staring down at him. And then of course by the age of 25, he published this captivating memoir. I have to admit I found myself pretty darn envious of Kevin Michael Connolly while reading his book, if that hasn't come across in the post already.

The latter half of Double Take is the story of Connolly's soul-searching trip to countries including Czech Republic, Croatia, Iceland, Japan, France, China, Romania, England, and Bosnia, to name a few. We meet his Kiwi girlfriend, Beth, with whom he travels part of the time, and share the awkward experiences he has with the people he meets. At this point the book gets rather introspective, as Connolly tries to come to terms with his reactions to people's reactions to him. He spends a good deal of time pondering his photo project, which he comes to understand as a therapeutic way to vent his own frustrations, and then questions the value of doing so at the expense of other people.

If there was an overarching realization at the end of the book, I missed it. Suffice it to say that the book ends when an emotional Connolly arrives back home among the supportive and influential people he knows and loves, people who see him for who he is--himself.

He ends the Epilogue like this:

"So maybe the reason I've been so frustrated at times by the question What the hell happened to you? is because it's simply the wrong one to pose. It focuses too much on a physical circumstance based on a singular point in time, rather than on all of the influences and characters that followed. ...Perhaps Where the hell did you come from? Is what we all should be asking."

Sauteed Dandelion Greens

2010-05-24T14:00:00Z

Last night I prepared "Dandelion Saute," a recipe from my recently acquired Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places by "Wildman" Steve Brill (the man who, incidentally, was arrested for eating dandelions in New York City's Central Park before being invited to do a stint as a naturalist leading tours there for the city). "This is one of the best ways to learn how to appreciate the flavor of dandelions," Brill comments next to the recipe, so I figured it was a good place to start.

Dandelion greens seem to be a logical first choice for would-be wild edible plant aficionados--and yet for some reason, I didn't try them until yesterday. (I tasted a lot of wild plants when I was growing up on the east coast, but usually late in the season after they had matured and were easiest to identify.) This spring, however, I am dedicating myself to the search for edible young shoots and leaves. The environs, of course, are somewhat limiting. Here in the Rockies above 11,000 feet the snow is just melting away now, and the few plants that grow at this altitude are barely starting to appear.

]]>

For this reason we headed down a few thousand feet in elevation on our hunt for the elusive dandelion. (I'm sure most of you are thinking that dandelions should be the easiest plant in the world to procure, but truly there is a problem of scarcity here, and then when you go into town and start scoping out people's yards you have to be cognizant of another potential issue--the possibility that they've thrown poison on the lawn in an attempt to eradicate said dandelions.)

Gregg gets the credit for spotting our young dandelion rosettes on a sunny, sandy bank outside of Breckenridge, Colorado. In keeping with the literature, we aimed for plants that had not yet flowered, lest the leaves be overly bitter. (Brill explains that for midsummer harvests, a boil or two will leach away some of the extra bitterness, and that late fall after the first frost is another good time to harvest dandelion greens, as the frost serves the same purpose as the boiling.) Anyway, we collected a small bagful, which, when "finely chopped" as the recipe requires, became two cups.

Brill's recipe for Dandelion Saute also calls for onions, grated carrots, garlic, soy sauce, and a tablespoon of unspecified wine, sauteed for 10 to 20 minutes in olive oil. He explains that sweet vegetables, like carrots, are good for countering the dandelion leaves' bitter flavor.

After Gregg's initial observation that the uncooked dandelion leaves smelled like a freshly mown lawn, he later gazed suspiciously back and forth between the colorful saute and me, no doubt recalling his upset stomach after our deep fried dandelion flowers last summer with some trepidation.

I tried to set his mind at ease by quoting Gregory Tilford in Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West (1997), who explains that not only are dandelions widely marketed as a potherb and salad vegetable in Europe, but also the fact that commerically grown dandelion greens are gaining popularity here in the U.S. among organic consumers. (Now I wouldn't know much about that myself, living out here in the stix as I do, and with lack of sufficient funds to afford organic fruits and vegetables. No, I have to resort to stealing dandelions from Breckenridge nature hikes, heh.)

Anyway, Gregg was further swayed by several authors' assertions that dandelion leaves are very good for you, since he is currently in the midst of a healthy cleanse. "The leaves are more nutricious than anything you can buy," Brill writes.

In their out-of-print book, Common Edible and Medicinal Plants of Colorado (1979), Kathryn G. and Andrew L. March include a table of nutrients for the edible portion of one pound of food which compares common wild edibles to widely-consumed vegetables. By way of comparison, dandelions contain more iron and calcium than spinach, and their vitamin A content is double that of spinach. (The source of information in the table is "Composition of Foods," Agriculture Handbook No. 8, U.S. Department of Agriculture. The March's note that their reason for not citing a later handbook is that the later edition did not include wild plants.)

In the end, Gregg not only ate a sizable portion of dandelion greens, but he also exclaimed that they were the best dish on the table. Success!

There is so much more to say about the dandelion--other edible parts, medicinal uses, how to identify it correctly, and a volume of colorful lore--but those are topics for another entry on another day. In the meatime, consider picking up one of these excellent pieces of edible wild plants literature, all of which contain entries about the delicious dandelion:

Source Misattribution in the Information Age

2010-05-24T02:05:00Z

For more than two years now I have been editing a frustrating diatribe destined to one day become a book (please do not ask why I agreed to do it because it is a long story) that is perhaps now at its most frustrating point as I work to confirm and then incorporate all of the missing sources referred to in the text.

It's not that I didn't tell the client two years ago when we started that he needed to cite his sources. I told him, but he said he had them, and we put it off. (As for me, somewhere in the back of my mind I never believed that the book project would come to fruition--so really, what did it matter? Well, it turns out I was wrong.) And, after my speech about "It's not a real book unless it has a bibliography," he enlisted me and a recent college graduate of his acquaintance to research all of his wild claims and attribute them to one source or another. Egad.

]]> Thankfully, it was the college graduate and not yours truly who was assigned to do much of the research, but now as I attempt to incorporate the sources she found (and the many corrections of erroneous facts), I am repeatedly frustrated to the point that I can only work in 25 to 45 minute chunks before my blood is boiling and I have to divert my attention to something else to calm myself down before starting back in on it.

Suprisingly, this new frustration has less to do with the fact that the book is so chock-full of errors, or that the entire thing is supported by inane, inconsistent logic, or the sexist cliché after sexist cliché. The fact is that these frustrations are old hat; I've grown accustomed to them. (To be honest, they've actually managed to evolve into humorous anecdotes that I enjoy sharing with my friends.)

No, today my frustrations are less due to the client and more to the gargantuan proliferation of presumably misattributed quotes and information on the internet--of which I have only now become so painfully aware. (Go ahead and laugh.)

I can see how it happens: A quote is attributed (without confirmation or reference) to Mark Twain (for example) by one source, from which point it is quickly propagated all over the internet, so that before long hundreds of sources state that the quote is by Mark Twain--when really "Anonymous" is the better designation because there is no actual source to back it up.

Take the following quote, which is commonly attributed to Confucius but is actually anonymous (according to WikiQuote, which yes, can be edited by anyone and should therefore also be taken with a grain of salt): "Choose a job that you love and you will not have to work a day in your life." After several hours of grueling internet research I still have yet to find a reference that demonstrates where, specifically, Confucius set that bit of wisdom down in print--which is why, I imagine, WikiQuote maintains that the author is anonymous.

And yet, here is a short excerpt of a very long list of websites that attribute the quote to Confucius:

Yikes.

(By the way, if anyone does find a valid reference for the actual source of this quote, please be so kind as to share. You can prove both me and WikiQuote wrong!)

In the meatime, this what I've been doing with my time--trying to track down all of the impossible quotes that are littered throughout 200 impossible pages.

On the bright side, at least some of the misattributions (on the internet and in the book) are obvious for what they are, such as this gem that was attributed to Confucius but is in fact a Confucius joke: "Man who goes to sleep with itchy butt wakes up with smelly fingers."

On that note, I will end my entry with some sage advice (and feel free to quote me directly on it): Be careful of what you read on the internet because it's not always true. (If you do decide to use my quote, however, please make sure to use the copy/paste function so you don't get it wrong and I end up being misquoted too. Thanks.)

(Note to friends planning to comment: let's please leave names out of this, okay?)

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer...for the woman who wants to be rescued by a dangerous man

2010-05-22T13:15:03Z

It's not usually a good idea to watch a movie before reading the book, because nine times out of ten the book is better than the movie. But when it comes to Twilight--Stephenie Meyer's first book in her bestselling vampire series--there is really no harm done in reversing the order of things. This is because the movie is better than the book.

If you don't know the story already, it is about a 17-year-old girl, Bella Swan, who moves to her father's house in the small town of Forks, Washington, and then falls in love with her classmate, the pale and dreamy Edward Cullen, who turns out to be a member of a coven of non-human-eating "vegetarian" vampires. Over and over again, Bella drones on about how amazingly beautiful, how hauntingly captivating, and how dangerous Cullen is--dangerous because, even though he has chosen not to eat humans, he still has the desire to do so; and because out of all the humans, Bella's scent is the most irresistible to him.

]]> In contrast, Bella Swan is the quintessential weak female, repeatedly in need of rescuing--from a car accident, from a group of men in a dark alley, and ultimately from a man-eating vampire. When her life is not in danger, her body is, as Bella is prone to tripping and falling over pretty much anything in her path. Because of this, Edward warns her over and over again (I would say about every other page for 400 or so pages) to be careful, because he is convinced that she can hurt herself doing absolutely nothing. The other thing he repeats a lot is how wrong their relationship is; how it cannot be; and how he is dangerous and bad for her. For her part, Bella fails to spend a single day without questioning her own worth compared to her otherworldly "god" of a boyfriend.

I read a review that glowingly compares Twilight to a soap opera. It's a good comparison that helps to explain why the book is so popular. After all, women do like dangerous men we can't have--and apparently we are willing to slog through 500 pages of achingly repetitive drivel (or waste away in front of the television) to live inside that fantasy.

"American women like dangerous men," my Ukranian friend Olena corrects me, shaking her head. (Olena has a hard time understanding why her female coworkers chase the men that they do).

"It's because of society--and the media," I tell her, knowingingly, before diving back into my borsch and egg log.

A brief Google search of "women as weak" revealed the following post, Why have weak women become cool? posted by candrani in the "Female Ass-Kickers" club at fanpop.com. The premise of the post is that even though strong women were recently in vogue (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer), they have since gone out of style in favor of their weaker alter-egos. The author gives the oft-crying Hermione in the Harry Potter series and Bella Swan in the Twilight series as examples. (Although I myself am not sold on the Hermione example--I see her as a strong, smart girl who occasionally cries, as even the strongest women are wont to do)--I most certainly agree that Bella Swan is the poster child for the helpless, weak female who gets the man of her dreams by giving up her own life. And as it turns out, I am not the only one who has recognized the harmful images of women and relationships portrayed in Twilight.

Meyer has been criticized for weak characterization and I have the same complaint--the characters, and their love, come across so shallow it's painful. For example, I still can't grasp what Bella sees in Edward except for the fact that he's so beautiful, which is pretty much all she talks about.

As far as Edward's interest in Bella, Amazon reviewer T. Adlam put it well: "I wondered what a century old vampire might find utterly attractive in a seemingly average 17 year old girl, besides the fact that she smelled delectable, could pick out a common tune by Debussy, and had a penchant for identifying the mitotic phases of an onion," concluding that "When one really steps back from this novel and looks at the entire scope of it, the true dysfunction of their unhealthy relationship is obviously apparent."

Of course, I'm probably taking things too seriously. It's just trashy fiction after all. And when it comes down to it, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is an easily digestible thriller with a clever story line--a point with which the American public clearly agrees. (Let me admit too that even thought I saw the movie first, I still read the book cover-to-cover. This after months of busy-with-other-things non-reading, after picking up and trying unsuccessfully to read other, more intelligent books.) So, after all that, let me now take this opportunity to thank Mrs. Meyer for ushering me back into the world of words after my long hiatus. (At right, for you purchasing convenience, is a link to the entire 4-book collection plus four collectible prints!)

On a final note, there has been some question as to whether or not Edward Cullen is a real vampire. Here is a post by Prince Darnyx at hellhorror.com (a website which, incidentally, was populated with Disneyworld ads when I visited) that should clear that up for you:

"Edward Cullen is NOT real. he is a fictional vampire that is adored by only ppl who enjoy romance. ...i DO believe in vampires, but if any1 reads this, plz dont become some1 who bites others without their consent. thank u, but dont try to jump from tall buildings or drink other ppls blood."

Exploring the Elements of Design by Poppy Evans and Mark A. Thomas

2009-11-09T12:36:07Z

To date, my book reviews on the blog have focused primarily on works of fiction. Starting today, however, I've decided to record my notes on the textbooks I have been reviewing--design textbooks, specifically. This shift in focus owes to my recent acceptance of a position teaching digital design at the Breckenridge campus of Colorado Mountain College in Summit County. My goal for reading these textbooks is twofold--to help me select an appropriate text for my students, and also to broaden my own knowledge of the subject.

Exploring the Elements of Design is a thin and colorful textbook by Poppy Evans and Mark A. Thomas (2004). I ordered it about a month ago using interlibrary loan and proceeded to read and take detailed notes on the entire book. I thought it was a good read.

]]> One of the things I liked most about Exploring the Elements of Design is that fact that the authors directly address students throughout the book, periodically identifying and acknowledging students' potential fears or presumptions about the design process and then addressing them in a comforting yet instructional manner. This voice helped to make the material accessible to me (a student, always), so I imagine it might do the same for other design students. For example, there is a section in which the authors define a workflow for students attempting to take a design problem from idea to visual solution--whether for a client or a class assignment. After making a good pitch for conducting thorough research on a topic to determine appropriate images and fonts, the authors drive the point home by stating that "working exclusively from your head will limit your ability to solve the problem accurately and creatively." It is simple but important advice that addresses the issue head on. I can't say how many times in my 10 years of design work I chose to simply work from my head. Egad.

To give you an idea of the topics covered by Exploring the Elements of Design, here is the chapter outline:

Defining the Language of Design
Managing Effective Design
Designing with Color
Typography in Design
Imagery in Design
Finding a Position in the Design Industry

As you can see from the outline, the book contains a broad survey of material that designers need to know and design students will likely study in further depth throughout the course of their education. Textbooks in and of themselves are often derided for being dry and lacking depth, but keep in mind one of the main purposes of a textbook is to provide a mental framework into which material can be filed later, allowing for an understanding of the breadth of a subject and assuming that areas of interest or importance will be explored in more depth later. In that light, I thought Exploring the Elements of Design did an excellent job providing such a framework for new design students.

Again, I liked the voice in which the material was presented--both for the accessibility it created as well as the clear and understandable explanation of content. I also found the images and illustrations to be well chosen and effective as visual examples of the written content.

This is the first purely design-focused textbook I have reviewed (as I have been mostly reading typography textbooks), so please keep that in mind if you plan to use my assessment as a basis for evaluating the text. That being said, I liked Exploring the Elements of Design and I feel confident in recommending it.

¡Yo! by Julia Alvarez

2009-11-01T13:22:33Z

Julia Alvarez, author of ¡Yo!, lives in Vermont and teaches at Middlebury College. I noticed it instantly when I read the back flap of the book, since Middlebury has a renowned writing program and is the one college that rejected my application so many years ago. Not to judge a book by its cover, but I also immediately noticed the design and layout of this charming little yellow book, its diminutive size and handwritten script-style font on the chapter headings. ¡Yo! is another one of those books that just feels right in my hands, that gives me pleasure to simply turn the pages.

My uncle gave me the book, figuring it would appeal to me based on my interest in Latin culture and the Spanish language, and perhaps because I am writing my own novel that tells, among other stories, the tale of the daughter of two undocumented immigrants to the United States from Mexico. In Julia Alvarez' story, in contrast, Yo's family members are wealthy political refugees from the Dominican Republic residing in the United States.

]]> "Yo" is short for "Yolanda," but also means "I" in Spanish. This protagonist, nicknamed "Yoyo," is a writer for whom the validity of her life's seemingly wayward direction unfolds throughout the course of the book. The story is told through the perspectives of the many people in her life--including her family members in the U.S. and in "the D.R.", her boyfriend, even her stalker. The language is as spirited and enchanting as the stories it relates, which made it as much a pleasure to linger over the words as it was to turn its delightful little pages. Stories within stories is the best way I can describe ¡Yo!. Yolanda García is always dropping out of school, blowing off scholarships, chasing the wrong man, or traveling back and forth from the U.S. to the big estate in the Dominican Republic as she navigates the complexities of her existence in the interface between two cultures--but writing, or struggling with writing, all the while, telling stories that "betray secrets" and "tell dangerous lies," as reviewer Rosellen Brown puts it, throughout the long process of coming into her own as a writer.

It came to a point about three quarters through the book when I wondered where it was going--as if coinciding with Yo's own quandary about her life. Eventually it is through her father's blessing--which relates a difficult story from their trials and tribulations leaving the D.R. for the U.S.--that Yo finally receives the validation and encouragement she needs to tell her stories.

I liked ¡Yo! and I related to it on two levels--that of my love for the rich infusion of Latin and U.S. culture, and that of my own ongoing struggles to trust my instincts and pursue my writing. Alvarez is also author of the award-winning books How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, along with several books of poetry.