{"id":347,"date":"2013-01-25T22:15:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2013\/01\/25\/a-small-revolution"},"modified":"2015-12-16T18:07:37","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T23:07:37","slug":"a-small-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2013\/01\/a-small-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"A small revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

You good, good<\/i> people. Before I say another word, I want to thank you for your many comments, your e-mails, and the incredibly kind card – a real, three-dimensional paper card – that one of you sent to me at Delancey. Your kindness blew me away. I thought for a long time before deciding to write that last post, and I want to thank you for making me feel not only safe in deciding to do it, but very, very glad. I remember my doctor saying to me, one day in mid-December, that I would not only recover, but that someday soon, I might even have a hard time remembering exactly what postpartum depression felt like. Though he\u2019s been my doctor for years, and though he knows us very well – he\u2019s Brandon\u2019s doctor, too, and June\u2019s doctor, and he delivered June – in the privacy of my mind, I thought,\u00a0Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Suuuuuuuure.<\/i> Well! Turns out, being wrong is my new favorite thing.<\/p>\n

In other news, June is a champion. She\u2019s my new favorite person. She sleeps with her arms straight up by her ears, like she\u2019s cheering very, very quietly about something, or like a gymnast who\u2019s just stuck her landing. She thrashes around like a rodeo bronc when in the nude, and if you sing “Katy Too<\/a>,” by Johnny Cash, with the words “Baby June” subbed in for “Katy too,” she will grin and stick her tongue out. This is because she has just discovered that she has a tongue. Every day is a small revolution.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been cooking more regularly, which is a great development, except that I haven\u2019t been cooking particularly well. I have long had a special talent for making bland soups, and I guess it should be some kind of consolation that, with so much change in my life in the past year, this, at least, has remained consistent? On the upside, I\u2019ve been roasting a lot of rutabagas, and I highly recommend that. And the other day, I made braised endive with prosciutto<\/a> for the millionth time, and for the millionth time, it was excellent. And last night, after dinner, I fell down a rabbit hole of Bon Jovi videos, which has nothing to do with food but was also excellent<\/a>. When I was eight years old, I had a Bop magazine poster of Jon Bon Jovi<\/a>, shirtless and wearing a fringed scarf, on my bedroom wall. I think that explains everything.<\/p>\n

I have a recipe for you today. Not the best photographs, but a recipe.<\/p>\n

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For years now, I\u2019ve followed the site 3191 Miles Apart<\/a>\u00a0and the work of its co-creators Maria and Stephanie. Two years ago, they began publishing a quarterly<\/a>, which is filled with photographs, recipes, projects, travel guides, and anything else they feel excited about, and it\u2019s always beautiful and beautifully produced, printed on matte paper that feels nice in your hand. One night last weekend, while June was sleeping and Brandon was working, I climbed into bed with 3191 Quarterly No. 9 and promptly fell onto Stephanie\u2019s recipe for oatcakes.<\/p>\n

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I should say that oatcakes are not actually cakes. \u00a0As Stephanie explains, they\u2019re sort of a cross between a cookie, a cracker, and maybe a biscuit – a small, crunchy, nubbly thing that you could eat at pretty much any time of day. \u00a0The concept is Scottish, although I\u2019m going to be totally blasphemous and uncouth and American and admit that I like Stephanie\u2019s version better than the oatcakes I tried in\u00a0Edinburgh<\/a>. In my defense, my friends who live in Scotland – and one of them is Scottish by birth – didn\u2019t love the oatcakes we ate that day either. No idea what the brand was, although I can tell you that we bought them at Mellis<\/a>. Anyway.<\/p>\n

I like to eat oatcakes with sharp cheddar, though you could also treat them more like a cookie and dunk them in a cup of tea. \u00a0This week I\u2019ve been eating them with peanut butter and slices of apple, as a second breakfast. (I eat my first breakfast around 6:30 am, while sitting next to June on a blanket on the kitchen floor, singing “Baby June \/ Katy Too,” and it\u2019s gone\u00a0long before lunchtime comes around.) They\u2019re a little sweet and a little salty, and they somehow manage to come across as both wholesome and<\/i>\u00a0tempting. \u00a0Do any of you remember Carr\u2019s Wheatolos? \u00a0Oatcakes don\u2019t really taste like Wheatolos – maybe a cousin of the Wheatolo – but for me, they\u00a0push the same buttons. God, I miss Wheatolos.<\/p>\n

P.S. Thank you, Stephanie, for allowing me to reprint your recipe. It\u2019s a keeper.
\nP.P.S. This essay<\/a> by Zadie Smith is wonderful (via Brian Ferry<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n

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Recipe<\/div>\n

Oatcakes<\/h2>\n

Adapted slightly from Stephanie Congdon Barnes and\u00a03191 Quarterly No. 9<\/a><\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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