Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay

In my third year of my undergraduate degree in French, I thought it would be interesting to take a class in Quebec literature. I had taken a lot of ‘classic’ French lit courses up until that point, covering such works as Madame Bovary and Germinal and I figured it was time I connected with Canadian francophone writers. It was in this class that I decided that with few exceptions, Canadian literature (both anglophone and francophone) is boring. I had had my suspicions before taking the Quebec lit course, having struggled through a few dull Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood novels. But it wasn’t until the Quebec literature class that it dawned on me: Canadians are boring! Case in point: the first book we read in class was called Le Survenant,  about a family that owns a farm and one day a stranger shows up to help. Quite seriously, nothing else happens and there are some mind-numbing pages describing farm chores. I still remember actually being angry at the book for being so utterly dull, and this was more than ten years ago! I have since been hesitant to pick up novels by Canadian writers and will only do so on the strong recommendation of friends.

It is perhaps not surprising then that I left Late Nights on Air on my bookshelf, unread, for a good four years before finally picking it up recently. I’m not sure what compelled me to actually pluck it out of my extensive library of unread books, but it wasn’t without some apprehension. As it turns out, Late Nights on Air is a bit boring in that nothing really happens per se. There is no zombie apocalypse; no disasters or vivid love affairs or dramatic turn of events. It is really a simple story about four people who work for a local radio station in Yellowknife. It is about how they interact with each other and with the remoteness of their location and the harshness of the weather. Bored yet? For some reason I wasn’t. I actually really enjoyed this novel, despite that in addition to being uneventful it is also pretty bleak. I guess this should not surprise me as that’s the other thing about a lot of Canadian lit: it’s often horribly depressing (the epitome might be David Adams Richards’ Mercy Among the Children). If ever I were uncertain about whether living in the North would be a good idea, Late Nights on Air set my mind straight on that point. Do I recommend this book? Yes, with some reservation. It did, after all, win a Giller Prize so it’s worth a try. I believe I may have hated this book had I read it ten years ago. Do we get more boring with age? Is it easier to relate to dull characters the older we get? If so, I’d say this a book for those in their mid-30s and over.

The Godforsaken Sea, by Derek Lundy

The Godforsaken Sea should have been a great read. Unfortunately, due to a number of problems that I am about to lay out, it is relegated to the lesser ‘good reads’ pile. The book tells the true story of the 1996-1997 Vendée Globe, a round-the-world race for single-handed, elite sailors. The rules of the race are simple: only one sailor per boat and no outside help or stops, for any reason. If you pull into port, you are disqualified. There are other rules pertaining to safety on board the boat, but I won’t go into those here. Up until the 1996 Vendée Globe, the record for completing this race was 109 days. It is gruelling physically and emotionally and extremely technically difficult. The most challenging part of the race is when the boats hit the Southern Ocean, to circumnavigate Antarctica. This, we are told, is the most remote place on Earth and if your boat capsizes here (a distinct possibility), your chances of rescue are slim. In this particular Vendée Globe, 3 boats capsize, which is the reason for the book at all. In case you are keen to read it, I won’t say anything further, but suffice it to say, the chapters detailing these events are gripping.

As you might imagine, having read this review thusfar, I was quite excited to read this book. I love adventure stories because as a self-professed chicken, I like to imagine what it would be like to experience such extreme activities, like climbing Everest or sailing the Southern Ocean, without having to risk my life. There are three main reasons that The Godforsaken Sea failed to live up to my expectations of being a heart-pounding read.

1. Language. Lundy either assumes his readers are avid sailors or that we’ll have the ambition to read up on sailboat design to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. I fit into neither category. I have been on a sailboat exactly once, and it never left the dock; and when I’m reading a book about sailing, I expect that a minimum of explanation of uncommon terminology will be provided to minimize frustration. Instead, Lundy casually drops terms like ‘halyard’, ‘warps’, ‘broaching’, ‘ketch’, and ‘ballast bulb’. Even terms like ‘keel’, ‘jib’, and ‘mast’, while vaguely familiar, had me feeling idiotic. I simply could not conjure up an image of these sailboats because of the technical language used. This all could have been avoided by one simple addition: a diagram of a sailboat with the appropriate parts labeled. While he was at it, Lundy could have sketched out what the living quarters are like for these sailors. Some description is given in the book, but an illustration would have gone miles to improve my understanding.

2. Lack of maps. As he assumes that his readers will know what a ‘halyard’ is, I suppose it is not surprising that he also assumes that we all know where Cape Horn and the Bay of Biscay are, what the Horse Latitudes are, and where the doldrums occur (he graciously provides a description of what a doldrum actually is). There is a pitiful map on the opening page, which shows the outline of the continents and the race route. Nothing much else is labeled and certainly not the things I’ve listed above, despite their critical importance to the story. Also irritating: on the map the little boat illustration is bigger than both New Zealand’s islands combined. Because of this, the reader has no sense of just how big the Southern Ocean actually is.

3. Narrative. Call me old-fashioned, but I think the best stories are told from start to finish. For some inexplicable reason, Lundy chooses to begin the book with what should have been the climax: the capsizes. Yes, before we have any clue about what the Vendée Globe is and who these people are sailing in it, we are launched right into the morass of these sailors’ struggles to survive. After this chapter, the book proceeds in a more chronologic fashion, but when I got to the point of the capsizes in the narrative, I had to then go and re-read the first chapter because I had forgotten most of the details by that point. Another related complaint is that Lundy has difficulty introducing each of the sailors in an interesting and memorable way. I think a more skilled writer would have been able to help the reader connect the sailor to his/her boat right from the beginning. I found myself forgetting who was piloting which boat and which country they were from. A lot of this confusion could have been alleviated by providing a detailed list at the start – Lundy does provide a list of the participating sailors and the name of his/her boat, but no other details. Why not add a simple line about each person’s experience, past races, etc.?

At this point I should note that The Godforsaken Sea was a huge bestseller when it first came out, so perhaps I’m on my own here in my frustration. And I will say that despite my issues, I feel much more knowledgeable about the world of sailing after having read it. So I hesitantly recommend the book, with the suggestion that you head on over to Wikipedia and read the entry on sailboats and familiarize yourself with a world map before commencing it.

Perfect Zucchini Cake

I find zucchini a pretty blah vegetable*, as vegetables go. It turns all soggy and mushy when it’s stir-fried and has such a mild flavour that it’s almost unnoticeable in soups and stews. So what to do with a garden brimming with this blandest of vegetables? Well, cake, of course! The exact qualities that make zucchini unsuitable for cooking combine to make it one of the absolute greatest ingredients in baking. It lends a particular moistness to baked goods that just can’t be achieved with anything else. Plus, it combines well with chocolate – always a bonus! I’ve made a lot of zucchini loaves, cupcakes, muffins, and cakes in my time but I have never been as wowed by any of them as by this particular recipe that I found doing a completely random google search, on a website called Simply Recipes. This is a cooking blog run by a woman named Elise Bauer, and if her zucchini cake is any indication of the quality of recipes on the rest of her site, I will be back to try them. To be honest, I don’t know what it was about this cake that made it so good. It contains no butter (canola oil replaces it), tasted great even without cream cheese icing, and I (*gasp*) added no chocolate chips. This was just plain zucchini cake in all its glory. I did tweak the recipe slightly from the original, adding less sugar and more spices than suggested. Below is my ingredient list, but you can find the original here. At the risk of messing with a good thing, next time I might try replacing half the canola oil with apple sauce and maybe one or two of the eggs with banana or ground flax seed. For cream cheese frosting, I used my new go-to recipe that I learned from recently making the Blueberry Pull-Apart Bread (but seriously, it tastes pretty great without the icing too!).

To make the cake, whisk together the following ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Beat together 3 eggs until they are frothy. Then beat in:

• 1.5 cups white, granulated sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil (or replace half the oil with applesauce – no discernible difference in outcome!)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Add the wet to the dry (or the dry to the wet – whichever bowl is bigger) and stir in:

• 2 cups grated un-peeled zucchini (don’t squeeze out the liquid as some recipes recommend; it makes the cake extra moist!)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 cup of chocolate chips (optional)

Pour batter into a greased 9×13 inch baking pan and bake at 350°F  for 40 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

*I am aware that if it’s got seeds, it’s considered a fruit. But I’m sorry, I just can’t bring myself to refer to zucchini as a fruit. 

The Secret Race, by Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle

I was going to start this post by saying The Secret Race isn’t going to win any awards for writing…but then I had a closer look at the back of the book and was quite surprised to discover that I was very wrong on this account. The Secret Race won the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. I stand corrected. I am assuming that it was the subject matter alone that got this book an award because the writing is by no means exceptional. However, I’m not one for wasting time reading poorly written material and I never once considered putting down The Secret Race: the subject matter is exceptional. The book chronicles the career of Tyler Hamilton, who rode for the infamous U.S. Postal Service cycling team, along with Lance Armstrong, for several years. I should say that I have never taken much of an interest in road racing and have only watched bits and pieces of the Tour de France before reading this book. I suppose I am guilty of being sucked into the drama that was Lance Armstrong’s persistent denial of ever having used performance-enhancing drugs during his ridiculously successful career. Despite more and more cyclists came out admitting not only that they had used drugs during world-class events like the Tour de France, but also offering up compelling evidence that Armstrong was right alongside them, even instigating and pioneering the use of new performance-enhancing techniques, Armstrong stood his ground. Hamilton was at one point one of Armstrong’s inner circle and lays out his story with page-turning detail. I read this book months after Lance finally admitted on national TV to having used drugs, and reading Hamilton’s account you realize what an obstinate bully Armstrong truly is to have denied it for so long. While I felt very little sympathy for Armstrong reading the book (he really is not a very nice guy), I did feel sympathy for these cyclists who really had no other choice but to engage in illegal doping. As you learn from Hamilton, it was only the very elite athletes who were invited to take part in the doping activities, which included among other things, blood transfusions. Once you were invited you faced a stark choice: either accept the enhancements and give yourself a chance to win, or quit. Since everyone at the top was taking part, there was no hope of advancing your cycling career otherwise. The amount of gruelling training and hardship that goes into becoming an elite cyclist is absolutely mind-boggling. Despite most of these athletes’ aversion to performance-enhancing drugs, it becomes clear from reading The Secret Race that they had no other option. If you have even a passing interest in the Lance Armstrong era of cycling, I do recommend this book, despite its less-than-stellar narrative style. You will gain a newfound respect for cyclists and what it takes to race among the best in the world.

Yeasty Lemon-Orange-Blueberry Pull-Apart Bread

A couple weeks ago I went blueberry picking and after devouring most of them, I was left with enough to do some baking. I had the sudden inspiration to make blueberry scones, a baked good I had never attempted. I don’t even really like scones, so who knows what I was thinking. At any rate, I started googling blueberry scone recipes and came across what might be my new favourite baking blog. La Petite Brioche is written by Christina Rose who is some kind of baking prodigy. Her site is replete with beautiful photos of mouth-watering photos of deliciousness (with the exception of some recipes that involve meat….why pollute a perfectly good dessert website with MEAT?!). Anyway, as soon as I discovered Christina’s blueberry scone recipe I quickly discovered that I no longer wanted to make blueberry scones. Not because it didn’t look like amazing but because below it, I discovered an even more drool-worthy recipe, for lemon blueberry pull-apart bread. Check out the photo for yourself. Needless to say, the scones were quickly forgotten. This bread seemed like a real project, something that I was feeling up for, given that I had an open Saturday afternoon in front of me.

I followed Christina’s recipe exactly, except that I used one less lemon than she suggested (only because I only had two), and I found that the dough actually yielded 1.5 loaf pans’ worth of bread…a very happy finding. I baked the half loaf for dessert that night and put the full loaf tin (unbaked) in the fridge to bake the next day. This worked wonderfully! I will not bother to record the recipe here, because Christina does a fantastic job of giving a step-by-step rundown of how to make this somewhat complicated recipe. Click here and give it a try!

Here are two photos of my process:

This is how my loaf looked before I baked it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is how it looked when I took it out of the oven, before icing it. The nice thing about this recipe is that it cools really quickly: you can eat it about 15 minutes after it comes out of the oven. Perfect!

The Devil’s Teeth, by Susan Casey

Some of my more regular readers may recall the review I wrote of Susan Casey’s second book, The Wave, which I wrote about a year ago. If so, you will not be surprised at my eagerness to obtain a copy of her first book, The Devil’s Teeth. The Wave kindled in me a newfound fascination with surfing, which until reading the book I gave no more thought to beyond a vague notion of it being a ‘kinda cool’ sport. When I found out that her first book is about great white sharks, I was sold. I confess I bought this book ages ago and, anticipating a great read, decided to reserve it as vacation reading, lent it to a friend in the meantime, and promptly forgot about it. About a week before leaving on a vacation to Kauai I suddenly remembered The Devil’s Teeth. I retrieved it from my friend in time and eagerly packed it for the trip. You’d think that this book could not possibly live up to my ridiculously heightened expectations (is it weird that I was looking forward to reading it almost as much as going to Kauai itself?). Well I am thrilled to report that it possibly exceeded them. I was happy to discover that the Devil’s Teeth was not what you might call a typical science book. There were no chapters dedicated solely to great white shark mating/migration/feeding habits. These were facts that you pick up as you go (and, as it turns out, no one is really sure about the sharks’ mating/migration/feeding habits anyway). Most of the book takes place in and around the Farallon Islands, which you might be surprised to learn lie 27 miles off the coast of California, within the city limits of San Francisco. On a clear day you can see them from the Golden Gate Bridge, yet few people have heard of them. The islands are known for three things:  brutal, unpredictable weather; shipwrecks; and great white sharks. It is a hostile, forbidding place that was designated a wildlife sanctuary, after having been first virtually destroyed by human activity. It is enormously difficult to receive permission to visit the Farallons and almost impossible if you are not an eminent biologist of some sort. Yet Casey wheedles her way there, not once, but three times. The book is a bit of a love letter to the Farallons. Casey visited first for three days as the guest of one of two biologists who live on the island semi-permanently. She became obsessed, mostly with the sharks, and decided she absolutely must go back. Because of the heavy restrictions placed on human presence on the islands, Casey and the biologist come up with a clever (albeit somewhat insane) way of allowing her to spend more than a day on the islands: they would rent a sailboat which she would live on for several months at the height of shark season. Considering the number of fierce storms that hit the Islands, this was a rather treacherous prospect, especially given Casey’s lack of sailboat experience. I won’t spoil the rest of the story but suffice it to say, things don’t exactly go as planned. For me, this book was a page-turner and I recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in sharks.

Illywhacker, by Peter Carey

At 600 pages (exactly) you either have to be a fast reader or really love Peter Carey to pick up this tome. I fall into the latter camp. I find Carey’s stories both engrossing and unusual. Illywhacker was published in 1985 and was shortlisted for the Booker that same year. It is easy to see why: the novel is full of poetic descriptions and clever observations. As I was reading it however I couldn’t shake the feeling that the novel reminded me of something and it wasn’t until I got to the end and realized that it is very similar, if not in style than in form, to my favourite novel of all time, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There are several similarities between the two. One Hundred Years of Solitude requires (IMHO) at least three reads before you can begin to grasp the multiple layers of meaning tied up in the characters and events. Illywhacker I suspect is the same. Through the long life of protagonist Herbert Badgery, Carey is trying to make some kind of point. I’m going to blame my lack of English degree for failing to grasp it. One Hundred Years of Solitude is about how history repeats itself and Garcia uses several generations of a family to make the case. The structure of Illywhacker is much the same: although most of the story is taken up with Herbert Badgery’s escapades, three generations of the Badgery family are explored in the 600 pages. The other aspect of Illywhacker that reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude was magical realism. For those not familiar with the term, magical realism refers to instances of magic or seemingly impossible events/characteristics that are seen as common place in the context of the book. In Illywhacker, Herbert Badgery is introduced to us in the first page of the novel as being 139 years old. He also has the ability to become invisible and later in the book he tears off the finger of a man, which he keeps in a jar and watches it change form. Herbert Badgery is a known liar (‘illywhacker’ means ‘trickster’) and so the magical realism adds to this sense of trickery that prevails throughout the novel.

Aside from its length, another difficulty I had with Illywhacker is the Australian slang that is peppered throughout. I had to keep asking my British husband to translate for me as much of these words are the same in Britain-speak. This proved to be somewhat annoying when he wasn’t around. Aside from this minor difficulty, I recommend Illywhacker. At no point was I bored and in fact didn’t want to put it down most nights. Other Carey titles I’d recommend: Theft and Jack Maggs.

A Week on Kauai

First off, I want to say I’m not a beach person. Spending a week tanning is definitely not at the top of my ideal vacation activities. My lily-white Scandinavian has known a tan maybe once in my life (after a trip to Croatia) and even then it was a miracle considering all the sunscreen I lathered on. Lying on a towel fully exposed to the sun gods and with sand in my sensitive bits just seems not only boring but kinda irritating. Generally I prefer a bit of excitement in the form of hiking (see my Chilkoot Trail post) or the culture of a new city. However after spending a week on the Hawai’ian island Kauai, I’m beginning to rethink my stance on beaches. It could have been the excellent company (Philip plus two close friends and their toddler); it could have been my holiday reading, a book that made me want to ignore the aforementioned excellent company (and probably did on occasion – sorry guys!); or it could have been that the weather was just right: hot but not too hot, slightly humid, and a refreshing , constant breeze. Likely a combination of all of these factors made this a week that I wish could have been two.

We stayed at the Kiahuna Plantation Resort in Poipu. The suites were condo-style and self-catering and for the most part I fully enjoyed staying there. (My reservations stem from an unbelievably irritating screen door that went off its hinges every. single. time. we tried to close it; as well as the lack of house-keeping the entire week we were there. Yeah, I know…first world problems.) We could see a sliver of ocean from our second-floor room and the sizeable balcony was an inviting place to eat breakfast. The beach was just a one-minute walk away.

The week went something like this. Generally we lazed about in the morning, reading and relaxing. I’d generally have my nose in my guidebook, deciding how to spend the afternoon. (At this point I want to put in a plug for The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook from the folks at Hawaii Revealed. If you are going to Hawai’i, don’t bother getting any other guidebook. If the rest of the island guidebooks are anything like the Kauai edition, you will simultaneously be informed and entertained by the entries. It is detailed and full of interesting ideas of places to eat and things to see. And it feels like a good friend of yours wrote the reviews.) Ok, back to our week. We actually spent a few days not leaving the resort property. This surprised me because I’m usually desperate to get out and do something, generally not content to just sit around. But the beach was so damned close and the water was so warm and my book was just that good!

Despite the allure of the 3-minute walk to the beach, we did actually get out and see some of Kauai. The highlights:

Waimea Canyon. Being 20 weeks pregnant at the time I wasn’t overly keen to do any kind of strenuous hiking in the Hawaiian heat, which was fine because it turns out neither did anyone else. (Apparently toddlers aren’t fantastic hiking companions anyway!) We drove up to the lip of the canyon to take in the view. Definitely not as impressive as the Grand Canyon but still…wow. If I hadn’t been feeling pretty pukey from the twisty car ride up, I would have enjoyed it more but I was quite taken by the grandeur of it. Picture a smaller, lusher, ocean-side version of the Grand Canyon, add some chickens in there (Kauai is overrun with chickens) and you’ll have Waimea Canyon. My pictures do not do it justice.

Secret Lava Pools. Not really all that secret given the sign that greeted us as we approached the treacherous, mud-laden trek down to the beach that read: “Don’t listen to guidebooks –  many have died here this year at lavapools” Uh-huh. Nice try locals. The “secret” lavapools are reached by trekking down to ‘Secret Beach’, a wide expanse of beautiful sand with waves that make it way too rough to swim in, and then climbing over lava rocks for a few hundred yards. Being billed by my guidebook as one of the nicest places to take a dip in Kauai, I was pretty excited. So I was somewhat dismayed when we did finally reach the lavapools to find that the only swimmable one (IMHO) was only slightly bigger (albeit much deeper) than my bathtub at home. Philip had no desire to jump into an oversized puddle where he could not see the bottom (this from a guy who happily jumped one of the highest bungees in the world). We’d come that far and I was hot, sweaty, and pregnant, and I was going swimming, bathtub-sized puddle or not. So I got in. Admittedly I have had better bathing experiences. But it was still pretty cool to be in a lava pool and it was refreshing. Plus I was reasonably certain there were no sharks hiding nearby. I stayed in for a few minutes and then we went back to meet our friends who had stayed behind on Secret Beach.

Kuilau Ridge Trail. To me this was absolute paradise. This hike was the essence of lush! Foliage draped the trail and there were flowers and birds everywhere. The scenery was spectacular. This was a simple out-and-back 2 mile hike with little elevation. Perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all the unfamiliar bird songs. If the beach hadn’t anxiously been waiting for us (and if we’d brought some food along) we would have stayed all day.

The Beaches of Maha’ulepu. There are three beaches just to the east of Poipu that sport some pretty fascinating geology. This is rugged, harsh Kauai where the sea has attacked the limestone ridges to form

lithified cliffs. Even though these beaches were just a 10 minute drive from our hotel, it felt like we were on a completely different island. The water was still a gorgeous aqua blue but the waves were roaring and crashing against the shoreline, making for a less-than-inviting swim. The seaside was barren – no trees along the immediate coast – so it felt more like Newfoundland than Hawai’i. Investigating the effects of erosion and rough seas was absorbing and I thoroughly enjoyed this excursion.

Shave Ice. I’m not sure if this delight is unique to Hawaii but it is a delicious one! I had seen signs for shave ice all over Kauai but wasn’t too excited about trying it, thinking it must be like a snow cone. When we finally went to Jo-Jo’s Clubhouse, which apparently has the best shave ice on the island, we discovered that shave ice is like a snow cone the way fettucini alfredo served in Florence is like Kraft dinner. The basic ingredients are the same – pasta, cheese, “cheese” – but they are vastly different things. Unlike a snow cone which is made with crushed ice, snow cones are made by shaving a block of ice with a sharp knife, then adding two or three (or more) rich flavours and a scoop of ice cream. I had one of Jo-Jo’s specials, pina colada, which had pineapple, coconut, and strawberry along with coconut cream and a scoop of macadamia nut ice cream. Heaven. The picture below is of shave ice from a lesser establishment as I failed to capture the Jo-Jo’s magic in photo form. But you get the idea.

One regret from the week? Not getting a photo of the positively ENORMOUS spider that did the 100m Olympic sprint à la Usain Bolt across the living room as we sat chatting. Never has my heart leapt into my throat at the sight of a spider. I am no fan of spiders but I usually silently tolerate them, unless they are the size of a dinner plate, in which case I shriek, pointing slack-jawed at the offender, in the hopes that someone of the male persuasion will do something about it. In this case Philip and our friend Sean did battle for us women. Weapon of choice? A heavy red binder. There was no way this thing was going to be coaxed into a jar, a piece of cardboard slid gently under the opening. After a quick search I determined that the beast was a cane spider: harmless as it turns out but seriously scary. The reason I wish I had photo evidence is that I find it remarkable how distinctly different our recollections are of the size of the spider. Us women, we agree it was about the size of my face. Philip and Sean? The size of my palm. Is this a male-female phenomenon? I want photo evidence.

Raw Strawberry Cake

I have been baking a lot of yummy vegan treats lately. Back in the fall I thought I was really on the path to being an at-home vegan, and really, for the most part I am. There are oodles of reasons to become a vegan and I’m not going to go into them now. However one of the best reasons I think is that it encourages experimentation in the kitchen. Instead of relying on the same old milk-eggs-butter combination, you are introduced to flax eggs, almond milk, and applesauce as substitutes. In many cases the vegan recipe is tastier and lower-fat than its dairy counterpart. (Chai snickerdoodles are maybe my favourite cookie; and I just whipped up a batch of vegan chocolate chip cookies which are a contender for the title). Last weekend I attempted a raw strawberry “cheese”cake. There is nothing remotely cheesy about this cake so I prefer to call it just a raw strawberry cake. At any rate, I was pleased with the results. Happily, the recipe involves no vegan cream cheese, which is both expensive and not very good: the “meat” of the cake is soaked, pulverized cashews. I think if I had a better food processor the cake would have been smoother and creamier, but alas I’m waiting for it to kick the bucket. This recipe also introduced me to alcohol-free vanilla, something that isn’t easy to find (I got mine at Whole Foods) but I don’t think I’m going back. The alcohol-free version is thicker and richer and just more vanilla-y. I’m a convert!

I’d suggest making this if you have some health conscious friends coming over in the summer: since the cake is raw, you want to use fresh, juicy strawberries. Your friends will appreciate the low fat, fairly healthy dessert: you will appreciate how easy it is to make this cake and the fact that you make it the day before.  Not surprisingly, I pilfered this recipe from my favourite vegan website, the Post Punk Kitchen. You can follow the instructions there, or my version below. The original includes a “fluffy white frosting” (which is the white dollop on top of the cake you see in my photo below). I didn’t find this added much if anything to the cake, so I’m not including it the instructions below.

Grease a 9-inch springform pan with coconut oil.

To make the crust, combine in a food processor:
1 cup pecans
1 cup almonds (I used blanched)
1/4 tsp salt
Pulse until fairly fine. Then add 4 pitted and chopped medjool dates; pulse them in until the dough squishes and holds slightly between your fingers. Press into the bottom of a cake pan. Wash out your food processor.

To make the filling, pulse 3 cups of cashews which have been soaked at least 3 hours. 3 hours is totally acceptable but you can leave them overnight if that’s easiest. Once the cashews are nice and crumbly, add:
1/2 cup agave syrup
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 tsp alcohol-free vanilla extract
Puree until the mixture is smooth as you can get it. Add up to 1/4 cup water to ensure a good, smooth consistency. With the food processor running, add in 4 cups of hulled, halved strawberries. I think you might get away with adding another cup of strawberries so if you’re feeling adventurous, give it a try for extra strawberry-goodness. Once the strawberries are incorporated, add in 1/4 cup of melted coconut oil slowly, with the food processor running. Pour the filling into the pan, cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Before serving, combine about 2 cups of chopped strawberries with 3 tablespoons of agave syrup and mash together to make a coulis. Spread a bit of the coulis on each plate and top with a piece of cake.

This is a very un-vegan suggestion, but this cake would probably be extra tasty with whipped cream (is there some way to get whipped cream to taste of strawberry?) or frozen yogurt on the side.

Sleepwalk with Me, by Mike Birbiglia

I think it’s important to have books like Sleepwalk with Me on one’s bookshelf. At the end of a stressful day or perhaps after watching a frightening movie (*ahem*), light-hearted, humorous books can give you a bit of perspective and make you forget just how bad a crummy day really was. Personal favourites include anything by David Sedaris and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Tina Fey’s Bossypants was awesome for this purpose. I received Sleepwalk with Me as a Christmas present, after my lovely husband remembered me recounting a hilarious segment by Mike Birbiglia on an episode of This American Life. I was at the gym when I listened to it and I could not contain my chuckles. Unfortunately I have to report being a bit disappointed by this book. Don’t get me wrong: there were definitely some laugh-out-loud moments (much to my husband’s annoyance as these always seem to happen when I’m reading in bed and he’s trying to sleep) and the stories were by and large amusing. My beef is with the writing. Birbiglia writes how he speaks. This is a problem I tend to encounter with my first-year students and don’t expect from a book I’ve purchased. But then, Birbiglia is a stand-up comic, not a Nobel prize winner for literature. It’s possible that my expectations may have been boosted too high by the glowing endorsements on the back from some of the funniest people on the (English-speaking) planet: Eddie Izzard, Nathan Lane, Denis Leary, and Lewis Black, to name a few. When John Hodgman writes, for instance, “Sleepwalk with Me is so funny, inspired, and jealous-makingly well written…” you’ll excuse me for my perhaps unrealistic expectations. But maybe I’m being too hard on Birbiglia. The guy does have some truly funny stories, some of them about sleepwalking, and at no point did I want to put the book down. And it certainly did the trick: every time I read it my life felt just a little better.

An aside: I just googled this book for linkage purposes and discovered that it’s now a movie, starring Mike Birbiglia, released in Aug 2012. Apparently I am out of touch. But in case you’re wondering, yes, I will see the movie.