Flatbreads & Flavors & Fandom

April 17, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Years ago when Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything was my Bible, I studied every page like a good little novice, and approximately 882 pages later I came across the no doubt often overlooked section, “Fifty Cookbooks I’d Rather Not Live Without.” This led to many happy finds but none so happy as Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, which in due course upended HtCE as All-Time-Favorite-Cookbook.

Is this the point at which I mention that I hung out last week with Naomi Duguid? No, that’s spoiling the surprise too soon.

Anyway…

So I got my copy of F&F in 2005 and away I went. You see, for years already then (and still now) I’d been haunted with guilt because the first time I attempted to make bread from scratch I forgot to add the yeast. It was only once I had a supple dough in hand that I realized my mistake and—close your eyes, here it comes—thinking there was nothing more to be done about it, I threw it out.

I sometimes feel that when I face Judgment Day, that wasted bread dough will be dangled in front of my nose, an outrageous combination of wastefulness and ignorance…

Lutheran Saints #2: Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633–1694)

April 3, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

No one has loved the Most High God’s descent to the tiny form of the fetus more than Catherina Regina von Greiffenberg.

Catharina was consecrated to theology long before she had any say in the matter. She relays “the vow of my mother who, when I still lay in her womb (during a dangerous illness, when she despaired of the possibility of keeping me), offered me up and promised me to Thy service and glory, should I be born alive.”

Hannah in the Old Testament had done much the same as Catharina’s mother, Eva Maria, in promising God her firstborn—who turned out to be the prophet Samuel. Eva Maria, of course, had no idea that the child in utero was a girl instead of the more usual boy starring in such accounts.

It would be natural to assume that being a female theologian was Catharina’s biggest difficulty. In fact, it was not; by far the bigger problem was being a Lutheran theologian. For Catharina lived in a time and place where the sheer existence of Lutherans remained very much under question…

The Cookbook I Moved to Japan For

March 15, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

If I can’t travel, I cook. I’ve never been to Mexico, and used to think I hated the cheesy-beany glop that claims to be its cuisine, but that all changed when I found Rick Bayless’s first, Authentic Mexican. I’ve never been to Thailand, but back when I was so new to cooking that I’d never even baked bread or knew what to do with most of the vegetables in the produce section I scouted out lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and turmeric root (before it was trendy) to make everything I could from Vatcharin Bhumichitr’s Vatch’s Thai Cookbook. French, Italian, Chinese, you name it.

Unless you named Japanese. Then I was stumped. Raw-fish sushi was a nonstarter and back then the only ramen I knew about was the hangover-cure with a toxic flavor packet you got in college. Despite its name, Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art was encyclopedic and forbidding.

Then, one happy day, I came across a reference to Elizabeth Andoh’s Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, and in keeping with the frugal habits of grad school poverty I checked it out of the library…

Slovak Novels in English #15: St. Elizabeth’s Square

March 1, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

I ordered this book as a matter of course, simply because it’s another Slovak novel in English. But as soon as it arrived, I became even more intrigued by the circumstances of its publication than its plot. Because this novel, which first came out in 1958 in Slovak, was translated and printed in English in 1964 by a publisher in Prague. In other words, during the severe censorship of the immediate post-Stalinist era, this book was selected not only for public consumption in Czechoslovakia but to send a message to the hostile outside capitalist world of English speakers. How and why did this happen?

My suspicions, of course, were that author Rudolf Jašík must have been a true believer in the Communist cause, and from what I can find out about him, my suspicions were correct. After five months imprisoned by the Nazis for distributing Communist leaflets in 1940, Jašík came out more convinced than ever of the evils of fascism and the righteousness of the Reds. He fought in the Slovak puppet state’s army on the side of the Axis but sabotaged his own regiment, for which he was again imprisoned. Jašík didn’t waste either bout in prison but worked on his Russian and even tried to join the Soviet army at one point. After his second release from jail, he joined the partisans in the Slovak National Uprising. This most revered moment in Slovak national history actually failed, but it put Jašík in good stead with the regime change of 1948. He held prominent jobs in industry and the arts, organized study groups in Marxist-Leninist thought, and was allowed to publish his handful of novels and poetry.

I came to this, his most famous novel, expecting a work of pious and overt propaganda. In fact, it is considerably more subtle than that…

Lutheran Saints #1: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719)

February 22, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg was only twenty-three years old when he landed at the south Indian fortress of Tranquebar on July 9, 1706, but his reputation already preceded him. The governor of this Danish colony refused to let him disembark for three days, and when he finally relented, denied Ziegenbalg lodging amidst the other Germans and Danes. The young man and his colleague Plütschau had no choice but to shift for themselves among the poor and despised Portuguese-speaking Indians of the city.

Their crime? They had arrived to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the local Tamil population.

This did not fit the agenda of the Danish East India Company or its governor at all. For one thing, they held the locals in contempt, as dark-skinned savages; for another, the Tamils’ becoming Christians would interfere with the nominally Christian Danes’ abuse of them; and finally, their own habits of drinking, whoring, and slaveholding—already inspiring disgust on the part of the Tamils—would come in for closer scrutiny. Anyway, the King of Denmark had never consulted with them about this mission business. He just decided by his absolute authority to sponsor Ziegenbalg and Plütschau because of his guilty conscience after the death of his mistress and their infant child. The board of the Danish East India Company back home had got a messenger to Governor Hassius before the missionaries arrived and instructed him in no uncertain terms: prevent them from doing what they’re there to do…

Two Cookbooks That Made Me a Cook and One That Made Me a Writer

February 11, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Childhood is one astounding new fact after another; a hurricane of surprises, delights, and alarms. A great deal of adulthood is trying to recapture that incessant novelty and the richness of experience it imparts.

Among the many surprises of human existence, one that most impressed itself on me came when I was four or five: the realization that you could talk about people you had never met in person! Humanity was not restricted to your immediate circle. You could be casual and matter-of-fact about these unknown personages, referring to these people only by their last names. Heck, they could even be dead!

This revelation came to me as I studied the back cover of my very first cookbook, Many Hands Cooking: An International Cookbook for Girls and Boys, published by UNICEF. The authors, smiling young women in their back cover photograph, were Terry Touff Cooper and Marilyn Ratner. The illustrator was Tony Chen. I read their brief bios many times over and thought to myself, “All right, well, if Terry Touff Cooper and Marilyn Ratner come in conversation, I’ll be ready!”

To date, neither Terry Touff Cooper nor Marilyn Ratner has ever come up in conversation. But by golly, if you’re game, I’m still ready! …

Slovak Novels in English #14: The Camp of Fallen Women

February 1, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

So often in writing about books I’m inclined to give two reviews: one of what the book intended to be, and the second of what the book actually was. The Camp of Fallen Women is one of those books.

The premise is fantastic: the actual, historical effort of the new communist state in Czechoslovakia to “re-educate” a cohort of prostitutes from a notorious neighborhood in Bratislava by interning them in a concentration camp. Forced to wear underwear, earn a respectable living by learning to sew and embroider, and subjected to long lectures on proletariat ideology, these “fallen women” try to make sense of what has happened to them and figure out how to survive in the strange new world of communism.

As a political satire, the book is sharp, pointed, and often funny. It shows how ideology can seriously interfere with sex drive—but also how sex drive can seriously interfere with ideology…

Memoir Update, plus, the Best Writing Book Ever

January 24, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Late last fall I finished a second draft of my memoir about moving to the newly minted Slovak Republic when I was seventeen and all the adventures, both linguistic and romantic, that befell me there. Then it was time to let the book lie fallow for awhile—since, you know, I had other things going on at the time, like getting used to living in Japan and all. Since then the book’s been farmed out to a handful of trusted readers for feedback, and next month I plan to launch into the third edit, which hopefully will bring it to a place ready to seek publication. Eeek!

The idea of a fallow period is a bit misleading, though, because in this time between edits I have made a marvelous discovery that—I do not exaggerate—has changed my life. It is The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne and the companion podcast he does with Tim Grahl (whose Book Launch Show podcast is also awesome).

First, an embarrassing admission: this is actually the second time I’ve discovered The Story Grid, which just goes to show that if the life-changing thing comes along when you’re not ready for it, life doesn’t actually change. (Apply this wisdom to your own life as appropriate.) I read a library copy a couple years ago and thought it was really cool, but for whatever reason was not in a place to implement its strategy.

Then this past November I had about drained my podcast queue dry and was casting around for something new, so I looked for writing-related podcasts. There are zillions of them, and most of them bored me so I quickly moved on. Then I got to the Story Grid Podcast and frankly binged on approximately 150 episodes. I was so disappointed when I caught up to the present that I bought the book, read, marked, and inwardly digested its contents, and life will never be the same! Or at least writing…

A Reasonably Quick Guide to Spiritual Gifts/Charismata

January 16, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

For Pentecostals, a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit entails a bestowal of divine gifts of new powers and abilities. They are personally enriching, to be sure, but their primary purpose is the building-up of the church, both through missional outreach and congregational edification. The most common term to describe these gifts is charismata (singular: charisma), a transliteration of the Greek term that Paul uses for divine gifts.

Paul appears to have invented the term “charisma” himself. It has virtually no counterpart in any other Greek literature of his period or before. It derives from the Greek word charis, which means “grace,” so charismata can be understood to mean “graced-things.” You can also see the word charis hiding in one of the terms for the Lord’s Supper: eucharist, which has the more specific meaning of “thanksgiving”…

Slovak Novels in English #13: Out of This Furnace

January 7, 2019 Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Like Alexander Boldizar’s The Ugly, Thomas Bell’s Out of This Furnace is a “Slovak Novel in English” on account of a certain sleight of hand on my part. It was written and published in English and to my knowledge has never been translated into Slovak. But like The Ugly, it concerns the lives of Slovaks in America at the wrong end of the justice system—though where Boldizar’s story is comical and absurdist, Bell’s is realistic and humane.

Out of This Furnace spans three generations, from patriarch Kracha’s emigration from his small eastern Slovak village to Pennsylvania, to his daughter Mary and her husband Mike’s failed expectations to rise above the poverty and backbreaking labor of their parents, to grandson Dobie’s gradual politicization into the role of a union activist. Bell knew whereof he spoke: no small amount of the story tracks with his own family history, though unlike his third-generation counterpart Dobie, Bell escaped the drudgery of the steel town as a young man and never went back. But he certainly looked back, and in so doing recorded the emblematic story of Slovaks in America…