September Didn't Exist

But I decided that a September newsletter still can. Judging books by their covers, tomato pie, giant words, and other September things.

September was the month that wasn’t, in good ways (a little vacation!) and bad (a couple of weeks sick in bed). (I’m fine! Wash your hands! Get your flu shot!)

To be honest, this has felt like the summer that didn’t exist. I was chased inside, first by cicadas, then by cicada mites, so turning the calendar over from September to October has caused more a feeling of panic (I have hardly eaten a tomato!) instead of a welcoming of cozy, baked apple times.

But I have a few more weeks of writing on the back patio. The gingko tree hasn’t even started to turn and my weather app says we have sunny days for weeks ahead, so here’s to a squeezing a little bit of summer out of these autumn days.

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I have a very bad habit, and that very bad habit is that I love to judge a book by its cover. I have worked in publishing and in bookstores. I have professionally recommended books. I have been trained for years to research books and understand who will like them, but still.

I love to judge a book by its cover.

In my defense, I do know what goes into a cover. I know that nearly a dozen comps are thrown around before a designer comes up with several ideas that are then narrowed down until the editor feels that there is a cover that correctly expresses the vibe of the book and also feels like something The Market will enjoy, and then that cover is shown to the author who hopefully likes it and then to sales and so on and so on.

So I think I should be able to trust a cover.

But it does lead me astray often, as I’ll build an idea on the book based on just that cover image and then I’ll be stuck with a book not meeting my expectations and no one to blame but myself.

I did this with a doorstopper of a book, a new book, out this summer. I saved it up for the beach, only to struggle to keep turning pages. But the vibe! Seemed just slightly, perfectly, spooky! September on the beach! With that lonely house looking out over the ocean. But the library has asked for two different copies back and now I’m plodding through the audiobook, but I keep forgetting that I’m reading it.

I do think I can only blame myself.

This doesn’t always end badly. I bought Pearl, a graphic novel by Sherri Smith and illustrated by Christine Noorie, with very little to go off of but implicit trust of Smith’s writing. But I saved it for the beach based on the watery cover: a young girl triumphantly clutching a giant pearl which she has pulled from the water. A swimming book, I thought! Beach!! And yet this is how I found myself, without warning, crying over a Hiroshima survival story. It’s a haunting book, the story of a Japanese-American girl who finds herself displaced in Japan during WWII, unable to get back to her family in California. The two-color art is stunning, especially, I think, in the places where it is distorted to illustrate a language barrier. It’s the kind of book that demands quiet while you read it and after you’ve finished, so perhaps the beach is the best place to read it so you can watch the waves for a bit when you’re done.

A few other things I read while on or near the beach:

The Skull, by Jon Klassen: This ended up being the girl-finds-abandoned-house-book of my beachy dreams. Klassen—maybe you know this—read a folktale while on a school trip to Alaska and then, when he couldn’t stop thinking about the story but also could not remember anything about the book, contacted the Alaskan librarian and asked for her help. Klassen was able to adapt the story into his own version, a weird, spooky little story about agency and protecting your people.

Ship in the Window by Travis Jonker, illustrated by Matthew Cordell, about a mouse who steals a model schooner, is a mouse-in-the-human-world book that can sit by classics like Norman the Doorman.

The Man who Didn’t Like Animals by Deborah Underwood, illustrated by LeUyen Pham, is a grump-whose-heart-grows-larger story that works even without the surprise ending. (It’s a tragic backstory! But you’d have to read the synopsis to know whose, and we don’t do that around here.)

And this isn’t really a book, but it feels like a book: the Krasl Art Center in St. Joseph, Michigan, is currently featuring the art of Gwen Yen Chiu. She’s a sculpture and calligraphy artist, and the works collected at the Krasl are both her traditional pen-and-ink calligraphy works as well as her larger-than-life, 3D sculptures of the same characters, but slightly distorted and heightened. Walking around the exhibit feels like being inside a sketchpad, a sort of a form of word becoming flesh. If you find yourself in Southwest Michigan in October, stop in.

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I have still hardly eaten a tomato, but I couldn’t let a year go by without making Ruth Reichl’s James Beard’s Tomato Pie. I started reading Ruth Reichl’s blog back when I first discovered her books, and now I’ve made this tomato pie every year for the last fourteen.

She talks about making this pie in her second book, Comfort Me with Apples, a fact I 100% forgot this summer when I found myself at one of her book tour stops and got to chat with her while she signed books for my mom and sister and me. “James,” she said—Ruth Reichl, who I will only ever call Ruth Reichl, calls James Beard “James”—“James,” she said, “was offended that we loved his tomato pie. It’s too low-brow.”

It is low brow. It is mayonnaise and cheese over thick biscuits. It is one of my most favorite meals and I make it once a year.

It’s nice served with a salad and often my family will throw on Italian sausage for protein (is it a Chicago thing to add Italian sausage to 1/5 meals?), but it’s also a solid meal on its own.

Over the years, I’ve made my own mayo or used various store-bought brands. Right now we’re eating Target’s organic house brand. (It did well in a Bon Appetit taste-test and I was convinced to try, and it turned out to be the best-tasting of the easy-to-get mayos in the area. It’s lemony! It works well in this! I know people swear by Duke’s and I do like Kewpie, but I don’t actually remember if I’ve been on a Kewpie kick at tomato time?)

I do think that this is one of those recipes that rewards good ingredients: decent mayo, garden tomatoes, aged sharp cheddar.

A few other changes: I haven’t bought buttermilk in ages and just sour some milk with a teaspoon of vinegar. I don’t include parsley in the biscuits because Ruth Reichl says it is just for show and I simply have not observed the show in all my 14 tomato pie years.

Ruth Reichl’s James Beard’s Tomato Pie

2 Cups flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/3 Cup cold butter

2/4 Cup buttermilk/sour milk

1 Cup mayonnaise

1 Cup sharp cheddar, shredded

Basil to finish

Preheat your oven to 375.

Measure 2 cups of flour into a large bowl and add 2 and a half teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoons of salt, and 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda. Cut (I use a large fork) 1/3 cup of butter (it helps if you cube it with a knife first) into the flour. Mash the butter into the flour with your fingers just until it looks like cornmeal but there are still large pieces of butter in the flour.

Pour in 3/4 cups of buttermilk and fold until the dough comes together. You can knead the dough here, but I typically just press it into a greased pie plate from the bowl.

Slice your tomatoes. If you have large heirloom garden tomatoes, you’ll probably only need 3-4, but you’ll want six Romas or Bob the Tomato-type tomatoes. Arrange the tomato slices in one or two layers over the biscuit crust.

Combine one cup of mayo with your shredded cheese and spread over the tomatoes. You should be able to cover the tomatoes completely with the mixture, which is what you want.

Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes. The mayo/cheese mixture will turn a pretty golden brown like the best custard tart. Top with shredded basil if you’ve got it.

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Things I’ve Liked in September

• Pistachio milk. The coffee shop in our beach town was serving pistachio milk cafe miels and I believe I had three. I ran home and bought some pistachio milk and it is wildly expensive, but if you are looking for a luxury nut milk experience, I must recommend spending too much on pistachio milk and adding it with a little honey to some strong coffee.

• My sister talking about E. Nesbit’s influence on C.S. Lewis and Lewis’s article “Three Ways of Writing for Children.”

• This podcast interview with Jon Klassen, particularly the part where he talks about how he chooses to illustrate the moments after the action has happened instead of illustrating the action itself. The interview starts 30ish minutes in.

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Perhaps this is too long, now, but maybe it’s penance for tardiness. I wish you a very merry October, friends!

(And just a quick little note to say I’m thinking of all my friends in the Ashville area and everyone in the path of this next storm! Stay safe!)