Broccoli Therapy

I have a confession to make.

When I added broccoli to last month’s poll as to which vegetable people wanted help learning to love, it was only because one person had mentioned briefly that while she didn’t hate broccoli, she was never particularly excited about eating it. I was certain that she’d be an outlier, and that we’d tackle beets or spinach or asparagus well before we got to broccoli. Who hates broccoli? Surely it’s one of the country’s most popular vegetables? (It’s not. More on that in a bit.)

Apparently, everyone hates broccoli, or at least everyone who reads this blog. It won by a landslide. My suspicion is actually that you don’t hate broccoli, but that like the original person who suggested it that you are bored by broccoli. After all, there are only two preparations for it, right? We tend to consume it steamed and spartan, or thickly enrobed in cheese.

While the cheese preparation is delicious, it perhaps strikes us as a less than virtuous way of consuming a vegetable – if the point is to be more healthy, soaking our vitamins in saturated fat and calories is perhaps not an ideal solution. Simply steamed however, broccoli is at best boring, and at worst can have the most unpleasant characteristics of the Brassica family: sulfurous and tough, nearly fibrous. What’s the health-conscious vegetable eater to do, apart from resign herself to boredom or cholesterol?

As it turns out, quite a bit! There’s no law that says broccoli needs to be steamed, my friends, and as with so many of the vegetables we don’t care for, steaming is not the answer. Immediately two preparations came to mind that I really enjoy, don’t require too many ingredients, and are reasonably healthy. I’m going to post a third but caution that I haven’t yet tried it myself; the principle is sound, however, and I plan to try it soon.

A simple sautee is the first and it couldn’t be easier. If it’s not already, chop your broccoli into florets of a reasonably small size. You want them to cook fairly quickly. Heat a pan and throw in some olive oil. When the oil is shimmering, toss in the broccoli and a good shake of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Stir frequently, until the broccoli is tender.

This will yield surprisingly buttery and soft stems with crisped florets. I toss it with pasta or rice, but you could simply serve it as a side dish or mix it with other vegetables.

The second method is a variation on the first and requires a few more easily obtained ingredients. Called braising and glazing, I grabbed this from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything, and it’s appropriate for just about every vegetable you can imagine (Except possibly cucumber. I don’t really know what one does with cucumber that isn’t raw or soup). Here’s what you do:

You’ll need frying pan with a lid – heat it up over medium heat and add 1/4 cup olive oil. When it’s shimmering, add a tablespoon (or to your taste) of minced garlic. Give that 30 seconds to start to brown and throw in your broccoli (again, cut into bits first, otherwise this is going to take a long time) and a 1/4 cup of chicken stock (of course you’ve made your own). Put the lid on everything and cook, stirring occasionally, until the broccoli is tender. Once that happens remove the lid and increase the heat, cooking until nearly all of the liquid is evaporated. The broccoli will be gilded with chicken stock. Salt and pepper those babies and enjoy! Two notes about this preparation: 1. In my version the florets came out a bit mushy. Keep an eye on the veggies and your pieces even – the stems were perfect, and I didn’t mind the mushiness but you might not like it. 2. If you want to make this vegan, use veggie stock, water, or wine. Try them anyway for different tastes! You can also squeeze some lemon over this, if you like.

Finally, you can roast the broccoli. Since I haven’t yet tried this, I found a great-sounding recipe here. You’ll see that some of the flavors are the same as above, but I get the sense that you could solve the mushiness problem. If someone tries this before I report back, please comment!

Regarding America’s favorite vegetables – if you click the link way back at the top of this post it will take you to a report on our most-consumed vegetables. While the report is governmental and a bit dry, just take a look at the graph on page four. Just six vegetables are listed (and confusingly, melon). All of the other wonderful varieties of food plant we can eat are lumped into an “Other” category – and they’re still outranked by potatoes and tomatoes! I hope that these Vegetable Therapist posts encourage you all to buck the trend and try to raise consumption of the forgotten vegetables.

One last note, since I’ve been long-winded already. Remember my beloved sprouts? Mark Bittman posted a recipe in his Minimalist column this week that sounds amazing. I can’t wait to try it – hope you will too!

Nearly a Decision…

My apologies for not posting this sooner – the weekend got away from me a bit!

Last week, I invented a cocktail, and asked all of you to help me name it – and your responses blew me away. They were creative, funny, and fitting; truly interesting and each worthy in their own way of being a drink. Some of them have even inspired me to create other drinks just for them! Unfortunately, that’s left me with the monumental task of choosing one, and only one, for this particular cocktail.

After much deliberation and consultation with various sources, I narrowed it down to two choices.

You’ll notice I wrote TWO choices there. While math is not my forte, I’m certainly not that bad. I just really, truly couldn’t decide between these two terrific handles.

So once again, I’m asking for your help, loyal readers. Note that each of these folks will receive a prize just for making it this far – but only one will be associated with this noble beverage.

Please vote for your favorite! The poll will close this Friday, October 30 and we’ll have a name by Halloween. Advocating for your choice is allowed in the comments, but please keep it civil.

A few other notes:

The name Bittersweet almost made it into this poll, but I decided was actually an alternative version of this drink, replacing the Punt e Mes with Aperol for its brilliant orange hue. As soon as I purchase some Aperol I will experiment and publish some photos. Kate and the McTegos will also receive a runner’s up prize.

The Edgar Allan Pomme, while not appropriate for this drink, will be its own cocktail. Look for that recipe in 2-3 weeks!

Also, a huge thank you to everyone who contributed a name to this contest of mine. I’m really grateful that you’re all reading this blog and playing along with my games!

Finally, I haven’t forgotten the results of my last poll – broccoli was the big winner! (Or loser, depending on how you view it.) A recipe to help you learn to love that much-maligned vegetable is coming this week!

Pao de Quejio – Cheese Bread

My friend Elise has a fun feature on her blog called “Recipe Fridays.” These recipes range from simple to more complex, but they generally sound both tasty and healthy. So naturally, my attention was piqued by THIS post.

Cheese bread, also known as pao de quejio, is a popular Brazilian snack food. Best served hot, these little guys are definitely tasty, though perhaps not as healthful as the roasted fennel posted a few weeks later. Still, they’re gluten-free, so good for growing number of people I know who have celiac disease.

Most interesting to me, however, was that Elise had used a boxed mix. Since I’m always looking for ways to bring food back to basics, I wondered: could the cheese bread be made from scratch? Or was it full of esoteric ingredients and techniques best left in Brazil?

As it turned out, the most exotic ingredient in pao de quejio is tapioca flour, which gives it that distinctive, gummy, mochi-like texture and, incidentally, is why the little dough-balls are gluten-free. Tapioca flour comes from the root of the cassava plant, rather than than one of the cereal grains that are usually gluten producers. Since it doesn’t make gluten, it’s unsuitable for making leavened bread (see this post for more info) but it’s a great thickening agent and will certainly bind together well enough for little rolls like these.

It turned out to be fairly easy to buy tapioca flour at Market Basket – thanks to Bob and his Red Mill. My guess is that with things like celiac disease and allergies on the rise supermarkets are eager to supply the “alternative” flours. I used this recipe to make my cheese buns, but I halved it because 4 1/4 cups of flour seemed like it was going to make a LOT of buns. In fact, even though the recipe claims to make 15 buns, I got nearly that with half the ingredients. Either mine were piddly or this lady is a bit off on her count.

I decided to use regular ol’ Farmer’s Cheese and a bit of cheddar for the cheese, since I didn’t feel like going over to the Brazilian market on Somerville Avenue. Forgive my lack of authenticity, but Dave’s Fresh Pasta is much closer to my house, so farmer’s cheese was it!

The recipe couldn’t have been simpler to follow, although when I threw in the tapioca flour the dough that formed was distressingly stiff and sticky. Fortunately the addition of the eggs made it more malleable. It still looked like something from a horror movie, but I could work with it:

I let it cool a bit in the refrigerator and then formed it into little balls:

Keep in mind that in the middle of this process you do NOT want to have to touch anything except the dough. Much hand-cleaning ensued.

During the baking something magical happened, however! Just as the recipe promised, in the last few minutes of baking the little amorphous lumps transformed into big, buoyant buns!

The house was also filled with the aroma of melting, caramelizing cheese, a smell that competes only with frying garlic for savory delight.

Upon biting into one of my creations the similarity to mochi was readily apparent. The outside was crisp, but the innards were sticky-chewy. They are glutinous despite the lack of gluten.

After being out of the oven for an hour my little golden buns deflated, sadly. They were still delicious the next day, however, with a judicious application of the toaster oven.

Overall I quite enjoyed these. Once one gets over the fact that the so-called bread is sticky and chewy inside they’re a treat. I hope to eventually do a comparison to the boxed brand to see if there’s a difference, but until then, I’ll happily snack on these!

Cocktail and a Contest!

Fall is my favorite time of year. The clothes are better (especially if you knit). The food is better – root vegetables, winter squash, and roast meats – yum! And the drinks are better – dark, molasses-tinged and heavy.

In that spirit I decided that I wanted to make a cocktail that said autumn to me – one that was dark, sweet, and a little spicy. Bourbon would be the base, with maybe a bit of brandy, but what else would add that smell of fall leaves, pumpkin-pie spice I was craving?

I considered infusing the bourbon, but decided on a simpler and easier to adjust route – spice-infused simple syrup. To make it, I put into a pot:

1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
1 star anise
3 cloves
peppercorns
2 allspice
1 cinnamon stick, broken up
a small piece of vanilla bean.

I brought this to a boil, then adjusted the heat to simmer for 10 minutes. After the mixture cooled, I strained it and had a lovely dark syrup that smelled like heaven. It was time to experiment!

For what I had in mind I thought some orange flavor would also be nice, so I tried to add it with Cointreau. I also threw in Becherovka for a bit more cinnamon kick, and some Fee’s Whiskey Barrel Bitters. The resultant drink was ok but a bit too sweet for my tastes.

This was hardly surprising with the number of sweet components I’d thrown in there – clearly I needed something more bitter to balance it. What did I have that had citrus elements and a more bitter flavor?

Aha! There’s Punt e Mes in the refrigerator! Perfect!

The resultant drink was much more what I had in mind – dark and still fairly sweet, but when cut with the bitterness of the Punt e Mes the spice notes really shone through.

If you’d like to play along at home, here’s the recipe:

2 oz bourbon
1/2 oz brandy
1/4 oz Becherovka
1/4 oz Punt e Mes
1/4 oz spiced simple syrup
2 dashes Fee’s Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Combine all of the ingredients in an ice-filled shaker. Shake vigorously. Strain into chilled glass. Enjoy!

So that’s the cocktail. Now on to the contest!

I have no idea what to call this drink. I thought about Harvest Moon, but apparently that’s some sort of inverted tequila sunrise. Ideally the name would either be fall-related, or something to do with spices. Rather than rack my brain to come up with something clever, I’m asking you!

Post a name for this cocktail in the comments by Friday, October 23rd. The best name will win a fabulous prize, to be determined by me! It might be homemade chocolate chip cookies, it might be a ridiculous knit puppet! Possibly both! Feel free to enter as many names as you can think up. And if you try the cocktail let me know what you think!

Baraka Cafe

When it comes to the cuisines of the world, Boston is heavy in certain areas. You can’t, as the saying goes, swing a cat without hitting a Thai restaurant. (Let us leave aside the question of why you’d want to swing a cat for the moment.) Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese – we’ve got ‘em in spades. Whole areas of the city are devoted to Mexican and Italian, and it’s even possible to get Ethiopian in multiple locations. When dining out ennui sets in, what do you do?

One possibility is to visit a tiny little restaurant on the outskirts of Central Square. Located at 80 1/2 Pearl Street, Baraka Cafe offers Tunisian and Algerian delights that I’ve yet to experience anywhere else.

I started a recent meal there with the cherbat, the restaurant’s signature lemonade. Filled with flavors of rose, mint, and spices, it’s both delicious and beautiful.

My dining companion selected the Jbinet with Berber Karmous as our appetizer. This was a plate of Mediterranean cheeses, served with marinated Berber figs. The cheeses were feta and yogurt, appropriately light as an appetizer, and wonderfully salty and tangy. They contrasted nicely with the rich figs. I’m a little concerned that I could have eaten the entire plate myself.

For dinner we went in very different directions. My friend ordered the “Ultimate Vegetarian Platter Du Jour,” which on this jour consisted of hummus, harissa, marinated olives, more yogurt cheese, and some sort of tapenade. While perhaps not the best choice for someone with an eye on their sodium intake, this was a great, colorful platter.

I went in the meat-eating direction with the M’Katef – the most perfectly prepared lamb I’ve ever put in my mouth, served over shallots and cous-cous. This was tender and perfectly seasoned; not spicy, but far from bland.

We finished our meals with tiny Turkish coffees. While these didn’t come in the cezve as it would at the Cafe Algiers, it was a fantastic end to the meal, redolent of cardamom and sweet without being cloying.

The restaurant itself is tiny – there’s a feeling of being in the chef’s living room. Ideal for a date, but it would be a poor choice for a large party. Note, however, that they do not serve alcohol – you’ll need to go for pre or postprandial cocktails if you want that to be part of your evening.

Crusty

I am fully devoted to from-scratch baking. The idea of buying a cake mix makes very little sense to me; the time it saves is that of stirring together flour, baking powder and sugar, which is approximately three seconds. When you add in the fact that the vanilla is imitation and the cocoa is dutch-processed, it just becomes a very unappealing option to me. Cookies are even easier than cupcakes, and even the convenience of slice and bake can be replicated by the home cook – just freeze your own dough! Really, the drag in making cookies is in baking them, anyway.

For a long time, however, the one thing I would employ a processed product in every time was pies. I had a terror of making my own pie crust. I’d heard horror stories – of doughs that came out tough and unpleasant, of crusts that cracked, or lacked proper flakiness, or wouldn’t roll out. I convinced myself that frozen Pillsbury dough was a reasonable substitute and contented myself with from-scratch filling.

Still, a part of me sensed that this was an untenable compromise. How could I ever be a truly worthy baker if I allowed Poppin’ Fresh, that fat little homunculus to be the secret behind my pies? The filling of most pies, after all, is dead easy – sugar, fruit, and spices for fruit pies, pudding or cream for most others. But how to conquer my fears and take control of my pastry destiny?

Salvation came in November 2007′s Cook’s Illustrated. In it was a recipe guaranteed to be fool-proof. Golden-brown, flaky pie crust could be mine through one simple secret ingredient. The answer to my pie fears? That bringer of courage to so many college coeds or guys looking to snag a number -friends, I’m talking about vodka.

What’s great about this recipe is that it totally appeals to that wanna-be chemist inside me. What the estimable staff at Cook’s Illustrated figured out was that tough pie crusts come from too much gluten being produced. Gluten is a composite protein in flour that increases a dough’s elasticity when it’s kneaded. More gluten = more stable dough. This is fantastic if you want to make something like bread. Your gluten network traps the little air bubbles caused by your fermenting yeast, and holds it nicely in place. It also makes your product chewier. Again, lovely for bread or a bagel, but a pie crust is meant to be flaky – it’s basically a bunch of scales of fat and flour overlapping.

In a pie crust the issue is that gluten forms when the flour mixes with water. You can’t make a crust without SOME liquid, both because you need a tiny bit of gluten to hold the pastry together and at a more basic level, so that the fat and flour hold together in the first place and let you roll it out. What the CI folks figured out is that gluten does NOT form in ethanol – the alcohol in your favorite cocktails. Vodka, being both 80% ethanol and flavorless, is the perfect replacement for half the water in the pie crust. Less gluten = more tender crust!

In honor of the wonderfully flaky and tender pie I have baking in my oven right now, here’s a link to the crust recipe. I personally replace the shortening with more butter, but that’s my personal preference. Go forth with confidence that you will bake a perfect pie!

Oh, and the filling in that pie in my oven? It’s apple – with bourbon.

Do You Need Glasses?

Today I thought I’d change it up a bit and talk less about food or drink and more about the vessels that contain them.

As I’ve mentioned in a few different posts, I have a pretty extensive collection of vintage barware. Most of my pieces are from the 50′s to the 70′s, and as my collection grows, the focus widens a bit. It started with glasses, but now encompasses all of the paraphernalia, from swizzle sticks to olive picks. A chip and dip bowl and pickle plate have also found their way into my heart, and of course, there’s the recipe books for both food and drink. Anything that relates to entertaining and is of a reasonable age is worthy of consideration. So here are a few highlights.

In terms of actual glassware I am fairly picky – I want the piece to have character, whether it’s kitschy or classy. In the former category that includes these amazing pirate glasses. I paid a dollar for the whole set!

These are easily the best thing in the house from which to drink rum.

Then, of course, there’s these ladies. Slightly NSFW, I suppose, though if you’re aroused by a glass there’s another issue.

They’re from the 70′s, and as you can see, they “strip” when you add liquid, although it’s readily apparent what’s under the white “clothes.” My attraction to these is two-fold: 1. I am a sucker for this simple sort of magic trick and 2. There’s something rather wholesome and very 70′s about these nude ladies.

They pair well with this bottle opener:

I think that piece is wonderfully elegant and moves us back toward the classy end of the spectrum. Another brass bottle opener:

I actually bought it for the motif on the other side:

My grandmother loved owls, and several of her grandchildren have continued the tradition. I’ve got a few pieces. Check out these cute Danish olive picks:

What I love the most about my collection is that it doesn’t just take up space – I actually use all of it. When people come over it gives me a great deal of pleasure to fix them the cocktail of their choice in a vintage glass, and serve a few snacks on my pickle plate. There’s plenty more to share, so I think I’ll do multiple posts from time to time. I’ll leave you for now with my two newest acquisitions. The first is an absolutely insane decanter that I picked up at the Holyoke flea market:

How great is he, with his little gold chain? It was in great condition, too!

The last is a beautiful chip and dip bowl from Hollis. This is coming out at the next party:

Now I just need to plan a shindig!

Taking Stock

Few things bother me more than throwing out food.  What could be more wasteful than letting perfectly good nutrition rot in the refrigerator when people are starving?  Then there’s the money you spent on the food in the first place, gone without benefit.  So we try to be really good about eating up our leftovers.  We even bought a food-saver with last year’s Christmas money, to better extend the freezer life of our excess.  In order to make leftovers more exciting I try to rework them, making hashes and salads instead of simply reheating last night’s dinner.  All of these tricks are pretty good, and while we still have to throw out the occasional moldy tomato, we waste very little.

One of our biggest victories in the war against waste, however, is stock-making.  Stock is a great recycler for a number of reasons.  First, in making the stock you’re able to use bits and pieces of whatever kind it is that you wouldn’t eat under normal circumstances.  For example, if you’re making veggie stock, in addition to the fresh vegetables that form your base you can dump in trimmings from previous meals.  In making chicken stock this week, I threw in some of those trimmings, along with several carcasses and necks that I’d saved in the freezer.  While you still need some fresh meat and vegetables (bones and trimmings alone will taste just like you’d imagine) this is an awesome way to get more mileage from your chicken dinner.  The bones add a bit of collagen that makes your stock nice and thick, and the trimmings add flavor and color – onion skins are key to a beautiful rich yellow stock.  Like so:

I like to use thighs for my fresh meat, because they’re cheap and more flavorful, since they’re dark meat. Throw them in the pot with a bay leaf, carrots, onions, and celery, cover the whole mess with water, and you’re good to go.

After the stock is done, it continues to help you recycle! The most obvious use for stock is soup, which in our house is the favored way of dispatching with vegetables that are still good but on the verge. It’s much easier to eat carrots, green beans, corn, onions, peas, and broccoli all in one meal when it’s in the soup pot. In our last creation we even tossed in a little left-over pancetta, which added a pleasant saltiness to the finished soup.

Stock is also the key ingredient in risotto, another canvas for “whatever we’ve got left in the fridge.” Even if I’m not in the mood for the full risotto treatment, throwing stock instead of water into the rice cooker adds a bit of depth to our meal.

Making stock at home is a bit time-consuming, but well worth the minimal effort. We’ve never wasted a drop!

Local, Seasonal, Vegetarian

There’s a great farmer’s market in Dewey Square on Tuesdays and Thursdays all summer and throughout the fall.  Since Dewey Square is right outside the South Station T stop where I pick up the subway, this makes it supremely easy and convenient to quickly grab some fresh and local produce on the way home, and unless I have somewhere to be after work, I usually try to take advantage.
While this is always fantastic, today I really struck gold:

These lovelies are maitake mushrooms, also known as hen of the woods. While they’re popular in Japan for their medicinal properties, these fungi are also really, really delicious. The name hen of the woods is apt because the mushroom has this wonderful meaty flavor and chew. Finding them was super exciting because they’re one of my favorite mushrooms and I don’t see them around that often. They’re rather expensive, but I find a little goes a long way with mushrooms, so I bought enough for a solitary dinner since the man was working late and hurried home with my prize.

I’d already been thinking about making barley tonight, as a change from rice…but what else to serve with the barley and mushrooms? I didn’t want to make a risotto – I wanted the mushrooms to shine on their own. And then I remembered that we had some beets in the fridge! Barley, beets, and maitake – the perfect fall meal!

Cooking the barley was easy enough – into the rice cooker it went, with 2 cups of water. For the beets, I decided to slightly modify the Beet Crisps recipe in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and slice them a bit thicker – they were not so much crisps as individually roasted beet slices. Into a 400 degree oven they went, coated oil and, once they were flipped, dusted with salt, pepper, and curry powder.

Finally, it was time to cook the mushrooms. I decided on simply sauteing them following the general outline of a recipe found online. My big change here, besides quantity (the mushrooms weren’t $29 a pound, but they weren’t so far off that I was going to buy that much of them!) was that I lacked the fresh herbs. I didn’t plant thyme in the garden this year, and my rosemary is somewhat…lacking. So I winged it with dried and hoped Marco would forgive me.

Maitake smells absolutely outstanding when sauteed. Don’t start dinner when you’re too hungry or you’ll be sorry.

When the mushrooms were drained of their excess oil, I put it all together on the plate. The beets saved the meal from being too drab.

The earthiness of the mushrooms played nicely with the sweetness of the beets and their slight curry mustiness. The barley came out beautifully – fully cooked and tender but still chewy. A lovely fall meal – local, seasonal, and totally meat-free!

She Cooks to Conquer

In our household, an important part of summer and early fall are trips to the Hollis, NH flea market.  Actually three flea markets in one, Hollis has a lot to offer that make it an ideal summer destination: it’s outdoors, it’s in a beautiful location, and they make surprisingly good hot dogs and hamburgers at the White Store.

Generally I’m looking for the same few things when I hit the flea market.  Bar ware is always top of the list, of course, although as my collection grows I’m pickier about what I’ll actually buy.  I’m currently in the market for a really nice vintage ice-crusher, and I’ve been looking for an exceptional deviled egg plate.  And then, there are the cookbooks.

I’m a sucker for a vintage cookbook.  There are lots of websites out there exploring how ridiculous and outdated they are, or even testing the recipes against modern tastes, but I genuinely have a love for these books.  Yes, partly it’s to laugh about the prodigious use of aspic, or to be horrified by what people thought it was OK to do with hot dogs, but also because they are an amazing historical record.  They teach us a lot about what was socially acceptable in a given period, especially for women.

A few weeks ago, at Hollis, we found an entire cache of 50′s and 60′s era cookbooks – for FREE.  I did my best to restrain myself and took home only three.  The one I want to share with you today, in some ways my favorite, is from 1952.  She Cooks to Conquer is definitely an education on the social place of women in the 50′s.  As you’ll see, it’s also an amazing example of commercial art.

Mermaids!

She Cooks to Conquer, as the name suggests, is written for lady who wishes to capture a man’s heart via his stomach.  The book breaks women down into two categories – Eves, who are happily married housewives, and Circes, career gals who still need to snag a man.  This book and its pseudo-Greek conceit are for the latter.  Please note that the author is a man, the estimable Robert H. Loeb Jr.  He is also the author of Wolf in Chef’s clothing, a book for men who wish to seduce women through cooking, and the  absolutely amazing title Male Power: The Young Man’s Guide To Good Grooming. Should you find this book in your travels, PLEASE share it with me.

Our friend Bobby writes in a chatty, you-go-girlfriend style, commiserating about the lack of good cookbooks for the single gal and referencing made-up terminology like “feedo.”  Though the recipe titles are all related to Greek mythology, they also employ a good deal of high-school level French.

Each chapter is designed to help Circe entrap a mate, with the final chapter, “The Man Who Stayed to Breakfast” emphasizing that said man is staying with the appropriate governmental and religious paperwork in place.

Oh, and it’s a visual cookbook!  You don’t need to be confused by too many words, gals!

Drinks!

The illustrations, which are done by a woman, are fabulous.  Look at the little angry eggs!

Grr!

Spending some time with this book it became clear that Mr. Loeb thinks very little of men OR women.  Men are babies:

There, there baby.

Who need to be ensorcelled to marry you.

Um...

And our Circe, this career gal who didn’t have time to learn to cook before, is apparently just waiting for her moment to become an Eve.

Good to see he's getting a rest.

What was most interesting to me about this book is that for all that it is not very enlightened about gender roles, it still acknowledged, in 1952, that there were women who were not immediately wives and mothers, who spent some time in the workforce, dating and having fun.  Loeb still assumes they’ll be Eves eventually, but I suppose it was a step in the right direction to note Circe’s existence at all.