Stories

I'll admit it, even though I find most of the recipes atrocious, I am fascinated by the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Every two years the contest is held with much fanfare and prizes, including a million dollar grand prize. The judges are generally food editors and choose recipes based on taste, appearance, creativity and consumer appeal, but because the recipes use packaged "convenience" foods, they often end up sounding bizarre. Samosa Taquitos with Apricot Chutney Sauce, anyone? Or Huevos Rancheros Pizza?

The Ungarnished Truth: A Cooking Contest Memoir "A Woman, A Chicken Dinner, A Million Dollars" is out now in paperback and I devoured the book in two sittings. Bake-off grand prize winner and author Ellie Matthews is smart, funny and very engaging. Her story gives an almost unbelievable level of detail on her road to the win. But even if she never won anything, you would want to read about this quirky and down to earth woman (who shocked everyone by not jumping up and down or screaming when she won).

1. Check the college’s weather hotline and confirm that classes have been cancelled.

2. E-mail students with directions for the next class meeting. Reassure them that spring will come (this isn’t the first cancellation of the semester), and wish them a joyous day.

3. Survey the landscape and begin shoveling.

4. Take a break to visit with your neighbor, after wading to the middle of the street. Compliment each other’s regalia: she’s wearing a jaunty beret with a pompom; you’re wearing – for which you fervently thank your son – those ear warmers with the band that fits around the back of your head (no hat hair for you, even the morning after a blizzard). When ice crystals have completely lined the inside of the scarf you’ve pulled up over your face, it’s time to stop talking and go back to shoveling.

When I am at my home on Orcas Island, Washington and away from the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, I morph from a well dressed city slicker to a somewhat cave-like hunter and forager.

At this time of year, I trample around the forests, looking in the ferns with my beady eyes for the first sign of fiddleheads, I watch the crocuses peep up through the ground as the blossom bursts on the apple trees; but most of my cavewoman thoughts are towards the ocean, the icy, clear ocean filled with great big fierce Dungeness crabs.

Catching crabs is my passion. This past winter, the season opened for a few weeks in December and I was out there in my little row boat, freezing rain pelting down, hardly able to find my boeys due to the rough water; my husband watching bewildered through binoculars, from our little cottage; and as I pulled up my traps to see my haul of crabs, I was happier than a child on Christmas morning.

On the surface, the Penn State scandal would seem to be another example of an institution of trust failing in its moral obligation to protect children. In fact, what the tragic web of human actions and inactions behind this outrage really shows us is that child sexual abuse is close to the perfect crime.

As the choruses of bloggers and essayists who have rushed to print in the last week have reminded us, perpetrators can rely on the majority of children to tell no one about their sexual abuse; most will carry the secret to their graves. Child molesters, especially trusted and respected adult authority figures like priests, coaches and teachers, gain control of their prey gradually rather than  resorting to violent assault. They know how to target children with low self-esteem or poor parental support, and then spend weeks or months working their way into the child’s life with gifts, praise, and outings.  First physical touching, the stroke of a knee or a hug, becomes a normal part of the ‘relationship’, and when the more invasive forms of abuse begin, the child’s fate is sealed.