Joan Bauer's Journal

The Project Girls

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, with so much devastation, with complexity and struggle, with a supremely mean election churning toward the finish line, with people wondering whom they can trust, with money short, with credit high, with angst and discouragement and depression and anger all around, I want to tell you about an email I received recently from two girls.  The subject line read: 

HELP US!!! 

They had just read my novel Close to Famous, about a girl named Foster who is a serious baker and struggles terribly with reading. Foster has a green apron with a shooting star -- trust me, that's important (see below).  But let them tell you in their words (I've deleted their names and did get their permission to share their correspondence)...they are The Project Girls.

 HEY Joan I loved your book close to famous it was amazing i read it in a day.Well you see i am in reading competition with my friend and that is where i found your book she read it and she told me so much about it thats all she talked about for a week! A WHOLE WEEk!!! Then she said to me that i need to read the book so i read it and OMG are you an amazing WRITER and me and her are doing a project for YOUR book we decided for our class project were going to make the cupcakes in the back of the book and were doing a powerpoint about your book and I thought it would be cool to do a slide all about YOU so thats why im emailing you im sorry i dont know what to say ive never liked a book enough to contact an author your my first one i would love if you would email me back i would be so happy! just tell me all about you things nobody knows that you wont mind sharing one question id really like you to answer is why did you write this book was it something that happened in your life i would love to put you in my powerpoint Joan so PLEASE email back i would like it real soon our deadlines coming up by the way were in 8th grade!!

Yours truly...

 

It's impossible not to answer an email like this, and you must respond right away.  So I gave them some places on my website to get info and I wrote:

Hi guys -- So glad you liked the book!  How cool is that?  I'll give you one quick thing that NOBODY KNOWS.  And it just happened yesterday.  Before yesterday, my three favorite cupcakes were coconut, maple pecan, and chocolate.  I just had lunch with my daughter in Providence and we went to this insanely significant cupcake place called the Duck and Bunny and now my number one favorite cupcake is Banana Nutella, number two is Red Velvet, and number three is coconut.

Okay, use this information wisely and get a terrific grade. 

Joan Bauer

A week later, I got this...

 

It's us, the project girls!

Dear Joan, do you remember us? We sent you an email pretty fast back and told us your favorite kind of cupcakes!  We did a PowerPoint about you. We wanted to tell you about our project so far its due on the 25th now... Well the PowerPoint is done and we were making cupcakes the night before but we decided we needed Foster Aprons so we went to Walmart and got a pack of aprons coloring dye a shooting star stencil and some yellow paint for the star and also sparkling red grape wine don't worry were 13 and 14 its non alcoholic. We were following directions for the aprons and it said to fill your sink with 2 gallons of water and SALT (it smelled really bad) then to put the packet in (it was like a powder you added) well Sierra dropped it in the sink had to get the packet out of the water out and got our fingers green. (we definitely had a green thumb) well after like an hour of splashing green on ourselves we had to put it in the washing machine it was haaarrrd work we decided to drink our red grape drink and we toasted to you and our green fingers. wish us good luck cleaning up well keep you up on the status of our project.

Yours Truly...

 

I give a standing ovation to these girls for guts and initiative.  I applaud their teacher for giving this assignment.  I salute their parents for being such good eggs, and I so hope the green dye didn't destroy the sink or permanently stain hands, etc., truly I do.    

And in case you were wondering how to get someone's attention, let The Project Girls inspire you.  In my book they get an A+ and major points for extra credit.  Nobody gets better mail than those of us who write for kids.  

 

 

Are You Sure You Want to Unsubscribe?

I signed up for an on-line diet, nutrition, and exercise overhaul and I was oozing with diligence when I signed up, so much so that I must have checked fourteen boxes about things I was interested in like fighting belly flab and frequent, fabulous fun ways to fend off food cravings.  And I have at least a dozen unread emails on toning and tensing my arms and special little exercise moves I can do at my desk or in line at the grocery or when I'm talking to a really boring person and need to keep active.  I have growing guilt that I am not doing any of these frequent, fab, fun things and I wonder why diet and exercise people use so much alliteration.  

I wonder why the models who are doing the exercises don't look like they need to do these exercises at all.  I wonder why the tea towel that one blonde lady is using can help people get-a-handle-on-their-love-handles, and now when I go into my kitchen and I see my tea towels there and not being used for anything other than wiping my hands after I cut fruits and vegetables, I wonder what it is about the diet craze that is making us all crazy.  Because no one can consume all this data.  I don't want to know about 125 special diet foods, I'd like to know about, maybe, 4.  I don't want 32 suggestions on burning fat, I'd just like one that will get the job done.  I tend to ride the exercise bike at home when I'm watching the Food Channel.  I find it strangely comforting to see all that stunning food while I'm pumping away and not eating any of it.  Certainly, we are living in the age of too much information, but I wonder why we've decided we need it, and what it means, and why my inbox now contains 64 low-carb meals that I can whip up in around 30 minutes.  But the whole thing is making me tired and I just want to eat out and take a walk in the park and not work on my abs while I'm doing it.  It makes me want to slice up my medicine ball, it makes me want to take my 5 pound weights and use them as door stops.  But, instead, I find a tea towel that is reasonably clean and I twist it like the blonde lady on my computer is doing, and I swing it to the left as my knees swing to the right and my dog looks strangely at me and my neck begins to spasm.  I attempt to drop to my knees, forgetting that my right knee is sore from the other fun, fab exercise I tried the other day, and although at this point I'm supposed to think of my core and what it means, I'm no longer sure what it means, and honestly I don't care.  So, I think about my other core, the one inside that says I am a person of worth and meaning whether I lose an inch around my middle, whether I can drop the stupid seven pounds. 

There are so many voices coming at us in this old world, the ones that tell us we're just not good enough, the ones that whisper that losing a little belly fat will change our lives, the ones that tell us we can look like the touched-up model on the screen, and when we do, then ahhhhh, we will know happiness.  My dog Max is sitting and looking at me, so I take the tea towel and play a serious game of tug with him, possibly strengthening my arms and abs and pectorals and my teeth and earlobes and that, honestly, feels pretty good.  Then I go online and unsubscribe from the uber diet site.  Are you sure you want to unsubscribe?  Trust me.  

Thanks, Mom

I can remember a cupcake materializing in the midst of a rotten day. A candle being lit despite the darkness. A birthday party planned even though it had been too tough a season to really think about that. My mother, sister, and I made Pilgrim dolls and decorated the house one Thanksgiving, even though our father hadn't been seen or heard from for weeks. 

My mother's great gift was knowing how to celebrate life no matter what the circumstances. In my new novel, Close to Famous, I gave that gift to my 12 year-old protagonist, Foster McFee. When I began writing this story, I had, like a good baker, all the ingredients out on the counter:  Fear; danger; humor; celebration; change; resilience; denial; over-coming; vanilla cupcakes; secrets; loss; learning challenges; chocolate chip muffins; raw courage; brown sugar brownies; moist chocolate cupcakes; chocolate malt cupcakes; milk chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting; all out despair; and banana cupcakes with fudge frosting. And I thought, OK, Joan, this time, you've done yourself in. This stuff doesn't go together. But of course it did. That's how I grew up. 

My mom died a year ago.  I have many of her belongings, but the ones I cherish most are her casserole dishes. When I use one, as I did recently to make baked apples, the warmth of her in the kitchen is so real to me. My mother knew that cooking unleashes a special power. She would have loved Foster's great dream to be a famous kid cook on television. 

Close to Famous is the first book I've written that my mother never read. But, the lessons she taught me are baked into the pages. Thanks, Mom. This one's for you.

Close to Famous is available in stores February 3rd.  To learn more, visit joanbauer.com.

On Writing and Cupcakes

I just read a book on being more energetic -- actually, I didn't finish the book; I got a third of the way through it and put it down because the suggestions were making me tired. It used hyphenated words like full-engagement and full-throttle and I realized that I'm not interested in speeding across a lake, metaphorically speaking, in a racing boat, the wind whipping through my hair. I'm a writer, and so I sat at my computer and started fiddling with a new idea. In a few minutes I was feeling fully alive, so alive, that I realized I was hungry. I went downstairs and decided to eat something fun, and there were these cupcakes I'd made the day before -- maple pecan cupcakes with maple frosting. I am here to tell you that there are few things more fun than maple pecan cupcakes. I felt the old brain really start to perk. Have you noticed how energizing fun is? The book hadn't mentioned this. And then I looked in my living room.  A few days ago we had changed all the furniture around and I loved the new arrangement, so I sat in the chair by the window and felt wholly satisfied and not at all tired. I went back to my desk and played with my idea and  completely forgot what time it was until my husband walked through the door. How was my day, he asked. I brushed cupcake crumbs off my shirt and whispered, "Wonderful."  I didn't tell him the details of my new story because you can't talk about new ideas right away -- they're made of wisps in the beginning and so easily can blow away. I tucked the new idea into my heart. It will be there tomorrow when I sit down to write. The cupcakes will not. We ate them.  

Fierce Soup

I've just learned from a William Safire column that it is no longer cool to say that someone is hot -- as in, Wow, that guy/girl is hot. The new word now is fierce.  It's a lot of pressure to be cool and I'm not sure I'll ever get used to fierce as the new hot. I was thinking about this while making soup -- vegetable beef (easily adapted to veggie) -- that requires a certain fierceness to put together. It also needs to be served hot, as in temperature. I've been looking for something to keep my mind off the tumbling financial markets...

I don't know about you, but when times get unendingly tough I feel like I should be doing great, wise, and noble things all day to make up for the world's messes. So putting beef shank into a pot and covering it with water to begin the stock doesn't seem like a good use of my time when there are perfectly good canned soups I can buy. But the simple fact that homemade stock is being created on my back burner soon becomes a gentle comfort in a coarse world.

A few hours later, I take out the meat and bones and pour the liquid through cheesecloth to get rid of the (I'll use the technical kitchen term here) muck. And as I do this I think how nice it would be if life came with cheesecloth so we could strain the muck out when needed. I am beginning to feel a fierce contentment rise as I do this homey, wondrous thing. Not once have I thought about Wall Street greed or banks failing or political blame. But as I begin the great chopping of vegetables, I begin to wonder. Should I have begun this soup? It's taking more time than I remembered.  I'm thinking now about all the things I should be doing and feeling bitter about people like Oprah Winfrey who have personal chefs. My kitchen is a mess, I smell like stock, and I haven't showered. But I add salt and pepper to the pot, plunk the vegetables in, wondering if I added too many. Too late now. I shower as the aroma of My Homemade Soup wafts through the house. Max, my puppy, sniffs the air excitedly. I return to the kitchen, toss Max a little piece of beef -- he's overcome. I taste my soup -- oh, it's good. I actually shout to my husband, "Oh, darling, soup is ready!" I serve it up in big blue bowls; realize all the spoons are dirty; wash two; sit down with Evan, and for a few precious minutes the crazy world seems really not to matter.   

Life With Pie

I made an apple pie today to thank my husband for helping me with my website.  I made the dough from scratch, as always.  This dough is so flaky and thin, it's worth all the anxiety I feel when I begin to roll it out.  In fifteen years of making this pie, I’ve rarely achieved a perfect circle.  The first few times my dough was shaped like Texas, then it began to look like Australia, once when I used very old shortening the dough broke off into little sections resembling the Philippine Islands.  Once my daughter said, “Mom, it looks just like Lebanon,” the shape of which didn’t instantly jump to mind.  Pie making and geography have always been linked for me.

I learned how to make this pie from a friend in Connecticut.  Eugenia had been in a bad accident and lived with chronic pain. Sometimes I could see the pain she carried etched across her face.  But when she made a pie, she was happy.  It takes forever to make an apple pie from scratch, and whenever I do it I feel like I should be wearing a gingham apron and looking out over the back forty watching for Pa to come in from the fields.  My husband came up from his office where he’d been building databases for his clients.  His hands weren’t dirty from working the soil, but his back was sore.  He saw the pie just out of the oven.  His eyes got moist.  

That’s the thing about a pie -- it harkens you back to another time; it calls you to sit down at the table with a big glass of milk and dig in.  It’s not like a cake, and don’t get me wrong, I love cake--but a pie requires more of you -- more of your focus, more of your day, more of your emotions.  You can’t scarf down a piece of pie down standing by the sink or tuck it in a napkin and take it to your room.  That’s messing with the rules of heritage. A piece of pie has to be eaten at a table;  you need to give yourself to the experience. 

My daughter is a fine cook and for years I kept offering to teach her how to make a fruit pie.  “I’m not ready yet,” she’d say.  I suppose it was because she’d been an eyewitness to my dough angst.  But this summer my daughter and I made two pies together --  cherry and blueberry.  From the first roll of her pin, the dough seemed to obey under Jean’s hands.  We had to step over Max my puppy who loves to stretch out in the middle of the kitchen floor and look so cute you just can’t help but give him treats and rub his stomach.  It was one of those blessed afternoons that you want to seal up in plastic and keep forever.  

Eugenia died many years ago, but this is what she gave me.  And every time I make a pie I remember the night I sat in her kitchen and she wouldn’t let me leave until I got it right.  I got home that night at 1 AM proudly toting my first apple pie.  I don’t think we fully understand the power that’s released when we take the time to share something we love.