People are beginning to notice that big publishers are not really all that interested in authors or readers; they are interested in consolidating control of distribution channels so that the only participants in culture are creators who work for little or nothing and consumers who can only play if they can pay.

Barbara elegantly collapses into one sentence the last several years of the ebook wars and, even more importantly, identifies all stakeholders in the reading ecology: not just publishers and libraries, but authors and readers.

The Growing Crisis

Over the last year or so, there has been spluttering (sometimes from me) at individual publishers such as HarperCollins (they of “26 checkout” fame), distributor-packagers such as Overdrive, and of course, the idiot library administrators who sign contracts they obviously haven’t read, or they would never have entered into those agreements, right? (That spluttering definitely didn’t come from me, being one of those administrators.)

But Barbara is pointing out that while the problem has many moving parts, the entire reading ecology is at risk; we are, in her terms, in an “apocalypse.” It is really nothing less than an outright assault on fair use; the publishing-industrial complex won’t be happy until readers are paying, not just by the title, but by the page-turn.

Barbara and I have an interesting convergence: we are both librarians-authors-readers (except she can write entire books, while my attention span ends at the essay). By author, I mean (full disclosure: HUSTLE AHEAD!) non-industry writing, such as the forthcoming The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage (Roost Books, Fall, 2012; edited by Lisa Catherine Harper and Caroline Grant), in which you will find my revised and republished essay, “Still Life on the Half-Shell” (first published in Gastronomica) about oysters, the locavore movement, and how I came to terms with life in Tallahassee. My essay includes exquisitely clear instructions on eating oysters Southern-style (complete with a photograph), making Cassoulet an obvious “must buy” for all library collections.

But my point isn’t about whether I am expecting to make a living from essays such as “Half-Shell.” My day job is my income; I can’t even remember if I am getting a small one-time payment, though I had such good editorial input from Lisa and Caroline that the revision process was its own mini-post-grad workshop, and I have a food essay floating out there that is significantly better for the lessons learned for “Half-Shell.”

My point is that it’s important, both ethically and strategically, for advocates of the right to read to understand that creators should have the option and the right to make a living from their creations, and that our advocacy, right now, at this moment in history, is crucial to ensure that right.

It’s also the reader’s right to support creators, which they can do either directly (buy my book!) or indirectly (fund libraries, and they will buy my book). Some of us in society will “buy” books, by way of funding libraries, that we never read ourselves or that we choose to purchase on our own, but we understand that the town pump benefits everyone — a take on the world that is less popular in certain circles, but only underscores our value to society.

Tied to the Tracks

What happened?

In the past, the writer-publisher-library-reader model had a modicum of equanimity. It is now obvious that the nature of the technology — the printed book — largely regulated that equanimity.  All of us in the reading ecology — librarians, authors, repackagers, readers — are tied to the tracks by the Brobdingnagian power wielded by the highly consolidated publisher-industrial complex that is then magnified a thousand-fold by the conveniently elastic, virtual nature of digital publishing.

As Steve Lawson observes, publishers can get away with limiting access, so they limit it. As Kate Sheehan points out in a comment on her own post, publishers can cut us out of the conversation, so they cut us out. Though it has been proven time and again that library reading boosts individual book sales, that’s not good enough for for the publisher-industrial complex.  They smell an opportunity, and their greed is overwhelming any vestige of decency or sense of social fairness.

Deep down, the publishing-industrial complex will not be satisfied until they can do away with those pesky librarians, they who broker reading as a public good, champion the right to read, and advocate for equitable access. Penguin invoked the term “friction,” in reference to the ease of checking out books; but I see the real “friction” as the Bonus Army of librarians, authors, and readers who are speaking truth to power. How convenient it would be if we were starved out of the reading ecology.

We’re also back to my ancient observation about Google: “don’t be evil” does not translate into “do be good.”

What is to be done?

I’m not a fan of…

• Dwelling at length on the supposed sins of any one publisher or redistributor; this isn’t just HarperCollins, Penguin, the other publishers who won’t even deal with Overdrive, or Overdrive. It’s bigger than that. (Note: I lay aside the Elsevier boycott, which works for other reasons, in a different situation and a different reading ecology.)
• Singling out individual libraries over their Overdrive contracts.
• Assuming Dilbertesquian cluelessness on the part of librarians struggling to provide ebooks to readers.
• Arguing that Information Wants To Be Free and therefore creators should work for free and make a living some other way. That’s not only naive, it leaves just one profiteer in the equation: publishers. (Again, this relates to the for-profit book industry. Scholarly publishing also relies on slave labor to line publishers’ purses — which is the point of the Elsevier boycott — but it’s a different ecology. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, but sometimes it’s hard to point to the money on the table.)
• Assuming “they” will solve the problem. Much as I appreciate ALA going to meet with big publishers, one of those publishers, Penguin, subsequently thumbed its beak at the reading ecology, withdrawing from Overdrive with a timing that can only be labeled impertinent.
• Indulging in magical thinking; the clock isn’t rolling backwards, and ebooks are here to stay.

I do think we need to…

• Recognize this crisis as a reading-ecology problem and a fight for the right to read, not just a public-library problem. It doesn’t matter that this has primarily been about Overdrive, whose customer base is overwhelmingly public libraries (though Overdrive has higher-ed customers, including Yale, Pitt, and my tiny library).  We’re all part of the reading ecology.
• Inform and engage our stakeholders, such as the Free Library of Philadelphia is doing., and as Peter Brantley did through Publishers Weekly, though I was a little uncomfortable with his portrayal of public libraries. They aren’t all urban catchbasins, and strategically, we need the large middle-class voting base to understand their stake in this crisis.
• Study the structure of our reading ecology and have economists and other strategists propose workable solutions. I know there has been talk about “buying” Overdrive, but even if it were for sale, would acquiring the repackager/redistributor solve anything? We need some serious theory at work for us. This is made even more challenging because library “science” is an iffy discipline at best.

I wish I had more ideas, but I solicit yours.

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Home Brewing

“Everyone who uses plastic fermenters has pushed the o-ring through the top and into the filled fermenter at least once. Don’t worry, your beer will be fine. Keep an extra o-ring handy for the next time.”

– From the “n00b” thread on Homebrewtalk.com

I really don’t need one more hobby; it’s not as if I am looking for things to do. I am backlogged everywhere in my life, from work to personal writing to Sandy’s Christmas present (a jumper cloned from a favorite old jumper of hers) to, I don’t know, STUFF and THINGS and EMAIL and READING and WHATEVAH.

But for over a month I’ve been mooning over the basic homebrew kits at Homebrew Den, Tallahassee’s homebrewing store. I didn’t really know why. I’ve always liked good beer, but we have a lot of that in Tallahassee. It’s not as if I have ever seen myself as Free Range Brewgal.

But I kept mooning and thinking about it. With a couple of small checks that floated in I felt it was ok to treat myself, so yesterday I  supported the local economy by taking home a kit of beermaking geegaws and a nice box mix (though that’s not what they call it) for a beer called 3 in a Bed Bitters, which reminded me of some of the great brews I drank in last fall’s visit to Oz.

Sandy was out of town, so this project became my Saturday night. I cooked and stirred and strained and sanitized and poured. (See the routine on Flickr.) It was largely relaxing (except for dropping the o-ring into the wort), somewhere between jam-making and sewing. Lots of attention to detail, lots of little steps.

Like writing, the payoff is slow and iffy (though I suspect it’s easier to make drinkable beer than get published). Like most skills and hobbies, it has its own special language, with new words such as wort (the liquid made from cooking malted barley, water, and other ingredients such as hops and flavorings) and words with new meaning such as pitch (the action of adding yeast to the wort).

Then on Sunday, between writing and some work-stuff and laundry and groceries and the cat-box, I browsed some more through The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, and on homebrewtalk.com got a little acquainted with the homebrewing community, whose denizens share recipes left and right, swap sanitation tips, and work hard to be welcoming to newbies.

The homebrewing n00bs, in turn, have strangely similar experiences with home brewing. We all seem to drop the grommet in the wort. We all agonize that we didn’t sanitize well enough. We all worry that our beer is not working its mysterious magic off there in the dark corner where we have stowed our five gallons of hope.  Even the anxiety is comforting in its universality, and the typical response is RDWHAHB — “Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Home Brew.”

(The worst that could happen is I have five gallons of liquid to pour down the sink. Whereas my IRAs… well, let’s not talk about that.)

The part I like the most, at this point, is that homebrewing is different.  It’s a break from the rest of my life — not work, writing, family, cats, Publix, laundry-folding, exercising, or WHATEVAH. But it’s also an easily-compartmentalized break, one I can plunge into on a Saturday night, and it’s highly accessible; you don’t need thousands of dollars or years of study or many painful hours staring at a monitor just to get in the door.

(It’s also a very male craft — I was greeted with an enthusiastic “Hi, Bro!” when I introduced myself on the beginner’s board — and I really don’t get that, since homebrewing feels so haimisch. But overall they seem to be pleasant enough guys, and I can think of worse things to call me than Bro.)

Plus, I realized, since I can cook, bake, sew, and garden, if I add “brew beer,” and throw in a goatherd or two (surely weaving and cheesemaking would be achievable), then Sandy and I can move off the grid and become Feral Women.

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Best Biscuits

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

By design, because we could, we essentially had the same meal twice for Christmas.

In the morning, by popular demand, I served biscuits and sausage gravy. Then for dinner we had oyster pan roast, almost verbatim from the recipe in my Oyster Bar cookbook, except served over split toasted biscuits. (Call it Southern Pan Roast.) Both meals were complete unto themselves and utterly sublime.

I’ve carried this biscuit recipe around with me for over thirty years; it’s written in longhand in a small plaid recipe book that has traveled with me to San Francisco, New York City, England, Germany, Korea, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Florida.

We eat very little refined flour, but Christmas is an exception. I had to force myself to give the remaining biscuits to the birds. These biscuits are worth every rich little bite!

Bon appetit –

Best Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup milk

Sift the dry ingredients. Cut in the shortening. Stir in the milk all at once. Knead 10-12 strokes. Roll 1/2″ thick. Bake 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees.

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I have an essay I’m trying to place about preparing a Thanksgiving feast in the officers’ quarters of Osan Airbase in Korea in 1990 — a meal that with one funny twist was its own triumph. I think that kitchen was even larger than Bittman’s (the hard part was gathering the ingredients).

Bittman’s post brought back those memories, as well as others about preparing feasts under challenging circumstances: military barracks, tiny sublet kitchens, the year I decided to brine a turkey and found myself, at midnight, grappling with a large, cold, wet, bumpy-skinned bird flopping in a vat of salty water. (Next year I returned to my painless trick: buying a kosher bird.)

But Bittman’s minimalist chic is a perfect tone for our time.

I often have very bad kitchen lust. We have a surprisingly nice kitchen for a small, 1950s-era house; it’s a square room that was redone by a previous owner with black tile countertops and matching appliances, and a wonderful reddish tile floor. It’s also the largest kitchen we’ve ever shared; after a series of one-rump kitchens, two of us can be in our kitchen at the same time as long as we aren’t trying to do the same thing. The Kenmore stove (gas top, electric oven) even has one “pro” burner that can bring kettles of water to boil in a flash or stir-fry at the proper temperature.

But then I visit houses with really large, heavily-equipped kitchens — vast parking lots with huge powered islands, countertop that stretches for miles, refrigerators that could chill half of Florida’s food crop, “professional” rangetops and dual ovens — and my brain twitches with envy. That should be my kitchen! I fume to myself. That person doesn’t even cook!

Well. If Bittman can write cookbooks and a cooking column in his dinky Manhattan kitchen, then I can go back to feeling unqualified love for the kitchen we work in.

Oh, and after peeking online at Bittman’s latest edition of How To Cook Everything, call that a sale. Yesterday I bought 3-ish pounds of lamb breast on a whim; I spent less than five dollars and thought, I can make something of this.  (Even standard cuts of lamb are very inexpensive in this area, but lamb breast intrigued me.) The 2003 edition has some suggestions. The 2008 edition is even clearer, offering five basting sauces. This will be fun — even in my own minimalist kitchen.

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Maybe my parents were bored by the soon-quaint recipes for Pot au Feu and Chicken Kiev, or perhaps they were put off by the indulgently carb- and fat-heavy recipes for souffles and pasta. No matter, I love this cookbook, which has followed me overseas (three times) and back again, and has now lived in six states.  I run my hands over its wrinkled, stained pages and see the spaghetti dinners of my teens, the quiches of my twenties, the mousses of my thirties, the baked squash of my forties, the bouillabaise of my fifties, and all through these decades, off and on, when time and resources allowed it, this wonderful fruitcake.

For Fiona, who took time from her work day in Sydney to share a real pub lunch with me and her friends, I say since you’re allergic to nuts, leave them out. The nuts add a nice meaty crunch, but the real trick of this cake, like any good fruitcake, is the complex melding of moist dried fruit bound together with the thinnest neural network of batter and the sparking synapses of frequent and regular applications of hard liquor. (For those of you who don’t drink, I have a date cake and a cranberry cake that will make your socks roll up and down, but this particular cake really won’t be the same without the hard stuff.)

Naturally I have adapted it — isn’t that the point? Start this cake at least a month before you plan to serve it — the week before Thanksgiving is perfect.

Fruitcake

For the fruit and nuts:

4 pounds total dried fruit: up to 8 oz dried citrus (lemon, orange, and/or citron — preferably not purchased in a mix, as that seems to have a soapy taste) plus golden raisins, muscat raisins, currants, dried mango, candied pineapple, and if you can’t resist them in their dyed glory, candied cherries (hell, it is Christmas, right?). Prunes and other dried fruit are also wonderful.

8 oz nuts — shredded almonds, chopped walnuts or pecans, or just about anything except peanuts (or substitute another 1/2 lb fruit)

For the batter:

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon mace

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar, packed

5 eggs

Plus: dark rum, cognac, bourbon, brandy, or sherry

——-

A day in advance:

Mix the fruits, cutting into large dice as necessary (think end of your thumb), and toss with 1/2 cup liquor (pick something you like, as you’ll be using it during the seasoning process, too). Cover and let stand at least overnight.

Toss in the nuts, if you’re using them, and then toss the mixture with 1/2 cup flour.

Cream the sugar butter, beat in the sugars, and then the eggs, one at a time. Sift or whisk the remaining 1 and 1/2 cups flour with the dry ingredients and then stir into the egg-butter-sugar mixture until blended.

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees and spray 2 9×5 loaf pans with cooking spray. (You can also bake the batter in other containers, such as smaller loaf pans, but watch accordingly.)

Pour the batter over the fruit mixture and mix thoroughly. Fill the pans and press the batter into the pans very firmly and evenly (spray your hands with cooking spray to make this easy).

Bake loaves about three hours (less if your loaves are smaller). Let cakes stand thirty minutes, then turn out on a rack and cool.

Sprinkle cakes with liquor and then wrap in a thin layer of cheesecloth. Sprinkle the cakes with a little more liquor. Place in a crock or deep kettle and cover tightly. Several times a week dribble more liquor over the cloth — if it’s a tiny bit damp, that’s what you want. The cakes should become aromatic.

To serve, chill the cakes for an hour or two if possible — they will slice better that way — and slice thinly with a long serrated knife.

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Take your favorite pecan pie recipe, melt two ounces of unsweetened chocolate, and stir in before you add the pecans.

The Joy of Cooking had this as a variation on its pie in the last (1997) edition, but they fiddled with the proportions of sugar and added bittersweet chocolate. I think I used unsweetened chocolate because that was what was on hand, and so a recipe was born.

The new Joy of Cooking, which is bringing me Joy, doesn’t include a variation for chocolate pecan pie. It has a version with chocolate chips, but that’s not quite the same. Its pecan pie now has one more egg. So I used that recipe, stirred in two ounces of bitter chocolate, and voila. I mix my pies in the food processor, then sprinkle the pecans in the pie crust and pour the pie goo over them, so the chocolate gets thoroughly emulsified in the pie goo and is very smooth.

You could probably do just fine with the recipe on the back of the Karo jar or a bag of pecans. I mean it. The bitter chocolate only slightly affects the texture of the pie (a little firmer) and pecan pie is so sweet to begin with that adding bitter chocolate doesn’t cut the sweetness. So there’s the recipe: take a pecan-pie recipe, add 2 ounces chocolate.

That said, everyone but me loves chocolate pecan pie. I like my pies less sweet, more fruity–in the pear-cranberry or apple-cranberry or exceptional-pumpkin genre–or fresh cherry pie–mmmm–particularly if the crust is really flaky. Better yet, I go for other kinds of desserts: tiramisu, creme brulee, custards, etc. Though there is something very felicitious about the idea of pie. I remember that in my visit to South Africa this October we all trooped to a restaurant known for its butternut pie, and after a long and wonderful meal we learned that they were out of butternut pie. Oh, the crestfallen faces! No pie? No PIE? I suspect I’ll now never know its joys.

I bake chocolate pecan pies out of love, because Sandy wants me to. They’re always a hit, and they make her proud. That makes them worth baking, quivery overly-sweet sugary goo and all.

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Note that you might pass over Version 1 if you were reading Epicurious, because some of the reader comments are harsh, but I know better. Version 1 is an example of the Craft of Science; success with this recipe relies on negotiating a delicate balance of fluid, liquid, and binding ingredients, all of which are highly variable. The pine nuts may be fatty and moist, or not; the “large” egg whites may be too big or too small; the almond paste may be sturdy and dry, or sticky and fluid. To succeed, you must be willing to experiment; iterative testing is key. Sometimes I get it on the first try, but other times I need to tweak and tinker. This is no cookie recipe for wimps.

Version 1 of this cookie is an example of the last mile we so often face in LibraryLand: the last little bit that will make a service succeed. Spell-check in an OPAC. Better signage marketing your wi-fi. Studying what circs and what doesn’t and adjusting accordingly (and how I hate it when librarians talk about “nonfiction” circ stats, as if dreary old reference tomes duplicating stuff on the Web were equal to snappy bios or thoughtful essay collections.)

But there’s nothing wrong with Version 2: it’s an example of Easy being Good. (Though it pays to think about what you’re reading: in the original version, step 1 has you heating the oven before you begin mixing the dough, while step 4 tells you to refrigerate the dough for an hour.)

Easy But Good Pine Nut Macaroons

Note: requires a food processor.

1 box (7 oz.) almond paste
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar, packed
Finely grated rind of one lemon
2 egg whites, size large (no larger!)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
pinch salt
4 oz unsalted, shelled pine nuts (approx)

Cut the almond paste into small chunks.
Whirl the granulated sugar in your food processor for about 30 seconds.
Drop in the almond paste, powdered sugar, and lemon peel. Process until the consistency of coarse meal.
Add egg whites, vanilla, and salt. Process until smooth.
Add flour. Pulse briefly. Scrape sides of the food processor, and process briefly again. Mixture should be very smooth.
Chill mixture one hour.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment, or spray it with nonstick spray.
Put the pine nuts in a small, shallow bowl.
Using a teaspoon and a finger, scoop up heaping teaspoonsful of dough and drop into the pine nuts. (Hint: spray the spoon with nonstick spray, and the dough won’t stick to it.) Pick up the dough (spray your fingers, as well, or dip them in water) and drop the cookies nut-side-up on a cookie sheet.

Bake 14-16 minutes, or until light golden. Start checking at 12 minutes. Cool several minutes in the pan, then gently remove to cooling racks. Store cookies in an airtight container; place waxed paper between layers.

Makes 25 cookies.

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