Thank You, Jane

On Tuesday morning, as I headed out the door, chattering at my carpool buddy, I turned my ankle.

I wasn’t even wearing any of my fun chunky heels (I have a slight addiction to secondhand Chie Miharas which I can quit any time I like1) but my kicky red suede/leather ankle boots, which abruptly tossed me at the driveway mid-stride. I probably would have been fine if I’d gone with the flow and just fallen over , but instead my panicked body flung me, and my backpack, and my tote bag full of books in the other direction, and my poor ankle gave out under the strain.

“Goodness2!” I said, and hobbled back inside, where my carpool buddy told me I was NOT to try coming to school and fetched the frozen peas to ice my boo-boo.

I meekly obeyed orders and called in sick. Then I did what I have finally learned is the best thing to do when I’m injured, which is to treat myself exactly like an injured animal, because I am. I crawled back into bed, momentarily imagining myself a hedgehog curling into a hole under a bush, and dropped immediately into sleep.

Austen

When I woke up, I sent the Aphrodite Unbound eARC to a couple of romance-writing friends, mentioning that I was sending it from my bed, where I was resting with a turned ankle “like an Austenian side character”.

They both told me not to get caught in the rain, because we’re all Austen nerds in Romancelandia. Later, I did get caught in the rain, when I took my improved ankle to the library and pick up my hold of Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Fortunately, unlike one of Austen’s flightier gels, I live in an age of elastic compression bandages, ibuprofen and rainproof fabrics, and I got home without having to rely on a single gentleman’s aid, be he secret cad or noble captain.

That’s when a friend messaged me, asking if I had the energy to “explain Jane Austen like I’m five”.

Reader, had I been on death’s very door with a putrid sore throat, I would have responded to that message.

Jane Austen is one of my heroes, both because she was a captivating writer with an excellent ear for dialogue and a keen eye for the ridiculous, and because she was great fun at parties. That’s not to say that I think every book is perfect (boo, Mansfield Park) or that I think her mores and morals stand up to modern scrutiny, because they don’t. But she wrote people, and especially women, as people. She wrote women as tedious, sensible, silly, cruel, judgmental, witty, petty, lively, suffering, obnoxious, perceptive, prudish, oblivious, vain, humble and proud, and even when I am shaking my head at Mrs Elton’s capricious whining over strawberries or Mrs Bennet’s nerves, they are real to me.

Jane Austen died at 41, the same age I am now. When I turn 42 in twelve days, I will be older than one of my heroes ever got to be. I could write (will write) for the rest of my life, and never write anything as sharply observed and brilliant as Austen. Would I give up the rest of my life, to be the genius she was and write the works she wrote?

No, absolutely not.

I like being me, and I like the world of elastic bandages and ibuprofen, and I especially like the world where I don’t have to rely upon the charity of my relatives or my ability to appeal to an eligible gentleman. I have a university education and the vote and a mortgage, none of which were available to Austen. Were I to be offered that devil’s bargain tomorrow, I would refuse, and continue to write my own charming works of non-genius in the genre she made possible - with gratitude to Jane.

Tamar Adler

One of my living heroes is Tamar Adler, who writes beautifully about food and cooking. Adler scorns the kind of fussy ingredient insistence that makes shopping for cooking such a chore, and instead puts forward a philosophy of using what you have, cooking it well, and tasting, tasting, tasting to find out what you like.

I do not agree with her in every particular — I will never be convinced that beets are good — but I like her philosophy.

In that spirit, let me tell you what I cooked on Sunday and have been eating all week. It doesn’t have a name or a recipe, but an attitude, which is “I would like to eat some greens and beans and feel very good about it.”

I put my cast-iron pot on the stove, heated some olive oil and butter, and threw some chunks of bacon in. I washed and sliced some silverbeet/chard, separating leaves from stems and chopping the stems. When the bacon was sizzling satisfactorily, I tossed in the stems and some sliced garlic, waited until that also sizzled and was beginning to stick a little bit, then sloshed in some white wine. That cooked while I rinsed some canned white beans. I put the beans in the pot with a tin of cherry tomatoes and several pinches of salt, stirred everything briskly, and piled the silverbeet leaves on top before popping the lid on and putting the pot in the oven.

At this point I realised that I’d forgotten to pre-heat the oven.

For other recipes, this would matter, but in this case it was a complete irrelevancy - I turned the oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and let everything cook for about forty minutes. By that point my kitchen was lovely and warm and I’d realised I wouldn’t need all the spinach I’d acquired for another dish, so I sliced the extra and put it on top of the silverbeet. After another twenty minutes or so, I gave it a good stir, tasted, added salt, pomegranate molasses and lemon juice, and kept tasting and adding until my tongue told me to stop.

This is not instagram food. It looks like absolute hell. But it tastes like heaven.

You don’t have to use garlic or bacon or pomegranate molasses or silverbeet or white beans. I’ve made this with onion, curly kale, brown sugar, black beans, and balsamic vinegar. If I don’t have a bottle of wine open, I don’t use wine. If I don’t have any convenient bacon, I’ll add extra olive oil.

You do need salt, and you do need to taste it, and you do need to trust yourself and your tastebuds. What does it need? Probably more salt. Would it be good with prosciutto or goat cheese? I can say a firm yes. What if you put some frozen peas in at the last second? That sounds fantastic. Could you reheat some in a pot with a little chicken stock and poach an egg in there? You sure can; I did that tonight, inspired by Adler’s chapter entitled “How to Teach an Egg to Fly” and also by the absolutely foul weather outside that made hot comfort food a necessity.

If you’re feeling wintry and limp and uninspired, I prescribe Tamar Adler. She’s a balm to injured animals.

Book Stuff:

• Aphrodite Unbound is coming out on August 14! The same day I turn 42! It’s the wild, nerdy, beauty-and-the-geek fake relationship romantic comedy of my dreams, and I can’t wait for you to meet Heph and Aphrodite as they negotiate their way to love. Pre-order now!

• I’m part of a fun newsletter promo that’s promoting a lot of free romance giveaways! Check out the Beach Reads link here, and browse for something you might like! Myself, I read the preview of 5 Boys in the Band, by Evie Kady, and picked up the whole book immediately on Kindle Unlimited. It really appeals to my love of found family, boy bands, and women trying to do their damn jobs and get ahead - even if there are some irritatingly handsome obstacles in the way.

• My next newsletter will be the July3 Business of Writing newsletter, for paid subscribers only. If you want to know how much money I’ve made from writing this year and whether Persephone in Bloom has broken even yet, that’s where you’ll find out! I’ll also be talking about the tools of my trade; the programs and tools I use to get work done and to you.

In the meantime, I am taking care of my ankle and myself, and I sincerely hope you are doing the same.

With gratitude to you and all my heroes,

Karen.