Courtesy of Northern Sun

The first branch of my story begins at home. Like every tree, there is so much beneath the surface; but, the reader and looker must start somewhere solid. My family is definitely the most solid thing I know. And so is the town where I grew up, Scranton. Here’s a quick background: both of my parents’ families immigrated to the US in the 1900s, coming through NYC and traveling a short distance to Pennsylvania. Scranton is two hours from both NYC and Philly, making it a haven for new immigrants wanting some land and a thriving industry. Most of my friends have a similar story but have an Irish or Italian heritage – we are all a true mixing bowl of alphabet soup. So, it is not surprising that my parents are a mix of 5 different nationalities and have different traditions, religions, and food.

However, one day, my uncle decided to root around in our background. In 1995, before the internet became what it is today, my uncle went to the court house and dug up census information all the way back to the turn of the 20^th century. (He is from Indiana and extremely interested in the odd and quirky family into which he married.) Maybe it was the sauerkraut, pierogies, and lentil soup that threw him for a loop, but whatever it was, it took him down an incredible path to undiscovered territory. He found out that my dad’s family was Serbian, a fact that my grandmother vehemently refuses to believe because it was so taboo when she was growing up. My great-grandfather had filled out the census form with “Serbian” when he first moved to town, but then did not list it any other year (corroborating my grandma’s feelings). We never knew until then! And we never would have known if my uncle didn’t look around. There was no reason to, right? But it does explain so so much. Like, why my dad can tan at the drop of the hat and why jet black hair seems to run on that side of the family. Not to mention some unexplainable idioms! These are such cool gems.

My grandmas have shared so many stories with me about their immigration and integration into American society. Their stories might be a little bit different than most because of the interesting town in which they lived. But, it doesn’t change the fact that each story has its own roots and flourishings. For my family, America held and holds the hope for prosperity. We all hope, dream, and work for it every day. Our ancestors have created a forest of trees from a variety of different plantings. We are strong and we all got here because someone planted roots.

I really am the American way, along with so many other incredible human beings that make up this country. Share your story with us at http://supermanisanimmigrant.com/ !

This week’s question: What is your family’s heritage, and where did your ancestors come from?

Anna: My mum’s side of the family is from Kiev, Ukraine. As Jews, it was dangerous for them to live there during World War Two, and they escaped to America during the pogroms by hiding behind a neighbor’s stove until the soldiers had left. I don’t know my dad’s family’s side of the story, only that they were originally from Germany. During WW2, they were already in the US and changed their last name from “Gut” (pronounced “Goot”) to “Good” to avoid persecution simply for being German.

Quinn: I honestly have no idea what my heritage is. I was adopted when I was ten days old, and know nothing about my birth parents. As for my adoptive parents, my father is pretty much the biggest American mutt imaginable. He’s got some of everything in him. My mother is 100% Swedish, but that really only comes out in her choice of Christmas foods. We never really talked or did anything with heritage, so honestly I’ve always felt somewhat jealous of and disconnected from people who have a solid tie to their heritage. I’m American, and proud of the melting pot that I call home.

Elizabeth: I’m incredibly Irish (and I “look” stereotypically Irish too- red hair and pale skin and freckles). I also have some German and English in me. My mom’s side of the family lives in Canada after immigrating from England, and my dad’s side of the family lives in Texas with us- my adopted grandfather is Hispanic, which is where I get my last name (Fierro) even though I’m not actually Spanish or Italian as it suggests.

Kara: My heritage is very confusing. On my dad’s side I’m fifth generation Irish, mixed in with a family that has been in America long enough to have fought in the Civil War. Mum’s side is from Tennessee and Kentucky, meaning that I’ve probably got a good bit of Scotch and English back there, but they’d all been in America so long nobody remembers where they came from. I’ve also got a hint of Cherokee from Mum’s side, so at least a teeny part of me belongs here!

Erin: I’m mostly Scottish, as I understand it.  My great-grandparents on my dad’s side came over from Scotland, and there’s a lot of Scottish blood on my mom’s side of the family too.  My last name is spelled unusually (Millar), but it’s actually the Scottish spelling of Miller.  Also a lot of English blood.  I think there might be some German in my heritage as well, and according to my mom there’s a little bit of Irish too.  But I’m mostly English and Scottish — which is also painfully apparent by my Casper-like appearance even during the summer.

Emily: I’m Eastern European … in a very wide, general sense of the term. My family is from Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Russian, and Serbia (as far as we know). However, I tend to surround myself with all Italians, so you never know what else might be thrown in to the mix. My family’s heritage is ingrained in every part of my life — so much so that I have sprinkled it into a few blogs so far! Holidays are always filled with different foods and traditions (you don’t eat kielbasa on Christmas?) and community events/family reunions have more accents than I can count. My family immigrated to the US in the turn of the 20th century, so the last 100 years have brought a lot of change to our history.

So, where does your family come from? Let us know in the comments, and leave us a question for next week!

1. There was a character with my name in it… and (spoiler) she died (this was the first experience I had with death, fictionally and otherwise). 

2. It was a book about four sisters, and I actually liked each sister and her role in the story (even at seven years old, I thought they all had something to offer to the novel, although I couldn’t phrase it in that way).

3. I wanted to be Jo when I grew up- I admired her confidence and rebellious attitude towards restricting gender roles (again, my thoughts were more along the lines of ‘Wow, Jo is awesome and I want to be like her’, but looking back, Little Women was probably my first taste of feminism).

4. The idea of eating pickled limes was unbearably picturesque, in my seven-year-old opinion (I didn’t understand what the word ‘pickled’ meant, but after reading Little Women, I began asking my mom for sliced limes and taking them up to my window seat to read, feeling much like Amy despite the fact that the limes were really sour and I didn’t like them half as much as I wanted to).

I really only understood about 50% of the story, I’m sure, but nevertheless, Little Women never really left my mind, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve repeatedly reread it- and gotten more from it each time. I love the fact that most of the main characters are female, and that they all have complex personalities and agency within their lives. It’s so different from many of the novels that were written back then, and I am forever grateful that I read Little Women for the first time as a precocious seven-year-old rather than for a required reading assignment in school. I can understand now some of the more problematic elements in the novel, and I know that libraries and bookshelves are filled with many new books that are just as well-written and female-centered as Little Women (for which I am very grateful!), but Little Women will always hold a special place in my heart despite all of that.

This week’s question: What is your favorite fictional food?

Erin: Lamb stew with dried plums! No, seriously. FictionalFood.Net has an amazing recipe for it, and before the midnight premiere of Hunger Games, my roomies and I made a huge pot of it. It’s likely that it has become my favorite stew (but it takes a long time to make). So while I love that that food is mentioned throughout the trilogy, it actually is delicious in real life too. Yummy!

Turkish Delight (photo courtesy of usnewnews)

Emily: Turkish delight has always sounded positively mouth-watering to me, especially in the dead of winter in a strange new magical land a long way from home. However, I think I thought it was more of a turkey casserole dripping with gravy and warmth instead of a rose water-flavored candy. Either way, I have always loved the name and would totally have been suckered into climbing the Queen’s sleigh to try some… Though maaaybe not to sell my soul.

Sugar Quills (photo courtesy of UniversalOrlando)

So, what’s your favorite fictional food? Leave your answer below, and give us a question for next week!

This week’s question: What is your favorite local produce, and how do you best like to eat it?

Anna: I love shopping at the local farmers market and just pick out whatever is the freshest veggies and such of the week. You can create so many different meals you’d never even think of otherwise.

Quinn: Listening to debate from the Environment Committee reminds me that produce is not limited to things that come out of the ground. Thus, my favourite produce local to Connecticut has to be seafood. Connecticut is a leading producer of clams, mussels, and other shellfish. I have to say that the best way, in my opinion, to cook it is a classic New England Clam Chowder. Cream, potatoes, and clams. Basic, but wonderfully tasty.

Nom nom nom. (photo courtesy of mooflyfood.com)

Kara: Oh man, I love all the tons of amazing fresh fruit and meat and vegetables that we get at our farmers market, but there’s one thing I look forward to above all else. Are you ready for this? It’s cucumbers. Actually, I don’t really like cucumbers by themselves very much, but cucumber sandwiches are pretty much the only food in the world that I will eat uncontrollably for hours on end. Now, cucumber sandwiches have a bad rap in my part of the world, so let me tell you the secret to super-awesome-mega-scrumptious-totally irresistible cucumber sandwiches: Ready? Okay, you have to take the crust off the bread (whole-wheat, preferably), and then you have to roll out the bread till it’s really thin, and THEN you have to put on a ton of butter on both sides. After that, you put salt and pepper on both pieces of bread, and then add some really thin cut cucumbers. Yeah. And then you cut them into small triangles and EAT THEM ALL BEFORE ANYBODY ELSE KNOWS YOU HAVE THEM. Seriously, ya gotta try it. Preferably with tea–and a good book. Personally, I recommend Jane Austen.

Strawberry Rhubarb pie

EmilyR: Going to the farmer’s market is like spinning a wheel of happiness: picking one thing  in season makes your food shine like the ultimate sun. For me, color is everything – like a color magpie. So, these crazy, purple, ginormous beets caught my eye (and made for incredible warm beet and goat cheese salad), the beginning of spring lead me to rhubarb (which became my first strawberry rhubarb pie!) and this weekend it was peaches (peach chutney, to be exact, to top some yummy fish). While ”local” is a pretty ambiguous term in some cities, buying at the farmer’s market is definitely a big step. It may not make an artisan local community, but maybe one day it will!

Erin: This is a hard one!  I’m a big fan of fresh, local corn on the cob…and living in Ohio, we have a lot of it.  (Heck, there’s a corn field literally five seconds from my apartment.  And they just planted their little corn seedlings.  I got a little overexcited about that last week.)  I always eat corn on the cob just boiled or steamed or whatever, but grilled is great too!  I also love local peaches, because they’re sweet and delicious (gotta eat those just plain, though), and in the fall I love fresh apples.  My boyfriend and I went apple picking last fall and those were some of the best apples I’ve ever had.  Basically…I love me my local fruits.  And corn.  Oh, and tomatoes.  Why do you make me pick?!

So, how about you? What do you look forward to eating this summer? Any particular produce you’re looking forward to…shall we say…nomming? Give us your favorites below, and leave us a question for next week!

This week’s question: Who is your favorite quirky side character? Somebody who doesn’t show up much in the story, but whom you remember fondly anyways.

Joshua Donovan (photo courtesy of syfy channel)

Erin: I’m not entirely sure I’d call him super “obscure”, but I guess I’d have to pick Avaric from Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (I’m re-reading it right now, thus why it’s on my mind.) Avaric only shows up a few times throughout the novel, and most of those times he’s being difficult or inappropriate, but I enjoy his character a lot. He reminds me a lot of a few of my friends IRL. I particularly enjoy the bickering between his character and Elphaba while they’re in school. Always some good lines during those dialogues that always crack me up!

Kara: You know, I thought this would be a really easy question, and then it wasn’t. I have always had a tremendous fondness for a certain type of odd side character. They are sometimes a bit snarky, and sometimes even a little on the evil side. Not always, but sometimes, and often they end up being my very favorite characters in a whole book–even though they may only show up once or twice in a book. I think it’s because their very vagueness makes them interesting, and gives you a lot of room to imagine for yourself who they are. The one that comes to mind immediately is a Bronze Rider named T’gellan from the Dragon Riders of Pern–who has maybe one page out of the the thousands in the series, and who yet manages to be one of the most memorable characters I’ve ever run across. A lot of tricksters share this same characteristic in Mythologies from around the world, from the Norse Loki to the Welsh Gwydyon and the Irish Angus Og, all of whom have been particular favorites of mine for years. I don’t think I could pick a specific side character I love more than all the others, but the list of favorites could go on and on…so I’ll just stop now before I get carried away.

Elizabeth: The moment I read ‘side character’ I immediately thought of Charles Beckendorf from the Percy Jackson series (which has a ton of fabulous side characters). He’s the loyal son of Hephaestus, loves working with machinery, and has a permanent scowl. He’s quiet and shy, but when he talks, it’s important and everyone listens. In the end of the series (spoilers), he sacrifices himself for Percy when the Princess Andromeda blows up with him in it. I don’t know why I love him so much, but I guess that’s the beauty of side characters.

So, who is your favorite side character? Leave your answer in the comments below–and don’t forget to leave us a question to answer for you next week!

Mixing up a storm in the kitchen.

This coming weekend marks Memorial Day in the United States, which for me mostly means a long weekend, planting my container garden, and having a cookout with my friends.  And if there’s one thing that you probably shouldn’t bring to a gathering with my friends, it’s probably sugar (we’re all plenty hyper naturally).

So, naturally, tonight I made cookies to take to the cookout.

But these aren’t just any cookies.  These are Hunger Games cookies from a recipe on one of my favorite nerdy food sights, FictionalFood.Net.

It’s always really tempting to just eat the bowl of raw dough…

Backstory: Last year, when Hunger Games came out in theatres, my friends and I did what we do best.  We ate a bunch of food and then went to see the midnight showing.  The food we ate mostly consisted of the Hunger Games recipes on FictionalFood.Net.  We had lamb stew, we had District 12 Drop Biscuits…and we had Mr. Mellark’s Cookies.  And while everything turned out delicious, Mr. Mellark’s Cookies were without a doubt the thing that stole the show (we even snuck a baggie of them into the movie theatre just because).

So naturally when it came time to decide what to make for the cookout this weekend, I decided it had

My roommates enjoying the raw dough off the beaters.

been far too long since we had that deliciousness.  Which is how I ended up breaking out the recipe again tonight, “improvising” as only my impatience can do, and now we have a pile of cookie deliciousness sitting on our kitchen counter.

My favorite thing about these cookies (the recipe of which you can find here) is that they’re relatively simple.  Most of the ingredients you probably already have around the house, which was a definite plus tonight seeing as how it’s been very moist outside for most of the evening.  My impatience comes in with the whole chilling-the-dough thing, which usually results in me putting things in the freezer, and then not actually letting them get as cold as they probably need to get.  But no matter, the cookies are delicious anyway.

The final product!

Mr. Mellark’s Cookies are basically a modified sugar cookie, involving (in theory) the kinds of ingredients that would have been available to the Mellark family bakery in District 12.  They always turn out nice and soft, and are just the perfect amount of sweetness.  But be careful, because they’re also very thick, so very filling.  I ended up in a cookie coma the night of the Hunger Games opening, these are so addictive.

Now I’m all ready for my friends’ cookout on Saturday, in which I’m sure chaos will happen.  I’ll be glad that I contributed to the inevitable sugar high!

Yummy!

Check out FictionalFood.Net for lots of recipes based off of movies, books, and video games!

This is me with Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins.

I don’t really know how to describe this book; to be honest, I haven’t read it in eighteen months and I’ve forgotten nearly all of the plot. In fact, I’m not sure if it even has a true “plot”. Lives don’t always have expositions, rising actions, climaxes, falling actions, and resolutions. Sometimes your life just is, and you just are, and that is just as deserving of a novel as grand stories with action and suspense, you know? I think that’s what Lynne Rae Perkins was trying to accomplish with Criss Cross.

But the emotion in the book, the relatable characters- that’s what I remember. It’s geared towards kids, but the simplicity of the writing only adds to how incredibly beautiful and real it feels to the reader.

So, in an effort to convince you how incredible the book is… Here’s a bunch of quotes from it- I could never do justice to it with my own words.

“They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up a magazine or look in the cupboard for a snack. Not exactly by accident and not exactly on purpose. You could go out in the world and do new things and meet new people, and then you could come home and just sit on the stoop with someone you had never not known, and watch lightning bugs blink on and off.”

“I know I’m still young and there’s a lot of time for things to happen, but sometimes I think there is something about me that’s wrong, that I’m not the kind of person anyone can fall in love with, and that I’ll always just be alone.”

“Life was rearranging itself; bulging in places, fraying in spots. Sometimes leaving holes big enough to see through, or even step through, to somewhere else.”

This week’s question is: We know your favorite villains, so now tell us about the one character, from any story, that you absolutely hate/fear/loath the very mention of.

Elizabeth: Dolores Umbridge. Obviously!

Other than her, though, I’d have to say Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. He’s perhaps the cruelest character I’ve ever encountered and his manipulation of young girls scares me to death- probably because I know that there are actually people like that out there in the world.

Kara: For some reason, whenever we have these sorts of questions, I think long and hard about them, and invariably end up with a Dickens character. Even when I decide I’m not going to pick a Dickens character, because I’ve already done that a billion times. This time, it’s Herold Skimpole from Dickens’ book Bleak House. Skimpole is one of the few characters in all of literature that has actually made me throw a book across the room, and if you’ve ever read Bleak House, you’ll know that it was quite a LARGE book. Basically, Harold Skimpole is this sweet, unassuming man who wanders through life with absolutely no clue about money or responsibility or anything else. He describes himself repeatedly as “quite a child” when it comes to any sort of worldly matters. Thus, he manages to convince people that he simply doesn’t know it when he takes advantage of them, which he does constantly, or have any idea of right and wrong when he hurts people. Skimpole spends his whole life preying off anybody who will believe that he is as stupid as he wants them to think he is, and when it suits him, he turns around and betrays the very people who help him. I think the thing that I find most insidious about Skimpole is that he isn’t really ‘evil’ in the usual understanding, he is simply the embodiment of the total self-serving narcissist who only cares to live well without any effort on his own part, and doesn’t care who he harms along the way. Because he puts on his sweet ‘childish’ air, it is usually the kind people, the ones who feel sorry for him, that he takes advantage of, and sometimes the price they pay for taking pity on him is more than just money.

Erin: I’ve wracked my brains trying to think of someone other than Dolores Umbridge, but I really can’t.  I despise Umbridge with the firey, burning passion of a hundred suns.  And she does terrify me.  I think the reason she is SO feared and SO hated is because she could be anyone.  There are people in the “real world” that she could be.  She enjoys hurting others, she loves the fact that she has power over others, but the worst of it is that she thinks she’s doing the right thing.  At least Voldemort knew he was dark…Umbridge literally has no idea.  And I think that’s why she scares me so much.

Emily: Heathcliff creeps me out and makes me enraged with his cruelty too! But in an effort to add something to thia conversation (which was epically hard when umbridge is just too perfect an answer), I will say that I absolutely have to put down the book/turn away/feel pain/read in between my fingers when Dracula is introduced. He scares the ever-loving crap out of me. In The Historian he is out for knowledge and will do anything to get it- an amoral protagonist to the extreme. He is the definition of terrible.

I also absolutely want to throw a book at Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca. She was so mean! Come on, I know you are a really devoted housekeeper to your late mistress, but pushing a newly married girl almost to the brink of insanity an death is just mean. Why you gotta be so mean?

What character scares YOU the most?  Tell us in the comments!  And, of course, leave us any questions you’d love to see us answer in a future Weird Question Weekly!

My first encounter with the works of Tolkien happened when I was probably eight or nine years old, before there was a Harry Potter (at least in the US), before there were movies of any of these books, and you actually had to sit down and turn pages if you wanted to know how a story went.

photo courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

Don’t get me wrong, I’d been obsessed with every story I’d ever read, but something about Tolkien’s prose was more vibrant and immediate than anything I’d ever encountered, and it scooped me up from the first words and plopped me down in a nice neat little hole and sent me adventuring.

For some reason I completely loved Thorin–possibly seeing a kindred spirit in his tendency to boss everybody around and act highly important. Little details like being male and having a beard are very unimportant when you’re nine, so when mum made us some lovely dwarf hoods a little while later, I positively insisted on wearing the blue one with the silver tassel and being referred to as Thorin Oakenshield at the dinner table. Oh, and bossing everyone around. But that wasn’t new.

photo courtesy of the Wall Street Journey

My brother and I and any hapless neighbor kids we could commandeer then proceeded to go forth and have grand adventures and fight dragons and discover great heaps of dwarf gold, and then bury said gold in the backyard and lose it. Eventually we even dug a monumental four-cave hole that was big enough for most grown-ups to climb into, and which (since despite our best efforts, it remained to small to be properly though of as the Mines of Moria) we called ‘The God-Forsaken Orc-Hole.’

Time went on, and eventually I read The Lord of the Rings and spent several years hanging out in Mirkwood with a cute elf, and then college showed up and life got complicated. The long and the short of it is that I hadn’t given Mr. Baggins a thought for several years when the news of the movie came out. I can’t say I gave him much of a thought even then, besides chuckling at Mr. Jackson’s trilogy antics and wondering if Arwen would manage an appearance.

But when the movie came out I suddenly had an overwhelming urge not to go see it. It took me somewhat by surprise, since I was rather looking forward to Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and was quite a fan of the LOTR movies for a while. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to see it, and the more I couldn’t really explain why.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of THe Hobbit, and realized almost immediately why seeing the film hadn’t appealed to me. Because down in the pages of that book were all those fragile years that disappear so quickly and cannot be held onto. All the adventures and dragons and long days tramping around in the woods as a kid. All the delicate drawings of Tolkien’s that I had copied out so carefully, the great map with the spidery dragon in red, and all the adventures that I had right alongside Mr. Baggins and Thorin and the rest. They stayed there, pressed in the pages, the ones that were written and the ones I imagined, all there just like it was yesterday.

photo courtesy of Wired.com