Really Random Tuesday #66: A Good Dinner and a Book Winner

Was Virginia Woolf a foodie?  Ahead of her time in many ways, she wrote about the importance of giving women more equality, and was one of the first modern writers to write about food. Virginia Woolf defied the conventions of the time, and described the "soles and partridges and potatoes", the food served at a luncheon, in A Room of One's Own.  At the very least, she appreciated the benefits of eating well, of "a good dinner".

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

~Virginia Woolf

Do you think Virginia Woolf would be a vegetarian, or even a vegan, if she lived in the present day? I  think maybe she would be.

Even if you're not vegetarian, the dish below is quick and easy to make.  I think it would've pleased discerning Virginia Woolf.

~ Pasta with Sun-dried Tomatoes ~

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.   - See more at: http://quotationsbook.com/quote/15338/#sthash.d80REBHP.dpuf

It's been ages since I last cooked with sun-dried tomatoes!  I used to buy them quite often.  When my friend, Diane, mentioned them to me recently, I recalled their intense flavor, and decided to make them the focus in a vegetarian pasta dish.  Diane combined sun-dried tomatoes with cappellini, or angel hair pasta, which sounded very good to me.  Since I didn't have much cappellini on hand, I decided to use vegetable radiatore from Trader Joe's, as I had a full package.  Created in the 1960s by an industrial designer, radiatori are little pasta shapes that resemble radiators. (They do remind me of the hissing radiators from my childhood, whose sounds at night were oddly reassuring.)

Ingredients:

8 ounces of pasta, such as cappellini or radiatore

1 - 2  tablespoons of olive oil

2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced

1 ounce sun-dried tomatoes

4 or 5 white mushrooms, sliced

1/4 cup of water (or red wine)

Oregano or basil to taste

Parmesan cheese for topping

Directions: 
In a small pan, cook two cloves of minced garlic in about a tablespoon and a half of olive oil for a couple of minutes, then add the sliced mushrooms, an ounce or so of sun-dried tomatoes (which need to soak beforehand in warm water for 15 minutes), about 1/4 cup of water (or red wine), and generous sprinkles of oregano.  Of course, you could also use basil instead of or in addition to the oregano, and add pepper, too, if desired.  (I have a lot of organic oregano right now from my garden so I used that.)  Cook for about 25 minutes over a low flame on the stovetop, stirring occasionally.  While this mixture is cooking, cook the pasta according to directions on package, for about 10 minutes, then drain in a colander.  I used about 2/3 of a 12 ounce package of pasta to make two generous servings. This recipe can be easily adjusted to make more servings.

Toss the pasta with the sun-dried tomato mixture, and top with shredded and/or grated Parmesan cheese (unless you are vegan).  A fresh garden salad goes well with this dish.

Pasta with Sun-dried Tomatoes

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The randomly chosen winner of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall is Carol N. Wong.  Congratulations, Carol!   I think you'll enjoy this biography about Margaret Fuller, who influenced and inspired others, including Virginia Woolf.  

Thanks to everyone who participated in this book giveaway.  I have other giveaways listed on the right side of my blog for those of you interested in winning other books.  Please take a look!

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Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related matters you can think of.  If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page. 

Happy Tuesday!  I welcome your participation in this meme, and your comments.

(Portrait of Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry, c. 1917, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Books in the Mail

My literary adventures continue in earnest. Though I'm still reading (and rereading) Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, which really requires much study and thought, I've finished my "lighter reading", Morality for Beautiful Girls, another heart warming book in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. The New York Times Book Review calls Mma Ramotswe "the Miss Marple of Botswana" and her sundry adventures always manage to bring a smile to my face. I'll begin the next one soon, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, possibly tonight, if it appears in this afternoon's mail. I've been getting books in the mail almost every day for the past week, from Amazon marketplace sellers--they've really come through! The books have been arriving faster than I had even hoped, and are in fine condition. If The Kalahari Typing School for Men doesn't arrive today I may start All In Together Girls, a book of short stories by Canadian author Kate Sutherland.

A Room of One's Own ~ Women and Poetry

"Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own."
- A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

In her essay, A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf offers this conclusion after she surveys history and finds that women are the subjects of poetry but not the authors. Very few women could achieve the "incandescent mind" of an artist such as Shakespeare, according to Virginia Woolf, because of their poverty and society's restrictions. She reflects upon the scarcity of women poets throughout the ages and in particular in Elizabethan England:

"For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet."
~A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

In a previous post called The New Dress, I stated that Virginia Woolf believed women were best suited to write fiction from their sitting-rooms, because their lives didn't lead to the opportunity to create poetry. In A Room of One's Own, she elaborates eloquently with encouraging words:

"I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young--alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh."
- A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

As a writer Virginia Woolf was keenly aware of the constraints on women--her notebook attests to this struggle--as they sought both financial and creative freedom, and she felt the need to entreat her audience, initially young college women, to write not only fiction but poetry (as well as criticism and scholarly works). As a feminist of the early 1900's, Virginia Woolf's epic essay encourages women to express themselves through art and achievement, and to become a vital part of history.

A Room of One's Own

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

I'm rereading Virginia Woolf's very intense A Room of One's Own, which is actually a long essay she wrote "with ardour and conviction" on the the topic of women and fiction, that she prepared when asked to speak about this subject at women's colleges. A Room of One's Own was published in 1929, when young women were still discouraged from attending college (due to genuine fear that a good education would make women unfit for marriage and motherhood), and although it's not angry in tone the essay reflects a society in which severe limitations were put on women and their achievements. Virginia Woolf speaks about the creative process that lead to her talks, of her notebook in which she recorded a multitude of ideas, thoughts, and mental meanderings, and writes about the train of thought that led to her conclusion, that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf grapples with what is exactly meant by women and fiction (not a simple matter), and demonstrates and expresses the complexity of her thought in her trademark stream-of-consciousness writing. Defying conventions of the time, she talks about the actual food served at the luncheon party, of the soles and partridges and potatoes, and of the importance of food to the artist in a more general sense. She discusses numerous things in this full, layered essay of her thoughts, among them a sense of loss due to the war which began in August of 1914, that changed the underlying current of life--previously filled with music and poetry, with romance--and of the special difficulties women artists face (still relevant today!). Her message is simple (though the means is not), that women must have money (a fixed income) and a room of their own (privacy) in order to have the freedom to create, luxuries that men may take for granted. She imagines Shakespeare's "sister", equal in talent and genius, but because of her sex, never writes a word, never expresses her genius, never lives to old age because she takes her own life in quiet desperation. Her essay is meant to encourage young women, to inspire them to create, as she's sympathetic to their plight. In A Room of One's Own,Virginia Woolf wants the limitations removed, and for women to have the same intellectual freedom that men have had for centuries, so that they, too, may express their genius.

As mentioned in a previous post, you can read A Room of One's Own online at eBooks@Adelaide.

More Works by Virginia Woolf

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
~A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf


I'm in the mood to read more works by Virginia Woolf. Today I ordered A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf from Amazon. While I wanted a copy of the book to read and for my library, you can also read the web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide (and thousands of other books may be read for free at Project Gutenberg!). I read A Room of One's Own in high school, and want to reread it. I think I understood it at the time but feel as if I'll get much more out of it now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser). I've already talked about Virginia Woolf a bit in June posts, mostly in relation to her story The New Dress (also published online by eBooks@Adelaide), and will write about A Room of One's Own and Woolf's thoughts (as well as my own) in the not too distant future.

(First edition cover pictured above.)