Nothing goes quite so well with tomatoes as basil, and a creamy tomato basil bisque fit the bill perfectly, along with a cheese and broccoli egg frittata, which is like an omelette for kitchen idiots like me who can’t do the omelette flip without dropping the eggs on the floor. But I decided a reworking of the classic canned tomato soup and cheese omelette was in order here. Good stuff! I don’t buy canned soup these days, just because I prefer the taste of homemade (and it’s healthier, too).
It reminded me of when I was a little girl and my paternal grandmother, Nana Baca, would make me canned soup and bologna and cheese sandwiches on white bread, cut into triangles. A sudden feeling that someone was standing behind her, reaching for her throat.” She melted butter in the frying pan, diluted the soup with milk, then poured the beaten eggs into the pan. All these actions, so common and so much a part of her life before the Overlook, had been a part of her life, helped to calm her. She went to the refrigerator and got milk and eggs for the omelet. “She opened the can and dropped the slightly jellied contents into a saucepan. She prepares canned tomato soup and a cheese omelette in a state of of nerves and terror. Another scene, kind of the calm before the storm, is when Wendy goes downstairs to make Danny some lunch after he’s seen the woman in Room 217 and Jack has started his spiral into menacing madness. For example, when Halloran, the seasonal cook, is showing the family around the kitchen and letting them see the bounty of food he’s left them to get through the winter, he mentions something called a “Table Talk pie.” According to Google, it’s a prepackaged miniature fruit pie that was sold along the east coast.
It was published nearly 30 years ago, and there are some seriously dated references that are hugely entertaining to read about. Rereading this book in the here and now was fascinating. Her transformation at Kubrick’s hands in the film makes her nearly unrecognizable, and which is annoying, because it’s certainly possible to have feelings of weakness and inadequacy and still find your inner strength and kick ass.
But it’s she who mostly saves the day in the book. In the book, she’s tough, resourceful and sharp, still a bit on the weak side as she herself acknowledges. I will say, however, that Kubrick’s notoriously misogynistic tendencies turned the film character of Wendy into a shrieking, nagging, needy harridan whom you almost wanted to see get chopped to bits. In a nutshell, the Torrance family is on their financial last legs and Jack Torrance accepts a job to be the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, just he, his wife Wendy and their son, Danny, who is psychic and whose power is referred to as “the shining.” If you’ve read this book (or seen the Kubrick film), you know the story trajectory and I won’t bore you with a lengthy description. In a sense, though their conflict takes violent place very much in the physical realm, the conflict is also mental, as both Jack’s and Danny’s emotionally tortured psyches also do battle. He is already in touch with his own shadow side, in the form of Tony, his “imaginary friend,” who is the actual, psychic side of Danny’s mind. It gets into Jack’s soul, tempts and taints him with liquor and with his violent, shadow side, and all goes to hell. But it only takes a small chink in one’s armor for the enemy to pierce us, and this is what the spirit of the hotel does to him. His intelligence makes him arrogant, yet he does truly care for his family. He is, for the most part, in tune with his own worst instincts……except for when he drinks. Jack Torrance is one of the more interesting characters in literature. Edgar Allan Poe did it with The Fall of the House of Usher. Shirley Jackson did it with great style in The Haunting of Hill House, which I blogged about a few months back if you want to give it a whirl. I have a thing for books that make the setting, the place, the hotel or house, as much a character as the people. But the story of the Torrance family remains my absolute favorite of all of his books. I’ve been reading his books since my early teens, starting with The Shining, as well as many others. I don’t think Stephen King has ever been accused of being a foodie, though he is most certainly the most visceral writer I’ve ever encountered.
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