Hey, sweeties, roll up your sleeves and let’s continue. If you haven’t made your dough yet, click here to read Part One first. You can either print out this recipe or bring the laptop into the kitchen. This recipe is linked under the icon on the sidebar so you will always be able to find it in the future if you want to wait a few weeks to try this lesson. If you do end up making bagels–regardless of whether they turn out perfectly or end up a burned, twisted heap of dough–blog about it and send me the link at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will add all links (regardless of when they come in–still send it if you’re reading this in 2010) to the bagel posts so future bakers can read along with other people’s experiences too. I would appreciate it if you blog about it if you’ll link back to this post so your readers can find these other blogs too.

Bagels (Part Two)

It has been twelve hours, right? Take out the baking sheet from the refrigerator. If you’ve made more than one sheet, take out two of them (I usually make three sheets of bagels each time. So I take two out of the refrigerator at once and go back for the other one about ten minutes later). Preheat the oven to 450 degrees (F). Set the timer for 10 minutes. Walk away and read a blog or two.

When the buzzer goes off, come back to the kitchen and get a large pot and fill it with water. I like a large, wide spaghetti pot rather than a tall one. To be honest, I have a piece-of-shit pot with wobbly handles that I got at the food store for $7. All you’re doing is boiling a bagel. It doesn’t have to be a nice Calphalon pot. Let the water come to a boil for the next 10 minutes (all in all, it should be about 20 minutes between taking the bagels out of the refrigerator and boiling them). Peel the plastic wrap off the bagels. They look like this:

Or like this:

See, they didn’t change a lot in the refrigerator. Once the water is boiling, drop in as many bagels will fit at once in your pot if they’re all floating on the surface. In my pot, it’s four bagels. In your pot, it may only be two. Drop them cornmeal-side-up into the boiling water and set the timer for 30 seconds.

Plain bagels float on the surface. For some reason, cinnamon raisin bagels drop to the bottom. Note this difference–there’s nothing wrong with your bagels.

After 30 seconds, flip over the bagels so they are now cornmeal-side-down in the water. Use the flat slotted spoon. The one below is perfect. I think I got it at IKEA many years ago. But look for something like this so the bagel can rest flat on the spoon and water can pour off.

Let them boil for an additional 20 seconds on this other side. The water should keep boiling (the cool bagels will lower the temperature of the water for a bit so don’t adjust the water so it’s not boiling). Remove with the slotted spoon and allow them to drain on a cooling rack with paper towels placed beneath. Boil the next bagels until all the bagels are on the draining rack.

Throw out that cornmeal-covered aluminum foil and place down a sheet of parchment paper and the damp bagels (you only need to let them drain for a minute).

This is the point where you will add any topping. You can sprinkle on dried onion or garlic (I get both in the bulk section of Whole Foods–do not use undried onions or garlic), sea salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or cinnamon sugar. Or make this mix to sprinkle over the bagels.

The Stirrup Queen’s Everything Mix

1 tbsp dried onion
1 tbsp dried garlic
3/4 tbsp sea salt
1 1/2 tbsp sesame seeds
1 1/2 tbsp poppy seeds

Place i
n the oven for 14 minutes. It may take a bit less or a bit more time–make sure you check. The tops should look like this:

And the bottoms should look like this when they’re done:

Which brings us to full sheets of bagels that look like this:

Or this:

Yum! Allow them to cool for a bit on the parchment paper. And then eat.

Any leftover bagels that won’t be consumed that day should be sliced in half and frozen in ziplock bags once cool. Bagels will only toast back to their pre-frozen freshness. If you want a toasted bagel that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, freeze immediately. If you’ll eat the bagel within 24 hours, store in a paper bag.

If you freeze them: take out a bagel and wrap it in a paper towel. Put it in the microwave for 30 seconds and then unwrap and discard the paper towel. Place in the toaster. And then…eat…once it comes out of the toaster. It will be so soft and crisp. It will be bagel love.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you blog about trying out this recipe: thetowncriers@gmail.com.

READ WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS RECIPE

• No Swimmers in the Tubes made cheddar bagels and rosemary olive oil bagels.

Does it make me a bitch if I’ve separated out the Costco-sized bag of Halloween candy into the undesirables and the desirables and kept all the desirables for myself while giving children like the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC the unwanted Baby Ruths and Almond Joys?

I need the M & Ms more than he does!

New List Today AND a question at the bottom:

Once again, welcome to the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Post Dates: October 29th and 30th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Happiness Sold Separately).

Group B:

That Was The Plan (Ms. Planner)
A Little Sweetness (Meghan)
All Things Deb (Deb)
Waiting for…? (Amy)
Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (R&R)
Where is My Happiness? (Bean)
The Open Door (Deanna)
Fatty Pants (Fattypants)
Outlandish Notions (Sharah)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
No Swimmers in the Tubes… (Noswimmers)
Fertilize Me (Farah)
Baby Steps to Baby Shoes (Baby Steps)
Desperate to Multiply (Portia P)

Even if you haven’t read Happiness Sold Separately, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #8 is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Even if you read this book a long time ago, I promise reading it again with a book club will make you see it in an entirely new light.

The Details: Tour #8 will start October 31st (spooky!). Participants will read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On Tuesday, December 6th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on December 7th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on December 10th–12th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #8, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon and we’ll be voting soon on the book tours for the winter. Happy reading.

NEW BOOK CLUB IDEA:

You know the idea of spinning plates? I’ve been mulling over the idea of spinning books. As I’m putting together the voting list for the next tours, I’m thinking of all these great books that are the opposite of an IF/pg loss book. The ones that give you an escape from everything that is going on. And beyond that, I actually do read books that are not infertility-related (gasp!). Jasper Fforde, chicklit, random Booksense bestsellers. I want to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I don’t want to read it in a vacuum. And I love you guys. And the Barren Bitches Book Brigade rocks. What do you think of a spinning book group? Each tour would become eight weeks long, but the two books would spin at the same time. You could drop in for either one or both. So every four weeks (as opposed to every six weeks), there would be a new tour and it would switch off whether it was an angel (non-IF book) or devil (IF-book) tour. If it gets too crowded, I’ll start a spin-off site where we can discuss/run both tours. Yes? No? Maybe so?

Welcome to the seventh tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: Happiness Sold Separately
Author: Lolly Winston
Start Date: September 19
Post Dates: October 29th and 30th
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Happiness Sold Separately. We’ve broken down the current tour into two groups. A new list will be posted tomorrow).

Group A:

Stirrup Queens (Mel)–my post is below this one
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
The Dunn Family (Erica)
Candy’s Land (Candy)
Mommy Someday? (Michelle)
Blood Signs (Wordgirl)
Precious Little (Carrie)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
Conceiving is Believing (CiB)

Even if you haven’t read Happiness Sold Separately, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #8 is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Even if you read this book a long time ago, I promise reading it again with a book club will make you see it in an entirely new light.

The Details: Tour #8 will start October 31st (spooky!). Participants will read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. On Tuesday, December 6th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to thetowncriers@gmail.com. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on December 7th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on December 10th–12th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #8, leave a comment below or send me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. Want to participate but live overseas and want to order many books at once in order to save on shipping? The next few tours are always listed on my side bar under the book icon and we’ll be voting soon on the book tours for the winter. Happy reading.

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about Happiness Sold Separately? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Brigade Tour by visiting the master list in the post above. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #8 (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

Lolly Winston’s books take you right to the edge of your worst fears and allow you to peer down into the valley with a safety rail between you and reality. In Good Grief, Winston explores the months following the death of a spouse. From the grief that hits you in the most unexpected of places–think breakdown in the produce section–to the rebuilding of a life, Winston’s book is raw and hopeful at the same time. Happiness Sold Separately is a wonderful second novel exploring the worst fears associated with infertility–the breakdown of a marriage, the loss of a hard-won pregnancy, the domino effect leading down through grandchildren. She writes the book with an aching beauty that had me nodding my head at times and shouting at the characters at others. The book drew me in and I cared about the characters, and that, for me, is the mark of a good read.

The end of the book was left open to the reader. Do you think that Elinor and Ted stayed together, or that they really finally separate? Did she pursue adoption on her own, or did they do another round of IVF with PGD? Do you think she ended up happy, or did she continue to struggle?

I like that Winston didn’t neatly wrap up the novel with a pat, clear ending. Life is messy–infertility is extremely messy–and I think all the characters bounced through so many conflicting emotions through the text that it would have been a let-down if they had found perfect clarity simply because we were on the last page.

I set down the book choosing to believe that Ted and Elinor stayed together. I think they actually have a lot in common in their grief and one of their problems is that they never share their mutual grief. I’d like to believe that the blow to Ted’s head actually made him wake up and see that he should have shared that dream with Elinor when his heart was ready to explode with excitement over the idea of adoption. Elinor never believes that Ted will be right alongside her on the journey, but I think if she let him be there in the way that he expresses himself (and not as a reflection of her own expression), she would see that he is just as desirous of a family and adoption would be an excellent path to parenthood for them.

Lolly circles back repeatedly to examine the peculiar dynamics of a marriage plagued by infertility. In particular, she focuses on the conflicting desires for closeness and distance that Elinor experiences. Why do you think Elinor “is irritated by her husband when he was attentive, and then resentful when he stepped back to giver her room?” (p. 12). Even during difficult treatment cycles, Ted was not a source of comfort to her (p. 26). Why?

You know how you feel when your back hurts and it makes your entire body hurt and consequently, you can never get comfortable. Your whole body focuses on that pain. It hurts to have other people touch you, you can’t get into a comfortable position, you think rolling onto your side will help, but it only brings more pain.

That’s sort of what infertility is like. The back is the connection for the whole body and the soul is the connection for all emotions. Infertility is like having an inflamed soul.

I think infertility and loss can cause so much pain that there isn’t a comfortable position. And even if pockets of comfort can be found within the panic, it isn’t a permanent fix. It can be suffocating to see your life unfold in a way that you never dreamed possible. We can, within reason, choose our careers. We can’t, at times, choose the role we always thought we would own–parenthood.

As we see glimpses into Ted & Elinor’s relationship after their unsuccessful fertility treatments, we discover that Ted seeks solace in the garage and the gym — places where he can “fix” things. Elinor finds refuge in the laundry room and by re-reading classic novels from college. Why do you think Elinor is drawn to these activities? What activities do you engage in as a way to soothe your soul during your fertility quest and why do you think you are drawn to them? What about your partner – does he/she have places or tasks that provide some refuge?

Bread baking. It started either pre-treatments or at the beginning of treatments. Josh bought me a bread textbook that had bread baking lessons as well as a bread stone for the oven. It was the perfect medium to work through my frustrations. It was warm and soft and smelled good. It wouldn’t be a stretch to play Freud and say that dough became my replacement for a baby. I think Elinor was drawn to laundry for the same reason I was drawn to bread baking. There is a rhythm to it and it feels productive. It is a low stakes accomplishment. If the laundry bleeds, you can usually fix the stains. If the bread doesn’t rise, you can force the dough or start over. It’s low stakes. And it’s on my time. My cycle, the whole idea of trying and waiting and having such a small window of a chance for things to happen, it’s maddening how much of it is tied to time. I can bake bread whenever I wish. I can bake it at night or in the morning. I can churn out 48 bagels and then ignore the oven for the next few weeks. It’s all on my terms.

I was actually thinking about writing a bread post that people could print out and try in their kitchen. A bread baking online tutorial. Yes? No? Would you want to learn how to make bagels?