Harold and the Purple Crayon (PG)

Zachary Levi is a sort of child-man whose magical crayon can create anything from airplanes to pie in Harold and the Purple Crayon, a mostly live-action movie.

I guess the book features a Harold who is sort of a PJ-wearing toddler. In the movie, we see that toddler transition to a non-specific-age adult guy (Levi), who hangs out in his two-dimensional world crafting things with his crayon and talking to his friends — Moose (Lil Rel Howery), Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds) and Narrator (voice of Alfred Molina), the “old man” who created Harold and his world.

When the Narrator stops talking to Harold, he decides to go to the Real World and look for his Old Man. He draws a door that says “Real World” and steps through, finding himself a Zachary Levi-ish three-dimensional human in a one-piece outfit. He’s accompanied by Moose, who becomes Lil Rel Howery in a brown fleece — though occasionally in times of stress he “mooses out” briefly. Porcupine doesn’t make it to the real world right away but when she does she is a British girl with a purple mohawk.

After hugging the first old man he sees and realizing there is more than one old man in the real world, Harold draws himself a tandem bike to make it easier for Moose and him to go search for his specific Old Man. Late-for-work single mom Terry (Zooey Deschanel) accidentally rams into them and, grateful that these two oddballs aren’t litigious, offers them a ride. The ride turns into a somewhat wary offer to stay in the attic of her detached garage for a night after her elementary-school-age son Mel (Benjamin Bottani) reminds her that his late dad always said they should help people who need it. Mel also likes that Harold and Moose are instantly accepting of his invisible friend Carl, kind of a lizard platypus dragon creature, Mel tells them.

Though Terry would like Harold and Moose to exit their lives quickly, Mel is excited to help them on their quest to find the old man — and he thinks these new friends might help cheer his mother up. They head to the library, where snooty librarian Gary (Jemaine Clement), fully absorbed with trying to get his epic medieval fantasy novel published, half-heartedly assists Mel because he hopes to impress Terry. But then he sees Harold “draw” an airplane into existence, puts together the whole “Harold plus purple crayon” thing after finding the original book in the children’s section and decides to try to get some of that crayon and its world-building magic for himself.

I feel like there is material to work with here — Harold’s imagination-powered crayon, the way imaginary characters (like Mel’s Carl or Gary’s book’s knights) provide something for people working through sadness or difficulties, the parental-like relationship between an author and his character and what it means for a character when the author is no longer there for him. But I think these concepts become less kid-engaging the more live-action the movie becomes. There are a lot of scenes where everybody on screen is an adult — maybe not terribly mature but still grown-up adult actors not being silly enough to make up for that for a child audience. Moose and Porcupine are fun characters, Levi is fine, Deschanel is sort of a wet blanket like all of these thankless mom roles but the movie overall was missing the magical something that keeps kids watching and not poking their siblings or going to the bathroom as the runtime wears on. The pacing is also off — the movie drags, feeling way longer than its 92 minutes. We spend more time than I think we need to worrying about Terry and her hopes and dreams (kids don’t care about mom dreams) and rush through set-piece scenes such as a final battle involving Gary in crayon-created knight mode.

Harold and the Purple Crayon isn’t terrible but it also isn’t there yet — the concepts and characters feel like they still need some development, especially if the goal is to really enchant a child audience. C+

Rated PG for mild action and thematic elements, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Carlos Saldanha with a screenplay by David Guion & Michael Handelman (based on the books by Crockett Johnson), Harold and the Purple Crayon is an hour and 32 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Columbia Pictures.

Featured photo: Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Sandwich, by Catherine Newman

Sandwich, by Catherine Newman (Harper, 229 pages)

Since it’s set in an idyllic village at Cape Cod, Catherine Newman’s novel Sandwich could refer to the town of that name, the oldest on the Cape. It’s more of a nod, however, to the “sandwich generation,” the term for adults who are caring for their aging parents and their own children.

That’s the life stage of the protagonist, Rachel, who (somewhat bewilderingly) goes by the name Rocky, and who, at 54, is “halfway in age between her young adult children and her elderly parents.” Rocky has been married nearly 30 years to Nick, “a beautiful man who understands between twenty and sixty-five percent of everything she says.”

I will confess right now that I love her, and did by the beginning of the second chapter, when she dubbed a toilet malfunction “Plungergate.”

Rocky and her husband have been renting the same modest cottage for a week every summer since the children were young, and as the novel begins, they are headed there again, as Rocky muses on how time whitewashes our perception of experiences, and how a beach vacation is often filled with things that have little to do with the actual beach.

“You might picture the wild stretches of beach backed by rugged dunes or quaintly shingled houses with clouds of blue hydrangea blossoming all over the place. … Which is funny because most of the time you’re actually at the surf shop or the weird little supermarket that smells like raw meat, or in line at the claim shack, the good bakery, the port-a-potty, the mini-golf place. You’re buying twenty-dollar sunscreen at the gas station.”

On this particular trip, Rocky and her husband are accompanied by their daughter, Willa, who is a junior in college; their son Jamie, who works for a start-up in New York, and his girlfriend, Mya. (Also, the family cat, named Chicken — which was the only deeply unrelatable part of the book for me — taking a cat on vacation.) Rocky’s parents are due to arrive later in the week.

Rocky and Nick, who bicker constantly, are glad to have their children with them in this familiar space, as they are still navigating their almost empty nest, having to “make nervous small talk over our early dinners, as if we’re on an awkward zillionth date at a retirement home.”

Their quarreling is obvious to all; at one point, their daughter asks Rocky if something is wrong, but there is also clearly a deep affection between husband and wife that is tested as the week unfolds and a couple of secrets from Rocky’s past are slowly revealed. These revelations are related tangentially to a storyline involving Jamie’s girlfriend and a health issue she is having. There is a plot here that is thoughtfully crafted, but honestly, it doesn’t matter.

Newman is the kind of writer who could write 200 pages about paint drying and keep the reader entranced throughout. She has a gift for taking ordinary experiences and draping them in gorgeous language, the kind that stays with you, as when Rocky reminisces that when her kids were young they would “vibrate with excitement” at the mere mention of a visit to a Cape candy store.

She also has a sharp wit and bestows Rocky with a self-deprecatory wryness that stays at the ready whether she’s trying on a swimsuit (“One big wave and my boobs will definitely be celebrating their dangly freedom”; smelling zero SPF tanning oil (“the scent of my future squamous cell carcinomas”); or revisiting memories (“ … Jamie at four, Willa a baby in the sling, me with my permanently trashed perineum”).

The joy of Sandwich, in other words, isn’t about the plot, but instead about Newman’s charming and funny musings about decades of family vacations at the beach. Much of this book could have been a memoir, and we suspect some of it is, at least the parts about parents and children vacationing together at the beach: the small happiness of rubbing sunscreen on the backs of grown children whose bodies used to be so familiar but are now off limits to you; the weird time warp that takes over at the beach (“It is always one o’clock when we leave for the beach, regardless of when we start readying ourselves”); the constant scanning for shark fins, ticks and other dangers that never stops no matter how old your children are; and the relative ease of going to be beach with older children as opposed to the physical labor of going to be beach with young ones and their paraphernalia, everyone “breaded with sand.”

People who also rent the same beach house every year will also enjoy the observations relative to that — such as Rocky mourning that the old coffee maker has been replaced with something shiny and new, and the family assessing the changes to the house since they’d last been there. (Willa says, “Is it weird that I’m kind of offended when they replace stuff? Like, they didn’t even consult with us!”)

At the beginning of Sandwich, the novel felt physically thin to me, which sometimes feels foreboding, as if the book didn’t ripen and the author didn’t take the time to develop it fully. But Sandwich turned out to be short for the same reason that A Christmas Carol is short — the author said exactly what needed to be said, in the ordained time frame, and didn’t waste words or the reader’s time on the superfluous. Sandwich is a lovely and disciplined novel that accomplishes something remarkable: It’s a book about the beach that is too good to be considered a beach read. A

Album Reviews 24/08/08

Blue Öyster Cult, Secret Treaties (Columbia Records)

Last week I riffed on Sweet’s Give Us A Wink album as a public service to Zoomers and millennials who’re interested in expanding their knowledge of old-school, pre-ringtone-oriented rock; this time it’s Blue Öyster Cult’s third (1974) effort, the BÖC album I’d recommend if you were going off-grid. As a friend noted, BÖC was/is a bunch of New York slackers who could barely believe their luck in getting a big record contract in the ’70s; they uniquely straddled a line between serious hard rock outfit and joke band, which sort of continued here, with their usual acid-trip lyrical forays (“Harvester Of Eyes”) and such and so. But beneath their Dadaist conceptual approach there was some serious beauty (“Astronomy” is a perfect song for any decent baritone to try wrapping their voice around), some badass hard rock (“Dominance and Submission”) and a chaotic take on life with the German Luftwaffe circa end-stage WWII (“ME-262”). This LP was pivotal in setting the stage for 1976’s Agents of Fortune, which of course yielded their biggest hit, “Don’t Fear The Reaper.” By the way, the origins of the antique music-box recording of “Waves of the Danube” used in the intro to “Flaming Telepaths” remain unknown to this day, a tidbit I find seriously cool. A great snapshot of a band that was happily/painfully exiting adolescence. A+

StrateJacket, Bad Start (Edgeout Records)

Like so many others, the proper release of this album was in purgatory for a couple of years while America waited for Covid to become accepted as the endemic danger it is today, but all systems do appear to be go for an Oct. 11 street date, so here goes. This is a northern California trio that wants to be Green Day, which I can deal with I suppose (my inbox is always so overstuffed with Dashboard Confessional clones that really anything else feels refreshing and innovative at this point) but when I say they want to be Green Day, I mean they really want that. It helps that their stuff is catchy, of course; the title track has an infectious-enough holler-along chorus built for awkward incel culture (“A small brain, a big heart, a shut mouth, a bad start”), but unfortunately there’s a texted-in quality to other songs, like “Be My Drug,” which is actually kind of — and I’d never use this word without just cause — cringey. Another suburban rawk band heard from, I suppose. C

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Gather ’round with your tankards of smelly grog and let us sing a Song of Ice and Fire, ladies and gentlemen, because new CD releases, having recently been forged in the furnaces of Mordor, are now poised to spread their (debatably) musical horribleness over the land of etc. etc! Ack, ack, barf barf barf, August is slipping away from us, and with it the summer, I haven’t been to the beach enough times this year, why don’t we all just put up our holiday decorations and deploy our inflatable Santa Clauses right now and get it over with! Yes, fam, the next traditional CD release date is Friday, Aug. 9, and relatedly, I’ll bet there are holiday albums due out soon, like, has Cannibal Corpse ever done one, and if not isn’t it way past time? But wait, hark, the Frost Gods be praised, there’s another new album dropping from acid-dropping metal-or-whatever jackasses King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, called Flight b741, fortune has smiled upon me once again this year, given that their band name takes up so many column inches that I’ll be back to watching World War II In Color in no time! I hope all the young scamps reading this are aware that American music has become so awful and hopeless of late that the mantle of loud rock ’n’ roll has been taken up by bands from far more deserving British penal colonies, specifically New Zealand and Australia, the latter of which is home to this band, to whom I’d refer as “the Gizzes” to save space, but that’ll never happen! Am I making any sense? No, because I am talking about King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, a band that has never made any sense, for example, let’s go listen to their new single, “Le Risque,” and see if it’s the same sort of trippy joke-music they release literally every two months! Yup, it’s kind of like what you’d hear if Steely Dan and Flaming Lips had a baby and your cousin who’s an accountant thought it was the coolest thing they’d ever heard, which makes you feel sorry for that cousin but sad for them at the same time! There is no real reason for this song to exist, but if they keep putting out albums at this clip they’ll accidentally create a mega-hit at some point, just you wait.

• Japanese composer, pianist, record producer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto died of cancer last year at the age of 71, leaving behind a lifetime of being rad as heck, doing things like hanging out with Devo, scoring films like The Last Emperor and The Revenant, acting alongside David Bowie and a bunch of other stuff. Opus is a posthumous album derived from a performance film of the same name, directed by his son, featuring Sakomoto playing solo acoustic piano. The test-drive track is “Tong Poo,” a pensive, heart-tugging but highly accessible pop-tinged piece that was originally recorded by Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakomoto’s former band.

• Yee-hah, if there’s anything that happens almost as frequently as a new album release from King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, it’s San Francisco garage rockers Orinoka Crash Suite (now known as Osees, formerly The Ohsees and whatnot) changing their band name again “in order to annoy the press!” Personally I’m not annoyed by it; it just makes me ignore them, so let me go listen to “Cassius, Brutus & Judas Single,” a song from the band’s new album, I SORCS 80. Wow, it’s buzzy, cool no-wave, too bad I’ll forget I ever liked it and simply resort to riffing on their stupid band name gimmick again next time.

• Lastly it’s lo-fi jazz-funk bro Louis Cole’s new LP, Nothing, which includes the song “These Dreams are Killing Me,” a great little tune that sounds like Justice trying to be a normal soundsystem. It has my approval. —Eric W. Saeger

Rhubarb Bars

Cookie base and topping

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
  • 1 cup (200 g) brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 3¼ cups (405 g) all-purpose flour
  • ¾ teaspoon baking powder

Rhubarb filling

  • 2½ cups (285 g) chopped frozen rhubarb
  • 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
  • juice of half a lemon

Glaze

  • juice of the other half lemon
  • ¾ cup (85 g) powdered sugar
  • Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8×8” baking pan.

Cream the butter and sugar together, and beat until it is fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Not that this will mean anything to you, but the mixture should be the same color as my Oma’s bathroom tiles.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder together, then spoon the dry mixture into the batter. Put about half the mixture into the prepared baking dish and press it with the back of a spatula or a measuring cup to push it into all four corners. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the edges just start to turn brown. Remove from the oven and set aside. Chill the other half of the dough in your refrigerator. Don’t let it make you feel guilty by giving you a wounded look; its time will come.

In a small saucepan, combine the frozen rhubarb, sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice, and cook over medium-low heat. As the rhubarb thaws, it will release a fair amount of liquid. Stir frequently. Bring to a low boil, and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until it passes the Spoon Test. This is something you read about all the time in old cookbooks. Coat the back of a spoon with the rhubarb syrup, then run a finger through it. If it leaves a clear line, your mixture has turned to jam. Set the jam aside to cool.

At this point, you have the baked dough, the raw dough and the rhubarb jam all taking time-outs in separate corners. Do not feel sorry for them. They know what they did.

After the jam has cooled slightly, tell it that it has finished with time out and can play with its friends. Spoon it over the baked cookie base, and spread it to cover. Remove the rest of the cookie dough from the refrigerator, and drop thumb-sized chunks of it over the top of the jam. It should pretty much cover it, with hints of jam peeking out here and there.

Return the baking dish to the oven, and bake for another 45-50 minutes. Pat it lightly on top with your hand to see if it has finished baking. Take it out of the oven and set it aside to cool.

Mix the powdered sugar and the juice from the other half of your lemon together to make a pourable glaze. Spoon it over the top of the rhubarb-cookie mixture.

When everything has cooled, remove the cookie mixture from the baking dish and cut into bars. How many bars is up to you. I got 12, but if you look down and see one gigantic bar, that’s between you and your pancreas.

Because of all the brown sugar, these bars have a nutty brown color and look suspiciously like they might be made with whole wheat. Rest assured, these do not taste healthy. The butter and brown sugar give a warm, butterscotch flavor that is balanced out by the tartness of the rhubarb and the zinginess of the lemon. They taste like a blondie with benefits.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

In the kitchen with Eric Alexander

Eric Alexander, Chef de Cuisine, Unwined in Milford, began his culinary journey in Rhode Island. Cooking in Newport, Eric embraced local ingredients and crafted dishes that were popular with both the locals and culinary circles. Then, at Johnson & Wales University, Eric dove into both the art and the practical side of gastronomy while polishing his cooking skills. He worked at Catalyst in Boston, Branch Line and Disney World, gaining experience in fine dining, large-scale culinary operations, seasonal ingredients and farm-to-table practices. Returning to New England, Eric continued developing menus and crafting culinary experiences as a personal chef before bringing his wealth of culinary knowledge to the Unwined team as Chef de Cuisine. His wife helps run a shelter and they foster and train dogs together, and have three dogs of their own. Seeunwinednh.com.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

My must-have tool is good spoons. They are useful for tasting, stirring, scooping food, and to help maintain consistent portioning.

What would you have for your last meal?

A Quarter Pounder with cheese, a 20-piece order of nuggets, a large order of fries and a chocolate shake.

What is your favorite local eatery?

Ansanm. Their food is incredible, and their plating is beautiful.

Who is a celebrity you would like to see eating at Unwined?

Comedian Dave Smith; he is a hilarious comedian and a smart guy.

What is your favorite item on your menu?

I like the rib-eye. Steak and potatoes is a timeless combination, and a good Bordelaise sauce is one of the best things there is.

What is the biggest food trend you see in New Hampshire right now?

Hyper-local sourcing is a trend that I am seeing. A lot of restaurants are trying harder to support their local farmers.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

My favorite thing to cook at home is whatever my wife wants.

Sumac Yogurt
From Eric Alexander

2 cups Greek yogurt
1 clove of garlic, microplaned or finely minced
1 Tablespoon sumac powder
juice of 1 lemon
zest of ½ lemon
salt to taste

Gather and measure all ingredients, then combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir until combined.

Hippo Note: Sumac is a sour spice from the Middle East. This yogurt would be an excellent side dish to anything spicy or Mediterranean.

Perfecting gluten-free bread

Dishon Bakery crafts artisanal bread loaves without the wheat

Evan Lang described his perfect, platonic ideal of a loaf of bread.

Made of flour, water, yeast and salt, it “would have a thick crust to give it a little bit of character,” he said, “baked pretty dark — caramelized in a way that you get flavor also from the crust. “The crumb should be relatively open. It should not fall apart; it should stay together, and it should not be gummy, meaning if you take the knife and you cut into it, we don’t want anything stuck on the blade.”

One of Lang’s missions in life is to make that bread, but without any gluten. At Dishon Bakery in Manchester, he is doing it.

Gluten is a stretchy protein found in wheat and a few other grains that helps give conventional bread its texture. As yeast ferments various nutrients in wheat flour, it gives off carbon dioxide gas, which is trapped by the stretchy gluten fibers in bread dough, allowing the dough to puff up — what bakers call “rise.” Unfortunately, some people — those with celiac disease, for instance — can’t digest gluten, and others choose not to eat it for nutritional reasons, so for bakers like Lang the trick is to find a way of duplicating gluten’s stretchiness without the actual gluten.

“If you go to the supermarket and you check out the gluten-free bread there, it’s not great,” Lang said. “It’s either small or crumbly. And if you’re looking at the ingredients, it’s more like cake; it’s full of sugar, it’s full of starches. We’re creating a product that’s a little more artisanal — kind of like real bread.” The secret, he said, is a slow, cold fermentation, and high hydration — meaning that his dough has more water in it than conventional wheat breads.

“Traditionally, bread and pizza have different hydration percentages,” he explained, “from 60 percent up to 100 percent for really, really Neapolitan-style pizza. “Our breads are all over 100 percent hydration.” This means that Dishon’s bread dough has more water than flour in it. By fermenting it slowly, at a low temperature, Lang gives it time to completely incorporate all that water.

Lang’s dough starts with brown rice, sorghum and millet flours — all gluten-free grains — and potato and tapioca starch, then builds the dough up to the point where it can be treated much like wheat dough.

“We bake on a stone like regular bread,” he said. “Traditionally gluten-free bread is kind of like a batter. It’s baked in a tin and ours are baked free-form on the stone.”

Dishon Bakery started as a cottage business in New Jersey in 2022.

“We were selling in farmers markets, and we very quickly outgrew that,” Lang remembered. “We moved to Philadelphia and we were baking in a commercial kitchen there and doing a lot of wholesale, continuing with farmers markets and shipping online. We were doing a pretty good online business. People would order online, we’d package it up and ship it out. We moved up here and we re-evaluated what we were doing.” The Langs decided to focus more on face-to-face interactions with their customers. “Since we did have enough demand for the product, it made no sense for us to sell more [wholesale]. So we’re going to try here to exclusively do retail, direct to consumer.”

Many gluten-free bakeries produce mostly sweet products — cookies, cakes, pastries and so on — but Dishon focuses almost exclusively on bread products. Lang keeps a freezer case with other gluten-free products for customers who are looking for something less bready.

“We have sweets that are New Hampshire-based,” Lang said. “We want to give them an outlet here. None of them are based in Manchester. So this brings their product to Manchester and also allows us to fill the case with products that we don’t do and we don’t specialize in.”

Dishon Bakery
915 Elm St., Manchester
Open Thursday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Orders can be placed online at dishonbakery.com

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