long live the subjunctive

There’s a fantastic feature on the NYT’s Times Topics blog called After Deadline, which explores questions of grammar, usage, and style as encountered by NYT writers and editors.

Today’s topic happens to be one of my favorite: the subjunctive mood.

Corbett writes:

It’s confusing, it’s widely ignored and in most cases it’s indistinguishable from other verb forms. So should we give up on the subjunctive mood? I say, no!

Hear, hear! He then goes on to note a couple of recent missteps by the Times, including:

Google, the leader in Web search services and advertising, argues that if reading news online was closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines, people would read more.

Generally use the subjunctive for a hypothetical condition: “if reading news online were closer.” (Or make it all indicative: “If reading news online IS closer … people WILL read more.)

It seems that pop songs are among the worst offenders when it comes to subjunctive misuse. For instance, take “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls. When they say “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me,” what they really mean to say is “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend were hot like me.” As if I needed another reason to hate this song.

The list of abuses goes on:

• What if God was one of us (Joan Osbourne, “One of Us”)
• I wish I was beautiful (Counting Crows, “Mr. Jones”)
• Damn, I wish I was your lover (Sophie B. Hawkins, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”)
• I'd like to think if I was I would pass (The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get”)
• I wish I was special (yes, even my beloved Radiohead, “Creep”)
• If only I was sure (The Cure, “Close to Me”)
• If I was to say to you girl we couldn't get much higher (The Doors, “Light My Fire”)

It's just like me to dwell on the negative. Can anyone name a song that actually uses the subjunctive correctly?

Here are some resources for further reading:

Subjunctivitis
Subjunctive (from Garner's Modern American Usage)
Grammar Girl: Subjunctive Verbs

Also, the delightful animal alphabet poster up top comes from Lorena Siminovich at Petit Collage.

forks print

Today I received my limited edition forks print from Julia Rothman, one of my favorite artists.

I love it. It makes our kitchen look so much more cheerful.

Also available in Julia's online shop is a new print depicting a quartet of Louis armchairs. True story: I majored in interior design as a young college freshman and had to learn all about these chairs (and other chairs). Then they killed the program the following semester and that made me really sad.

my pride and joy

We picked this up in July at the Le Creuset outlet in Camarillo. As if we needed to add a huge piece of cast iron to everything else we had to lug across the country, right? But it was a Le Creuset dutch oven! At 40% off and then some. When all was said and done, we were able to snag this 9-qt wonder for less than $200.

Tonight we took it on its maiden culinary voyage and made Red Chile Rice with Shrimp and Bacon from Rick Bayless's cookbook Salsas That Cook. Rick's recipe calls for a batch of Mellow Red Chile Salsa, which I'm sure is fantastic, but we decided to use up some leftover salsa we froze when we made chicken enchiladas a couple weeks ago.


To make this dish, you have to fry up some bacon and then fry the rice IN THE BACON FAT. This is very much in keeping with my new Southern lifestyle. Mmm.

millions of peaches

When we were getting ready to leave Santa Barbara I went through our cupboards and found some old canned vegetables. Western Family. You know, from Utah. From when I lived there five years ago.

I chucked the ancient stuff and decided that I need to try harder to use the other things I have that aren't past their shelf life, such as:


Canned sliced peaches. For some reason I own like 10 cans of this product.

Result:


Southern Peach Cobbler (click on link for how-to). I should probably be wary of the sheer amount of butter in this recipe, but I live in the south now so I'm just gonna roll with it.

Pretty tasty, and the easiest baked treat to put together if you're in a hurry. Or just lazy. Only one bowl! Six ingredients! (The original recipe had five, but I added one teaspoon of cinnamon to my version.)

Does anyone have a favorite canned peach-friendly recipe to share?

ETA: I baked the cobbler in an 8"x8" glass casserole dish and that seemed to work out pretty well.