Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice, a martin Foundation of Elkhart celebrating the Spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Up until now, Nora Seed's life has been full of misery and regret.

So full of regret, she wonders if she can go on.

Today we will meet her and her favorite librarian with my guest, Susan Elrod, to discuss Matt Haig's The Midnight Library.

Let's welcome my guest, Susan Elrod, chancellor of Indiana University, South Bend.

Welcome.

I'm welcoming--welcoming you here right now.

I'm happy to be here.

I appreciate the invitation.

Well, and I'm glad that you suggest this book.

You suggested it.

What was it about this book that pulled you in?

Well, I love books about time travel or different times.

And so while this book doesn't--it kind of has time travel in it, certainly multiple lives over different time periods.

And so I thought that might be interesting.

Well, and it certainly is, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

It's quite a technique.

Before we go on with the book, let's talk about what we're going to prepare.

Tell us what you're doing and why.

Well, when you mentioned that this book might be uncomfortable for people, and so we thought we'd make some comfort food.

And you described what you were going to be preparing.

I thought this carrot orange salad would be a wonderful compliment.

Bring some color to the meal.

But also this salad is from my mother.

So how comforting is a recipe that you grew up with and your mother making all the time?

You have no regrets about this salad.

No, I love this salad.

Well, and I'm going to make some potato leek soup.

This takes place in England.

And of course, they love their potato leek soup with onion.

And then I'm going to make some coronation sandwiches.

They're English sandwiches.

And they were invented at the time of Queen Elizabeth's coronation and very popular for teas and special occasions.

And we've--I've sort of made them a little more simple today.

So why don't you get started and show us what you're going to do with the Cuisinart?

Okay.

This is one of my favorite kitchen devices.

And this particular one is I can't even remember how old it is.

So this carrot orange salad consists of grated carrots, sections of orange, some dried cranberries and a little bit of sugar.

So it's also very simple.

So I've already grated some of the carrots and I like to grate anything actually with the Cuisinart carrots in particular, because the secret to this salad is the moisture from the carrots and the oranges.

And so I never buy the precut, pre-shredded carrots.

I always shred them in the Cuisinart.

They have sort of a dry consistency.

They're too dry.

Yeah.

And so you could probably bring them to life with some water, but it's better just to take fresh carrots and grate them in this way.

So if it's okay with you, I'm going to make a little noise.

Go ahead and make a little noise.

Right.

Just like that.

It's so fast.

It really is.

Oh, my gosh.

I don't know how people live without these.

So while you're doing that, I'm starting my--my sauce here with flour and butter, and I will add some vegetable broth to some chopped up leeks, chopped potatoes, which I have pre boiled and some onions.

And we'll let that cook for about 25 minutes.

So this is definitely comfort food, any kind of a cream sauce or as the base of a soup, it lends a sort of warmth and comfort as well.

I'm going to add some of the vegetable broth now.

And at the end we'll add the milk.

And this is supposed to be about three and a half cups.

So here we go.

And I can already smell those leeks.

They smell so fragrant.

You know, this has onions, too.

So we have a double--double whammy of flavor here of potency.

So you're going--you've got your carrots all ready.

I have the carrots all grated.

And so the next thing I'm going to do is peel and section an orange.

So I always like to start my orange peeling by cutting off the ends, you know, because it's kind of hard to get started if you--and then I use sometimes I peel with a knife, sometimes I peel with my thumb.

Today I'll peel with my thumb, see what kind of a mess I can make.

And it depends on the orange that you have that.

Some of them, it's like you think you're pulling off a leather suitcase or tearing it apart.

And, you know, with an orange, you never really know what's going to be on the inside.

This one actually looks nice and juicy.

So that's again, good.

You want you want some juice with your orange.

So I'm going to make an even bigger mess here as I section this orange.

While you're doing that, I'm adding my potatoes and I'm going to turn up the heat now.

So I know I--since I haven't burned the butter, which is the first test of talking, making a sauce, and then I'm going to add some onions and now we can let them out of the bag and not cry here in the studio.

So about a half of chopped onion.

And then I want to--I have four leeks that I've cut up horizontally, use the lightest part of the leak, the lightest green, and I'll chop up some more of this and add it to this base, and then we can let this cook for twenty-five minutes.

And I just want these a little smaller.

Have you--do you like leek soup?

I do.

I love potatoes.

Leeks.

I never had this growing up.

It just wasn't an American thing to do.

And my family, just didn't have that kind of soup.

So I find it very, very good.

Yeah.

Now, getting back to the book, what?

I'm going to wash my hands really quick.

Well, please do.

I'm all messy with orange.

So, let me just do that.

And so we'll put this in.

This is already starting to boil.

We'll cook these together, cook it down.

Then at the end, we'll add--we'll add some milk and some salt and pepper.

More salt and pepper and then a little bit of curry powder and coriander and the English like a little kick of Indian.

They have some of the best Indian restaurants in the world.

And that's, of course, it was part of their empire.

And many Indians came to London.

So here we are.

We're starting this.

I'll chop up a few more.

But let's get back to the premise of this book.

We talked about regrets and the grass is always--might be greener on the other side.

What is the basis of Matt's story here?

What does he say about regret?

Well, you know, I think Matt himself has had some challenges with, I don't know if you would say regrets, but he's had struggled with depression himself.

And so I think maybe this book was a bit of self therapy for him.

Maybe--maybe it was his way of helping him self through some of the struggles that he was having.

And so the whole idea behind the book is Nora regrets everything in her life, you know, and the last straw is her cat dies.

And she thinks she's responsible.

Right.

And so she just says, 'That's it.

I can't go on'.

She was--well, she was so good at so many things in her life.

Right.

And somehow she didn't choose the thing that she really loved or she would have--something would boomerang.

Her dad wanted her to be an Olympic swimmer, and she could have been and she could have been a scientist, a glaciologist.

A musician in a rock band.

A philosopher, a philosopher.

She could have been any of those.

And instead of saying, I'm going to follow my bliss, I'm going to find the most important thing that appeals to me.

She sort of collapsed, didn't she?

She did.

Under the weight, I think, of all those expectations.

Expectations of her father, of her life.

She put all--she put some of them on herself.

Absolutely.

Like so many of us do.

Yes.

And we think we have to be better.

If you come from a very achieving family, they have expectations of what you're going to do and that you must succeed.

And that itself is such a burden.

But I think that you must succeed in their view.

Yes.

Because success means something different to every individual.

One of my favorite parts of the book is all of the Thoreau quotes.

But you know, you must go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

Your dreams may be different than those of your parents or your families.

And we tell that to students all the time when we're advising them so that they--they're so young and full of potential.

You want them to be able to follow their dreams and and pursue what is interesting to them, because they're going to be the happiest if they do that.

And it almost seems like their advisors have to almost be psychologists.

Yes, there's a lot of that.

I would think so.

I mean, somebody wants to come in and be a renowned physicist, but they really have trouble with science and math.

And they--they're so worried and they have everybody in the family is either been a doctor or a physicist.

And my son had friends that had that kind of pressure.

And so we find--now we got this all set.

Now I can cook and we can talk.

And I better turn it down so it doesn't burn, because that's not pretty either.

So she is overwhelmed by all these things and she thinks of ending her life.

That's how depressed she becomes over this and the whole mechanics of this midnight library.

She can go into the library, she can choose a book that would reflect a choice she could or should have made or might have made.

And we explore all these alternative lives.

Her life as a rock star.

Yeah.

Her life as a glaciologist.

Yes.

And there there's little vignettes of what might have happened.

Well, we are going to continue preparing here and we're going to take a little break, continue with our preparation.

And in the meantime, we want to show you a list of books written by Matt Haig.

We'll be right back.

My guest today is Susan Elrod, chancellor of Indiana University, South Bend.

And our book is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

And if you haven't read it, I suggest you read it.

It will affect someone in your life, I'm sure.

And the second part here, we're going to be making some English sandwiches.

These tea sandwiches or sandwiches you take on a picnic and mine is made of a chicken that I poached yesterday.

And I'm adding yogurt and mayonnaise.

Some celery, we'll have some chutney in here.

This is a very English touch.

Chutney, and then some--well, I've got it right here, curry powder that we'll add.

And then we'll put a bed of lettuce.

And in this instance, it's arugula.

We'll put it on the bread, add the touch, and that will be our little tea sandwich.

And I guess there was a PBS show that had a wedding in a castle where the whole reception was made up of these tea sandwiches, some salads and lots of champagne.

Lots of champagne to celebrate.

Yes.

So tell us what you're going to do to finish your salad here.

So I've already grated the carrots.

And what I'm going to do now is cut these orange sections into three individual sections about an inch long.

You just and this salad is so adaptable because you can use as many carrots or oranges as you need to to make it whatever size.

And if you're feeding a big group, you can just grate more carrots, add another orange.

And so this is a really adaptable salad.

And again, what I love about it is it's so juicy.

So you've got the juice from our specially grated carrots and now this is a pretty juicy orange.

And then I have orange flavored dried cranberries.

I get these from Trader Joe's, love them, and sometimes I plump them where I just boil a little water in a pan and then put them in, let them turn--turn the fire off and then let them sit and then drain.

That makes them even juicier, but you can put them in without that.

And then the last piece of the salad is just about a teaspoon or so of sugar.

Oh, maybe we'll go a little more, and that draws the juices out even more of the carrots and the oranges and the cranberries.

And so if you really want juicy, dried fruit, sometimes I use raisins also.

Then you just let it sit for a few hours and then the dried fruit will soak up the juices as well.

And that is the salad.

I like the freshness of it.

We're used to seeing some of these ingredients in Jell-O or isn't added to some of their salad.

And this is the fresh stuff right there, the good stuff.

And it's beautiful, too.

And I would use those plumped cranberries in so many salads.

I love to put them in a green salad.

So great.

They're one of my favorite things to add.

Yes.

If it's not in your repertoire.

Go out and buy a bag of them.

You can buy them at Trader Joe's so you can buy them anywhere.

Anywhere.

Okay.

I've been adding some yogurt and mayonnaise to the chicken that I've chopped up and I will add some chopped celery.

We've got to have a little crunch and we will add even a little bit of a chopped green onion.

And the interesting thing is there are a lot of flavors in this.

Nora had a lot of lives.

Oh, she did.

This is for this life.

This for that life.

There we go.

Getting back to those lives.

You know, we do visit many of these lives she could have chosen.

And after seeing all of these lives of what really would have happened if you had married Dan or if you had become a scientist or what did she find out?

What was the reaction of investigating the alternatives to what of what would or could or should have?

Right.

Well, for example, in the case of Dan, who she didn't marry in her route life, as it's called, she visits a life where she did marry Dan and she realizes that she made the right decision in her route life by not marrying Dan.

She realizes that Dan didn't turn out to be who she thought he was going to be.

Yes, he had a lot of hidden--.

He had--.

Traits.

He did.

And so she could be relieved about that.

So that was a regret she could cross off the book.

Yes, because in this midnight library, the librarian gives her initially this big, heavy book of regrets and she kind of goes through them and relives or lives what she could have done.

And what she might--what she regrets not doing in many cases.

And very often she finds out, 'Well, you know, that wouldn't have helped me in my life'.

So maybe I don't really regret that.

And throughout the book, the book of Regrets becomes lighter.

She's relieved of the burden of regret.

And I'm going to add a little something here, some mango chutney.

I love mango chutney.

And I use this in other dishes.

I just think chutney was a great English invention.

Of course, it's really Indian.

And we'll add that to the sauce here before we make our sandwiches.

And I've added some, yes, green onion, and now I'm going to add a little coriander and curry.

Curry is--gives a kick to these sam--these sauces.

I was doing it the other day and I couldn't taste the curry and I thought, well, this time I'm really going to kick in with it.

And a little coriander again, the influence of the Indian cuisine.

So actually, she also--I think she was really interested in music, found out being a rock star wasn't all it added up to be.

In fact, it was miserable.

Right.

She--I think she committed or tried to commit suicide in that life.

And her--.

If I remember.

And she heard that her brother had and they had communicated it because she was flying all over the world.

So that was another regret she could toss.

She could lift.

What about the scientist?

Right.

So one of my favorite chapters as a scientist, of course, was when she picked the life where she had become a glaciologist.

And so she was up at the very top of the world in Norway, and that's where she met Hugo, another slider.

So this was another person who was going through his regrets.

Yes.

And he actually liked sliding around from life to life and was not quite ready to give up sliding for his own life.

I find that interesting; slider.

At first, you have to kind of see this as sliding in one life and out.

And today I think more and more young people are sliders.

They don't stick with the same job because the jobs change so quickly and they have some talents.

If maybe you're a musician and you want to be in a rock band, maybe that'll come a little later.

When you play in a band besides being an accountant or, you know, things of that nature.

So she finds out that maybe 'I don't have so many regrets after all'.

And I think Hugo thinks of himself as being part of the multiverse, where there's multiple versions and he's getting detached.

Should I start buttering?

Yes.

Why don't you do that?

Yeah.

And then I'll bring this over and we'll start, I think what we'll do and then put a little lettuce on the buttered--buttered bread here and I'm using a little bit of a baguette roll.

I want her to try this.

I could have used a baguette and sliced it.

I could have used white bread.

And I'm not a great lover of white bread.

So if we cut up some brown bread here and I actually saw it in the English recipe book.

So this would be great with tea, coffee, a little bit of sherry.

So I'm checking on this wonderful link and potato and onion soup and I have to add some milk to it, some of the final--final touches before we get our one out to whip it up.

And we've just passed the coronation mix to you that has the chicken and the mayonnaise.

Avocado--not avocado.

There's no avocado.

Why did I say that?

Maybe in another life.

In another life, I used avocado.

With little green--our little green onions and--wonderful.

Am I doing this correctly?

Yes, that looks great.

So great.

And we've got this turn-- I'm going to let this just sort of heat here.

Actually, it's not a good idea to use an immersion blender when the soup is boiling hot.

We could have serious scene here of regret, too.

So we'll let will let that kind of settle down a little bit.

I could serve it that way.

Chunky.

I like chunky leek soup.

It calls for the immersion blender and we'll see.

Maybe we'll do it as it is.

How are you doing here?

Good.

Looks good.

Yes.

Making sandwiches.

Mm.

There's hardly any--you don't have enough room, do you?

Maybe you do.

Okay.

We're going to take a little break.

We're going to invite you to our sort of English tea in celebration of comfort, family and a life empty of regrets, but a full life nevertheless.

And we'll be right back.

Today, our book has been The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

And my illustrious guest is the chancellor, Susan Elrod of Indiana University, South Bend.

A pleasure having you.

It was wonderful to be on the show.

You're a natural.

A real natural.

I love to cook.

Yes, I can tell that.

And you have, I'm sure, the best interests of your students at heart.

And I can--I can feel that.

And--and that's important part of this book.

And that's one of the things I enjoyed about the book.

Knowing your limits, knowing what you can do, finding someone to help you and don't be forced into thinking you have to be perfect in everything every minute of the day.

I don't know.

That was my--that's what I took from the book.

What did you take?

Well, you know, I think this is an interesting time to read this book.

We're coming out of the pandemic and people are thinking about their lives in different ways.

And so I think it's a nice book to read to help you maybe spend some time, be patient as you're thinking ahead to what you may or may not do, the choices that you might make.

I think especially students who--who need to follow their passions, follow their bliss.

Their bliss, that is--that's very important.

And maybe your bliss is cooking.

Maybe you are going to be a chef.

Maybe you're going to be a scientist or a musician, but stick with that which pleases you and makes you feel good about yourself.

And I think we made some food to go along with this today, some comfort food to ease us on down the road, right?

Yes.

The road of life.

I just want to mention that I made, with your help, some English coronation sandwiches, as I said before.

These were developed during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and served with various salads and champagne, of course, and some nice hot soup, potato leek, onion soup.

And tell us about your salad.

And I made a carrot orange salad that also has orange flavored dried cranberries, a recipe from my mother, which is very comforting.

Very comforting.

And hope you can sing the song, 'I don't regret a thing'.

Edith Piaf.

'Je ne regrette rien'.

But, you know, so you have a few regrets along the way.

But we just say, suck it up, Sergeant.

Right.

Keep going.

Learn from them and move on.

Just keep going, too.

Yes, but I liked the book.

Did you?

I love the book.

I loved reading it.

At a second time, even I got more out of the book the first time through, I thought, well, we all know how this is going to end.

She's going to get back to her roots life.

And, you know, it's all going to be good.

But the second time I read it, there were more nuances to these other lives and regrets and symbols.

So it was great.

She did manage to move on.

And we're certainly glad you joined us again today, and thank you for joining us on Dinner and a Book.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guest.

I loved it.

And remember, good food, good friends, good books make for a very good and fulfilling life.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice, a martin Foundation of Elkhart celebrating the Spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.