This Must Be the Place

A Thought I Had While Running

2012-01-26T13:46:00.000-05:00

It is easier to speed up than to slow down.

At least while you're running on a treadmill. Go faster, then a bit faster, and you don't have attention to spare for much of anything besides breathing. Slow down, and you suddenly notice how tired your legs are, how much you really want to stop. There must be a use for this, right?

A Thought I Had While Walking

2012-01-26T11:43:00.000-05:00

Heading from the office to the T station the other night, I used to want to be a writer ran through my head, and then I thought, That would be a horrible, horrible thing to ever say out loud.

Might make a good opening line, though. Keep on keeping on.

Keeping It Real

2012-01-14T06:54:00.000-05:00

Halfway through January, and everyone is still optimistic. My friends' Facebook updates are full of gym visits, and blogs overflow with gentle redirections to healthy fare after the holiday blitz of indulgence. Everyone is keeping a firm eye on their budget and their waistline again, as we swing back toward a more balanced way of living.

I don't actually have anything against processed foods. I know some people who have gone on a cleansing binge and threw out every last item, but I require my little treats, and also possess a four-year-old who won't eat anything other than canned ravioli right now (this too shall pass, I remind myself almost daily). It is generally sensible, however, from both a dietary and budgetary standpoint, to make sure that processed items are a small category on your shopping list.

Time is obviously a factor as well (the adage "good, fast, cheap, pick two" definitely comes into play), but this is where the planning comes in. Think ahead, use your leftovers wisely, and you won't find yourself falling back on "convenience" anything, because you'll already have it. Which is awesome.

So here's the menu plan this week:
Saturday - Potato Frittata; Butternut Squash Soup
Sunday - Roast Chicken; Butternut Squash Pilaf *
Monday - Black Pepper Tofu **
Tuesday - North Woods Bean Soup ***
Wednesday - Orecchiette with Roasted Cauliflower
Thursday - Pork Fried Rice ****
Friday - Fish TBD

* Using up the rest of the squash, something I am generally horrible about.
** To which I will add some veggies, and make some extra rice.
*** Lydia's pick for the week
**** Using up the extra rice made earlier in the week.

Since we have a three-day weekend, I may have time to make some chicken stock or marinara sauce--or even to bake something, which it feels like I haven't done in weeks.

Probably because I haven't done it in weeks.

Processed foods required? I'm not sure if pancetta and kielbasa count as processed. Pasta technically is, and so is rice if you want to get picky about it. I'll pick up some canned broth in case I don't have time to make it after all. The tofu dish requires cornstarch, which I'm almost out of. I do rely on canned beans for the soup. Pretty much all real food here, though. The produce aisle part of my list is much longer than any of the others = success in this book.

I'd also like to direct you to the Tummy Treasure blog, where an interesting experiment in budget-friendly meal-planning is going on. I generally throw caution to the winds while I shop, and while I doubt I will ever be as disciplined as she is (unless forced to by circumstances), I find reading this series to be a helpful reminder that it's not actually necessary to spend a small fortune to put good (real) food on the table.

2012 - Off to A Good Start

2012-01-10T13:21:00.000-05:00

Discipline is not a fun word. It seems to have the word "slip" built mockingly into it, and it feels that way in the mouth. It's a word like the last bit of a soap bar; you would unwrap a new one, but feel guilty for wasting what's already there. It's also a word I mistype almost every single time.

Until they come up with a way to make everything that is good for us fun, however, it is pretty much the only way forward. A fair amount of research points to the idea that discipline works like a muscle. The good part of that is that the more you do it, the easier it gets. The bad part is that just like your muscles, it gets tired and eventually quits when overused, and while a sprained discipline won't put you on crutches, it can derail projects and lead to moping.

I do not like moping. I do like feeling like I'm making progress toward my goals. Therefore, some studious application of discipline has been in order this past week. It's been a good week, an encouraging week. Part of that comes from knowing myself well enough to know where my discipline is likely to wear out. I like being productive, but that doesn't mean I like working harder than I have to. Hence, my efforts to make discipline as easy for myself as I can.

First off, there's going to the gym. Yes, I joined along with the rest of the herd. I know from years of painful experience that the only way I will make it over there is to make the process as free of conscious thought as possible. I go early in the day, when there are no realistic excuses I can make to avoid it (not being able to sleep past five is in this case an asset). I pack my stuff and lay out my sweats the night before, so that all I have to do is pack a lunch, grab my ridiculous number of bags, and trudge out to the bus stop.

Packing a lunch (and breakfast, for that matter) is important for both fitness and financial goals. The most important thing I did for this effort so far? Stocking up on yogurt. I will only eat one kind of yogurt, and it's a kind that my normal store doesn't carry. I can get through my day on a half a bagel and a sandwich or whatever leftovers are around, but only if I have my yogurt in between. If I can't, then I'm going to eat an entire bagel for breakfast, and then I may as well go out for lunch since my day has already been calorically blown. I do realize this is silly, but there's no addendum on "know thyself" that says "but only if what you find out is not too silly." By giving myself this one thing (which is even good for me!), I make it easier for myself to eat decently during the day.

I do allow myself treats. There is no reason to be ridiculous about things, after all. I have adopted vending machine pretzels as my standard afternoon snack, which is probably better than M&Ms, and I give myself the occasional visit to Dunkin Donuts.

The third discipline is writing. This is actually a lot more difficult than getting myself to the gym, but it's been pretty successful this week. Inspired by this post on Terrible Minds, I had to admit that I spend an awful lot of time doing things that are not in fact writing. So now, after the gym, I sit down at my desk. I open up my document and -- this is the important part -- nothing else. No email, no IM, no browser. Just my book. I set the timer on my phone for one hour, and I work until that hour is up (also I drink tea and eat my bagel, which tastes pretty damn good by that time, let me add).

Can I keep this up? Remains to be seen. So far, it's been a good month. I've been to the gym every (week)day. I've revised the first 3,000 words of Fury's Flight, nearly 1/3 of what I need to apply for Taos. I haven't gone out for lunch even once, though I think I will need to schedule in some breaks in that; boredom does not make for a happy, productive me.

Finally, in what is perhaps a fit of insanity, I've signed up for the new Tuesdays with Dorie project, which starts in February. The fact that they're every other week this time was a big motivator; I should be able to bake twice a month! Serendipitously, while I was thinking about whether or not I should try to participate, my mother let me know that she had a copy of Baking with Julia that she had picked up free somewhere and wasn't using. The book has obviously been well-used by someone, and I look forward to adding my own sprinkles of flour and spatters of chocolate to its pages. Although I did a lot of baking for the holidays, most of it happened in something of a frantic blur, and it's been something of a sugar drought since then (I did mention that treats are good?).

If I was doing a Happiness Project, it seems that

January = Body & Writing
February = Kitchen (& Writing, since you are supposed to blog about the recipes)

I'm sure I will think of something to do in in March. With writing.

Here, We Write Stories

2012-01-04T15:25:00.000-05:00

Once in a while a realization smacks you alongside the head like a loving parent, bringing to light something you already half-knew but never understood until that moment. I don't know if I will be able to set myself a schedule for blogging, but at least I finally feel that I know what was missing.

Winter Solstice, 2011

2011-12-22T08:05:00.000-05:00

Feeling rather pensive today, standing at the brink of the new year. There are so many things I want to do, sometimes it feels overwhelming.

Not for long, usually -- I am by nature or training a planner, and when things look insane, my instinct is to break them down, to chunk them out, to find a path toward the goal. At least, I do that sometimes, with things I really care about. Other things, well... they can fall by the wayside. I am wondering if I should take a page from The Happiness Project and try a different thing every month? Something to consider during the holiday week

Generally speaking, I'm a pretty happy person, but one thing I've never been happy with (for long) is my productivity. I am often busy, but am I busy in good and useful ways? How will I look back on this time in ten years, or twenty?

I have some firm goals in mind for 2012. I will revise Fury's Flight; I will apply to writing workshops; I will take up the next book (and find a title for the dratted thing). My Christmas present from D* this year is a precious one: time to myself. I'm going to use it to take a French class in the spring. I've renewed the gym membership that lapsed while I was pregnant with Mimi.

Beyond that? Things get vague. Things get, "I'd really like... someday." I'd like to learn to can, and to quilt. Yesterday a friend gave me a book on cheesemaking, even more packed with heady possibilities than most cookbooks. I'd like to plan a monthly day trip somewhere with the kids. I'd like to actually do a 365 project. I'd like to single-handedly revive the art of letter writing, decorate my apartment, learn to dress like an adult, throw dinner parties.

Beyond vagueness, the list devolves into questions. Do I want to listen to NPR, or do I just feel guilty about not being a better informed person, and would doing something about it make me happy? Should I put more time into blogging? Am I doing enough to develop my writer's voice?

Add to list: study the art of the possible.

I have an open notebook, and a spiffy new desk calendar. Time to plan.

2011 Goals Revisited

2011-12-09T08:46:00.000-05:00

As we dive headlong toward the holidays, it seems amazing that the year is already almost over! Time to sit back with a plate of cookies and see how we did.

Do Things
After 2010's "lost summer" and an autumn consumed by a wonderful new small person, this was a major goal, and I'm thrilled to say that it was met and then some. While we didn't get around to everything on my list, we did quite a few things:

Vermont Cheese Festival
Visited friends in CT and ME
Visited family in RI, PA, and VT
Sandwich Fair
Gardner Museum
Walden Pond
Chinatown
Museum of Fine Arts
Museum of Science membership got used a lot (we re-upped for next year)
Nutcracker

So many wonderful memories. I hope we can keep it up next year!

Finances
I had two financial goals this year:

Start saving for the kids' college education. I set up automated deposits for all three of them, and they have been ticking away faithfully. No problem there.
Improve the savings account. This one was an abject failure. I'd like to blame a series of emergencies (the cat, the car) and traveling, but at base I think it comes down to lack of discipline, and I'm going to make that a top priority for '12.

Food
I wanted to try one new recipe a week, and I wanted to blog about them. As I generally do, I started the year out strong and then lost my way. I seem to have reached a zone where I'm not as concerned with trying new recipes all the time; it's nice, but it's not a priority. As for the blog, who knows what I'll end up doing with it, if anything at all. So this area wasn't a big success, but it's also not something I really fret about. We eat well pretty much all the time, and I can be happy about that without stressing myself over it.

Writing
I had two goals for this area, too, and double success! I send out a couple dozen queries for The Inquisitor's Wizard--which netted me absolutely nothing, but I did it, and I have the rejection emails to prove it. I put my shoulder to the wheel and finished a proper draft of Fury's Flight, and then I rejoined critters.com and got myself a half dozen beta readers, who are giving me some very useful feedback.

Observe Birthdays
Umm... I started out well?

So there we have it. Obviously, I can't say that I met all of these goals, but it was a really, really good year. I have a wonderful family and friends, and many things for which to be thankful as we wrap up 2011.

Happy New Year (almost). May 2012 be everything you wish.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-12-01T15:43:00.000-05:00

I was looking through my old posts as I planned the meal for 2011. Last year I was too busy to even write down what I made? Never again! Not that this year was much of a stretch. We have the routine pretty well down, and I didn't even do any cooking ahead (I had planned to, but a gas leak at our place on Sunday put the kibosh on any notion of making rolls or cranberry sauce in advance.)

Appetizers:

Prosciutto and Gruyere Pinwheels
Cheese and crackers
Sweet and Spicy Nuts (recipe below)

Bread Basket:

Golden Pumpkin Walnut Loaf (which no one touched during dinner, perhaps because I forgot to slice it)
Cloverleaf Honey Wheat Rolls

Dinner:

The turkey was slathering under the skin with an entire stick of butter mixed with dried herbs, and cooked in a startlingly short period of time. The gravy was from this recipe and may actually have been my favorite part of the meal.

The following day, having learned from painful experience that if I wait it doesn't happen, I hacked the carcass into pieces, piled them into my stock pot, added carrot, celery, onion, and a few peppercorns, and set it to do its quiet magic while the rest of us went about our day. Only a week later, nearly all of the leftovers have been used.

It was a good day. Until the mouse ran across my stove....

Sweet and Spicy Nuts

1 C sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 large egg white
6 C unsalted nuts - walnuts, pecans, natural almonds, cashews

Preheat to 325. Grease 2 jelly roll pans,

In small bowl, stir first 5 ingredients together. In large bowl, with wire whisk, beat egg white until foamy. Stir nuts into egg white. Add sugar mixture; toss until nuts are thoroughly coated.

Divide nuts between jelly roll pans, spreading evenly. Bake 25-27 minutes or until golden brown and dry, stirring twice. (Check on them, you may need to rotate pans, one of mine gets done quicker than the other). Transfer nuts to wax paper to cool.

Store tightly covered at room temperature up to one month.

... And Done!

2011-11-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

50,000 words, 29 days. A three-time winner is me:

It's a horrible draft even by NaNo standards, but it'll sit there in the queue until I have time to give it some proper thought. As long as I keep doing this every November, I will never be without a book to work on--assuming that I don't give up this entire hobby at some point as a ridiculous waste of time, as sometimes sounds like a good idea.

I have lots of food posts to do, and maybe now I will have time to write them.

30,000 Words Under the Sea

2011-11-19T07:27:00.001-05:00

Or something like that. NaNoWriMo is... well, not exactly cruising along this year. It's been something of a struggle, though I've never been more than a day's wordcount behind. The story is pretty workmanlike at this point; I've got ideas for things I can do with it when the day comes to draft it properly--which I think I will do, though it's going to have to wait for Fury's Flight and then Go before it gets furnished. I could probably have just as well spent the time doing a proper outline and some research. On the other hand, I am coming up with some things along the way that I might not have if I were doing this more systematically. I guess I am halfway between pantsing and plotting.

Terrible Threes?

2011-11-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

I read on another blog comment earlier this week that three years is the average lifespan of a blog. Maybe if I can keep this one going for another few months things will perk up.

The Empire Divided Must Unite

2011-11-15T09:38:00.000-05:00

Having made a brief experiment with separating out my interests into dedicated blogs, I'm moving those posts over to this one.

Weeks of Eating Cheap

2011-10-21T09:35:00.000-04:00

I am incredibly lucky in that for the most part, we don't have to worry about the grocery budget. Every once in a while, though, we have an unusual bill (usually car-related these days) that makes me frown at the amount I've been spending, and vow to cut back a little bit. Then we have a week in which we try to eat from the pantry (which tends to be kind of overstocked, because I never buy one can of something when I can buy three). Here, in no particular order, are my favorite "cheap week" meals:

Pizza. We have homemade dough, mozzarella, and pepperoni already, so kind of a no-brainer. Our oldest recently commented that we've stopped having pizza-and-a-movie nights; perhaps it's time to resume that tradition.
Tacos. One of my guilty pleasures is Old El Paso or Ortega tacos. From an actual box. With iceberg lettuce on top. Using ground beef from the farmer's market makes it all right, doesn't it?
Fritatta. This counts as actual food. A half dozen eggs and a few vegetable odds and ends and you have a meal, albeit a rather slim one for hearty appetites. I will probably try to bake some bread or make a simple soup to go with it. Speaking of which...
Soups. Grab a butternut squash (cheap and abundant at this time of year), or a few potatoes, or a few cans of black beans for that matter.
Chickpea curries. One can of chickpeas, one can of diced tomatoes, seasonings, perhaps some fresh spinach (the only thing you'd need to buy), serve over the starch of your choice.

With no fuss and very little thinking, and one or two "leftovers" nights, there's a week of dinners. Not particularly inspired dinners, perhaps, but tasty and reasonably healthy. My shopping list has a mere 20 items on it, half of which we can probably get at the farmer's market.

Even better would be if I can get myself organized enough to make muffins or something over the weekend.

Oh, Beta Readers....

2011-10-19T09:57:00.000-04:00

I have ten of them signed up to read.

TEN.

My takeaway? That the story sounds different enough to be interesting, and that the first scene promises writing quality that will at least not be torture to endure for 92,000 words.

I have also gotten one very honest negative review of that scene. I can live with that. The book has been through two drafts, but this is just the start of its journey.

Third Draft: Done

2011-10-11T09:57:00.001-04:00

It ended up being somewhat shorter than I had hoped, once I deleted all of the crap scenes I had moved to the end to figure out later. It is however complete, a coherent story from start to finish with no missing scenes or transitions or bits marked "figure this out later." Now to wait and see if anyone on critters.org wants to beta, and to start researching the next novel.

FURY'S FLIGHT

92,000/92,000

Blueberry Crumb Cake

2011-10-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

Just a day after I said I don't cook much right now, what did I end up doing but cooking dinner for a visiting friend. The dinner was Beef Carbonnade. The recipe from my venerable binder of clippings during my years as a Cooking Light subscriber. It delivered (and yes, the weather was hot and sticky here, but we cranked up the air conditioning and pretended that it was properly seasonal). While making the stew, it occurred to me with a frisson of horror that we had nothing at all to serve for dessert.

Acquaintances who hear about my baking frequently want to know why I'm not the size of a house, and the answer is that I don't often actually eat the stuff. I am someone who wants her sweets in the afternoon, the long desert between my early lunch and 6 p.m. dinnertime. After dinner I am busy making sure homework happened and organizing bedtime snacks, and other than the odd miniature chocolate bar I hardly ever eat dessert then. The exception happens when we have company. Somewhere in my mind it is written You shall serve dessert to your guests or give up all claim to being civilized.

The oven, of course, was going to be busy for the two+ hours it took the carbonnade to reduce itself to a molten deliciousness. So I went looking for something that a) I had everything I needed for, b) did not require chilling time or anything else complicated, and c) could be served warmish, since it would have to bake while we ate. That ruled out most cakes and brownies. I didn't have time to fuss around with batches of cookies. I did have a lot of summer fruit in the freezer....

Dorie Greenspan saved my bacon with her crumb cake. No exotic ingredients? Check. Simple to make? Check. Serve warm or room temperature? Check.

Scrumptious? Check!

CRUMBS
5 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/3 c (packed) light brown sugar
1/3 c all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c chopped walnuts

CAKE
1 pint (2 c) blueberries, fresh or frozen (no need to thaw)
2 c plus 2 tsp all-purpose flour, divided
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
2/3 c granulated sugar
grated zest of 1/2 lemon or 1/4 orange
6 Tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter an 8-inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.
Make the crumbs. Put all of the ingredients except the walnuts in a food processor. Pulse until it clumps and holds together when pressed. Transfer crumbs to a bowl. Mix in the walnuts. Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface and refrigerate until needed (up to 3 days).
Toss the blueberries and 2 tsp flour together to coat the berries. Set aside.
Whisk together the remaining 2 c flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
In the bowl of a stand mixer (or another large bowl if using a hand mixer) rub the sugar and zest together with your fingers until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the butter and mix at medium speed until light, about 3 minutes.
Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating for about 1 minute after each. Beat in the vanilla. Dorie says don't worry if it looks curdled.
Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients (in 3 additions) alternately with the buttermilk (in 2 additions).
Gently stir in the berries.
Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth it. Get out the crumb mixture. Break it up with your fingers and scatter over the top.
Bake for 55-65 minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool until just warm or room temperature.

Things I Did with My iPhone in 24 Hours

2011-10-06T09:45:00.000-04:00

Read Facebook
Make a phone call
Read Twitter
Read email
Read a novel (hi D*)

Thank you for everything, Mr. Jobs.

Gilden Latten Bones

2011-09-23T09:56:00.000-04:00

Gilded Latten Bones is the... I don't know, feels like the 50th book in the Garrett, PI series, but Wikipedia tells me there's only 13. From the feel of the ending, I suspect this is intended to be the last one.

The story starts out in traditional noir mystery fashion, and seems fairly promising. There is a bizarre attack on the place he's now sharing with Tinnie, and it looks like an older, wiser Garrett will be hauled back to his old haunts when someone comes close to killing his old friend Morley.

Much as I appreciate learning a new vocabulary word, the series has lost its luster for me. While Cook has done a great job evolving his setting over the course of the series, he hasn't done so much for his protagonist, and his attempts to do so in the course of this story strike me as clumsy. Garrett is still Garrett. The "settled down now" veneer is translucently thin, the problems his now-permanent relationship with Tinnie create seem as tired as Garrett himself, their resolution verges on unnatural (for one thing, it requires the Dead Man to like a woman).

The story is encumbered by the weight of all of the characters it has created over the years, all of which now seem like they have to show up in every book, along with a few new ones. The choppy style seems less like an effect and more like laziness. Two-page chapters? Am I reading a Dan Brown novel? I had to force myself to keep going beyond the first few chapters.

The worst thing? This should have been a great Garrett story. The final adventure, dark deeds at the highest levels of the realm, hideous sorceries lurking in Tun Faire's shadows, a man caught between two women, the case that will require everything he's learned from all of his previous adventures... and instead it falls flat. The pieces never gel, there is never any serious sense of threat. Garrett spends as much time mooning (awkwardly) over his relationships and sorting out minor problems among his friends as he does anything else, gets beat up, sleeps a lot, gets a cold (!), with the result that the actual plot feels like an afterthought. Surrounded by an army of secondary characters, slowed by pointless subplots, the top-heavy story creaks along to a finale in which Garrett has no part to play.

I really, really want to know what his editor thought about this one.

This review also posted to Goodreads.

State of the Novel

2011-09-09T09:55:00.000-04:00

Revisions creep forward.

FURY'S FLIGHT

82,000/100,000

As Always, Julia

2011-09-07T09:54:00.000-04:00

Every summer, we visit the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Most summers, we manage a visit to Meredith, and the Innisfree Bookshop, and do our part toward keeping this fine little business in operation. Now that we have the three kids, we are spending more time and money in the toy section than we used to, but I try to keep my purchases weighted toward the written word. This year's find for me was a delightful volume of letters exchanged between Julia Child and a woman who became her good friend, Avis DeVoto.

I don't generally go in for biography or for recent history, but I found this book absorbing and delightful. The writers' personalities come across brilliantly. It's a fascinating story, not only of how a well-loved cookbook came to be but of the times that saw it come into being. The 50s were not so long ago, but sometimes we think that we know them better than we do. The politics sound awfully familiar (at least we don't have McCarthy to deal with right now!), but in a pre-second wave feminism, pre-food revolution world, the minutia of daily life are strikingly alien.

It's a quick read, and a fun one for anyone interested in Ms Child and her culinary offspring.

The Magic Treehouse #1: Dinosaurs Before Dark

2011-08-31T09:53:00.000-04:00

We have a 7-year-old who is just reaching the point of being able to read chapter books on her own. The Magic Tree House was on a list of recommended summer reading from the school, and came recommended from a friend, so I picked up Dinosaurs Before Dark to see if she would like it. We're up to the third book now, though not without a few battles. She read the first one entirely by herself; since them we've moved to a trading model.

The books are short. Each one has ten chapters, and in each the two main characters (Jack and Annie) visit the Magic Tree House and pick up a book. By making a wish, they are sent to another place and time, where they have a mildly frightening adventure, and then return home. A meta-plot makes itself known in the first book, and continues to build very slowly: Who is the owner of the tree house? Why are the books there? This is useful for holding adult attention if nothing else!

I think these are pretty good books for a young reader with a good basic vocabulary. The writing itself is workmanlike, and I am baffled by Osborne's heavy use of sentence fragments, but the settings are interesting. Osborne isn't afraid to throw challenging words in, but there are no more than a handful of those per volume (precipice stood out in #2, sarcophagus in #3). The individual chapters are very short, so it's easy to get through one a night, or two or three for that matter. Reading them doesn't feel like a chore, and there's a great sense of accomplishment for a new reader in being able to read a whole book. The perils of the characters are quite mild, so I would particularly recommend these for kids with an anxious nature.

State of the Novel

2011-08-15T09:53:00.000-04:00

I ought to use this space for accountability in writing as well as reading, now that I am finding my way back into the world of being productive. My WIP is a genre-blender with the working title Fury's Flight.

FURY'S FLIGHT

80,000/100,000

In addition, I have begun noodling about with ideas for this year's NaNoWriMo project (my third). Just a few notes and ideas, and an Amazon order placed for a book (used) that might be helpful in researching the setting. I have never had to do much research for a book before, so this will be interesting.

The Happiness Project

2011-08-11T09:51:00.000-04:00

In the list of phrases I would use to describe myself and my reading, "self-help books" is pretty much dead last. I've read more Stephen King books (four) than I have read self-help books in my life. A couple of weeks ago, we were in Seven Stars as part of a bookstore-hopping expedition, and The Happiness Project was out on one of the front tables. I picked it up and read a few pages about how cleaning out her closets improved her life. Since I had found the same orderly home = productive mind effect in my own life, I checked out the author's blog. I spent most of the weekend reading her archives, then got the book for Kindle so I could read it on my phone. (Oddly enough, I feel okay buying "practical" books in e-formats, but strongly prefer pleasure books to be physical objects. Perhaps that isn't odd.)

One thing that I think makes this one stand out a bit from most self-help books is that the author (Gretchen Rubin) has actual chops as a researcher (law school is good for something!). The book is well-organized and well-written. Though she knows her audience well enough not to include footnotes, there is an extensive list of pointers for further reading in the back. If you keep up with the news at all, you're likely to find yourself nodding at times and thinking, I remember hearing about that study.

Not only the book, but the project itself is well-organized. Taking one major topic a month, a handful of tangible goals and practical methods to attain them, and a number of inspirational writings, is a good way to go about such a big effort. Rubin addresses ways to keep track of success, and isn't afraid to abandon strategies that aren't working for her. She's adamant that what works for one person may not work for another--in fact, one of the central theses of the book is that what makes one person happy doesn't have to make anyone else happy, and that knowing (and accepting) what makes you happy is a key to achieving it.

I loved this book. I'll almost certainly read it again. Amusingly enough, the experience of reading it alone made me happy. I liked her stories, her commentary, her successes and failures, and most of all I liked her systematic, practical approach, which fits well into my own strategies for life. I don't feel any inclination for a year-long personal overhaul, but I did feel inspired to at least think about what areas of my own life could use work. I joined a few list-making and goal-setting sites, like Day Zero and Listography--not to pressure myself to use them if I ended up not liking them, but just to see what I would come up with. 2011 has been a banner year for getting out of our ruts to see the people we love, and I want to make sure that 2012 keeps it up--without turning into a harried treadmill of obligation that leaves us too tired for our regular lives.

The Happiness Project is not only a blog and a book these days, but includes an online toolkit for anyone looking to make their own resolutions. It's worth looking at if you feel the self-improvement bug, but aren't sure how to go about it.

Virtual Light

2011-08-11T09:49:00.000-04:00

Why yes, I am reading these out of order. I'm going to try something I did in a couple of posts on the old blog, and examine the opening. So many people in the business emphasize the important of the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first chapter.

I can't find a ton to pick apart in this one. This is the sort of description Gibson absolutely excels at, full of tiny, lyrical touches and fearless language. It gives an impressionist glimpse of the world of the book (in SF, it could be argued that the world functions as a main character), perfectly juxtaposing beauty and decay. It draws you in without apparent effort to see what will become of this man, this place. Unfortunately for the reader, the courier described turns out to be not a character at all, but a plot device.

I used the word fractal in conversation the other day. The book is a bit dated that way. I haven't read Virtual Light before, and I bogged down about three quarters of the way through. In the process, I noticed a couple of patterns that showed up in this one and in Idoru.

Gibson relies strongly on impossibly naive observers. Every main character in both of these books has a fish-out-of-water thing going on. It lets him pile on the descriptions, to be a tourist in his own near-future world, but makes it difficult for the characters to be effective actors and occasionally comes across as ridiculous--Rydell's ignorance on many occasions is simply impossible to buy. They don't seem to have any realistic connections to other people, normal friendships or families. They stand to one side and watch, anchorless, puzzled by everything that is going on around them, which is to say, the plot. The bad guys have a lot more on the ball, though they also tend to be featureless and direly uninteresting.

A general historical amnesia seems to be in play. This book is set in 2005, but everyday things from their own recent past are cast as strange almost beyond belief. It's a sort of reverse time-travel effect, where the pre-industrial character is astonished by cars and vacuum cleaners, but considerably less explicable. Factory-produced cigarettes? Cars that ran on gasoline? RVs? How bizarre! It's heavy-handed to say the least, like none of the main characters ever watch TV. There's a lot of time spent on descriptionss, on stuff, but there is an almost total cultural vacuum (yes, despite the presence of Yamazaki, who is supposed to be studying it). Like Idoru, on the whole this reads like notes for a novel, rather than the completed thing. It gives a glance at things I want it to dig into, then gets distracted by its own surface.

I also realized while reading this just how annoying it can be to use italicized speech for emphasis. A couple of minor characters in Virtual Light speak this way. "I haven't seen your friend before." "That storm was just terrible, wasn't it?" "We're a full-service shop...." I had a critiquer once flag me for overusing emphasis in dialog, and I didn't think at the time that it was that big a deal, but I'm definitely going to be more careful about it in the future. I'm not sure it's ever defensible to give such a distracting characteristic to a character so minor that they are more properly a piece of set-dressing than a person.

The plot is not innovative; it's a straightforward technological McGuffin pursuit, which unfortunately is almost the exact same pattern the next book follows, though Virtual Light has far better action scenes. The stakes seem to be high, but he frequently blows the tension, and the ending is so pat, so literally deus ex machina that I found myself wondering if I was misremembering how much I liked the Neuromancer trilogy.

I'm going to give the third one in this series a miss and move on to something different.

Getting Organized (In Theory)

2011-08-08T07:05:00.000-04:00

I had a very odd Sunday: I didn't do anything. D* and the older kids went to church in the morning. It was raining hard. I turned off the air conditioning and opened a lot of windows, listened to the rain and the baby, and read a lot of the Happiness Project archives. In the afternoon I played LEGO with the kids, took videos of L with my phone, and did more reading. The TV didn't go on until after dinner, the air conditioning likewise (if it's too hot the boy can't sleep). I had a bunch of stuff I'd wanted to get to, but nothing really urgent. We'd had lunch guests on Saturday, so the place was reasonably clean already. I don't relax very often; sometimes I wonder if I'm forgetting how.

I enjoyed my reading, not least because I was delighted to find some of my own hard-discovered principles among hers. At least for me, a tidy environment is one sizable component of happiness. Clutter and mess stress me out, and so I am coming to understand that Do it now is an important rule if I don't want to be that way. The important corollary is Do it myself--it's better than either steaming or nagging. It only takes a minute or two to wipe off the stove, to throw away (or recycle) that empty container, to put a book back on the shelf. It makes tackling the major chores easier if the first step doesn't always have to be "declutter the room."

I also like her "spend it out" rule, though I don't think it's a major problem for me--not least because we moved last year, so we've already and recently gone through all of our things and gotten rid of clothes never worn, books never read, and broken objects. Now that we've been here a whole year, I find that I retain this winnowing eye. We have more stuff than can comfortably fit into the space, so I've been shoving some of it into the attic--thinning the book collection, recognizing that the photo albums just won't get updated for a while, since there's nowhere to put them, passing outgrown baby things along promptly--and investing in some storage devices for the rest of it, especially the 10,000 toys we seem to have accumulated.

Here's a list of interesting-looking links I gathered from her:

I asked my mom for a toolbox for Christmas, tired of rummaging through our cardboard box of oddities, hoping I won't stab myself on a rusty screwdriver (which if it isn't a drink, ought to be).

I just realized as I put together the link list--I'm better! I am back to being the me who is energized by having a lot to do, who plans for the future, who wants to accomplish. Whew. One of the things I'm going to put on a list (somewhere) is to buy a sunlamp, so the next dreary spring doesn't knock me for a loop.

30 Foods Meme - Day 2 - Warm Salad of Thyme-Crusted Tuna

2011-08-07T09:32:00.000-04:00

These posts are turning out to be rather widely spaced! We have been very busy this summer, and Ms Greenspan is not doing a prompt every day. For the second day, this was it:

What is one food that you absolutely, completely, totally, and utterly cannot stand? Answer in haiku, please!

My response:

Delicate pink curls
With too many little legs -
Shrimp make me shudder.

Don't like how they look, don't like their texture, don't care for their taste even in highly processed form.

I do like fish, though, and our farmer's market now has a fishmonger! The prices are high, but it's good fish, and the $$ encourage us to practice portion control with our proteins. On one recent visit I got a piece of tuna for no particular reason. A couple weeks later, we set out to "eat down" the freezer in preparation for a week on vacation, and I had to figure out what to do with it. The internet to the rescue again. A moment of searching, a few minutes of paging through the results, and I had a candidate not only for the tuna but for the bag of arugula I had impulse-purchased that morning: Warm Salad of Thyme-Crusted Tuna.

I also had some corn. Corn season is a brief and glorious thing in New England. Who needs madeleines? The sight of corn in its husk, piled anyhow on counters or spilling from bags and bushels, conjures a lazy afternoon heat, cicada song, my grandparents' patio, the rattle of a pot lid as the water begins to boil, greasy fingers and the sweet crunch of that first bite. My favorite farm (okay, one of my favorites...) puts a sign on theirs:

That's the way to get it. I'm not a particularly devoted locavore, but corn on the cob is one thing I will not bother with from the grocery store.

But, back to the tuna. In practice, this was so easy it falls under the "do I even call it a recipe?" category. Arugula plus slivered basil plus good tomato plus balsamic vinaigrette. Tuna plus generous salt and pepper plus thyme. Cook the latter in a very hot pan until it's as done as you like it (ours not being the freshest, I cooked it through).

Put the latter in proximity to the former, and eat it. Much better than shrimp.

New England Tour 2011: Vermont Cheesemakers Festival

2011-07-26T09:12:00.001-04:00

I wish I could remember where I first came across mention of the Vermont Cheesemakers Festival. I do remember thinking "wow, that looks really neat." Last summer it just was not an option -- we were moving, buying a car, having a baby -- but I put it down on my list of things to try to do this year.

And we did! We went! And it was great. Even better, we got to spend the weekend with D*'s awesome sister and her husband, who moved to Burlington last year. I have driven past the city any number of times, but never spent any time there before. It looks like a really great place, and the scenery is jaw-droppingly beautiful.

We drove up on Saturday--the last day of the recent heat wave, and when we got in the temperatures were in the 90s. We unloaded our things and hit the nearest beach. I had no idea there were beaches there, so we weren't prepared, but who needs bathing suits?

Then back home for dinner and a late bedtime for some very tired children.

Some time in the night a thunderstorm passed through and the temperature finally dropped, leaving Sunday clear and crisp and all around the most beautiful weather possible. After the baby's morning nap, we headed over to Shelburne Farms.

The place. Is. Huge. It goes on and on and on. Beautiful lake views!

Ridiculously large buildings!

Cows!

Solar panels!

And, of course, the festival!

I didn't even try to take any pictures of the interior, which was a complete zoo -- a very tasty zoo, a zoo packed with people enjoying themselves to the hilt, but a zoo nevertheless. The two older children were well and truly freaked out by the crowd, and ended up staying outside with their aunt and uncle while D* and I braved the stalls (Mimi in her baby carrier grabbed shirts and loose hair). It was somewhat overwhelming even for us, and after a while we snagged some edibles and joined everyone else for lunch on the grass.

Sans utensils as we were, it was a most primitive repast: hunks ripped off a baguette (from O Bread) with chunks of a soft white cheese (which I think was the Jack from Neighborly, but I might be getting them mixed up). On a beautiful summer day, there is absolutely nothing better than pure, simple foods!

After fortifying ourselves, we dove back into the fray, this time for proper shopping. On reflection, I think was a good approach: an initial tasting swing, and then a second to focus on picking up the ones I liked the best. If you ever get a chance to go to this event, be prepared to spend money! And bring a cooler, which I managed to forget even after I put it on my list of things to pack. After some agonizing, I ended up with four kinds of cheese (mostly cheddars, which I hoped would travel well), some shortbread cookies, chocolate, apple butter, and a second baguette. I didn't really taste any of the wines, but D* sampled a few and proclaimed them all to be on the sweet side.

After that, we took a ride on a tractor-drawn wagon up to the Farm Barn so the kids could see the animals, of which they have many -- sheep, goats, pigs, donkeys, chickens.

We had another snack. (I was worried that they wouldn't have any milk available for JJ but hello... dairy farm? Duh!) L helped to milk a goat, and took part in the chicken roundup, when they put the birds into the barn for the evening. It may have been the cutest thing I have ever seen, a dozen children very seriously surrounding chickens and clapping their hands to herd them.

She also found an egg! We took a gander at the cheesemaking operation, which is pretty straightforward really, and relaxed in the grass before catching the last cart ride back to the festival and our cars.

In the morning it was time to head back to Boston with our swag. I would not at all mind making this into a tradition!

30 Foods Meme - Day 1

2011-07-12T10:46:00.000-04:00

I have never done one of these meme things, but this one sounds like fun, and the first one elicits a very easy response. I will take a shot at playing along.

What is the best recipe that a parent taught you to make?

There are different ways one could take that. My mother is not one of nature's cooks (my father is not in this picture at all). She kept us fed on a tight budget, and my childhood palate was perfectly all right with macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and things based on Cream of X soup. Vegetables were frozen, garlic was powdered, and going out to eat meant Perkins. Her own parents ate much the same way. It's the way a lot of Americans eat. It wasn't until I reached adulthood that I started to realize what a world of food there was (perhaps ironically, due to a cookbook she got me when D* and I first moved in together); I reached college without ever having eaten Chinese food, without having had real butter, and I still remember picking up a bunch of fresh asparagus for the first time.

So when it comes to recipes that a parent taught me to make, well, there's a pretty slim selection. If anything, it's actually gone in the other direction; my mom has recently started learning to cook because she's become vegetarian, and occasionally wants to cook for others, which means something other than frozen cheese pizzas. Some of these dishes have reached my grandparents' table, which has acquired more dietary restrictions as they age.

I have acquired a couple of recipes from my in-laws, but nothing that really fits the bill here. Which leaves me with only one thing, something we made straight through my childhood, in all of the apartments and houses we lived in, through good times and (lots of) bad. I made it for my college roommates. I still make it in exactly the same way.

The Toll House cookie. I know that small fortunes have been invested in a search for the perfect cookie, and entire books have been written on the topic. As far as I'm concerned, that money has all been wasted. There is no better chocolate chip cookie. I make them big, and underbake them slightly so they're chewy all through, and there is nothing out there that will ever take their place. I know the recipe by heart.

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 c butter, softened*
3/4 c sugar
3/4 brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 package chocolate chips**

1. Preheat the oven to 375.
2. Mix the dry ingredients together.
3. Cream the butter with the two sugars.
4. Add the eggs and beat until well incorporated.
5. Mix in the vanilla.
6. Mix in the dry ingredients slowly, just until incorporated.
7. Mix in the chips.
8. Drop onto a cookie sheet in large spoonfuls. Bake anywhere from 9-12 minutes, depending on how big they are and how you like the edges done.
9. Allow to cook on the sheet for a few minutes, then remove to a rack to finish cooling.

* I use salted butter, but stick to something like Land O Lakes, which has relatively mild salt content. For regular table use I prefer Kate's of Maine and Kerrygold, but those are too salty for cookies.

** I don't hold with walnuts in chocolate chip cookies, but if you do, go right ahead.

So there you have it, my very first meme.

Swiss Chard, Leek, and Gruyere Quiche (via Nutmeg Nanny)

2011-07-11T08:42:00.001-04:00

My recent addiction to Tastespotting is paying dividends in the form of a burgeoning bookmark file, and a whole other place to look when I am Out of Ideas. This particular recipe was the result of a huge bunch of farmer's market chard taking up almost my entire vegetable drawer, and no particular idea how to use it. Thank goodness for search boxes, which led me to this blog post and a blog I'd never seen before. The Internet just goes on forever.

Generally speaking, I don't do quiche. I like to cook, but I am lazy, and quiche involves that whole crust thing. When I wrote down my week's menu plan, I put this down as a frittata instead. Then I thought, It's a Sunday afternoon. You have time. You've been scrambling for weeks, it's time to slow down. When are you going to have another chance to do this? So I got together the ingredients for the dough.

At which point our three-year-old ambled over and said, "Wet," in that particularly forlorn tone he uses on these occasions. In this case, wet meant a diaper blowout of proportions that required immediate laundry and bathing. So this almost became a frittata after all, but I got it together, made the dough (with 6yo's assistance), etc., etc. Grumbling to myself the while.

And it was absolutely worth it. I am a quiche convert. This may become a weekend "thing" now. I am going to reprint the recipe here because I made so many changes, mainly due to my not having a deep-dish tart pan, and partly due to the aforementioned laziness.

Swiss Chard, Leek, and Gruyere Quiche

2 1/2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 recipe Flaky Tart Dough (it's Martha, you can't go wrong; cutting the recipe in half worked fine)
5 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme
2 heaping cups torn Swiss chard leaves
1/2 cup Gruyere cheese
1 leek, sliced thinly

1. Make and chill the tart dough. After chilling, on a lightly floured work surface, roll dough into a 16-inch round. With a dry pastry brush, sweep off any excess flour; fit dough into a tart pan with a removable bottom, gently pressing it into the sides. Using a sharp knife, trim the dough evenly with the edge of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap; chill tart shell until firm, about 20 minutes.

2. Preheat Oven to 375 degrees

3. Line the tart dough with a sheet of parchment paper and fill with pie weights (or dried beans, or whatever). Transfer to oven and bake until light brown, about 25 minutes. Remove weights and parchment paper and continue baking until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.

4. Whisk 1 egg and 2 1/2 Tbsp flour until smooth. Add the remaining eggs and continue mixing until well blended.
Add milk, salt, pepper, and thyme; mix until well combined.

5. Sauté leeks in olive oil until soft. Add the chard and cook until just wilted. Allow to cool, then add to the egg mixture. Pour it all into your cooled tart shell. (You may want to put the tart on a baking pan in case of leaks.)

6. Bake until filling is slightly firm and crust is a deep golden brown, 40 to 50 minutes.

7. Transfer quiche to a wire rack to cool until set, about 20 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The two of us polished off almost the entire thing for dinner, with a side of soup; it would serve four for lunch or with a more substantial set of side dishes (or daintier appetites!).

Crab Cakes with Lemon Aioli (Williams Sonoma Comfort Food)

2011-07-11T07:30:00.000-04:00

Crab twice in one weekend? Don't mind if I do! This recipe had been intended as our Father's Day showpiece, but then D* came down with something, so we had it a week later. It was no worse for the wait.

New England, of course, is known for lobster, but I maintain that whoever first plucked one from the briny deep, looked into those eyestalks and said, "Hey! Dinner!" must have been really hungry. I can take or leave them in shelled form, and shell-on prefer to keep my distance. Crab, on the other hand, I would happily eat every week (if I could afford it), and if a menu has crab cakes on it, you can safely bet the house that you know what my order will be.

Once a year or so I take a stab at making them myself; the results have been tasty, but lacking in visual appeal as they invariably fall apart. This has been my best attempt to date, and I suspect it's because they don't mess around trying to be "light." A teaspoon of oil and a nonstick pan just won't cut it in the adhesive department

They were a trifle too wet, but next time I will know to drain my crab better.

Lemon Aioli

1 c mayonnaise

Finely grated zest of one lemon

2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 clove garlic, minced

salt and pepper to taste

Crab Cakes

1 lb lump crabmeat

3/4 c panko or other breadcrumbs, divided

1 large egg, beaten

1 Tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce

1/4 tsp hot pepper sauce

1 Tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley

1/2 c canola oil for frying

lemon wedges for serving

1. To make the aioli, mix together the mayonnaise, zest, juice, and garilc. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside 1/4 cup of the aioli; cover and refrigerate the remaining 3/4 c until serving.

2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Pick over the crab meat for shells and cartilage (there's always one tiny little piece). In a bowl, mix together 1/4 c of the panko, 1/4 c aioli, egg, mustard, Worcestershire, hot pepper sauce, and parsley. Add the crabmeat and mix gently to combine.

3. Divide the mixture into 8 equal portions and shape into thick cakes. Spread the remaining 3/4 c panko in a shallow dish. Coat the cakes evenly with the panko. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

4. In a large frying pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the cakes and cook until the undersides are golden brown, 2-3 minutes. Turn and cook another 2 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain briefly.

5. Serve the cakes at once with lemon wedges and the remaining aioli on the side.

4 servings

New England Tour 2011 Plus! Malone, NY

2011-07-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

No one ever knows where Malone is. I sure didn't when I met D* . Most people think that by "upstate New York" I mean something around the state's midline, when what I actually mean is a place where, from a suitable height, you can wave hello to Canada.

Why go to Malone? High school reunions are strangely compelling things. I haven't been to one of my own, and probably wouldn't--the people I am most curious about are the ones who have dropped off the planet since graduation, not the ones I see on Facebook. But D* is different than I am, and since his parents moved away from the town this might be the only reason we have to visit it. So we piled into the car (again) on a Friday morning and drove north.

We stopped for lunch in White River Junction, choosing to spend our cash at the Polka Dot, a diner of ancient mien, well matching its personnel. It did have a wifi hot-spot, though! Across the street, no doubt in eternal conflict, was a much newer place full of young people with laptops called Tuckerbox.

Unfortunately, Polka Dot was not some lost foodie haven; my grilled cheese was orange cheese on square supermarket bread, and that was about the size of the place. On the virtue side, it was cheap and almost empty, so we weren't in anyone's way with the kids and all of our stuff. L didn't like that her fries were crinkle-cut. She ended up eating a granola bar.

We got to the ferry around three and found it waiting. This was the part the kids had been waiting for, and it does make for a very nice break in the trip, a chance to stretch legs and get some air.

We drove through a landscape common to small towns all over the region; acres of corn, cow pastures, auto shops, tractor dealers, antique stores containing a dozen unwanted attics, the occasional dentist or other professional catering to a shrinking population.

Some of the farms are renting out their land as windmill sites, and they make a striking and strange addition to the landscape, colossal structures breaking the gentle roll of trees and hillsides.

We got to our hotel (Super 8. Can't recommend it.) and headed out again almost at once in search of dinner. There's a place called Mo's at the Holiday Inn Express just up the road, and we settled there rather than subject ourselves to Pizza Hut. Pizza might have been a better option, as D*'s ravioli were still partially frozen (even after he complained about it). My pasta primavera included at least half a pound of pasta and was drenched in cream sauce. L had chicken fingers and french fries, which would merit a sigh from most parents, except that we have been praying she would venture to eat this ubiquitous children's item menu for several years now, instead of refusing to eat anything at all when we travel. JJ had graham crackers.

Then we had ice cream, went back to the hotel, watched Bolt on the TV, and went to bed. Overexcited and tired kids plus a ludicrously loud A/C unit made sleep long in arriving; the dog in the room next door and the baby made it interrupted.

Saturday morning we were all up early if not necessarily bright. It was a packed morning. Breakfast with some other reunion people, a trip out to Burke to see another old friend, a visit to High Falls.

Then lunch out at the Rec Park with D*'s sister and brother-in-law. There we took a much-needed time-out. The older kids played on the playground and in the water; a paddle-boat ride was taken; the baby played quietly in the grass, which seemed to take the place of nap time fairly well. No running around required for a few hours.

Then it was time to go back to the hotel and get ready for the reunion dinner. I can't say much about the reunion itself; it wasn't mine, so I was necessarily at loose ends throughout. I found a couple of people to talk to, but that was eventually shut down by the DJ (who seemed to think that playing hair metal would strike the right note--yes, it was from the right years, but you can't dance to it). D* had a good time, and that was the point. His sister and her husband watched the kids, and they all had a trauma-free evening.

In the morning we got back together for breakfast. D* went to church, the kids watched videos, and I kept the baby from playing with power cords in the hotel room. In the afternoon we drove out to the Almonzo Wilder Farm to pick up some postcards for a friend of mine.

Then we went back to the Rec Park for an hour, and then over to a BBQ held by the family of some friends of D*'s. Their place is right on Lake Titus, so there was more water play and even a boat trip for L. Eventually the kids were worn out enough that we headed back to the hotel.

The trip back on the 4th was trouble-free, aside from the a/c in the van being out. There was only one flare of temper (JJ threw a toy over the side of the ferry on our return trip, upsetting his older sister on behalf of his younger one). We stopped for lunch in Montpelior, at a little place not far from 89 that has been different every time we go through the state, but which generally provides a decent lunch (and this time, gelato! yum). Then we stopped again at a rest stop a little farther down the highway. It was a perfect afternoon, and we didn't really want to leave, but if you have to spend a day driving with the windows down, you can do worse than a summer day in Vermont. The state is ridiculously beautiful, and I89 is in excellent shape. There wasn't much traffic, just a few other homebound southern New Englanders.

We thought briefly about trying to see the fireworks, but everyone was tired, and the kids were in no shape for another late night. Some other year for that!

Cinnamon Puffs (King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion)

2011-06-28T10:52:00.000-04:00

In my fantasy life, I throw quirky dinner parties and brunches where no one wants to leave, spend mornings piping perfect rosettes on tiny cakes, and make my own candy, which I hand out freely in whimsical, hand-decorated containers. (In my fantasy life I might be Molly Wizenburg, except even in my fantasies I'm not crazy enough to actually open a restaurant.)

In real life, I might have a half hour free in the morning before meeting friends for a too-rare lunch out. A half hour that will also involve reviewing notes for a meeting and rescuing the baby when she crawls under her playpen/chair/busy board.

So I decide to make muffins.

And forget to set the timer. And realize that there's a typo in this recipe, but don't remember which of the two values they give I used last time I made these. I peek at them often, recall the old guideline that they're ready when you can smell them, and hope for the best.

I am a devoted fan of quick breads, and (typo aside) I consider these muffins to be pretty near to perfect. For one thing, they taste like snickerdoodles, which is awesome. For another, they call only for ingredients I always have. That stops Fantasy Me from taking over the grocery shopping and loading up the cart with various strengths of cream, which then languish sadly, watching their expiration dates recede in the distance. (Fantasy Me uses everything she buys, and never lets a leftover go to waste. Unfortunately, Real Me has to clean the fridge.)

If Fantasy Me ever opens a bed and breakfast, these will go on the menu. It sounds like a lot of nutmeg, but it's great. Trust me.

Cinnamon Puffs
3 c (12 3/4 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 c (7 oz) sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 1/4 c milk
5 1/3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Topping:
1/4 c sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. In another bowl, beat the eggs slightly, then add the milk and melted butter. Add the wet mixture to the well in the dry mixture. Stir just until moistened. Line or lightly grease 12 muffin cups. Fill about three-quarters full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until muffins are golden and springy when touched.

While the muffins are baking, mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

When the muffins are done, let them cool just enough to handle. Dip the tops into the melted butter, then into the cinnamon sugar mixture. Serve warm.

Makes 12 muffins. Try not to eat them all yourself. :)

Fantasy Me never has to clean up cat puke while typing up a recipe....

New England Tour 2011: Portland, Maine

2011-06-27T07:45:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we were in Newport, RI for D*'s cousin's wedding. This past weekend we headed north for a long-anticipated visit with old friends. They moved into their house nearly three years ago, and we still hadn't been to see it.

Mission accomplished! The day did not start out promising--it looked pretty much the way it had for almost a solid week.

We piled into the van and made our way out of the city. The baby was not happy about being trussed into her car seat practically as soon as she woke up, and made her annoyance known before finally falling asleep. It rained the entire way up. We arrived just around noon, which meant that after a rapid tour we piled back into the van (hooray for passenger space) and headed into Portland, a city D* and I hadn't been to in ages, and which the kids have never seen. Goal: Lunch.

It was Lobsterfest. Despite the rain and low-60s temperatures, there was something resembling a turnout for it, which meant that we had to search for parking. The first restaurant we tried had a half hour wait, so we went around the corner to The Dry Dock. I had the crab melt, and it was delicious. L ordered chicken fingers and fries, and proceeded to eat one bite of each, alarmed by the unpeeled potatoes. J had a graham cracker. The baby ate her cereal and jarred veggies enthusiastically, in between turning around to stare at everyone else in the place.

Since it wasn't actually raining, we poked along the pier.

Then we decided to check out the Lobersterfest, two piers down. Unfortunately, if you weren't going to eat lobster, there wasn't much to see, but we did encounter some mild drama. A bunch of men were fishing off the end of the pier. One of them cast, and managed to get his line wrapped around a seagull. We figured the bird was done for, flapping hopelessly about in the water as it was, but wait! A fellow in a small launch motored over and after a couple of attempts, herded the critter over to the gangway (a word it has taken me 24 hours to bring to mind). The fisherman and a friend waited there. With commendable dexterity (and nerve), one of them grabbed the gull by the neck, and they got it disentangled and sent it on its way.

I'm not sure if this speaks to the human capacity for empathy with even such a useless creature as a seagull, or if he just really liked that lure.

We strolled about a bit longer, then headed back toward the car.

L had taken immediate note of the number of ice cream opportunities available even on such a short journey through Portland, and her behavior had been acceptable. A stop at Beal's was in order.

Then back to the house for Wii, catching up on life, and a lovely pasta dinner.

On the way back... it rained.

The Heart of the Blogging Problem?

2011-06-26T06:19:00.000-04:00

It may be that I don't have enough problems! I have the usual challenges of anyone with kids and a life, but there's nothing specific that I'm dealing with to provide a focus. I don't have to live on a low budget, cook gluten-free, avoid allergens, or get dinner on the table in 15 minutes or less (though it's always nice when I can). I know what I'm doing in the kitchen to a degree that satisfies me, and I don't want to be Thomas Keller.

I need more goals.

Idoru

2011-06-24T09:47:00.000-04:00

I have read Idoru before. I could not tell you when that was -- probably shortly after it came out, since I have it in hardcover. I realized recently that I remember nothing about it, so when it came time to put a fresh book in the backpack, I plucked it from the shelf.

Reading fifteen-year-old SF is a great way to make yourself feel old. Remember the nineties, and what we thought the future was going to look like? Things never work out quite the way we thought they would, and not only in the jet-packs and household robots department. One of the most anachronistic things about this book is the idea of a fourteen-year-old who doesn't know what a love hotel is, not to mention an Internet so tame and compartmentalized, so disconnected from other people, missing most of its inter-ness. There are beautiful virtual landscapes everywhere, but with the exception of Walled City they are sterile.

Today, he would probably not feel compelled to define otaku, though he also might not set the book in Japan, which seems to have lost its place as the lodestone of the technoculture. He uses the word "fractal" several times. In the now that the imagined future turned into, we don't seem to be interested in the immersive virtual reality idea that so much SF of the late 20th century dealt in, though you can bet that I sat up and took notice when this story ran in Gizmodo during my reading.

Anyway. Turns out that the reason I don't remember what happens in the book is that for 200 pages, nothing much happens. Laney is immersed in mystery and Chia in a vague sense of threat; meanwhile, Gibson indulges in stylistic riffing, scattershot, fragmented moments of sensation and image that reflect a world sad and lost and confused, a world that doesn't know what it looks forward to any longer. Often, he can't be bothered with a complete sentence; I am left uncertain as to whether this was a choice, reflecting the characters' incomplete perception and experience of the world, or simple laziness.

I do feel compelled to mention that the name Slitscan is perfect, combining the clinical, invasive, and vaguely obscene, and is a stroke of genius, even if the character of Kathy Torrance is of dubious believability, given less depth than the titular idoru.

Or perhaps that's the point. It's difficult to tell purposeful from unintended irony any longer. Perhaps the book's overall thinness is part of the effect. Because after those first 200 pages, there is a flurry of activity, and then... next to nothing actually happens. The conflicts that barely appeared on screen are resolved with a negligent handwave. The characters go back to their lives. The point of the whole business remains hints whose fruition lies elusively in the future. The book reads like a lacework of notes draped across a scribbled skeleton of plot; like something that could have been reduced to a few chapters of another story, or even to a poem, stripped down to its images and feelings, a meditation on modernity and celebrity without the burden of narrative.

I'm likely to forget about it now that I've read it again.

Belay That?

2011-06-24T09:28:00.000-04:00

I've given it some more thought, and I'm going to try to continue to keep this blog live after all. It doesn't cost anything, after all, and if no one reads it... oh well.

This has been a strange spring. It's been chilly and wet far more often than not; today I wore a jacket to work (it's almost July!), and I suspect that many of us are considering a change of career, perhaps something in the slug-farming field.

I am bored out of my skull at work, restless with the lack of challenge in my days, and less than happy with the changes that came with the acquisition. Outside of work, I seem to be exhausted all of the time, even when the kids sleep, and frequently grouchy. My usual optimism is nowhere to be found; I consider projects as a means of reviving my spirits, but stop short of undertaking them, because really what's the point? The world has no need of anything I am likely to produce. I am ambivalent about the entire Internet and seem to have lost faith in the whole idea of the world-wide conversation. Wary of engaging, alarmed by conflicts, and finding the entire business more a source of stress than of interest and pleasure, I dropped Twitter, dropped blogging, scaled back my Facebook activity. I switched my playlists to all-soothing, all the time. Work on the current novel has been reduced to occasionally opening the file and staring at the opening scene I was in the middle of rewriting.

I don't really like myself when I get like this. Even in a funk, I feel something of the problem-solving itch, which I suppose is all to the good. I'm trying to drink more water, taking some extra vitamin D, and if the weather hasn't improved by the time of my next paycheck, I'll buy a sunlamp. If that doesn't help, a trip to the doctor may be in order. Previous experience suggests that the thing to do when you're depressed is to the things that you enjoy when you're not depressed, and I have not been doing much of that.

Closing Down the Shop

2011-05-18T13:02:00.000-04:00

Three years of inconsistent efforts later, I don't think there's much sense in keeping this blog up. I never did figure out what kind of blog it ought to be, which may be a metaphor for my somewhat scattered life, or just may reflect a lack of reflection. There's plenty of good reading out there.

Follow-up: Setting the Hook

2011-04-09T08:13:00.001-04:00

I'm going to continue with the analysis I started in my previous post, using the same two books to explore how the hook evolves into the opening of the story--the first page or so--and what gets accomplished in the first chunk of the book.

Though I didn't really think about it at the time I selected them, Swordspoint and God's War have some superficial similarities: both have main characters who are basically paid killers, both of them are first novels. The differences, however, are enormous, as we saw in their opening paragraphs, and each continues as it began.

God's War is divided into parts. Part 1: Bel Dame covers roughly the first 50 pages of the novel, so we'll use that length as our comparative point. A bel dame in the book's vernacular is the higher echelon of killers, distinguished from mere bounty hunters; they do important work, hunting down traitors and those who have returned from the war carrying dangerous contagions. The first few paragraphs after the hook set up the events of Part 1.

The first part of God's War consists of background and setting material interwoven with present-time information about Nyx working, using Jaks to track down a target. At the same time, she is trying to evade some old associates and enemies, who consider her as having violated the bel dame rules. Nyx gets her target, but she also gets caught, goes to prison, gets out, and forms a bounty hunter team--accepting this lower-status work as all she can get, turning some of her own hunters into members of her team. Seven years pass.

The passage of so much time with no detail at all makes me wonder why the story didn't start with Part 2. With the sole exception of a very brief, glancing contact with some Mysterious People, nothing that has happened so far seems to have major significance. Nyx is tough as nails; she has a sister (not close), a dead partner (de rigeur for hard-bitten types) and no scruples, ideals, or goals beyond staying alive. The other POV we've met, Rhys, is a foreigner from the enemy country, a former dancer, an indifferently talented magician willing to work for Nyx, and religious. His backstory provides potential conflicts that could be interesting, but so far they have not materialized.

After 50 pages, these characters have not become people, and I am only continuing to read this book for my own education.

Let's turn to our other paid killer, Richard St. Vier (names can say a lot, whether they have a real-world derivation or are based in a fictional language, whether they have surnames--it's a great way to imply without stating your setting). Swordspoint has several POV characters; the plot turns on conspiracy and betrayal, so the multiple voices have a role in making events comprehensible. Let's take a look at the rest of the opening.

Honestly? It gives me goosebumps. It could be argued that this lyrical opening is too slow, that it seeks to make a character of the landscape when it should be showing us the actual characters. As a reader, I'm inclined to let people get away with beauty for its own sake; others may be more strict.

This doesn't outline events; it gives a feel. 50 pages farther into Swordspoint, St. Vier has fought two duels. Like the Jaks business, these are non-plot events that serve to introduce Richard, his lover, the setting, and the entire cast of noble characters whose schemes against one another set the plot and subplots in motion (for such a short book, there are plenty of threads).

By contrast with God's War, after those fifty pages you have a sense of what each of these people wants. Whether it's power, challenge, sex, a hiding place, everyone is after something, and everyone faces obstacles to their desires. This, along with the variety in their goals, goes a long way toward making them realistic. The backgrounding takes a while, partly due to the size of the cast, but there are no extraneous players; the plot rises organically out of contact between people whose wants are in conflict.

A long-distant version of my first novel started with the birth of one of the main characters. For both of the MCs, I included childhoods and formative events, not quite grasping at the time that I was thereby writing a biography, not a plot, that the character's story was not The Story. Many painful revisions later, the first chapter of the book contains the first events in the actual plot.

God's War starts with a bang, then appears to lose its way in a maze of past perfect background and current events that seem insignificant. Swordspoint starts slowly, like a gardener sowing a varied handful of seeds to see what comes of them.

Where do you start your story? Where does the plot start? Do you find yourself having to backtrack a lot in time to lay background? Is that background playing a part in the plot, or just in your character's background?

Act I, Scene 1 - On Hooks

2011-04-04T08:34:00.000-04:00

Last week I started writing a rant on the topic of writing advice I consider worse than useless: the do and don't lists on how to start your novel. This list from the Guardian went around the Twitter aspiring-author community like wildfire last year, and to some extent it still haunts the mental landscape.

Given the weekend to cool off, I no longer feel quite so ranty. (Never internet while angry.) I do feel like this is a topic that needs more attention and thought that can be provided by a series of checklists. I don't know if I'm the person to provide that, but I may as well give it a shot.

I am a technical writer by trade, and I am going to try looking at the First Paragraph from a functional perspective. Art is dynamic; it needs to do something in interaction with the audience (otherwise you may as well stare at the wall). The First Paragraph in a work of fiction has one overriding purpose: to make the reader read the second paragraph. One way to do this is by stimulating the reader's curiosity, and one way of doing that is with a "hook." As far as I can tell, a hook is a simple sentence that contains something startling.

I am not sure that the hook is essential. There are other ways to excite curiosity. I find myself wondering if, given all the crap they must have to wade through, agents and publishers don't end up putting an almost unnatural weight on that opening sentence, that opening paragraph. Speaking as a reader, I've read the jacket copy; I am prepared to believe that this book I am holding contains an interesting story. It does not actually need to grab me by the lapels and fling me into an action scene in order for me to believe that, any more than every movie has to start with a James Bond sequence. I am generally willing to give a book at least a few pages before I get impatient.

Which brings us back to function. Your first paragraph does something--an infinite number of somethings--to provide the reader entree to the story, to pique their curiosity. It can also serve to identify its intended audience and the story's overall tone. To illustrate, I am going to quote the first paragraph of one of my favorite books of all time, Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint.

By way of contrast, the book I am currently carrying around with me is Kameron Hurley's God's War.

These are very different openings. Is one approach good and the other bad?

I think we can all agree that God's War has quite a hook--it formally declares itself as such by setting the first sentence off in its own paragraph. More than inciting curiosity, however, it also sets a tone. This is going to be a book that treats its characters and its readers roughly. The language is bald and challenging. The place names along with the desert provide a hint as to the setting's roots. This is effective, compact use of language.

As for Swordspoint... Oh. My. God. Weather! And nothing is happening. It has no identifiable hook, and current wisdom, it seems, suggests that no reader would ever get past that paragraph. However--there is more going on in it than "it's winter." Description piles up (like the snow) in a series of contrasts to create tension that can only be eased by reading on: feather-puffs/ruined, jagged/rounded, cozily/shattered. It builds a picture in your mind, promises more but makes you wait for it. The language tells you what kind of story this is going to be, that it is literary, romantic, indirect.

I think there is room in this universe for more than one approach to the opening paragraph. What do you think?

Limited vs Open-Ended Series

2011-03-30T08:40:00.001-04:00

I don't often get up on a high horse and talk about writing topics, because really, who the hell cares what I think? But I've run across this topic on two blogs in the past week, and it's starting to make me crazy, so I'll blather for a while.

The posts were on the topic of writing a series, and what both of them did was gloss blithely over the inherent difference between a limited and an open-ended series, equating Harry Potter with various mystery/thriller series without ever taking note of the fact that they are comparing two different creatures. And the thing that makes a limited series different is something that is very near and dear to me: THE END.

A limited series has AN ending; it structures itself around that fact. Each part of the story evolves some distance toward that point, usually with an ascending sequence of climaxes that have the same overall rhythm as any single volume. All of the plots go to the same place. Because the previous volumes are essential--it's all one--you can limit the amount of refresher information you give readers, or section it off in an introduction. It is expected that characters, even the world will suffer major changes; that is kind of the point.

An open series has MANY endings; each book has its own. Each book's climax tends to be at the same pitch, and each new volume hits the emotional reset button. Without an end to aim for, subplots tend to proliferate; killing them off becomes a major commitment, deep-sixing a resource that could be used in future books. Either every book has an all-new major antagonist, or the major antagonist is hidden in the shadows and only his or her catspaws are defeated. The main character tends to be the draw for the entire series; therefore, it's difficult to make substantial changes to the character. Since you never know when you might pick up readers, there tends to be repeated descriptive information for new fans who don't know what the main character looks like, or what kind of car is the villain's signature.

In case you can't tell, I have very little use for open-ended series; it's one reason I hate most television (major exception: Babylon 5. Guess why.) A story that has no destination is doomed to lose its way and drown in a bog, and by the time it does that, no one will miss it.

FURY'S FLIGHT

70,000/100,000

Too Many Irons

2011-03-23T09:01:00.000-04:00

It has been over a month since I've posted a blog entry. I'm not dead, or ill, nor is anyone else in the family. It's just one of those occasions on which, while trying to juggle work, family, writing, cooking, gaming, blogging, and the sundry smaller things that make up my life, I dropped a few.

In the interim I've made a lot of nice new recipes, gotten my game back onto a weekly turn schedule, survived acquisition by Oracle with most of my sanity intact, and written some more of Fury's Flight. I've revised my other novel's query and am continuing to assail the Fortress of Agents. I've totally fumbled the 365 Project.

Going to pick things up and start again.

FURY'S FLIGHT

64,000/100,000

Whew, Where to Start

2011-02-18T09:21:00.000-05:00

I started writing this post almost a week ago. I'm just going to throw it out there before this gets even more embarrassing.

The past couple of weekends have been all about cooking. The weeks have been all about writing (and a crappy but necessary work project). There's no "where I've been" post in two weeks now because I haven't been anywhere; I've been writing. That's good. I hope. Though it is making me cranky when I get pulled away from it to do other things, and I am consumed with worry that I am going to finish my outline far shy of the wordcount I want. I am discarding a fair amount of the alpha text as I rewrite. We shall see.

On to the food. I still need to type up some recipes, but I can at least get the links out of the way. I did indeed make chicken vindaloo, and it was awesome, very close to restaurant quality. I think next time I will use thighs on the bone, and I suspect that will make them ever closer. To go with it were Penang Pickled Vegetables, or as close as I could get with what I had on hand. Those were also very good. So was the Salmon Chipotle Chowder (as you can see, it was a spicy weekend!). I would make all of these again without hesitating.

The soup project has gone off the rails a bit, even though I got some pretty new bowls from Crate & Barrel. I may get back on track this weekend, but we shall see.

And a few more photos, to catch me up. I am a bad 365er; I have missed many days now, but I'm trying.

365 #23 Yet another view of Boston. I wanted to get the shadows, but I was talking to a co-worker and missed the time.

365 #24 Buying spree at Harvard Book Store

365 #25 Cheddar-Chive Bread via Dorie Greenspan - it rocks

365 #26 Dinosaurs

365 #27 New C&B bowls

365 #28 Days getting longer

365 #29 Miriam 4 months

365 #29 The trees can tell

365 #30 Public discussion on art restoration in the Red Line

365 #31 Mussel shell in a snowbank on First St., Cambridge. I have no idea.

Core Characteristics and Emergent Properties

2011-02-14T07:18:00.000-05:00

As usual, I have no idea how this train of thought came about, but a few weeks ago I started thinking about the core characteristic of each of my main characters, what it is that makes them uniquely themselves. For Brandon, it's duality--not just bisexuality, which is rather obvious, but his ability to move between the court and the lower city, to share foreign and home perspectives, to understand magic without being of it. Kevan took a lot longer to figure out, and the answer surprised me, because I'm pretty sure it's love. Not exactly something I planned to put into his character, but on examination, most of what he does can be traced back to that. For the new book, I'm not entirely sure yet.

That it takes a while to figure out struck me on reflection as a good thing. You want a character to be complex, to have if possible all of the inner confusions and contradictions of a real person. If you set out to write someone thinking, "this person is ambition" or whatever, you're going to wind up with cardboard, because real people don't act the same way all the time. Ask anyone to describe themselves in one word and they're likely to fidget a lot, come up with something, and then add "but" to whatever they said.

I think that this notion of a core characteristic is something that should emerge as you get to know the characters, and it's not likely to make itself known in the first draft. Once it comes out, you can shine it up in a few places if you want to, or leave it as an exercise to your future readers to argue about; if you can't come up with anything at all, though, after several drafts, that might mean that your character is not drawn clearly, or isn't being active enough to demonstrate their qualities.

FURY'S FLIGHT

13,191/100,000

We Live on Hope

2011-02-08T14:58:00.000-05:00

And such slender threads of it, too. One can see why those involved with publishing can start to seem callous--if they gave wanna-be writers any thread of encouragement we would cling to them like strangler vines. I was privileged to receive such a thread of hope today, and even though it was part of a rejection it will likely power me for the rest of the week.

I owe this blog a lot of recipes and photographs.

FURY'S FLIGHT

4,865/100,000

Where I've (Virtually) Been

2011-02-04T08:06:00.001-05:00

In between jabs at a dreadfully boring but necessary task, my RSS reader overflows with wisdom and laughter.

Writing Advice piece 1 and piece 2. The only actual rule seems to be "work your ass off," and a few people even get away without doing that.
Reading lists: Women of Fantasy and Women of Science Fiction. I fear commitment to such a project, but good intentions in this case will only lead to a few books on the shelf.
I adore chicken vindaloo, and we still haven't found an Indian restaurant near our new apartment, so I will have to try this soon.
People discussing politics politely?!
Barbara Hambly has a LiveJournal.
I want these bowls. Lots of them.
A series of practical posts for debut authors, which I am sure we all hope to have use for someday.

FURY'S FLIGHT

3.955/100,000

It Can Stop Snowing Now

2011-02-02T08:33:00.002-05:00

Music: The Mollys, This Is My Round

I think there will be many a cup of tea drunk today. I made it to the office yesterday, but I didn't have much company there, and it was a long, cold wait for the bus home. I feel sad when it doesn't snow all winter, but this is officially ridiculous. Schools are closed, so I'll be working at the desk in the bedroom with my headphones in while D* plays Mario to entertain the kids. I thought the Wii would come in handy during snowy days, but I didn't expect it to get quite such a workout.

I have been looking around for a progress widget. This one comes from Inkalicious. It might do (not sure this will be a 100k book yet though - maybe 90k).

FURY'S FLIGHT

2,716/100,000

365 #21 Miriam 3 1/2 mo

365 #22 The view from my desk today

Goal Roundup: January 2011

2011-01-30T11:37:00.000-05:00

One month into 2011 (that was fast):

Do Things: I have been letting the winter blahs get the better of me (considering buying a sunlamp). Going to see some friends in CT next weekend, though. I am trying to organize a get-together of the new supper club, since no one seems to want to take the initiative there. Hoping to visit the local Y today and see about joining.
Financial: Paid off credit card (thank you, Oracle) and all of our birth-related hospital bills--woohoo! Saving on target.
Food: 7 new recipes this month, and I made bread for the first time in forever. Not keeping on top of the blogging so far, though.
Writing: Queried 14 agents; six rejections so far.

Can't complain too much. I'm even getting a bit of reading done.

365 #18 This is how my living room usually looks, complete with blurred child

365 #19 We have gotten just a bit of snow this month; that is our van to the left

365 #20 I like tea, okay?

Bonus - Lydia doing her penguin impersonation

Vegetable Barley Soup with the Taste of Little India (whew)

2011-01-29T06:46:00.000-05:00

So far, the soup project has been a success. It's a good way to build new recipes into my schedule. It has not (so far) been easy to do the same with the blog updates; for that matter, I have made quite a few new recipes that aren't soups, some of them quite good, and they haven't even gotten a mention here. But hey--baby steps.

It has been a bit of a difficult month. January is a tough nut any year; this one has seen an astonishing amount of snow for our locale, which makes getting out and about seem like more of an effort than it's worth, and of course there's l'enfant to rob us of sleep. I veer back and forth between thinking that I'm depressed because I'm not getting anything done and because I'm trying to do too much. It's pretty annoying for someone like me to feel both harried and unmotivated. Here we are on Saturday morning, not even 7 a.m., and my weekend is full. Do I need down time, or time that produces something other than a momentary pause in the flood of disorder? I did do a lot of baking last weekend, and that felt good. It has been too long since this place smelled of fresh bread.

Back to the soup. This is a good one. I have not historically used barley all that much, but I should do something about that. It's a hefty soup, brimming with the good things of winter, and you could easily add a few more if you wanted to--some ribbons of kale, or a potato. I love Indian spices and probably used a full teaspoon of each of those indicated. I like a thicker soup, and used less broth and a bit more barley than she suggests.

1 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
2-3 onions, chopped
3 big carrots, trimmed, peeled, and chopped
1 parsnip, peeled, cored if necessary, and chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric, plus more to taste
salt and pepper
1/4 tsp garam masala, plus more to taste
red pepper flakes to taste
6 c chicken broth
1/2 c pearl barley

1. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or soup pot. Add the onions, carrots, parsnips, garlic, and ginger. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and cook about five minutes on low heat. Add the spices, cover, and cook gently, stirring often, until the vegetables are soft but not colored, about 15 minutes.

2. Add the broth and bring to a boil, then stir in the barley. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the barley is tender, which can take from 15 to 40 minutes depending on the type of barley. Adjust seasoning.

Does it get any simpler than that? My only real quibble was with the lack of leftovers; next time I may make a double batch and freeze some.

Where I've (Virtually) Been

2011-01-28T09:18:00.001-05:00

Links from the past week, some of which prove that the entire internet is not entirely a vast wasteland, and in aggregate suggest I've been cat-waxing:

Free Movies Online
This story collection looks worth checking out
Why have I never heard about this workshop on Martha's Vineyard before? At least one of us ought to go.
Do I really need yet another way to keep track of stuff I find online?
Bento boxes! I want all of them.

Found Words

2011-01-28T09:13:00.001-05:00

Looking through Google Docs, which I use off and on, I came upon this three-year-old fragment. What's a blog for if not for publishing things one finds in odd corners?

Once upon a time there was a woman who wouldn't write. She was daily beset by fearful imaginings, and hesitated to give them even mediated life through the page. She was also an incorrigible editor. The merest sentence, should it be written, would be fodder for a hundred or more rewrites. Surely to write badly was worse than not writing at all? There were too many bad writers in the world, what need to add to their number? Melodramatic, infantile, without redeeming merits, escapist, a cherisher of the familiar who knew that she would blaze no new paths, only tidy the borders of ancient gardens a bit, if that much. Was there any value in that to the world? To herself? What if, after some time of tidying, it turned out that she might after all find some new flower growing to one side of the path? It was then that the thorns of Time would rise up and wind around her ankles, drawing blood.

The cat stared intently at a sound. It could have been the house settling, or a child moving in its sleep. It could be something worse....

365 Update

2011-01-27T08:39:00.000-05:00

I have missed a few days and didn't always keep track of when a shot was made. Must try a bit harder to find interesting items. I like this camera a lot - it's a big leap forward from my old one.

365 #12 Falling Snow

365 #13 Train Graffiti

365 #14 Foggy Boston

365 #15 Godzilla working on bread dough

365 #16 Miriam 3 Months

365 #17 Downtown Crossing

Where I've Been

2011-01-22T06:39:00.000-05:00

Stuff I thought was cool:

Lovecraft documentary
There is a lot of crummy and overhashed writing advice out there. This is not that.
Why yes, ISBNs can be interesting

And that's it for the week.

Spiced Squash, Fennel, and Pear Soup

2011-01-22T06:33:00.000-05:00

All this babbling about writing lately, I never got around to posting last Sunday's soup recipe. This is definitely one that I want to keep. You can make a perfectly acceptable squash soup with many fewer ingredients, but this one is really good. The hint of ginger does wonders.

A note about garlic. Dorie subscribes to the French theory that you must split the clove and remove the green germ, because it's bitter. I tasted the green part when I made this, out of curiosity, and found it didn't register as bitter at all, so from now on I'm not going to bother. You may now cast stones.

Yet again, I failed to take a picture. It's squash soup, you can probably guess what it looks like.

Spiced Squash, Fennel, and Pear Soup
Dorie Greenspan, Around My French Table

3 lb whole squash (Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, acorn or butternut) or 1 1/2 lb peeled and cut
about 3 Tbsp olive oil
1 large Spanish onion, coarsely chopped
1 spring onion or 1 shallot, coarsely chopped
1 medium fennel bulb, trimmed, cored, and sliced
2 celery stalks, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 large garlic clove, sliced
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
fresh ground pepper
5-6 c chicken or vegetable broth
2 ripe pears, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped
2 strips orange or tangerine peel, pith removed
1-2 lemons
creme fraiche or heavy cream for serving (optional)
toasted salted pumpkin seeds for serving (optional)

Preheat the oven to 425F. Line a baking sheet with foil. If using a whole squash, cut it half, scoop out the seeds, and rub with olive oil. If used peeled and cut squash, toss with a little oil. Sprinkle squash with a pinch of salt and roast until tender (45 minutes for cut, longer for whole). Cool, peel, and cut into chunks.

Warm 2 Tbsp olive oil in a Dutch oven or soup pot over low heat, then stir in the onion and spring onion or shallot. Season lightly with salt and cook 5 minutes until starting to soften but not color. Add fennel, celery, garlic, and a pinch more salt, and cook, stirring often, 5-10 minutes or until soft but still pale. Add spices and roasted squash. Pour in 5 c broth, increase the heat, and bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer. Add pears and orange peel. Partially cover the pot and simmer about 20 minutes or until soft enough to mash with a spoon.

Puree (blender, food processor, or immersion blender). Adjust salt and pepper. Add more broth to thin if necessary. Reheat until hot.

Ladle into bowls and finish with lemon juice, garnish with creme and pumpkin seeds.

Writing Update - Ups, Downs, and Alongs

2011-01-19T13:02:00.000-05:00

"Ups and downs" meaning that I have started the uniquely masochistic process known as querying agents. I have sent out five queries, gotten one form rejection and one request for the first five pages. I have heard that this agent requests many partials which are later rejected, but it gives me hope that my basic query letter and synopsis are acceptably written.

For the record, it feels exactly like getting a call-back on a resume: elation, followed by anxiety that I'll screw it up through an elementary error, followed by a reminder to myself that often these things don't work out, and it's no one's fault. I've done a fair amount of job-hunting in my life, been to many an interview that didn't pan out. I can handle this. The threat of rejection brings out my inner teenager, but of course one can't let that old version of oneself call the shots.

For the "alongs," I am working more earnestly on Fury's Flight. I am not sure whether I will try the entire snowflake process. Filling in spreadsheets is not my idea of a good time. I had a few ideas last night, and I think I've got a way to fill in the plot hole the book plunged into as I was finishing NaNoWriMo that year. I'm anxious to get with the words.

365 - Catching Up

2011-01-19T07:28:00.000-05:00

I have been dutifully taking pictures, but not posting them. Have been in something of a funk, to tell the truth. It might just be the weather, which has been outstandingly miserable for a week now.

365 #6 Snownami in Progress

365 #7 Morning after snowstorm

365 #8 Pet me NOW

365 #9 Menu planning process

365 #10 I build 'em, the kids play

365 #11 Boston

Writing Update

2011-01-17T07:11:00.000-05:00

Important step on that "real writer" business today--I sent off a query email to an agent. Still makes me feel sick, but it has to get done.

Last night I finally opened the two crits I have on the first chapter of Fury's Flight, and found some very useful commentary and suggestions. I will probably have to axe the initial scene, but it's only a couple of pages. Better than axing 16 years of backstory like I had to last time.

I've started writing down the FF plot on index cards, looking for places I can add to it. There's a lot of digging to do if I'm going to make it the book I think it could be. For the moment, I think I will try to just get all of the events in place.

Where I've (Virtually) Been

2011-01-17T05:51:00.000-05:00

Not much of a list this week:

Bread has fallen off my list of things to do lately.
Interesting blogging on language.
A racial variation on the Bechdel test.

And that's it for today.

Halfway Through January

2011-01-15T07:00:00.005-05:00

This was supposed to have been published on the 15th, but autopublish seems to be borked right now. Anyway, goal accountability time - how are things going?

Do things: Plans made to visit good friends early in February.
Financial: Paid off credit card.
Food: 3 new recipes.
Writing: Finished my polishing run on the old book; sent the first chapter of the new book to another writing group friend (who is currently distracted by most of her country being underwater); worked on/obsessed over query letter.

The year is off to a smashing start.

365 #5

2011-01-12T06:15:00.000-05:00

Wellington T/bus stop, Snownami Eve

Leek and Potato Soup

2011-01-12T06:08:00.000-05:00

This marks the start of Project Soup, and I chose it purely because I had two beautiful leeks in my refrigerator. The supply of those tends to be spotty; when I see good ones at the supermarket, I buy them, then figure out what to do with them. Which usually means soup.

I don't usually make this soup to a recipe, but thought that I ought to start the project off right. The results were certainly different than I would have come up with; my L&P soup is much, much thicker, and less seasoned. I like my soup to be just this side of mashed potatoes; I believe next time I will use a method more like hers, but with a different balance of liquid to potato.

I have not yet gotten back in the habit of photographing my dinners. I took this picture at work. It will have to serve double-duty as my 365 pic, because it's the only one I took that day.

Leek and Potato Soup

2 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 large onion, preferably Spanish, chopped (or 1-2 more leeks)
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
3 leeks, white and light green parts, split lengthwise, washed, and thinly sliced
1 large russet potato, peeled and cubed
6 thyme sprigs (I used dried)
2 fresh sage leaves (optional)
4 c chicken broth or water
3 c whole milk or water*
optional toppings: minced fresh parsley, sage, tarragon, or marjoram; snipped fresh chives; grated Parmesan or Gruyere; croutons; truffle oil

Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or soup pot over low heat. Add the onion and garlic and stir until they glisten with butter, then season with salt and white pepper, cover, and cook 10 minutes or until soft but not colored.

Add the remaining ingredients, increase the heat, and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer, mostly covered, 30-40 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Adjust seasoning to taste. Puree (or don't) with a blender or immersion blender, or just mash it all up a bit, serve and garnish.

* Really now - isn't there just a slight bit of difference in the results depending on which you use?!

365 #3

2011-01-11T07:22:00.001-05:00

An entirely unexpected Christmas present from my mother: beautiful Guy Devrenne flatware.

365 #2

2011-01-09T09:13:00.000-05:00

Spent the day in Bedford, NH, with relatives of my husband. The table keeps growing -- we've had two babies and an engagement in the family since the last holiday gathering!

Water Tracks

2011-01-07T07:48:00.000-05:00

Today was my first visit to North Station since they redid it (several years ago now, I believe). I was pleasantly surprised. Waiting for the Green Line over to Lechmere with the intent of treating myself to Finagle a Bagel, I was drawn toward the tracks, where the water that had pooled between them looked like a window, not a reflection. I didn't manage to get a shot that picked up on that before the train arrived. There were only three other people waiting. I couldn't even tell you the last time I took a Green Line train.

Walking down First Street, I made my usual stop to look in the window at David's Shoes, and the usual promise to myself that someday I will buy some cool boots. At least, it used to by my usual stop, back when I parked the car up in the commuter lot there; I haven't been by since we moved. Continuing on, my nose going numb from the 20 degree temperatures, I decided that I liked it that way, that I really wouldn't want it to be warm all the time.

The bagel was quite good, also.

Where I've (Virtually) Been

2011-01-06T19:38:00.001-05:00

I often see a post or page, think it's something cool, and then never go back to it. So much for bookmarks, of which I have far too many; this is intended as a slightly more focused aide memoire. Not an original idea, I know, but worth trying.

ISO Chunky Sweet Potato Soup - More fodder for the soup theme from the CLBB (Cooking Light Bulletin Board). We should probably eat more sweet potatoes. And an SFGate article on soup, too.
Want. Perhaps I should start making my 2011 Christmas list now? Via Design*Sponge.
A lovely post on how to start journaling. I've kept a journal off and on since age 9, but it would benefit from loosening up. And more color.
This modular planter system looks cool. Given the number of Small Yet Destructive Creatures in my household, I find the idea of suspending things out of reach quite attractive.
CSAs in our area. For years now I've thought about joining one, and backed off. There is also the Stillman meat CSA. I don't think we have enough room for that much meat, though.
The Strange Case of the Dead Bird on the Nightstand

In a similar spirit, I've finally updated the blog list to reflect sites I'm actually keeping an eye on these days. Shocking, I know.

My Day in Pictures

2011-01-06T07:29:00.000-05:00

2011 Recipe Project

2011-01-05T08:42:00.000-05:00

I had off the Monday after New Years, and took the Tuesday as well, so had some time to kick around at home after getting most of the post-holiday tidying done (and giving up on Super Mario Bros in frustration). I pulled my recently acquired copy of Around My French Table off the shelf -- I see blog and bulletin board posts referring to it constantly, and thought I ought to give it another look as I considered what to do with my cooking goal for the year. I opened it to the Soup chapter, and there I found my goal.

Or at least, a goal. I often think that I don't make soup nearly often enough, and when I do, it's one of three fairly basic recipes. We have many months of cold weather to go. So for the first two months of 2011, I will try to cook one new soup a week from Ms. Greenspan's book. This may require a bread subtheme, or actual sandwiches (and perhaps some nice bowls...). This will almost certainly have to happen on Sundays, the only day when I can be more or less certain of having some time to myself (the next four Saturdays are already booked with social events, which is certainly A Good Thing, but there are also errands and cleaning to shoehorn in).

We shall see what transpires, how much time I can find, and whether I enjoy having this kind of focus or long for my old scattershot ways.

I got a new camera!

Out with the Old...

2011-01-03T05:59:00.002-05:00

... holiday catalogs, and 500 first-grade math worksheets. Out with the tree, having served its purpose. Out with toys no longer played with ("out" meaning "into storage until Mimi is old enough for them"). Out with the old ownership of my company, and in with A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Oracle, Inc. Out with cold, grey days, in with more of the same for three more months.

Out with 0-3 month clothes, in with 3-6 month. They do grow quickly. She's found her hands; last night I saw her staring at her fist with an expression I can only call astonished.

Dave took the kids out to a museum in the afternoon. I cleaned the kitchen, put together dinner, and played Super Mario Brothers while Mimi napped.

This is the recipe I intended to make, Braised Beef Short Rib with Salsa Verde and Feta. I was planning to cheat on the salsa, mind. At the last moment I decided that there was no reason to dump salsa on these lovely ribs, and served them as they were, with the vegetables from the sauce (which I rough-chopped in a manner that would have gotten me thrown out of Ms Goin's kitchen at once) and a simple risotto. I love risotto, and I never get around to making it so often that I get tired of it. I'm sure the sauce would have been better had I done it her way, but the ribs were gorgeously silky with their big chunks of carrot and onion, and I have no regrets.

Gearing Up for the New Year

2011-01-02T06:54:00.003-05:00

The office last week was tomb-like, a handful of us sprinkled through the big room, trading "sure is quiet" "yep, sure is" comments when we passed. I have been tidying up old projects and giving some thought to new ones. Home has been noisier, but with nothing much going on in terms of the holiday. It's been an exciting year, and we just weren't ready yet to go out and do anything major.

The Weekly Recipe Project is giving me trouble; when I look at it under that name, it seems impossibly limited. Only 52 recipes? I probably have that many online recipes bookmarked, never mind a hundred-odd cookbooks and binders of clippings. How to approach the task of selecting my pool? I browse through blogs, look at files I have saved for years, visualize my bookshelves. Perhaps I should restrict the project to soup recipes, or bread, or desserts? Take one recipe from a different cookbook every week?

I was up early New Years day--for creatures that sleep so damn much themselves, cats don't grasp the idea of sleeping in--and decided to get the grocery list/menu planning out of the way. I already had one new recipe lined up for later in the week, but in the spirit of starting the new year right, I grabbed my new copy of At Home with Madhur Jaffrey and started with the fish chapter.

I made this pretty much as written, except I don't have any asefetida and my fenugreek is ground, not whole. I added more cayenne than specified, but that was by mistake--the result was intensely hot, and made me wish I had some naan. I served this with rice alone, but it would make a nice component in a multi-course meal. It came together quickly and without much fussing, and made a nice change from my usual fish standbys.

Fish and Peas in a Fennel-Fenugreek Sauce

1 lb fillet of cod, hake, or halibut, 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick
1 tsp salt, divided
pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne, divided
1/8 tsp ground turmeric
3 Tbsp mustard, olive, or canola oil
1/8 tsp ground asafetida
1/4 tsp whole mustard seeds
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
1/4 tsp whole fennel seeds
1/8 tsp whole fenugreek seeds
3 Tbsp plain yogurt
4 medium tomatoes, coarsely grated (I used a can of tomato sauce)
1 c fresh or frozen and defrosted peas

Sprinkle the fish on both sides with 1/4 tsp salt, freshly ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp cayenne, and the turmeric. Set aside 30 minutes or longer, refrigerating if necessary.
Put the oil in a frying pan and set on medium-high. Put in the asafetida, then the mustard, cumin, fennel, and fenugreek seeds.
As soon as the mustard seeds start to pop, add the yogurt. Stir until it almost disappears.*
Add the tomatoes, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp cayenne, and more pepper if desired. Stir and cook for five minutes, until tomatoes thicken slightly.
Add the peas, stir, and continue to cook another minute on medium heat.**
Lay the fish down in the sauce. Spoon the sauce over the fish and bring to a simmer. Partially cover and poach fish on medium-low heat until just cooked through, 7-10 minutes. Add water if the pan dries out.

* Mine did not disappear, but left little spongy bits like tofu behind. I used Greek-style yogurt, so maybe it had more solids.
** I added the peas near the end. Why would you cook peas for 10 minutes?

No pictures because my five-year-old camera died last week. I am trying to decide between size and features with a new one.

I am in the middle of a four-day weekend, trying to get the place back to some semblance of normality. More tidying than cleaning, trying to find homes for new things and continue whittling down the old.

On other resolution-related fronts, I sent Empire off to Dragon Moon Press, which was having an open sub month, and have put together a list of agents to query. The first chapter of Fury's Flight went to the writing group for crit, though I haven't psyched myself up sufficiently to read the feedback yet.

The Usual Look Back

2010-12-20T10:02:00.000-05:00

Time for the standard evaluation of the past year's goals, and the setting of some for 2011. I think one goal must be to keep better track of my goals, since after August the whole enterprise went by the wayside. So did a lot of other things. When I wrote these out at the end of last year, I didn't expect to be having a baby.

Financial -- Blown in a big way, what with moving and buying the van. We did pay off one of the credit cards, and an another unexpected event (my company being bought) should allow us to pay off the other one.
Health -- Also blown, given that I quit exercising in July.
Food-Related -- Hit or miss, and I can't entirely blame pregnancy for this one. My energy level did suffer a lot from our crazy summer and autumn.
Writing -- I didn't get done what I wanted to, but I did get a lot done, including a second NaNoWriMo win.
Reading -- More hits than misses.
Birthday observance -- Started well, then lost it over the summer.

All of which misses the point of the year, unexpected as it all was. Miriam is the sweetest baby one could wish for. The move was exhausting and difficult, but we're glad we did it; we like our new place, and our new town, and my new commute. We got rid of a lot of stuff we didn't need any more, and got some new things we've been needing for a while. I might not have been tracking my cooking well, but we have eaten well much of the time.

My hopes for 2011 are for recuperation and exploration.

Financial -- The emergency fund needs to be replenished, we have three college educations to think about, and of course we still hope to buy a house someday.
Writing -- Empire goes out to agents in February. If no one likes it, it goes in the drawer, under a rock. I'll also be working on a proper draft of last year's NaNoWriMo project.
Do Things -- This is a new one. I want to get out and about in New England, to see our friends, and to take advantage of the wonderful resources of this region.
Food -- I'll shoot again for at least one new recipe per week, and a blog entry for it. I hope to spend some time on ways to make my kitchen more efficient, to smooth out our weeknights as much as possible.

I would like to make exercise a goal, but experience tells me that rarely works with nursing; there's only so much time in a day. I'll work on my eating habits and see how the weight loss goes.

I've also been hearing about the 365 project, which sounds like it would be fun, but I'm not so good at forming new habits unless they fit into a particular time slot.

So that's it, and there's nothing too ambitious on the list. May 2010 go out in peace, and the new year be all that you wish for.

How I Spent November

2010-12-01T09:04:00.000-05:00

Retail Therapy

2010-10-23T12:59:00.000-04:00

During the long, long week and a half we spent waiting for Mimi to arrive, and the long, long days I spent having contractions that didn't get anywhere, I must confess to having vented some of my frustration by shopping. I splurged at Penzeys,

indulged myself at amazon.com,

and after our daughter finally decided to join us out in the world, reached an agreement with my mom in which we would split the cost of a new, 6-quart stand mixer as an early Christmas gift--replacing the smaller one that has been used pretty darn hard for the ten years I've had it, and which spews flour all over the place every time I start it.

I don't think I'll be getting anything else for Christmas now, but I'm going to have a lot of fun!

Today is the next-to-last market of the season. The temperatures have gotten sharply colder. It's time to snuggle down and think warm thoughts, turn on the oven, dig out the hats and mittens, and buy root vegetables.

Where I've Been

2010-10-15T11:46:00.000-04:00

Kind of a weird week here

2010-10-02T12:59:00.000-04:00

I woke up at 2 a.m. on Tuesday feeling crampy. This being exactly how labor started with JJ, we figured things were getting underway. We kept on thinking that for the next couple of days, but as I am posting this on Saturday, still babyless, you can infer that this was not the case. It's been pretty exhausting and frustrating; having an occasional contraction seems like a cruel tease on nature's part.

What with trips to the hospital and fretting, I didn't end up doing nearly as much cooking (or anything else) as I was planning to last week, but these new recipes made it in before things got stressful:

Chicken fried rice with bok choy -- Excellent. I even got L to eat some of it, by keeping the various pieces separate for her consumption.
Bo nuong cha (about halfway down the page)-- A lot of trouble to make and to eat, but totally yummy; a keeper

At least the false alarm gave us a chance to get things sorted out at home; the baby's room has been cleared of moving boxes, the clothes are washed, the car seat installed. Yesterday I went in for my trifecta of appointments: ultrasound to check fluid levels (fine), non-stress test to make sure the baby's doing okay (fine), general -purpose appointment with one of the midwives (fine, though they have a whole new batch of them who all seem terribly young).

We made it to the market this morning regardless--a bright, chilly day after yesterday's storm, the first one that has really felt like autumn to me--and made the rounds. I have been trying to buy some meat there every week, stocking up the freezer, but I am a bad locavore, since I have not yet been able to bring myself to pay $25 for a chicken.

Back at home, we had what is becoming our traditional post-market lunch of fresh mozzarella on focaccia with sliced tomato--quite possibly the last tomato of the summer. I am planning next week's menus, and feeling more than a little grumpy about, well, everything. I am going to try to put that grumpiness to some productive use this afternoon, but we'll see.

No links this week because most of these are improv to at least some extent:

Zucchini fritatta; squash soup
Braised chicken and root vegetables; mashed potatoes
Pizza
Pasta with beans and broccoli
Something in which I can use Thai peppers (so cute I had to buy them) and bok choy
Calzones with chard and....?

It would be nice to get some baking done, too, but I've been saying that for weeks now and haven't managed to do any.

The Return of Supper Club?

2010-09-27T07:26:00.001-04:00

Me being me, one of the first things I did after we moved was go hunting for people to cook with. Having no luck with Meetup.com, I went back to the good old Cooking Light forums and found an old post for a group in the area that was looking for new members. A couple of emails later, and the arrangements were made for a meeting at the end of September.

Every group has slightly different customs, and of course lots of them try to change things up a little bit with every meeting. The host for this one picked an herb theme. I offered to do an appetizer, on the theory that a) I don't get many chances to make those and b) if I ended up missing the dinner due to baby's arrival, I wouldn't be deleting an essential part of the meal. Once we had all settled on a course, the host sent out randomly selected herbs to be part of each person's dish; mine turned out to be rosemary.

A wonderful, easily available herb. Yay. As the weeks went by, I did some searching. I found plenty of recipes that sounded good, but they tended to have one thing in common: they were really easy. I didn't necessarily hope to knock everyone's socks off with gourmet flair (alas, this is not the Noble Pig), but I was anxious to show that I do like to cook and would be a committed member of the group. So I decided I would do three different dishes; none of them would be difficult, but the variety might be nice.

I did all of my shopping on Saturday; alas, no rosemary at the farmer's market, but I did find some fresh at Stop&Shop. Sunday dawned mercifully cooler than the previous day (late pregnancy does little to enhance one's ability to appreciate unseasonal warmth--I would rather it snowed tomorrow than hit 85 again).

The cashews were first. Five minutes' work, if that, and they smelled fantastic. Next up, the dip. Again, five minutes, and the food processor did nearly all of the work. The bread was the only thing that required anything resembling effort, and that not much. I haven't made bread in ages.

Everything was well received, but the bread made the biggest splash (someone wanted to know where it had been purchased!). In addition we had butternut squash ravioli with sage, brown butter, and hazelnuts; a dish of chicken, mushrooms, and tomatoes with tarragon; an orzo salad with tomatoes and oregano; and cookies made with basil (which was... interesting). I met a bunch of the group and had a very pleasant evening; most of them have kids and one is due any day now, so there was plenty of built-in conversational material there.

I'm not likely to make any meetings arranged for October, but we'll see how things go after that.

Last week, this week menus

2010-09-26T05:33:00.000-04:00

Closing in on the end of this pregnancy (2 1/2 weeks to go, more or less). Tthings are going well. We've been shopping for baby things, we got the van inspected, and the baby's room is slowly taking shape (though it does still have the curtains the previous tenants left, which are black). We think we have a name.

I haven't bothered to pack a bag for the hospital; previous experience suggests that labor is proof against pretty much all distractions, that you may as well go home in the clothes you arrived in because you still look pregnant, and that the baby will be professionally swaddled the whole time and oblivious to any adorable outfits you attempt to impose.

Last week's recipes turned out thusly:

Eggplant and fig caponata -- Excellent as always, the only problem is that one tends to eat too much of it on this fantastic foccaccia and can hardly eat any dinner.
Red Potato and Tomato Gratin -- Just okay, a lot of work for what you get out of it; I doubt I'll make it again.
Spiced Kuri Squash and Chicken Stew -- Really good. The squash turned out to be very dense and not too sweet, and went marvelously with the spice. I wish I had used both squash and skipped the chicken. Seriously.
North Woods Bean Soup -- Old standby for a reason. She ate two helpings = success.
Mushroom and Fettucine with Red Pepper Flakes -- Excellent! I didn't have as many mushrooms as recommended, added some sliced up pattypan squash. It was really good..
Couscous Salad with Chickpeas and Tomatoes -- Haven't made this in a long time; it remains an excellent recipe

This week should include:

Chicken fried rice with bok choy
Bo nuong cha (about halfway down the page)
Improv pasta salad
Stuffed squash
Chicken with linguine, leeks and tomatoes

Tonight, assuming I don't have a baby, I'll be meeting with a new supper club for the first time, but I'll try to blog that separately.

Menus for a new week

2010-09-19T10:18:00.000-04:00

As usual, I bought things willy-nilly, or perhaps giddy would be a better word, buying whatever caught my eye. Now this week's market jigsaw is nearing completion:

Sunday: Eggplant and fig caponata, an old favorite I make every summer when there's good eggplant to be had. Red Potato and Tomato Gratin, a new one from a source I am coming to like more and more. Some sort of pork tenderloin to go with.
Monday: Spiced Kuri Squash and Chicken Stew, which I didn't get to last week. Good thing squash keeps well.
Tuesday: North Woods Bean Soup. I'm tentatively designating Tuesdays as "Lydia's Choice" night, and this is a recipe she usually eats.
Wednesday: Mushroom and Fettucine with Red Pepper Flakes. I found this blog a few weeks back, and this will be the first recipe I've tried from it. I am very curious about their wine, and will be keeping my eyes open for it once I'm on a more relaxed regime there. School open house is this night, so best to do something simple.
Thursday: Tacos. Take it easy.

If I can get my act together, I'll put together Couscous Salad with Chickpeas and Tomatoes for lunches, to use up a few more veggies.

I will be tucking extra chard into a number of these recipes, and I have yet to find a place to use the bok choy - perhaps alongside the curry, in a pan-Asian nod? - and the daikon - pickle it? - but this is the overall shape of the plan.

Baby is very stretchy this morning, making her mother very uncomfortable, and creating a distinctly lopsided bulge in my belly. At this point, one occasionally feels like a balloon about to pop.

Last week's reviews

2010-09-19T05:25:00.000-04:00

We bought a minivan. After all these weeks, plus an additional two hours of paperwork, we went back to the first dealership and bought the first one we had looked at. I think it will serve. The sales guy was gushing over our credit scores, which I like to think are so good precisely because we buy less than we can technically afford in areas like vehicles. We'll go pick it up Tuesday.
Next, some notes on last week's new recipes.

Spicy Oven-Fried Chicken--Is indeed spicy, and made relatively little mess. I think I would make this again, though the chicken ended up being fattier than I am used to.
Fingerling Potato Salad with Leeks and Fennel--This one was only so-so; I have better potato salads.
Roasted Tomato Soup--A standout, though I think mine would have benefited from being less rushed. D* has asked that we have it again, if I can fit it in while we are still getting tomatoes.
Pan-Roasted Pork Chops with Cranberries and Swiss Chard--An excellent recipe overshadowed to some extent by a difficult evening, one which has prompted me to consider a stronger set of ground rules for dinnertimes.

I didn't get around to the squash curry yet; maybe tonight. Yesterday I filled my bags to bursting again, so this morning I'll have to sit down and work out what to do with everything. This afternoon we're going shopping for baby stuff--finally. I'll be 37 weeks on Tuesday, so in a little more than a week, she'll be welcome to show up just as soon as she likes.

Still crazy after all these years?

2010-09-12T06:40:00.001-04:00

On Thursday D* and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. It's been an eventful decade for us (the rest of the world goes without saying)--two moves, two layoffs, two children and all of the changes they brought, and will continue to bring us for many years to come. This year has been more eventful than most--as D* says, "Surprise baby is surprising." There have certainly been difficult times, but on the whole we reckon ourselves blessed, or lucky, in that the good times have far outweighed the bad and overall things have kept getting better.

We spent yesterday afternoon car hunting, with little to show for it. Hardly anyone seems to be selling what we want. We set aside our disappointment and made our way back to Cambridge. A brief stop at the Wine & Cheese cask (where I confided in the teller that I would kill for a margarita and received a sympathetic look), a mosey down to Harvard in the cool afternoon air, and then we enjoyed a wonderful meal at Dali, a place we last visited while I was pregnant with Lydia (some day I'll get more than a sip of sangria, dammit). Some day we may be able to take the kids out for dinner and they'll actually eat something, but on this occasion they were being babysat by their saintly grandparents, so we had anchovies and baked goat cheese and prunes wrapped in bacon and rabbit and seafood ravioli and... I'm starting to feel stuffed again. And then we had dessert.

We also made it to the Union Square market in the morning, and came back with a fridge full of vegetables, so I am happily spending time now doing the jigaw-puzzle-like menu arrangement that must follow. This is what I have so far (subject to change, naturally!).

Sun
Spicy Oven-Fried Chicken
Fingerling Potato Salad with Leeks and Fennel

Mon
Open-Faced Jerk Vegetable Sandwiches
Roasted Tomato Soup

Tues
Pan-Roasted Pork Chops with Cranberries and Swiss Chard
36 weeks!

Wed
Spiced Kuri Squash and Chicken Stew

The latter half of the week will be improvised, and next weekend will be another busy one--if we haven't gotten the car sorted out by then, we'll have to change strategy in order to get it done with, because we really can't waste much more time on this. Should probably also buy a few baby clothes and stuff!

Overdue Post: Vacation Wrapup

2010-09-02T07:44:00.000-04:00

Life continues to be crazy; so what else is new? Still settling in, have started car hunting, and there's all the joys of the third trimester with which to cope. I have been spending a lot of time reading other blogs and being generally envious of other peoples' time and energy. But I wanted to post about our vacation before it falls entirely out of my thoughts. The paucity of pictures is due to my failure to pack the battery charger for my camera.

8/14 Saturday: We drove up in the morning. L melted down on arrival, got over it and spent most of the day playing with her grandma. JJ spent most of his time on the sand pile, a remnant of last year's landscaping and leveling efforts. Dave's mom made dinner, we had pie and ice cream to celebrate his birthday, and lit sparklers out on the dock after it got dark. We had to move L's bed--she had first said she wanted to be upstairs, then changed her mind, which I pretty much expected was going to happen. JJ didn't even wait for lights out, but snuggled down and went to sleep, one exhausted little boy.

8/15 Sunday: Food shopping at Moulton Farm and then the grocery store in Center Harbor was followed by a quick lunch, and then hitting the beach with the grandparents before they had to head for home. Left Dave alone to relax and write and stuff. Later on, Dave's uncle took the kids for a boat ride. I am told that L used the words "accelerate" and "turbulence" during that. For dinner we had tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese, drizzled with olive oil and sea salt; corn on the cob; steak with a pan sauce of shallots and red wine. Dave told me that if he was ever sent to prison, memory of that meal would sustain him. The man knows how to give a compliment!

8/16 Monday: Rain moved in, so we went to Fun Spot for a couple of hours. Dave took L for a canoe ride, which she liked a bit too much, and did not want to stop. Didn't do much in the afternoon; the kids watched DVDs on my laptop. Dinner was an improvised pasta salad with green beans, cherry tomatoes, more mozzarella, olive oil and lemon juice. Strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

8/17 Tuesday: Got a lot of writing done, made pancakes. Another gorgeous day, so we went to the beach again for the morning. Journal says, "Cicadas all day, crickets all night." In the afternoon Dave took the kids to the library. A late trip to GPC for ice cream capped the day.

8/18 Wednesday: Was declared "the worst day ever" by our overly dramatic daughter, who got up much too early, refused to eat breakfast, and spent most of the day in A Mood. Not actually a bad day by any objective measure; played on the dock and the sand pile, went to Meredith in the afternoon. Made the usual pilgrimage to Innisfree Bookshop, did our bit to keep the place in business. Stopped by Oglethorpe and spent an imaginary ten thousand dollars, and then Lee's chocolate store to spend a few real ones. Dave and the kids went to the GPC playground for a while--more writing time for me!

8/19 Thursday: More beach time. L spends all her time in the water, enjoying the kickboard Grandma got her for her birthday, and trying to make friends with everyone remotely her own age. JJ doesn't trust the lake, will only go in up to his knees, and that with much coaxing; he prefers to play in the sand. I took L to the quilt shop, where we found some nice things, and she got to practice apologizing for breaking a dried eggshell they had in a display. I bought a couple more patterns to add to my "some day I will have time for this" collection. The first of our friends arrived for their weekend visit, the first time in ages we've been able to arrange a get-together.

8/20 Friday: Windy and chilly in the morning, but nice later on, though far from hot. Our other friend arrived at lunchtime. We went to the Old Country Store. L wanted to go to the library (the Moultonborough Library has a wonderful kids' section); the plan was that the guys would return to the cottage, but they got wrapped up doing a jigsaw puzzle and we all ended up staying for a while. Played with the kids; L had one of her wands and went around soliciting wishes from everyone. After dinner we had a fire and made s'mores, which L called "smears." It was absolutely wonderful, seeing old friends and my own family, everyone having a grand time. I took JJ off to bed, and everyone else played Trivial Pursuit, with L assisting.

8/21 Saturday: Quiet morning, uncertain weather, another visit to Fun Spot in the afternoon. We played mini-golf on the decaying course, and I got a couple of games of pinball in. Lee Wah's for dinner--it's pretty awful Chinese food, but you can't mess with Tradition. More Trivial Pursuit in the evening.

8/22 Sunday: Our one friend had to catch the bus back to NYC in the early morning; the rest of the time was occupied by cleaning, a trip to the dump, and so forth. Traffic was horrendous, but we made it home eventually and collapsed into our beds.

I didn't exactly feel rested when we got back, but I did feel good. It was a great vacation, and I feel enormously fortunate to have such wonderful people and places as part of my life.

One Step at a Time

2010-08-27T14:25:00.000-04:00

August appears to be doing as I wished, and speeding past in something of a blur. We are still not fully moved in, but the pieces are sorting themselves out, very slowly. We got the TV stand earlier this week, enabling the unpacking of another handful of boxes. The process has been slowed by a week on vacation, about which I hope to have more to say shortly (though not much to show, alas, since I forgot the charger for camera, and indeed have no idea where it is right now).

What Was Missing

2010-08-09T07:59:00.001-04:00

Walked out of the apartment this morning into air like a damp dishrag, and nearly missed the bus--I am not yet used to the fact that waking up ten minutes later may actually impact my morning. A single cricket serenaded my hasty progress.

But it was a lovely weekend. Saturday began with a trip to the Union Square farmer's market, where I bought--oh, lots and lots of things, and felt ludicrously happy and very much an urban dweller. L asked for a snack, was offered a ground cherry by a man working at the stand we were in line for; she wouldn't try it, so I did, and found it surprisingly sweet. I bought her a stalk of broccoli, which she nibbled at for the remainder of our stay at the market (yes, she likes raw broccoli, at least as much as she likes anything that resembles real food). There was South American flute music, and lots of people had dogs, and some of the eggs I bought are green, not to mention huge. Lunch was a caprese salad and slices from the cutest little watermelon ever. I wish I'd written down the name of the tomatoes I got, because I actually found them okay.

In the afternoon we headed over to the Mystic River Reservation--which is a lot bigger than I realized, looking at it on this map. Maybe next summer I can start running again. The background sound was a strange, constant meld of traffic and cicadas.

On Sunday my sister-in-law and her husband joined us for lunch. I had promised L cookies, so after putting the dough in to chill, I made a corn chowder that looked reasonably good, and indeed it was so. Any excuse to use my belated birthday present:

For some reason, most of what I've bought for the new kitchen is red, I don't know why, though a straightforward interpretation would suggest energizing change.

After lunch the kids dragged everyone else upstairs--I heard a fair amount of LEGO clatter--while I cleaned up a bit and got the dough out. L ventured downstairs while I was rolling out the first bit, and very soon everyone was back in the kitchen, wielding cookie cutters shaped like dinosaurs and decorating the results as soon as they had cooled off.

It was exactly what I have spent the past few years feeling that we've been missing from our lives--casual, minimally planned social contact, in which people can come over on short notice and feel free to linger, because they don't face an hour-plus drive home from our place, and I can relax and putter and feed the people I love without making into a laboriously planned Event.

The place is still coming together--I don't think we'll be fully sorted out for another month, but we unpacked a bit more, hung up the shower curtain I like so much instead of the ugly one the previous tenants left, shoved some out of season stuff into the storage zones, and Freecyled a ton of moving boxes and packing material. We have filled another box with books we might be able to part with. There's a lot left to do, but every incremental improvement in the entropy level does good things to my stress levels as well.

In the late afternoon on Sunday, the kids watched a video while I sat at the kitchen table and leafed through old cooking magazines, cutting down the stack (am I ever going to make that? what was I thinking when I turned down that corner? do I like this entire issue enough to keep it, or can I pull out a few pages and recycle the rest?). It was pleasant and restful and productive at the same time, even if reading about fall recipes makes me want to hurry the seasons forward even more.

Supper was an adaption of a pork and bok choy stir fry I found after a brief online search. I had a ton of bok choy, beautiful little plants from the market, so didn't use any other greens. I also found that I didn't have any cornstarch or hoisin sauce--I have some restocking to do. It was good anyway.

And now it is Monday, and it's going to be 90 degrees again.

Lost Summer

2010-08-05T12:20:00.000-04:00

In a recent IM conversation with a friend I referred to this year as a "lost summer" for us. She pointed out that a new apartment and a baby aren't exactly a loss, and of course she's correct, but that wasn't quite what I meant.

It's just that between the apartment hunt, packing and unpacking, and preparing for the baby, this summer has left us with precious little space for "now." Every spare minute is occupied with the future, getting ready for things to happen and wanting to the time to pass faster so that we can get on with adjusting our lives. I'm not really comfortable with this suspended state, with long-term waiting.

The weather has made it worse, a summer of sky-high temperatures and humidity that would be uncomfortable even if I wasn't pregnant, and which currently have me longing for fall more than I recall ever doing in my life. I tend to feel guilty about not living more mindfully a lot of the time, but this summer, I am giving myself permission to wish the days away, to focus on a time (not as far away as it seems, I try to convince myself) when we will be doing instead of preparing.

Just this once, August can't go by quickly enough.

...And More Progress

2010-08-04T11:18:00.000-04:00

Said farewell to Mom this morning after a busy, if not actually whirlwind, visit to help us settle into the new place. Which is not to say that we went out and did a lot of things, because we didn't, but the time passed quickly.

Sunday we did indeed go out shopping--Home Depot for keys and shims to keep our bookshelves from toppling (the floors in the new place are, um, not exactly level); Target for a vast miscellany of things, including an umbrella stroller (finally) and what turned out to be our housewarming present--all new towels!; and Bed Bath & Beyond for the things we couldn't find at Target.

Monday D* had a major dental appointment in the morning. I am drawing a complete blank on the afternoon; I suppose we just spent it unpacking. For dinner I made stuffed 8-ball zucchini, inspired by this post from Tea and Cookies, one of the best blogs going. I added mushrooms, and it made for a nicely substantial meal. I also did my first baking in the new place, a mint brownie recipe I have never tried before. They turned out okay despite the fact that I almost forgot to put in the eggs (had to scrape them out of the pan and stir those in), but are in no danger of displacing my usual go-to recipes.

Tuesday morning L had her annual checkup, and the acquisition of the vital paperwork to allow for enrollment at her new school. In the afternoon we went to the Aquarium, as I figured we should try to do at least one "event" during the visit. The place was packed with summer tourists escaping the heat, and the visit was a little hectic, but I think we all had a good time. Getting home, unfortunately, took forever, as there was construction on 93 causing an insane backup and spillover onto the local roads. The kids were patient (OK, L was patient; JJ fell asleep). Once we finally got back, I pulled some tortellini out of the freezer and whipped up a sauce with canned diced tomatoes, an emergency "recipe" I am happy to have.

The new place is coming together. I am impatient for our furniture to arrive, but the kitchen is almost totally sorted out now, which means I can relax in it. The books are finding their way toward an arrangement, though we are almost certainly going to have to store or get rid of some of them. There's a ton of miscellaneous things left to do, but progress is visible, and I think that the place is going to suit us very well. I'm even getting used to the stairs.

Making Progress

2010-08-01T05:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday had its ups and downs, but much progress was made.

The first outing was to the Union Square farmers market, near our old digs in Somerville. They didn't have a market when we lived there, but the past few years have obviously been good for it--the place was packed and obviously thriving. After the disappointingly tiny Medford market, with its two whole farms present, I was dizzied, not sure where to start. Amid intermittent meltdowns from L we provisioned ourselves with summer bounty, bolstered it with a few staples at Stop N Shop, and headed for home. Lunch was one of those minimalist summer market meals--a focaccia round sliced up and halved, filled with tomato, hand-made mozzarella, and basil leaves the size of my hand. Not to wax rhapsodic or anything, but it was damn good. I don't even like fresh tomatoes normally.

After lunch, Mom and I took the kids to the park, which is only about six blocks from our new place. Everything went fine, despite a disappointing absence of other kids. It was a perfect afternoon, sunny, warm, and breezy--I hope for their sakes they were all at the beach or otherwise outdoors, because anything else would have been a horrid waste. Every few minutes a jumbo jet would cruise overhead on a landing trajectory.

The kids played happily for a couple of hours, got thoroughly filthy, and seemed content when I announced it was time to head home. I carried J on my shoulders while L and Mom followed along. We were nearly home when L found a rock in her sandal, took off said sandal, then ran to catch up with me, and, one-shoed, tripped, skinning both her knees. She was quite fine about it until she we got to our driveway and she realized that she was bleeding, at which point the hysterics started. One would think Bactine a tool used by the Spanish Inquisition, but a Band-Aid and ice cream sandwich were soon applied.

The kids settled down with a movie, and Mom and I went to work attacking The Pile (mostly Mom, I must confess). We found a half-dozen boxes that can go right into storage--clothes that will await the next child to grow into them, CDs that I've ripped, but find myself reluctant to get rid of, just in case my laptop and external hard drive both spontaneously combust on the same day.

One major triumph: by dint of much box-shifting, Mom unearthed the remainder of my baking supplies--the actual ingredients. As soon as I put the flour away, I realized that I was going to have a storage problem. I just have too much stuff, even for a kitchen this size. Some consolidation and perhaps thinning will have to take place.

The next task was to give the kids a bath. Much as I like our new whirlpool tub, it's difficult in my present condition to do much leaning and bending, which means that the only practical way to bathe the kids is to get in with them. Fortunately, it's big enough to accommodate all 3 2/3 of us. The bath was the occasion of the day's second trauma, when L headed upstairs for fresh clothes, slipped, and split her lip open on one of the steps. Further hysterics ensued, but were short-lived.

Dinner was a simple dish I make in the summer when I don't have any better ideas: onion and garlic sauteed in olive oil, add squash, broth, and your protein of choice (chickpeas for this occasion, but I often use those Al Fresca chicken sausages), serve over pasta.

Today, Day 2 of Mom's visit, we have some shopping to do, and I hope to finish getting this kitchen sorted out. Perhaps I'll even bake something, and post a picture. I've been reading many wonderful food blogs lately, and am envious of the degree of photographic skill shown off on many of them. My little point-and-shoot hasn't gotten much exercise lately.

It's 5 a.m., I've been awake for ages (though my sleep was solid while it lasted), and I think I'll try to get some writing done.

Hoping to Come Back Here Soon....

2010-07-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

Everything is still rather blurry and busy, but now that the move is behind us I am finding--much to my relief--the desire to cook, to think about food, possibly even to write about food, coming back. Slowly. So I have some hope that once we are more fully settled, I'll be able to act on this returning itch.

We made it!

2010-07-24T05:42:00.000-04:00

Thursday was hectic, as all moving days are. Dinner: Bertucci's (again!). Yesterday was slightly less so, but still really busy. I am focusing on getting the kitchen unpacked. Visited our new grocery store, a Stop N Shop not far away. Looks like a nice place. The furniture store delivered the frame for L's bed (the rest of her stuff won't get here until Thursday) and the cable guy came by to set up our internet service. For our first cooked meal in the new place, I made chicken with Penzey's lemon-pepper, cauliflower, and couscous. So far the move's only casualty has been a coffee mug. The Bigfoot guys did a great job.

Today we are headed back to Worcester to clean the old apartment. Not exactly looking forward to it, but it has to get done. If I can unearth the rest of my kitchen stuff, I am hoping to bake something tomorrow.

Almost There!

2010-07-20T14:45:00.000-04:00

What a week it has been, and it's only Tuesday. To recap, with product placement:

On Saturday we drove in to "the city." A quick stop at the Harvard Book Store to unload a few more books, and then we were off to examine our new apartment in more detail than we had before, including measuring rooms and such. After lunch at Bertucci's we headed out to Natick and the fabled Jordans furniture store, so many of whose radio ads I have heard over the years. We had never been there before, and were somewhat floored by the sheer showmanship of the place. In short order we found a couch, a TV stand, and a bed for our daughter, then retreated from the sales onslaught. More packing followed.

Sunday morning was the last day for church in Worcester. I cleaned the oven, did laundry, and packed. In the afternoon, one of my co-workers visited to pick up a bookcase we are offloading on her, and then we headed back to Rotmans (which is a lot quieter than their competition) to finish our furniture shopping, which consisted of a mattress and dresser for L. More packing.

Monday I took the afternoon off. Stopped at Petco to get a new litter box for Jasper, drove home, took L over to the store to pick up her cake, and did more packing. In the evening was her birthday party at Pump It Up. It was a short guest list, but the kids all had a good time, with only one episode of tears (when one child wanted a balloon that someone else had already picked out). By the time it wrapped up, we were all pretty well exhausted. Drove home through a sky that threatened to unleash a thunderstorm at any moment but never did, though it was a gorgeously dramatic frame for the sunset.

Tuesday has been pretty quiet, but then I'm at the office, doing normal things, wondering if I'll manage to finish up the kitchen packing tonight and if I'll need to take another half day tomorrow.

I am so, so, so ready for this to be over and done with. I want my life back!

Countdown: The Final Week

2010-07-15T10:06:00.000-04:00

Last night I made chili without a recipe. I didn't even really think about finding one, just threw a bunch of things that seemed right into a pot, based on memories of the first chili I ever made. Ground beef, onion, green pepper, chili powder, cumin, a can of tomato puree, and some kidney beans. It turned out just fine.

A week from today we'll be moving into our new place, and starting the business of learning a new town and sorting our lives back out from their current boxed state. The moving company has been around to give us an estimate. The packing is going well. We are excavating things that were shoved into a closet when we moved into this place, and throwing a fair number of them away, or giving them to the thrift store, hoping to avoid last-minute craziness as far as possible.

We'll be leaving some furniture behind when we go, some of the unfinished pine we picked up cheap in our first Boston years, and replacing it with what I continue to think of as "grown-up" furniture. Last night I packed up the baking ingredients--two entire boxes' worth.

27 weeks pregnant and things seem to be fine. She's an active little critter, just like her siblings. I got my packet of preregistration paperwork for the hospital, and started making a list of the things we'll need to get.

Last but not least, today is my daughter's birthday! 6 years ago we were well into the second day of labor, with five hours still to go before meeting her. It's been a wonderful time, full of adventures. Yesterday while I was working at home, I tried to assuage her disappointment at not being able to spend time with me by suggesting that she write me a letter. "Dear Mommy, I love you. Love Lydia."

Goal Roundup: June

2010-06-30T13:17:00.000-04:00

Well, that went by in a blur--as expected. It was a busy month, to say the very least.

Financial: The savings account is expected to suffer as we put the initial payment on the new apartment, replace some furniture, and prepare for Baby. On the other hand, we may be credit card-free by the end of the year, which would be pretty awesome.
Health: Travel and illness interfered in the first two weeks. Since then, back to walking in the morning when I'm in the office.
Food: See above. Too busy and/or exhausted to do any real planning or much cooking worthy of the name. All of my bakeware is now packed. It will be August before things settle back down in that realm. Not expecting much from myself until after Baby.
Reading: Interesting Times, Lords and Ladies (both while sick); All Things Bright and Beautiful (reread from a long long time ago). Nearly all of our books are packed, but I left out a few just in case.
Writing: Have added a few lines of dialog to the current scene, but otherwise this has been sorely neglected as I try to get things done at work.
Birthdays: Missed my grandmother's. Bad. :(

So not great, but not unexpected; moving and baby-growing are tiring activities. We'll be spending July packing and then doing the move, so I may not even bother with the tracking.

Right now, I really want to lie down and take a nap somewhere. If only.

Chicken with Kale and Wild Mushrooms

2010-06-27T06:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we packed up the cookbooks, and most of the metal bakeware (the cookie cutter collection may need its own box...). It was a long, tiring day, fraught with annoyance over the past week's unreliable--meaning mostly absent--hot water supply and our landlord's efforts to get it fixed. The kids are watching a lot of TV these days while we pack. I was happy to get out for an hour by myself and visit the grocery store, where I bought a bunch of veggies and things pretty randomly. I already had chard from the Thursday market, and I was thinking vaguely of mushrooms. I came home and plugged search terms into Google and came up with this:

Chicken with Kale and Wild Mushroms

One thing about getting more experienced is that I rely a lot less on recipes than I used to. Which is not to say that I don't use them, but rather that I am better now at identifying the places where it's possible to go a slightly different route and still get to an acceptable place. I wasn't about to blanch my greens separately (for one thing, we were running out of clean pans) when I could throw them on the mushrooms for a minute. We don't have any decent wine right now, but a sauce of all chicken broth would do all right.

The one thing I forgot was the lemon juice, which probably would have helped; I found the flavor a little dull. Next time I might try throwing in some herbs, too. It wasn't a particularly ambitious meal, but it's the first we've had in a while that wasn't takeout or put together in a state of advanced exhaustion after a bad commute.

Come Tuesday I'll be 25 weeks along with Baby To Be Named Later, who has already developed a nice strong kick. Three of those weeks will be consumed by preparing to move, much of the next month by settling in to the new place, and then school for our newly minted first grader. October will be here before we know it.

A Big Step

2010-06-24T09:58:00.000-04:00

The first major item on the summer checklist has been resolved: We have a new apartment! Signed the lease last night on a lovely place in Medford. We'll be moving next month, and I hope we'll be happy there.

Regardless, it's a major load off my mind to have it reduced to the relatively simple logistical problems of the actual move. This is much better than the major strategic decisions--not to mention the physically exhausting process of tracking down agents, locking down appointments, and driving hither and yon to see the places. It's exciting to be able to look at a calendar and say, "In X days I will be free of this commute." We told our current landlord that we're going to be leaving; a little sad after all these years, but our family is about to outgrow the place--it could be argued that we already have--and I'm more than ready to be done with the drive.

The farmers markets are open here at last, but my company's policy on working at home has changed somewhat, so I'm not sure if or when I'll make it to the Worcester market, in between everything else. I have been stopping by the one near the office, but there's a limit to what I can buy there without going into serious advance prep with coolers and such. I look forward to learning more about the markets in our new town!

Trials and Tribulations

2010-06-11T14:15:00.001-04:00

This has been one of those periods in which the good things arrived sandwiched between the really unpleasant.

It started nearly two weeks ago, on Sunday, when we were supposed to drive into the city to look at a few apartments. Every single appointment ended up canceled or postponed until Tuesday. On Tuesday I went to the office early so I could head out and see the two places I had managed to reschedule. After spending twenty minutes stuck in an inexplicable traffic stoppage, I found that the first was in appalling condition and the second, despite being a duplex, was actually smaller than our current apartment.

Then I got lost trying to get to the highway. Did I mention that it was raining? I found myself thinking that maybe we should just stay put after all, forget the whole idea of moving.

The following morning we set out to visit my family in Pennsylvania. The trip itself went fine; everything was lovely and the kids behaved themselves to an astonishing degree. On Thursday we went to Presque Isle in the morning, then out for dinner with my grandparents (Olive Garden--Erie doesn't offer a lot of options). It was at about 2:30 the following morning that things really and truly went south, as I woke up with a vague feeling of all not being well. By 5:00 it was unequivocally established that I was ill (I blamed the restaurant, but later events seem to have cleared them). I spent the day on the couch with a can of ginger ale, package of saltines, and a Terry Pratchett novel while D* and my mom took the kids out.

Saturday I seemed to be improved, so we headed down to our college reunion. Had a lovely time, though I was very tired; it was nice to see people, to gripe about the changes made to the campus (and those that should have happened, but haven't). Around 9 that night I either relapsed or went into a delayed Stage 2 of the bug. Bad night. Sunday I was still a mess, and we had to drive down to Butler to see my seldom-visited paternal grandmother. I sat in the living room with my Gatorade while everyone else ate lunch, unable to contemplate the smell of anything edible. Then we continued on to Pittsburgh.

On arriving in the hotel parking lot, JJ threw up. The temptation was strong to turn around and head back to my mother's place and thence home, but having tossed his milk he seemed chipper enough, so we decided to see how the night went. D* took them out to a nearby park while I rested. JJ threw up once more, and so did I, before bedtime, but the night passed uneventfully after that, and in the morning everyone seemed to be doing okay. We went to the zoo as planned and had a fine old time of it, started our homeward trip that afternoon, enjoyed a lovely night's stay in Buffalo (and how often do you hear that?), and enjoyed an uneventful drive on Tuesday. I kept exclaiming delightedly about feeling more or less normal again.

Wednesday, JJ vomited again, but again it seemed to be an isolated incident, and it was hard to say whether he was really sick or just having some aftereffect of all the travel and excitement. Then our remaining cat, Jasper, was acting a little odd in the afternoon, and seemed to be having some trouble walking when he got up from a nap, so I made an appointment for him and blew a bunch of money on blood tests that showed nothing wrong that we didn't know about.

Thursday, JJ seemed to be more clearly under the weather. The cat seemed to be fine. I went to my OB/GYN appointment; I haven't gained much weight with this pregnancy yet, but I started off with some to spare, and the baby appears to have weathered my little gastro-intestinal adventure handily.

Friday, 4:30 a.m., L asked for a drink of water, and two minutes later was heaving.

Needless to say, I hope, I haven't been doing much cooking, and indeed food of any kind has not played much of a role for most of us in the past week. Still, the farmer's markets are opening, and in a fit of optimism, I am nevertheless making appointments for more apartment viewings this weekend. Sooner or later, things have to start going better.

Right?

Goal Roundup: May

2010-06-01T11:32:00.000-04:00

Not the best month for this stuff--way too much going on. Still, here's the progress:

Financial: Lost some ground, think we're back on track now.
Health: Missed a couple due to schedule problems.. Walking outside when the weather is nice, walking on the treadmill. Only gained 2 pounds at my OB checkup, so must be doing okay there
Food: Sans inspiration, sans energy. The few new recipes I've tried haven't turned out well. It's been a T&T month for us.
Reading: The Great Divorce (new), Before They Are Hanged (new), The Truth (reread), Going Postal (reread), Making Money (reread). Literary comfort food to go with the literal.
Writing: Done through Chap 13, I think. Got some more crits on the first four chapters, mostly minor stuff. Struggling with lack of time/energy as work is really heating up.
Birthdays: One birthday observed

Apartment-hunting is consuming a lot of time and energy and so far has produced absolutely nothing. Still, I started packing anyway. Being 21 weeks pregnant is taking up the rest of the energy.

5:30 AM

2010-05-15T05:31:00.001-04:00

"What are you doing?"
"Making sure the erasers are okay."
"Oh."
"Can I go to the bathroom?"
"Sure." "Now go back to bed."
"But the sun is up."
"It's 5:30. The sun gets up early in the summer. People need to go back to sleep."
5 minutes later, "Mom! What was that noise?"
"Probably birds."
"I think it was trees moving back and forth outside the window."
"Could be. Go back to sleep."
5 minutes later, "Mom!"
"What?"
"The sun's rising."

*Sigh.*

Where Does the Time Go?

2010-05-12T07:39:00.000-04:00

I had a vague thought this morning that I hadn't blogged for a while. I had no idea it had been nearly two weeks! Time goes by awfully fast when you're apartment-hunting and pregnant and trying to finish a novel. The only new recipe I've tried in the past couple of weeks turned out badly, so I don't want to blog it. Instead, a quick up update on Empire -- I've made it through chapter 8 in the latest bout of restructuring. This is about 1/3 of the way through the book, and the point at which things really start going badly--shadowy threats manifest, poor decisions are made. Fun times.

Farfalle with Chicken, Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions, and Goat Cheese

2010-04-30T12:25:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted a new recipe here, let alone a new recipe that blew me away.

At least, I think this is a new recipe. D* says we've had it before. I don't remember if we did. In any case, I haven't blogged it, so it's probably been at least two years since I made it, if I did.

I wish I knew why this dish was so entirely awesome. Was it the basil, even hydroponically grown? The goat cheese, which melted all creamily into the nooks of the pasta? The fact that I was really, really hungry? I have no idea. But it was good.

Farfalle with Chicken, Tomatoes, Caramelized Onions, and Goat Cheese

I made it pretty much as written, except for using grape tomatoes. I left them whole, and even though I don't generally care for tomatoes, I loved their sweet bursts of flavor in this. I am looking forward to making this again in the summer, when fresh ingredients should make it even better.

Goal Roundup: April

2010-04-30T07:02:00.001-04:00

Another pretty good month.

Financial: Savings to plan. Paid off my student loans (alas, the bottle of champagne I was planning on will have to wait until After Baby). The car is half paid for, as of this month. Used the month's extra paycheck to kill a big chunk of credit card. Go, us.
Health: Seems to be the month’s dump goal, but given that I'm pregnant and feeling lousy, I am giving myself a pat on the back for getting to the damn gym three times a week, even if it's just to walk.
Food: I did try four new recipes this month--three from Fine Cooking, which are on here somewhere, and another one I should blog this weekend if I can get my act together.
Reading: Mistborn; Plato’s Republic: A Biography (audio); The Court of the Air; Persuasion (podcast).
Writing: Very, very little progress, but I am still grinding forward, and I've had a few ideas this past week that should be good for the story.
Birthdays were at least a day late in all cases, but I did send the cards.

May will probably be a wash, as we'll be busy apartment-hunting, getting rid of crap, and eventually, packing, which takes way more time than it ought to.

To Do

2010-04-28T07:17:00.002-04:00

Write.
Exercise.
Drink plenty of water.
Cook and eat nutritious, homemade meals.
Get eight hours of sleep.
Earn a paycheck.
Blog insightfully.
Meditate.
Network.
Tweet.
Value friends and family.
Read work in your field.
Read work outside your field.
Comment insightfully on other blogs.
Research current/future novels.
Research agents.
Research publishers.
Attend conferences (for career).
Attend conferences (for writing).
Critique others' writing.
Write some more.

Where Have I Been?

2010-04-19T13:26:00.000-04:00

Not having a ton of time/energy to cook, for the most part. The morning sickness is diminishing, but I am regularly feeling overwhelmed by the rest of my life--like this blog is just one more thing to do (badly).

Three New Ones from Fine Cooking

2010-04-11T11:21:00.000-04:00

After a dry spell, last week saw a burst of energy in which I tried three new recipes from the latest issue of Fine Cooking, a magazine of which I am increasingly fond:

Tilapia with Scallions and Black Bean Sauce -- Instant keeper. We loved this one, and it was quick and easy to make. I don't really like tilapia all that much, but this is a good use for an increasingly common and popular fish.
Chicken Noodle Soup with Lemongrass -- I still haven't found lemongrass around here, but even without it, this is a good soup. I'd make this one again.
Chinese Egg Noodles with Five-Spice Pork -- The dud of the week's efforts, alas, this was okay, but not something I'd make again -- at least not without significant tweaks, the first of which would be to eliminate the bacon. This turned out on the greasy side.

I don't know if this blog is having an identity crisis or what. I don't seem to have the time to make a proper go of it--work, kids, writing, reading, to which will soon be added apartment-hunting and moving. Too many hobbies, not enough hours. I hate to abandon it, though. I suppose if nothing else I can keep it as a record of the few new things I try these days.

This next week is going to be full of veggies after a weekend that's been mainly carbs, but they're tried and true ones for us. I want spring!