Villain Work

I'm within three chapters of finishing my first draft (and they aren't even big chapters) but I've been fighting and fighting with them and recently realized that I can't write them without believing in my present bad guy more than I do.

So I'm backing off from the chapters and doing some villain work.

The villain is the main problem I'm facing, but working on him also made me realize that I need to make some other characters in the book less pleasant--there are too many nice people right now. I think this is a result of me being in my winter mode and wishfully writing what I'd like to be surrounded by, as though crafting nasty characters is just too hard for my brain in the midst of the dark and cold days.  I can imagine a sunny, warm day, sitting out on the deck and having a great time writing a really despicable character. But right now, when I feel the world is not an overly easy place to live in I'm doing a much better job crafting the kind characters--I've developed a sibling relationship that was a little thin and have filled in some of the (pleasant) background characters. But if I want to finish the draft, I'm going to have to get over the niceness hump* and write the meanies.

So I went out and bought a bag full of out-of-season non-local fruit: strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and kiwis. Maybe I can trick my brain into summer mode for a short while, just long enough for me to crank out some really nasty characters to make my book more interesting.

And if you have any great villains you think I should keep in mind, please let me know!

*The niceness thing does not apply to me. I am not nice to be around now. In fact the best I can do is resolve not to be as unpleasant this February as I was last year. That's hard enough.

Getting weepy on the stairmaster

I was at the gym the other night stomping away on the stairmaster when all of a sudden everything got sort of blurry. No, I wasn't going so fast that the machine was smoking (ha!), nor was my vision deteriorating more than its already crappy state; I was reading the final chapters of the wonderful book Plain Kate by Erin Bow and my eyes were responding appropriately.

This is a wonderful book. The story is about a young girl and is set in a vaguely Russian-ish land with prominent characters who are members of a traveling Roma family. The story has elements of magic and mystery, but primarily it is about loneliness and belonging.

None of the characters are simple--almost all of them have been deeply hurt by the world--and none of their feelings are simple. The best example is the villain of the piece, who I absolutely hated for preying on Kate at times, and for whom I felt a deep sympathy for his suffering at others. Kate is also unsure what to feel or think about him: fear? pity? friend? enemy?  There's no simple way to render a character who steals from Kate but also saves her, and I loved this complexity.

You'd think that with such layered characters the book would be long and it would take a lot of text to convey such complicated feelings and characters. But there is a remarkable economy to the language--it is lyrical, yet spare. It didn't feel like there were any extraneous words in the book. By comparison, most other books (many of which I also enjoy) seem downright sloppy.

And I challenge anyone to read this book and not be thoroughly in love with character of Taggle the cat. Bow has captured the most perfect "cat-ness" of Taggle:

Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. "It's covered in bread," he huffed. "What fool has covered meat with bread?" He batted at the crust, then sprang back as it broke, and began licking gravy off his paw. "Ooooo," he purred. "Ooooo, good."
"Taggle," gulped Kate, again.
The cat looked up from his licking. "Oh. Well. I could share." He arched his whiskers forward and, like a lord, demonstrated his beneficence by giving away what he didn't want. "There is bread you might like."

The only other fictional animal I can think of that is this perfect, that absolutely captures the appeal of the particular species, is Manchee the dog in Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go (which I mentioned here) whose love for the boy Todd made me cry.

For the writers out there, it was really nice for the author to include the information in the acknowledgments* that it took her six years to write this book. That seems like a perfectly reasonable amount of time in which to create something so perfect and precise. I checked out the author's web site and it looks like her next book will be out in 2012 so (yeah!) we don't have to wait another six years to read it.

And now a word about the cover art: Very pretty but it just doesn't fit. Take a look at the picture at the start of this post. It looks like the girl on the cover is having a lovely time, balancing on the ridgepole of a roof, looking out over a magical town, a gentle breeze making her hair and scarf float out behind her and her cat is prancing in front of her! This lighthearted depiction is the absolute opposite of the one incident in the book when the main character (and the cat) are on a roof. They are in a city that is about to be destroyed and the inhabitants of the city are known to pick scapegoats (like Kate), accuse them of witchcraft and burn them at the stake (so not a friendly, happy place). And by this point in the story Kate has had her hair cut off and been badly burned. She is hunched and tense and clinging to the slates. For example: "The downpour slowed to a cold soaking rain. The steep roofs were slippery, but they didn't dare go into the streets. Men in the dark garb of the city watch roamed in packs and harried the refugees from doorways and alleys. So Drina and Kate stuck to the roofs, inching, sliding, scraping, keeping out of sight. It was slow and exhausting." This cover just doesn't fit this wonderful book.

*Thank you, editor, for putting the acknowledgments at the end! One of my big pet peeves is when they are at the beginning.

Frita Batidos

It's been a good long while since I blogged about a restaurant. I haven't been eating out much and when I do its usually just a rushed post-gym dinner at our favorite Korean local, Maru, or for a beer and sandwich at a brew pub. But yesterday I joined some friends for a holiday lunch. Since only one of us works in a traditional office where holiday parties are the norm, we made our own little celebration and decided to try Eve Arranoff's new place Frita Batidos.

I got there before the lunch rush began and it was quiet and very, very white. It's a casual place with (white) picnic tables and all hard surfaces so while it was quiet when we arrived, once the traffic picked up, the noise level was approaching uncomfortable. I'm not sure my sensitive ears could handle a boisterous late night crowd.

But the food! Oh my the food! I ordered a black bean frita with tropical coleslaw on top and a side of the twice fried plantains. The black bean patties I've had in the past have been leaden and heavy and feel a bit like a punishment for choosing them over meat. But these are creamy and flavorful and really rewarding. I didn't wish I was eating another friends big Cuban sandwich, delicious though it looked.

This may not look like a huge amount of food for $14, which is more than I usually spend on lunch, but it is all so rich that it was amazingly filling; I wasn't hungry when dinner time rolled around and since I'm one of those people with a hobbit-like tendency to eat every three hours or so, that's saying something.  If I worked downtown I could see getting just the black bean frita with a side of tropical slaw (it was good on top, but I think I'd like it even better on the side); that would set me back $8 and mean that I wouldn't be feeling stuffed. But those plantains were amazing and amazingly rich. They are drenched in a garlic-cilantro butter and accompanied by a sweet chili mayo for dipping. They melt on your tongue and the combination of the sweet plantain and the rich butter, combined with the bright flavors of the garlic and cilantro is just magical. This place is open late and I could see coming here after a show for an alcohol-soaking up plantain gorging.

If you have a sweet tooth, as one of my friends most decidedly does, then you should try the churros with chocolate Espanol.  It was a huge portion which meant we each got to sample them without depriving her of the blood sugar spike she so desired.

They were the best churros I've ever tasted--the dough is flecked with orange peel and nutmeg, they are rolled in cinnamon sugar, and the chocolate is like warm, cinnamon-spiked ganache. I'd say one order could easily satisfy two sweet-tooths or four normal-tooths.

None of us tried the batidos--I was chilled from walking downtown on a windy cold day so I'm going to wait until the weather is more conducive to the consumption of ice to give those a try. 

December catch up

Just a little update for those who still check in here. As you may have noticed, blog posts have been scarce of late. I blame that on the 1600+ words I've been churning out for the 1st draft of the novel. By the end of my fiction writing I'm so sick of sitting still (and my wrists hurt) that even if I have an idea for a blog post, I'm too wiped to write it. So here are a few miscellaneous things that I've been meaning to post:

I finished NaNoWriMo! Unfortunately 50,000 words only took me to just past the half-way point in my novel so I'm trying to keep up the momentum. December is harder than November as far as making the time to write. I'm giving myself a break and not expecting any writing on the weekends--it's just too crazy.  But I've managed to add a little more than 15,000 words since the end of NaNoWriMo. I'm approaching the end of part 3 (of 4) so that feels good, though I'm thinking I probably won't be able to finish the draft before the New Year. The kids get out of school next week and finding time to write will become even more challenging.  

Gift/book wise: I'm giving a few family members The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell. Somehow I neglected to blog about it here but it was probably my favorite read of the year.

I have a hard time staying hydrated in the winter because drinking cold water when it's freezing flipping cold outside is something that I have to force myself to do. So lately I've been making an effort to make and consume the following two hot, non-caffeinated beverages. The first I call
Winter Comfort:  Make a half a mug of strong peppermint tea--let it steep for about 10 minutes. Then glug in vanilla soy milk to the top of the mug and nuke until the whole thing is warm. I know, it sounds kind of disgusting, but I really love it.

The second is Cheaper than Sweetwaters' Lemon-Ginger Tea: Put about 5-6 cups of water in a pot. Take a piece of ginger root, about 2 inches long, and slice crosswise into 1/4 inch pieces (no need to peel it). Chuck the pieces in the pot. Dump about 1 T of powdered ginger in there too (more if you really love the ginger burn). Then bring to a boil, cover and simmer for a few hours. Stir in the juice of 2 lemons that you squeezed and about 1/2 cup of honey or sugar and stir until dissolved. Taste and adjust for your own sweet/sour preference. You can strain out the chunks of ginger and keep this in a jar in the fridge for a while. Then give it a shake (the powdered ginger settles to the bottom), pour in a mug and nuke until hot. It's also very nice to settle a tummy that may have overindulged in holiday treats.

Past the half way point

It's day 19 of NaNoWriMo and so far I've churned out 34,992 words. So I'm a little ahead of schedule with the word count though I'm only about a third of the way through my plot map. Since I know that what I've written will need to be tightened up, I'm not too bothered by the length though I will have to keep this momentum up after November 30th to get the first draft finished.

A few things I've discovered:

• I really like writing with a map. Whoa boy is it a different experience. Less choice is a good thing for me. It keeps me plugging through the hard parts and stops me from jumping ahead to the bits I know will be fun to write.
• My main character's mother is blind! And her father dies in the course of the book! I didn't know these things when I started writing, but that's the process of discovery.  As one writing site recommended (can't remember which one): it can be kind of fun to throw a whole lot of grief at your main character and see how they respond.
• I love Last FM. I don't think the interface or organization of the web site is as good as Pandora but the way it connects songs and groups is way more diverse. For example, if you are on Pandora and create an Iron and Wine station, be prepared to get swamped with Nick Drake and Bonnie Prince Billie. I like both, but not all the damn time. Last FM mixes in way more artists: Andrew Bird, Elliot Smith, Noah and the Whale, and plenty of other bands I've never heard of. I've been playing Last FM while I've been writing and it has proved to be a good way to keep me at the computer.
• The house is a sty, there are piles of mail that need to be sorted through and we keep running out of stuff like milk, bread and prescription meds. If I didn't have most of our bills set up for auto pay, we'd probably be getting threatening notices from utility companies. I'm barely remembering to get the laundry washed and dried and have had to tell everyone just to rummage around in the clean laundry pile to find what they need for the day because folding and putting it away isn't happening. But the kitties think the clothes pile new kitty bed is fantastic! Dinners of late have been mediocre at best. The thing that blows my mind is how people who work out of the house for 8+ hours a day get any of this stuff done. At least I can chuck in laundry and go back upstairs and write. 
• But hey, it feels good to be so jazzed with the writing that things that normally bug the crap out of me don't seem to matter.

Patterns/Maps/Plans (and the problems when you don't have one)

I've been feeling a little frantic lately. Halloween is approaching and I've been trying to figure out how to transform last year's bat costume into a dragon, for the girl critter. At least the wings are taken care of...but there's still a tail to construct and the pointy spikes along the spine to attach and part of me thinks it would probably be easier to start from scratch rather than trying to modify the old costume. Then I could go and buy a pattern and have someone else do the thinking part of how to craft it--all I'd have to do is follow the instructions. But the girl is rather attached to last year's costume (though won't be so easy going as to agree to be a bat again this year...) The boy critter wants to be an Ipod so that takes a big box and some time for him to trick it out--shouldn't be too big of a deal. But this week he also has his class Mythology Wax Museum and he chose to be Hermes, so we have to figure out how to make and stick some wings onto his sandals and on a hat, create a drapey toga thingy and a caduceus (thanks to the girl's reptile enthusiasm we have plenty of rubber snakes available).

I've also been preping like crazy for this year's NaNoWriMo. I'm working on a new (NEW!) novel and, though I'm hesitant to curse it, the prep has been going really well. I'm not letting myself write any of it until I've created a really detailed plot map, including a chapter synopsis and scene by scene summaries. I got lost in the narrative of the last book and realized that once I'd generated enough text for a three volume series (and it still wasn't finished...) that I really shouldn't have been writing without a map. Maybe someday I'll have the patience and distance to be able to go back and force a form on that text, but for now I'm going to let it sit and start with a completely different mindset. I'm pretty excited about November starting--I feel like a dog that's been kept on a tight leash and on Monday I get let off of it to romp and play and write all the scenes and chapters I've planned.

Of course I am a little worried about the necessary time commitment and the way everything else in our lives will go to hell.

Which brings me to my kitchen.  Maybe because my brain has been so preoccupied with stitching and plotting, I haven't had much energy left over for dinner planning. So instead of feeling free in the kitchen, for the past week or two, I've felt really stressed. The farm share ended recently and while I still have a big box of winter squash and bags of sweet and regular potatoes to work through, the rest of my produce is now of my own choosing. It should be liberating, right? I can cook whatever I want! But it's a different sort of thinking and I've been overwhelmed by the liberty, so there's been a lot of 5pm grouchiness where I dig through the fridge and/or freezer trying to figure out what sort of slop to heave on the table and pass off as dinner, while the critters subtly hint (by gnawing on my ankle) that they expect to be fed soon.

It's not going to get better once November 1st rolls around and I put food (even) lower on the priority list while I try to churn out the book. So, this weekend I'm going to take a little break from my Scrivener plot mapping frenzy to put together a meal plan along with a shopping list (so I don't find myself tearing through the crisper drawers looking for the cilantro I forgot to buy).  I'm thinking of getting really regimented for the month of November--making Monday Slow Cooker night, Tuesday Pasta night, Wednesday Mexican night, Thursday Stir-Fry night and Friday Pizza night. I'll probably feel a little annoyed with how repetitious and rigid this plan is (and I know it would drive me to despair if I had to do this forever), but hey, for the next month I'm going to keep reminding myself that prose, not food is the priority. If I can follow the map in my novel, I should be able to follow the plan in my menu.

And hopefully, stay sort of sane-ish.

It has been a while...Tantre Farm Share, week 19

From vaguely left to right: (Top) butternut squash, sweet potatoes (yams? They don't look pale enough to be real sweet potatoes...), kale, lettuce, arugula

(Middle-ish zone) delicata squash, head of garlic, tatsoi, sorrel, radishes, kohlrabi

(Bottom) carrots, red potatoes, green tomatoes, red tomatoes, hot peppers, tongues of fire shell beans, turnips

Only one more week of overwhelming (and overwhelmingly good) produce! I know I haven't been doing these updates much--summer got pretty crazy since I did not book enough critter activities to keep them out of my hair for long enough to lay out and admire my produce. Thank god for school!

So what to do with all that stuff up there? Here's what I've come up with so far:

• The shell beans will go into some sort of minestrone-style soup (they are fantastic in soup--super creamy dreamy). I'll probably chuck in a couple of carrots, the 2 plum tomatoes, a couple of potatoes and some kale too.
• One butternut will get cut into cubes and roasted, then tossed while still hot with the arugula, some cheese ravioli, olive oil and a little balsamic, lots of black pepper and shards of Parmesan or pecorino. The rest of the squash will probably go in the basement to be stored for later.
• the sorrel will go in an omelet. I love sorrel omelets.
• I'll probably try and ripen those green tomatoes in a paper bag (toss in an apple for good ethylene gas).
• According to Tantre the sweet potatoes (yams?) need to be cured, though last year that resulted in mine going rotten, so I must have done something wrong. If I don't rot this batch then I'll probably peel, shred and make them into burrito filling (like this Moosewood recipe for sweet potato quesadillas).
• kohlrabi? Akk. I've been pleased that Tantre cut way back on the kohlrabi this year. The one I got is about the size of a softball so maybe I'll go play catch-the-kohlrabi with the critters!
• lettuce + radishes = salad (duh)

And the rest of it...will probably get the same old (boring but tasty) treatment of heat, olive oil, garlic, salt, and some sort of acid.

Hope for next year's garden

This year I grew a lot of weeds.

Two years ago I made the dumb mistake of mulching my vegetable garden with straw. Clearly it was very seedy straw because this year the grass growing in my raised beds was out of control--it smothered pretty much everything but the peas, garlic and two very determined turnips. Everything else was swallowed by the aggressive grass. I'd weed it all out, go away for a week, and come back to see a luxurious green carpet again.

Eventually I gave up. I was getting plenty of good produce from the farm share and I just didn't have the energy to deal with the mess I had created.

However, I do have hope for next year.

Today I took this,

 dug up the worst of the weeds,

 covered the bed with two layers of newspaper,

and dumped on about 2 inches of compost ($2.25 per big trash can behind the recycling shed at the dump).

I read about the newspaper/compost weed-blocker plan in this article in the NY Times. I did two of the three beds today (I only have 2 trash cans and each bed took one trash can full of compost so I'll have to head back for one more fill up). And now I'm looking forward to planting some things that I can't get enough of: one bed will get strawberry plants, one bed will get tomatillos (I want to can some green salsa next year) and the third will get a lot of sugar snap peas, garlic, and maybe a few plants that I've failed at in the past (cucumbers are on the list) and still want to try again. Even if I get the weirdly warped and stunted cukes that I seem to specialize in, they'll have to be better than all the grass.

The creative schedule (and a biscotti recipe)

I've been having a really hard time getting into the writing groove after I shove the critters out the door wave fondly to my departing progeny. Being yelled at by two uncooperative beings who don't want to get up, don't want to get dressed, don't want to eat breakfast somehow ruins the mood for coherent, much less creative, thought. (Who'd of guessed?)

But for about the last week, my fiction ideas have been flowing fast and furious when I get up at 6 am. I used to read while I drank my coffee, taking 45 minutes or so for myself before the morning chaos began. But lately, I haven't been reading, I've been grabbing the laptop and pounding out what feels like really good plot solutions while I sip my black brew. But 45 minutes is not enough time--7 am comes around and I feel like I'm just getting going and that makes the process of bed-extraction and school-preparation even more unpleasant because it is tinged with resentment.

So what to do? Do I continue to return to the writing desk after the critter departure time and attempt to drag myself back to the ideas and inspiration that was flowing so well before all the morning stress and drama began? Or do I do something that sounds a little sick at first: get up at 5 am and add an hour to my creative me-time before anyone (except for the furry hair-balls) is conscious?

Yeah, it sounds kind of sick when I write it but I'm trying the 5 am thing. In my favor I have the fact that I'm a morning person. I won't be skipping down the stairs at 5 am, mind you, but I will adjust to and accept being awake at such an hour much better than my night-owl husband. But this creative schedule presents me with a problem: I still need to be functional in the afternoon and evening and I don't want to go to bed shortly after the bed-time critter-wrestling takes place.

I've decided to try a three fold approach: nap, tea and baked goods. I'm not much of a napper but I'm going to try and get myself to lie down and quiet my brain a little in the early afternoon before I have to collect the critters from their scholarly pursuits. I'll follow this forced break with supplemental caffeine consumption and a snack that might help provide enough sustenance to allow me to function (relatively) normally in the evenings.

The caffeine part I've got down: my sister got me hooked on a new tea supplier, The Tea Trekker. A pot of their Ceylon Fancy Silvertips tea should do the trick. The snack part just came to me as I was preparing for my Dad's 75th birthday this week. As a part of his birthday celebration he requested a batch of biscotti from a recipe my friend Lea gave me; I made these for him a couple of years ago and did not realize how much he liked them. Or maybe it's just that when you turn 75 you get a strong desire to break your teeth!

These are real biscotti, not the kind that have been prettied up with butter added to make the dough more tender. These babies are hard and substantial and, as I was making the recipe, contain a pretty good quantity of protein thanks to the copious quantity of almonds in there.

Yesterday afternoon I found myself snacking on the ends and crumbles of the batch I made for him with my cups of strong tea and I didn't have too much trouble functioning like a grownup that evening. So these babies are going into regular rotation in the baking plans--I might try and add some whole grain flours to the next batch to see if I can make them healthier.

Lea's Biscotti di Greve in Chianti (Orange-Flavored Almond Biscotti)

2 C all-purpose flour
1 C sugar
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 eggs and 1 yolk (reserve the egg white for an egg wash)
1 t vanilla
grated orange zest from 1 orange
1 and 1/2 C almonds, skins on, toasted

• Preheat oven to 325.
• Put the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times to mix.
• In a 2 C measuring cup, or something with a good spout, mix together the 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk, vanilla and orange zest. 
• With the motor running, pour the egg mixture down the feed tube into the dry mixture. Process just until the dough is a shaggy mass--not collected into a ball. (Depending on your egg size you might need about a Tablespoon of water to get the dough to stick together. Drip it in a few drops at a time if needed.)
• Pour half the nuts down the feed tube and pulse several times; repeat with the remaining half. (If you have a smallish food processor, like I do, you'll need to take off the top and scrape down the sides/break up the big lumps with a spatula.) Don't over grind the nuts--you still want some recognizable chunks of almond in there.
• Turn the dough out onto a baking sheet lined in parchment paper and start to squish/shape it into 2 long loafs, each about 2 inches wide and situated 3 inches apart on the sheet. This is much easier to do if your hands are damp (the dough is super sticky) so keep a bowl of water to dip your hands in while you are shaping.
• Take the reserved egg white, add a dribble of water to it and brush the tops of the loaves with the egg white wash.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes until pale gold. Remove them from the oven and leave until they are cool enough to handle. Using a serrated knife, cut the logs diagonally into 3/4 inch wide pieces. Lay them cut side down back on the parchment and bake for about 12 minutes longer. Then use tongs to flip the slices and bake the other side for about 12 minutes. If your dough was a little on the damp side, you might need to increase the second bake time by a few minutes--the centers of the slices should be dry and not sticky.
• Cool on racks.

Exquisite eggs (and a salsa recipe)

Brian's friend, John, has started keeping chickens and yesterday Brian came home with a half-dozen exquisite eggs.

This morning I poached one and had it with paesano bread drizzled with a little olive oil:
You can just see the intense color of the yolk glowing through the white, but here's a clearer view:
No, I did not touch up the photo! It really was that glorious golden orange. I've bought plenty of eggs from the farmer's market, but none have been this deeply colored or this flavorful.

John is also the source of my salsa recipe. He's a salsa-making fiend and every year adds to the number of tomato plants he grows in his back yard (I think he's up to 50 plants this year). I can't even imagine how many jars of salsa he makes, but he and his two sons eat it pretty much every day. Last year I used his recipe and made 6 pints, which we loved. This year I made 12 pints--6 of the original recipe and 6 with chipotle peppers to give it a smoky kick.

Tomorrow I think I'll have my poached egg with a dollop of salsa and will raise my mug of black coffee in a toast to John!

John's Amazing Salsa
makes about 6 pints

10-11 cups of peeled and seeded tomatoes. Roma's are preferred but I've made these with all kinds of tomatoes--roma's, brandywines, green zebras, yellow plum, etc.
3 cloves of garlic
3 large white or yellow onions
4 mild red, green or yellow peppers (or a mix)
4-6 jalapenos with seeds; for the chipotle version swap in two chipotles in adobo sauce for the regular jalapenos
1 bunch of cilantro, washed (you can leave the stems on)
1/2-2/3 C brown sugar (depends on how sweet you want it)
1 C white vinegar
3 T pickling or kosher salt (not iodized)

Wash all the vegetables and then cut into manageable size pieces. Use a food processor to chop all the vegetables--I usually leave some a little chunky and almost puree others so the salsa has some thickness. Put all the chopped vegetables, the sugar, vinegar and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2.5 hours, stirring frequently so the bottom doesn't scorch. You want to reduce the salsa so it isn't watery and some of this will depend on the juice content of your tomatoes, so if it still looks a little watery at the end of 2.5 hours, simmer for a bit longer.

Prepare your jars--wash, then put on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven for 10 minutes to sterilize. Boil the lids to sterilize.

Fill jars with hot salsa, put on a lid and screw on a ring. You can either set these on the counter and hope they all take a seal (I have pretty good luck with this but if the seal doesn't take then you'll have to refrigerate the jar and consume it relatively quickly) or take the safe route and process the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Enjoy the taste of late summer all winter long!