Even more structure

I'm on a structure kick right now. Rosina Lippi had a perfectly timely entry on her Storytelling blog about documenting all the scenes in the novel she is currently working on, Queen of Swords. So I have set myself two projects to begin (and probably not finish) before the rugrats return this afternoon:

1) I will go through my Strange Animal manuscript and document all the scenes with the point of view and current or anticipated length. I'll be doing it on an Excel spreadsheet rather than fiddling with the formatting of my Word document (I'm pretty sure the way Lippi is doing it would facilitate moving back and forth from scene map to text more easily, but I've had some bad experiences with the formatting function in Word and don't want to spend a ton of time undoing autoformatting gone awry).

2) I will set myself some homework and document all the scenes in a model book, in this case Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries. I chose this book mainly because it follows a woman from before her birth to her death which is what I'm doing with Gert. Shields makes some wonderful surprising detours (like following Magnus Flett to the Orkney Islands--who saw that coming when his character first appeared in the novel?) which could have back fired into irrelevant digressions and instead help the story to transcend the anticipated linear structure. She never forgets that she is writing fiction, not biography, and thus these imaginative flights enhance her project.

Time to make more coffee and start some fun data entry.

The Writing Life

Oh man, this is bliss. Of course I miss the kids, but a couple of phone calls have assured me that they are alive (and stuffed with cookies and lemonade) and it is probably a good thing to miss them. I probably haven't missed them enough in their short lives.

Yesterday I managed to re-organize the entire novel into a chapter structure that I think works far better than the old structure. I also went through the entire thing and cut the stuff that was crap (it's amazing how much more obvious it is to discern what is crap and what is good writing when you haven't seen it for a few years) and transferred the stuff that was decent into the new chapter structure.

The re-structuring is a major accomplishment because it means I can now work on parts of the book more easily for shorter periods of time (say, when I have a few hours free rather than a whole long weekend) and have a sense of where they fit into the whole. Turns out, I'm a writer who needs structure.

Today I revisited the pleasures of writing long-hand. I went out to lunch and brought a pad and paper and while eating I started defining the cast of characters. Up till now, people sort of floated in and out of the narrative. Now I'm deciding how much they should be in there, who will remain minor, who will be one of those vivid, briefly appearing characters, and who will be a main player. I feel like a manager picking a baseball team. I also wrote two short scenes. And writing long hand felt really good; I'm just hoping that I can read my own handwriting when it comes time to put it into the computer.

The progress on my office continues, though I'm having doubts about the color. I primed, painted the ceiling and got the first coat of color on. Sarah drove by and peeked in the window and thought it was a good color; Tracy stopped by and didn't like it. I am having fears that it is a shade too close to creamsicle. I never liked creamsicles and don't particularly want to feel surrounded by one in my office... Thankfully paint is cheap (even cheaper right now since Lowe's has it on sale) so for $15 I can change my mind. I may go with blue instead, though I'll probably wait till Brian gets home and listen to his opinion for once.

Granny to the Rescue!

Let me brag again about what a terrific mother-in-law I have. When she heard that I was really disappointed about the loss of this weekend for a home-bound writing retreat, she offered to go up to the tchotke-filled cabin with Brian and the kids (they are all her tchotkes, after all). So the kids get a weekend being spoiled to death by Granny Kathy (someone who will never say No! unlimited lemonade! cookies as a major food group!) and Brian gets to have his mommy take care of him while he's sick. (He is feeling a bit better; well enough to handle the drive.)

They left yesterday at 6 PM and for the first time in almost 5 years, I have the house to myself for more than a matter of hours. They even took the dog (they left Jonah, the cat, but he's a low maintainence buddy).

I'm a morning writer so yesterday evening, I set the scene for a successful time today at the computer--did a superficial clean-up of the house so the only chaos I have to confront is in my brain, re-stocked the caffeine supply, and then primed the front room. Ok so the last thing falls into the home-improvement area, but Mary Jean reminded me that most writers do not successfully write for 8 hours straight in a day (and for those of you who do, I don't want to hear about it....) so I figured a project that a) needs to be done and b) that I find kind of therapeutic and conducive to brain relaxation would fit the bill this weekend, so I'm painting the front room. Today, I'll take a break after doing some writing to paint the ceiling white and tomorrow the walls get painted this color:

It looks a little glowing and orangy here...trust me it's more a warm sand color.

I thought about painting the room a deep shade of blue since I find blue a calming color for a room and thought that would be good for an office where one is not supposed to freak out and wack the computer when it (or my brain) misbehaves. But it is a North facing room and I was concerned that it would end up feeling gloomy. No, I did not even consider leaving the room white. I grew up with a hospital-architect for a father who considers white (or maybe off-white if you are feeling really bold that day) the only acceptable color. Yes, I am still rebelling against my father at the ripe age of 35...

Enough about home improvements--I had my first cappuccino of the morning and I'm off to face my novel!

Prisoner release DENIED

No happy food ramblings today, no strange knitted toys, and not even a little rhapsodic waxing over someone else's wonderfully written novel: today I'm feeling sorry for myself.

I had my hopes up that Brian would follow through on the plan to take the kids up to the cabin for the long weekend thus freeing me to work on my long-neglected novel for 3 days without interruption. But Brian has come down with a pretty bad cold--a sore throat so bad that he has trouble swallowing anything that isn't liquid and noticeable fatigue. I may not always be the most sensitive spouse, but even I know it isn't fair to send the guy off with two insane bundles of energy when he's feeling that lousy.

I was, however, surprised at how disappointed I felt last night when I realized that my mini-writing retreat would not be happening. I've been keeping that part of my brain pretty much in prison since Ian was born (that's almost 5 years, folks) and told myself that realistically I wouldn't have enough time or energy to face it until both kids were in school. I convinced myself that I was ok with this. Brian's suggestion of the free weekend was kind of like an early prisoner release promise that was withdrawn at the last minute. I was already peeking out through the bars and anticipating what freeing that part of my brain would feel like.

Anyway, instead of continuing this poor-me rant, I am going to try something a little more proactive. Today I'm going to call my mother-in-law and see if she will agree to take the kids for one day a week for the summertime which I will turn into my writing day. I already feel guilty suggesting this since she is probably too nice to say no and a full day with them both can be exhausting. But hopefully the guilt I feel will motivate me to use the time well: I hereby publicly promise that if I can pull it off I will not end up using the day to run errands, clean the sty-of-a-house, do any of the myriad home improvements we have started and never finished, or even relax with my other 3 obsessions. I will use that day to write.

Leftovers I like

One of my flaws as a cook is that I dislike leftovers. I often make too much food for us to consume at one sitting and sorely neglect my part of the responsibility in dealing with the leftovers the next day. I'm not a big fan of eating the same thing twice in a row so contemplating last night's dinner for lunch the next day makes me grumpy. Thankfully Brian is happy to take leftovers to work with him, he's no human-trash-can, but he doesn't have the food-repetition disorder I seem to have. But I may have found an exception to my leftover loathing; here is what I had for lunch yesterday:

Does that look like a dreary plate of leftovers? I think not!

On Monday night I made the flank steak with arugula and goat cheese salad and it was terrific. I loosely followed the Cook's Illustrated recommendations (May 2005 issue) for how to deal with flank steak: I made a paste of lots of garlic (I think I used 6 cloves) and olive oil (about 6 T) and salt, pricked the steak all over with a dinner fork (great stress relief to poke the hell out of a piece of meat!), rubbed on the paste and let it sit for half a day in the fridge. At dinnertime I wiped off the paste, ground some pepper over the steak and tossed it on the gas grill. I didn't really time it--I think it was about 4-5 minutes per side. Then I plopped it on a carving board, tented it with tin foil and left it for a good 15 minutes while I finished making the salad. I'm convinced that this last step is what transformed the steak from shoe leather to a chewy but juicy steak. Most of the time I'm so hungry that by the time I'm done cooking I have no patience to let food "rest" (I have also been accused of having a tongue made of asbestos since I often eat foods that are pretty darn hot, temperature-wise).

For the salad, I tossed the arugula with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, ground some pepper over it and sprinkled it with a little coarse salt and then tossed it again with a little balsamic vinegar. I topped the arugula with halved grape tomatoes and some crumbled plain log-like goat cheese.

By the time I was done with the salad prep, the steak had rested and was ready to be sliced (against the grain at a slight angle). And the resulting dinner was terrific! The warm steak and cool goat cheese combined nicely and the arugula and tomatoes offset the richness with their bitterness and acidity. I had plenty of Farm Bread on hand to mop up the steak juice and olive oil, but if one was on a high protein diet, the bread would not be missed. I'll definitely be making this again--it strikes me as a terrific dish for an outdoor party or buffet since it doesn't rely on the meat being hot to be good.

And I discovered that left-over grilled flank steak is a nice thing to find in the fridge when one is hungry the next day! I assembled a steak sandwich and paired it with some of my garden's fresh radishes, romaine lettuce thinnings and cornichons. And much to my surprise, I found myself smiling over a plate of leftovers.

mmmmm....cooooookie.....

Yes, I've been watching a little too much Sesame Street--which reminds me to gripe a bit about how they plan to change Cookie Monster because he doesn't promote healthy eating habits. What will he be replaced with--a Broccoli Monster? (come on, sing along with me: "B is for Broccoli, that's good enough for me...")

Yesterday it was raining and I felt in need of a little chocolate therapy, so I decided to follow Ami's recommendation and try the urban-legend-Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe. They are fantastic cookies--there is a bit of instant espresso powder in the dough which gives it a richer flavor. Following Annie's question about brands of chocolate chips to use in the Healthy Banana Muffin recipe, I decided to branch out and try Ghirardelli chips and see if there was any difference--there is. The extra $1 or so is worth it--these chips were bigger, richer and didn't have that burn-the-back-of-the-throat quality that the Nestle or store-brand chips have.

A plate of cookie-goodness

Lest you think I'm only cooking these days, I show a progress report on my second sock:

knitpics merino sock yarn in color: flower power

I'm making this one in 2 x 2 rib which I like a lot for its stretchability. The knitpics yarn is also softer and springier than the Elann yarn I used for pair #1. I also like how the colors of the yarn are swirling around the sock, sort of like a barber pole.

Garden Bounty

It has begun! My garden has started producing and we now have months of fresh delicacies to look forward to. This year I planted (in alphabetical order): arugula, basil, beets, kale (red russian and dinosaur), lettuce (bib, romaine, oak leaf), mache, mesclun mix, peas, pole beans, radishes, rainbow chard, spinach, tomatoes (green zebra, sungold cherry, and beefsteak). Also small quantities of herbs right outside the kitchen: basil, chives, rosemary, sage, spearmint, thyme. I think that's it. I decided to leave the cucumbers and zucchini to the farmers' market because I'm not a fan of prickly vines.

Here is a photo of some of the radishes I harvested yesterday, destined for a radish salad tonight:

"Easter Egg" variegated radishes (pink, red and white)

I also thinned out the romaine lettuce and the arugula and brought home enough for a few salads.

Today I'm going to track down some flank steak to make a grilled steak with arugula and goat cheese recipe for dinner. I will report back on my progress to make a flank steak that doesn't end up like shoe-leather...

Bijoux du congélateur

The snooty sounding French title for this post sounded a lot nicer than "dinner from crap I dug out of the back of the freezer." Since dinner turned out remarkably well, I thought I'd be a little pompous here and use the French for "jewels from the freezer".

I made a mango shrimp stir fry and raspberry strawberry cobbler and pretty much everything that went into both recipes was either frozen or a basic staple (flour, milk, etc.). I never would have made the Mango Shrimp recipe before reading Mark Bittman's wonderful article in the NYTimes validating frozen food (you can't access the article on the NYTimes website for free, but you can read it here). And my shrimp recipe is heavily indebted to Trader Joe's which sells decent frozen food at reasonable prices.

Without further ado--here are the recipes:

Mango Shrimp Stir-Fry Recipe:
12 oz frozen Rock Shrimp (TJ's sells them in 12 oz bags, a little more or less would be fine too)
2 C frozen mango chunks (about 1/2 a bag of the frozen TJ mango chunks)
1 1/2 C frozen multi-colored pepper pieces (TJ sells bags of frozen red/yellow/green pepper mix)
3 scallions (horrors! a fresh ingredient!), sliced on the diagonal
1 T grated ginger (the jarred stuff from the Indian grocery store works fine, obviously fresh is fine too)
2 large cloves of garlic, squished through a garlic press or minced fine
1 T cornstarch
2 T canola oil
2-3 T soy sauce
1-2 T bottled Chinese oyster sauce (optional)
1 T tabasco (optional)
1 T toasted sesame oil
salt and pepper

cooked rice, to serve it over (brown rice is particularly nice since it is kind of nutty tasting)

1. First defrost your frozen stuff: put the shrimp in a colander and stick them under the tap with a lukewarm stream of water flowing over them. While they are thawing this way, stick the mango in a bowl and nuke it for about a minute; check and see if it is thawed, nuke some more if it needs it. Put the peppers in a separate bowl and nuke them--I started them on the defrost setting and finished with about 30 seconds regular power. Try not to over-nuke the peppers because they will get mushy. Drain them if they exude some water.
   
2. Pat the shrimp dry with a paper towel and toss in a bowl with 1 T cornstarch and some salt and pepper.
   
3. Now that all your ingredients have shed their icy coatings, heat up a large non-stick frying pan (or wok) and add the 2 T of oil. When the oil is nice and hot, add the ginger and the mashed garlic. Let it sizzle for about 30 seconds until it starts to smell good then add the mango. Stir fry till the mango is warmed up (about a minute or two), then add the peppers; shove all the mango and peppers to one side of the pan and dump the shrimp in the other side. Stir the shrimp gently and let them cook for about 1 minute then mix the shrimp, mango and peppers together.
   
4. Add the scallions, soy sauce and oyster sauce (optional) and stir fry for about another minute or two till the shrimp look cooked.
5. Take off the heat, add sesame oil and tabasco sauce (optional).
6. Serve over rice.

Ta da! The only thing that is slightly sub-standard about this recipe is that the peppers do get a little mushy, so substitute fresh if you have them. But for convenience, speed and idiot-proofness, frozen is fine.

Since it took almost no energy to prep the ingredients for the stir-fry, I decided to make desert too. In digging around the freezer, I found about 4 C of frozen raspberries leftover from a picking binge last summer at Makielski's berry farm. I thought about making a raspberry pie or tart, but making a crust was too labor intensive. So I made a raspberry cobbler. I also had about 1 C of fresh strawberries that looked like they would start molding soon, so I sliced them up and chucked them in too.

Raspberry Cobbler Recipe:
4-6 C frozen or fresh raspberries (or a mix of berries. I ended up using 4 C frozen raspberries and about 1 C fresh sliced strawberries. Blueberries would be good, or some peaches.)
1/2 C sugar
1 T cornstarch
1 t cinnamon
1/4 C butter
1/4 C sugar
1/4 C milk
1/4 C buttermilk (optional, substitute another 1/4 C milk if you don't have buttermilk on hand)
1 C all purpose flour
1/4 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
heavy cream or vanilla ice cream for serving (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
   
2. In an oven-safe 2-quart dish, toss raspberries with 1/2 C sugar, cornstarch and cinnamon.
3. In a small bowl, blend flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
   
4. In a bowl or a mixer, beat the butter and 1/4 C sugar together. When they are creamed and a little fluffy, add the buttermilk and milk (or all milk) and the flour mixture. Mix together until sticky and sort of biscuit-like. Drop by tablespoons over the berries in the baking dish.
5. Bake for 30-40 minutes (a little longer if using frozen berries, a little less if using fresh). The top will be browned and the berries will be bubbling up underneath it.
6. Serve with a drizzle of heavy cream, or vanilla ice cream.
   

If you happen to have a lemon on hand, a little lemon zest grated in with the berries would be nice. But since that requires you to have a fresh lemon around and we are celebrating the riches of the freezer here, think of it as completely optional.

Don't you want to go dig around in your freezer now and see what is hiding? Try not to get beaned on the head by a bag of frozen bagels, like I did...

I'm seeing socks everywhere....

Ta da! I finished my first pair of socks last night. Of course, now it is getting too warm to consider wearing wool socks, but I can't get grumpy about good weather.

The sock obsession is growing. Today I got a routine email from The Motley Fool (a business/stock-watching website with a sense of humor. Not that I actually follow any of their advice or have any spare money to invest, but getting the occasional e-mail from them makes me feel like I'm not totally out of touch with the real, money-focused world) the subject line of which read: "Simplify Your Stocks". What did I see when I read it? Why "Simplify your SOCKS" of course.

I received my knitpicks order last week and now have three different colors of sock yarn to choose for my next pair:

Flower power, Pansy and New England

I am going to have to set the sock obsession aside next weekend because it looks like I really will have two-days/three-evenings to myself. Brian has promised to take the kids away for the long weekend even though he wasn't organized enough to make a camping reservation at a State Park. He's going to fall back on taking them up to his parents' cabin in Au Gres. I try hard to like the cabin, but it is coated with tchotkes (model light houses, sailboats, etc. which I always encourage the kids to "accidentally" break) and is dusty as hell so I always have an allergy attack when I go there. I have contemplated thoroughly cleaning the place, but it would take all weekend and since I usually go up there to get away from cleaning my own sty-of-a-house, it doesn't really motivate me. I'd rather just not go.

So the kids and Brian will be up there and I intend to invoke the long lost discipline that got me to read books like this in grad school, and use that strength of will to work on my neglected novel. I won't dither away the time knitting or cooking or otherwise avoiding working on the novel. The book needs a thorough revision and a defined structure and finally I have a clue how to impose such order on the verbal chaos I have created. I finished The Stone Diaries last night (loved it) and it occurred to me that the project of that book (a woman's life from birth to death) is just about as sprawling as mine and the author manages not to get bogged down in minutiae. So I'll be spending the weekend with my buddy Valeska Gert, eating a lot of take-out, getting a flat butt from sitting at the computer, and (hopefully) missing my kids so much that I'm ecstatic when they come home.

Fuzzy friend and Take-out review

Oh look, I made myself a slightly disturbing fuzzy friend:

Just hanging out, being fuzzy.

I was trying to use the mohair yarn to make something wearable for my mother-in-law, but the scarf I started knitting looked like a muppet. So I decided to use the yarn to make my first knitted toy. It turned out ok though it did make me aware of how crappy my embroidery skills are--the eyes are pretty weird looking in person too. But it still seems to have kid appeal: my two-year-old spotted it as soon as she walked in the door, grabbed it and started yanking on the arms. I don't know how many more callisthenic sessions Mr. Fuzzy will survive, but he made it through his first encounter.

I could get into making knitted toys--it seems like a great way to use up some of my stash yarn that I can't figure out what else to do with. I think my next toy project will be a bit more ambitious--here's a free pattern for a knitted monkey that I'd like to make in some psychedelic colors.

Now, moving on to food. We all know that the key to being a sane parent is having a bulging file of good take-out menus. I have a new one to add. Yesterday I tried the take-out at the revamped Foods of India grocery store on Broadway. In the old store (located across the street and now being demolished for yet another condo development) there was a take-out window called Food n' Flavors and they had a pretty limited menu and only so-so food--the chicken curry was totally generic and the mattar paneer was ok, but nothing to write home about. In the new store, the take-out window has been renamed Shan-e-Punjab and the menu and food have improved a great deal. Now there is a much larger selection of vegetable dishes, chicken, lamb and seafood, biriyanis, naan and (not on the printed take-out menu, but posted near the window) some tandoori offerings.

Last night I ordered the Saag Paneer (spinach with cheese cubes) and Aloo Gobi (potatoes and cauliflower)--you can choose basmati rice or naan to go with them so I got one of each.

The chef likes to use lots of ginger which is fine with me, though I do wish it was grated finely rather than in large chunks. The naan was fantastic with a slick of ghee on the surface. The cauliflower in the aloo gobi was a little undercooked, but hey, he's using fresh cauliflower rather than frozen so I can't get too grumpy about that. The saag was thick and rich. And it was cheap, cheap, cheap. There's nothing on the menu over $7.95 (for the two seafood curries) and dinner last night cost $11.50 and was plenty for two people with healthy appetites. Next time I'll probably also order one of the lamb dishes so that my-better-and-meatier-half (aka Brian) will be content and so there will be enough for leftovers for lunch the next day. That addition will still keep the whole take-out under $20.