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Food and Update

February 1, 2012 in Food, Monthly Update, Race to the Hugo, Writing | 4 comments

It’s the first of the month, so there’s a new Hot Flash (micro-mini story) on the Hot Flashes page. You might have to think about it for a minute, especially if you haven’t had your morning cuppa.

Next, I’m happy to announce I’ve given birth to a bouncing baby science fiction romance story posted at the Race to the Hugo Award. Mitchell Allen and Holly Jahangiri are both in there working and posting, too. I must have been subliminally influenced by new blog follower Nicholle, because I gave the main characters the last name of Brisbane. My mind is such a rag-bag!

And, since Wednesday is Food Day here, I have a “recipe”, if you want to call something so simple by that name.

BOK CHOI AND ORANGE SALAD

  • bok choi, cut into bite-size pieces
  • oranges, cut into bite-size pieces
  • almonds, toasted in a skillet

And that’s it. I should have tossed it before I took the picture, because it looks all garnish and no salad. We used Honey-French dressing, but you could use anything you think would taste good with it. An Asian-Ginger would be nice. Rice vinegar and sesame oil would be VERY nice.

Hope your February is as wonderful as February ever gets!

WRITING PROMPT: Make a list of first names and a list of last names and organize them by “sounds like a good guy”, “sounds like a bad guy” and “neutral”.

MA

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Egg Salad SUPREME

January 25, 2012 in Food | 6 comments

pickled capers photo from Wikipedia

Okay, you already know that any recipe with “supreme” in the name probably has black olives in it and, look at this, no surprise, this one is no different. It really turned out to be good, though.

EGG SALAD “SUPREME”

  • hard-boiled eggs, cut up
  • thin-sliced celery
  • thick-sliced green onions
  • sweet pickle relish
  • black olives (ta-daaa!)
  • pickled capers
  • mayonnaise
  • salt and pepper

Mix and eat. Good on fresh-baked bread. Good on toast. Good warmed and sprinkled with cheese.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you might detect an uptick in promotional posts. That’s because I want to sell more books. Apparently, “If you build it, they will come” only applies to baseball diamonds in cornfields. Or maybe I should be doing all my book signings in cornfields out in the country. Yeah, yeah, that’s it! And I bet having a ghost with the voice of Darth Vader looking over my shoulder and giving advice wouldn’t hurt, either.

WRITING PROMPT: A character tries to make something plain seem fancy with a couple of slight additions.

MA

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I’m Ba-ack!

January 19, 2012 in Food, Race to the Hugo | 6 comments

Didja miss me? If you used your cursor to select the blank space in yesterday’s non-post, you saw that I was striking to oppose the SOPA and PIPA bills proposed by the movie industry … I mean the United States Congress.

NOW, since yesterday was food day and I missed it, here is a food post:

We had spaghetti and marinara sauce last night. In the interest of eating fresh and local, the spaghetti was harvested by my husband and me at a nearby pick-your-own pasta farm. Okay, yeah, that’s a lie. Bought it in a box. Bought the sauce in a jar. But here’s what went with it:

GARLIC TOAST

I keep a jar in the refrigerator of light olive oil with a couple of cloves of garlic stirred in. So last night, I spread some bread with that (the oil goes semi-solid in the cold), sprinkled the oiled bread with Romano-Peccorino cheese, (Oxford comma, I love you) and broiled it until the cheese was browned. It was VERY good!

The Race To The Hugo has begun! Holly Jahangiri, Mitchell Allen, and I have challenged each other to writing Hugo-winning fiction this year. Holly even put up a web site for it: Race To The Hugo!

They’re both writing novels. I figure six short stories would give me six more chances than either of those. But — OH, NOES!! Mitchell has already posted the first installment of his novel and he and Holly are each planning to write stories AS WELL!! Will this get me off my lazy feet and onto my productive backside? We shall see, my precious. We. Shall. See.

WRITING PROMPT: Your main character is challenged to a contest. Would he or she cheat? Would he or she even be tempted to cheat? What if it were a matter of life and death, rather than for fun? Would he or she be more or less likely to cheat if the stakes were high than if they were low?

MA

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#SampleSunday – Rose of Kashmir

January 15, 2012 in Food, Sample Sunday | 8 comments

I think I posted this before on my old blog, but I don’t find it when I search this one, so here it is.I did post ABOUT it, and here’s a link to that post.

In my bio, I like to claim that I’ve been published on the wall of an Indian restaurant. I wrote this story in response to an exercise in which scent was the featured sense. When I had polished it, I printed it and had Charlie frame it, and I gave it to the manager at the Shalimar in Louisville on Hurstbourne Parkway. The next thing I knew, it was hanging on the wall in the waiting area and, if they haven’t taken it down, it is hanging there still.

Rose of Kashmir

by Marian Allen

I kept my eyes straight ahead, seeing suit-coat sleeves, shirt cuffs, broad hands, steering wheel, dashboard, hood, asphalt, car after car ahead. Eyes on the road was always a good idea on Hurstbourne, an eight-lane anthill at any hour. I had usually risked a happy glance to the side anyway, up to four months ago.

The Shalimar Indian Restaurant was what my glance had saluted: the best food in town, our special place. Dolores and I had met on the buffet line, had gone there on our first date — most dates — and back for all our wedding anniversaries. There had been ten of them before the blonde in my computer-users group got drunk and called me at home.

I tried not to remember Dolores’ face, puffed and red and shining with tears.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, Dodie. I was stupid. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

But it hadn’t been enough. How could it be enough?

“I hope it was worth it!” Those had been her final words before she filled two suitcases and left our apartment. My apartment, suddenly.

Worth this loss? No, it had not been worth it.

Dolores’ mother knew where she was, but she wasn’t telling. I sent messages through her. There was no reply except to the most practical questions: Your summer clothes are in the spare room closet, the dentist is listed under Preventive Partners in the white pages.

“Tell her I love her. Tell her I’m sorry.”

“I will.”

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Work that day was the same as work every day.

“How’s it goin’?”

“Fine.”

A.M., lunch I hardly tasted, P.M., back to the car, back onto Hurstbourne.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

The drive home was grinding. Traffic glared and blared. A fender-bender somewhere ahead stalled me for half an hour within sight of the big yellow letters: SHALIMAR. I crawled past, radio tuned to a station playing music Dolores and I had never loved, while the ghosts of curry and hot mango chutney leaked into the car from my memory.

Still clinging to remembrance, I wasn’t surprised that the rich, exotic, familiar scents seemed to color the air of the apartment. So, when Dolores stepped out of the kitchenette, her wary face floating like a dream over a tray of steaming dishes, it took a moment for me to realize I wasn’t hallucinating.

She put the tray on the sideboard. “I… thought we should talk. Mom gave me your messages. I stopped by the Shalimar and got some carry-out….”

I should have been afraid to open my arms, I should have been ashamed, but the power of our past made me stupid. She came to me in a brief and awkward embrace.

Evening stretched into morning as we ate and talked and cried, a night that was painful the way setting a broken bone is painful.

When I die, I know I’ll go to heaven. It’ll be easy to find. It smells like basmati rice and chicken tikka masala.

WRITING PROMPT: Write a scene in which scent is the featured sense.

MA

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Strata Rocks: A Post NOT About Geology

January 11, 2012 in Food | 6 comments

This is Food Day on the blog, you you know Strata is going to turn out to be edible. Appropriately enough, today’s Google Doodle celebrates Nicolas Steno, the father of stratigraphy (the geological kind).

Strata means layers, and the kind of strata I’m writing about today is another term for “layered casserole”. They’re very good and they’re very easy, which is why I say they rock, although you can make them as complex and difficult as you choose. I’m sure Nero Wolfe and Fritz Brenner would take three days to plan one, a month to gather the ingredients and a week to construct it. And Archie would call it a relapse and get disgusted and quit and …. If you haven’t read any Nero Wolfe mysteries, do so.

ANYWAY, the strata I make has a bread base, an egg-and-milk body and something else. Very versatile. Here’s the one I made the other night:

CHEESE STRATA

  • two pieces of leftover, stale bread, broken into small pieces
  • two eggs, lightly beaten, in a measuring cup
  • milk added to bring liquid level up to 1 cup
  • spicy brown mustard to taste
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • grated cheese

Butter a small casserole. Put in the bread. Thin the mustard with a little of the egg mixture, then re-combine with the rest of the egg and milk. Add salt and pepper. Pour the egg mixture over the bread. Sprinkle on the cheese. Let sit until the liquid is absorbed by the bread. Bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. [NOTE: The knife should be clean when it goes in, of course.]

Now, you could put a layer of mushrooms, spinach and/or other vegetables over the bread and egg/milk. You could use spices or herbs to vary the flavor. You could do a layer of sausage or ham or bacon or chicken.

You could make a sweet strata by starting out with sweet bread and adding fruit and/or nuts and cinnamon or nutmeg or any favorite spice.

Here’s a link to a collection of strata recipes at AllRecipes.com. Enjoy!

WRITING PROMPT: A character finds something unexpected while digging.

MA

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Friday Recommends – Quick & Easy Cooking

January 6, 2012 in Food, Friday Recommends | 7 comments

New follower Dean has asked for recipes for a new cook, so I’ve scoured the internet (which is more than I’ve done to my sink) and come up with these links. How you all work me! (Points to anyone who gets the reference.)

First, a list of recipes “For the Beginner Cook” from Food.com. They have a bunch on that page and more in the sidebar. They look WOW.

Lots of new cooks are students, so you might look into Student Recipes, if you can stand the “I think this funkiness will appeal to students” design of the web site. It looks pretty good, actually, very well organized and easy to use. On the first page, in the pictures on the left side, the middle picture in the bottom row, the picture of the toast with butter on it, is labeled “Quick” and takes you to a page of many quick and easy recipes. I plan to check this one out at greater length. Dude.

[Note: Did you know that if you're on Twitter and you mention Lebowski, Dude, the Duderino or Duder, you automatically get a reply quote from THE BIG LEBOWSKI? I found that out yesterday.]

You can usually count on About.com to help you out, and this was no exception. They have a Busy Cook site with a Quick and Easy section.

AllRecipes has three sections that I’ve found so far: Quick and Easy Recipes, New Quick and Easy Recipes and Convenience Cooking.

The Food Network has some recipes it calls Quick and Easy, but their idea of quick and easy may not be mine. They don’t claim they’re cheap, either.

Last but I hope not least, check out my Alligator Sandwiches here on this blog. As I explained to Dean, they aren’t really recipes for alligator sandwiches. I just call them that because they’re so quick and easy you can make them when somebody says, “Let’s eat! And let’s make it snappy!”

Enjoy your weekend!

WRITING PROMPT: What is your main character so obsessed with, all his or her dreams contain some reference to it?

MA

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A True Tale of Serendipity and Thrift

January 5, 2012 in Food | 6 comments

Once upon a time, two fairly simple people got married, intending to live out in the country, which they did.

One of their wedding gifts, given to them by one of the husband’s sisters, was a glass cocktail shaker with a silver top and four tiny cut-glass cups.

The wife put the shaker in a cabinet and forgot about it, and used the cups to hold small amounts of ingredients for cooking or small amounts of sauces for dipping or tiny bouquets of wildflowers gathered by the couple’s children.

So, thirty years passed.

One day, the husband said, “The juice I mix in this plastic pitcher always settles. What I need is a pitcher I can shake.”

THE END

Don’t you just love a happy ending?

WRITING PROMPT: Write about a forgotten wedding present that comes in handy in an unintended way. Yes, I’ve seen CASTAWAY. ~grin~

MA

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From the CPP Culinary School

January 4, 2012 in Food | 2 comments

CPP stands for “Container, Paper and Plastic”. See, I learned how to cook from the recipes on food containers or printed in ads. I still check out the containers for recipes. Food packagers (and, let’s face it, food manufacturers) pay people good money to come up with recipes that make those foods appealing, so why not try them?

Here’s one I tried over the holidays and really liked. It was on a can of store-brand cranberry sauce. It’s vegan, if you use vegan margarine, as I did, but not gluten-free, unless you have a gluten-free flour you can substitute. Maybe powder some oatmeal and substitute that?

CRANBERRY-CRUNCH

  • 1 1/2 cup uncooked rolled oats
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup butter or margarine
  • 1 can (14 ounces) jellied cranberry sauce
  • ice cream [or whipped topping]

Preheat oven to 350F. In a bowl, mix together oats, flour and brown sugar. Cut in butter until crumbly [the butter, I assume, not you]. Press half of the mixture into an 8″ square baking dish. Spread with cranberry sauce. Top with remaining crumb mixture. Bake 45 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream. [or whipped topping]

I really liked this. It’s not too sweet, which was refreshing after the sweet-laden holiday. I think it might be good heated in the microwave and eaten like cereal for breakfast, maybe with a little vanilla almond milk. Mmmmmmm!

WRITING PROMPT: What does your main character habitually eat for breakfast? Or DOES your main character eat breakfast?

MA

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AGAIN With The Vegan?

December 28, 2011 in Food | 2 comments

No, but this was really good! Did you ever go to a dim sum restaurant and have those little yeast buns with barbeque in the middle? For some reason, I got a craving for those the other day, so I made some, using my rice cooker/steamer. Here’s how:

Dough: I used the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day dough. Just pinched off a lump about the size of an orange, floured it up, rolled it out thin and cut rounds with a biscuit cutter.

Filling: Vegetarian “hamburger” crumbles — I used Lightlife Smart Ground. I didn’t have any barbeque sauce, so I mixed some taco sauce and Honey French dressing with the crumbles.

Instructions: Put about 1/2 tsp of the filling in the center of a dough round. How much you use will depend on how big your rounds are, of course. Bring the edges up and pinch them together like a purse. Maybe twist the top to make sure it’s sealed.

Oil the steamer basket so the dumplings won’t stick to it. Arrange the sealed dumplings in the steamer basket, leaving room between them. Put water in the bottom compartment, steamer basket on top, cover, and switch on.

I steamed them for about 1/2 hour.

SO GOOD!

I know: Pictures, or it didn’t happen, but we ate them before I could get out my camera. Maybe next time.

WRITING PROMPT: What food does your main character simply inhale? Chocolate? Rare roast beef? Noodles? Everything? Nothing?

MA

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Friday Recommends – A Very Vegan Christmas

December 22, 2011 in Food, Friday Recommends | No comments

I admit it. This past week, on Tybee Island, I was not vegan. I was not vegetarian. I fell off the turnip truck so hard, Mahatma Gandhi bounced. So Imma make up for it by taking vegan dishes to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. That way, I know our vegan daughter will have something she can eat.

What will I make? Well, maybe a bean cassoulet, though not the kind I made before, since I don’t have the same stuff in the pantry and fridge. Maybe something else.

I’ll have plenty to choose from. I found these nifty sites, great for finding recipes to please the vegan in your family or, if you’re the vegan in your family, great for finding recipes to please the omnivores who don’t know who good vegetarian food is.

Vegan.SheKnows has a selection of Top Vegan Christmas Recipes

The Veggie Table presents a full menu, with recipes, for a Vegetarian Christmas Dinner

Veg Kitchen has a variety of Vegan Christmas Dinner Recipes

If you’re British, or are partial to marmite and such, try the Vegan Family’s Vegan Christmas or Yule recipes.

And, if all those fail you, you can’t go wrong browsing Vegans Eat Pencil Shavings.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go rummage in the kitchen and decide whether I want to make a lentil and mushroom risotto or maybe a vegetable shepherd’s pie or….

WRITING PROMPT: One member of your main character’s family has dietary restrictions. How does your main character deal with that?

MA

 

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