Actually, my week has been more like _uck it up! When the pressure is on, it's a bad idea to try to keep up with blogs and tweets and the like. Dashing off a few words can be deadly. So, these words will be measured.
When I am writing, every novel has a song that I associate with it, and I usually play the song over and over until it melts into every cortical fold and becomes subtext to the novel. The Shadow Warriors song was Pachebel's Canon, but, alas, I had to cut the scene with the Canon, but I still think of it as The Love Theme from The Shadow Warriors. It was a fantastically sexy scene, too. I hope to canabalize it sometime.
World of Mirrors also had it's song. Another Night by the Real McCoys. Yup, The Love Theme from World of Mirrors.
What of Promiscuous Mode? Can you believe Walk Away Renee? I must have played it a hundred times. The Love Theme From Promiscuous Mode. I Will Survive played during a key scene. I love that novel. My writing group loved the novel. Significant Other loves the book. But alas, no agent has loved the novel. Alas, alas.
And Festival Madness? Mais oui, that novel had two love themes. The first is Total Eclipse of the Heart and the other is Desenchante (please add all the accents) by Zazie and Obispo who sang it to me thru earphones on an Air France 747 over the Atlantic. So romantic. It took forever to get the CD. My brother-in-law finally sent it from Europe. Amazon wanted a godawful amount of cash and I just had to have it.
So now I'm working on my "fem jep" (woman in jeopardy) suspense novel, In Flight. So far there are two song possibilities. One is I Need to Know by Marc Anthony; the second is I'm Shipping Up To Boston by the Drop Kick Murphy's. Not too romantic. But still. It has a certain je ne sais pas and the energy it created when Papelbon came in to close a game was phenomenal. Right now I'm playing Marc Anthony. The odd thing is that song is associated with my drug lord, not the main character. I love my drug lord. He's a total play against the stereotype.
This book is, like the others, not exactly writing itself, although the beginning did, creating false confidence. I am plugging away, one sentence after another, one page, another scene and I just closed in on 75,000 words. I always write everything long and then cut. It's easier to take words out than put words in. Believe me. I cannot for the life of me write one of these 75,000 word mysteries. 75,000 words always seems like a little chicken-shit book that you can almost read in one setting, the kind of novel that you might finish before the plane lands. Horrors!
This is NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. Unfortunately, I always have a BIG EVENT in November (see beginning of this post) and it would be incredibly stupid to try to do that, too. Maybe next year. Basically, what NANOWRIMO does is give you permission to write a really shitty first draft, which is what most first drafts are, with the exception of Robert Parker who, I am told, writes such a stellar first draft that he doesn't revise. My god, I hope none of my first drafts ever see the light of day. We are talking really BAD Sentences.
Of course without a publisher breathing down my neck, I don't have to hurry and can write bad sentences with aplomb, knowing there's adequate time for rewriting.
The Huffington Post today advised calling a self-pubbed book an "independently published" book. I like that. Pretty cool, no?
I hope this lengthy post makes up for weeks of not much. I haven't tweeted (except for one disastrous boo-boo) or posted to Face Book either. Exile and cunning and all that stuff. Ha ha.
Grapeshot
Friday, October 30, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Fall in New England
First, some of the maples turned, then lost their leaves. Subsequently, all the other trees and bushes sat there, like, well, like bumps on a log, apparently unaware that autumn was here.
Yesterday, driving up Route 128, hooray, finally, glorious color. Last night: monsoons. Many of the leaves fell, but good color today in the village of Mansfield. This is the weirdest fall ever, following the weirdest non-summer of the tomato blight.
We have three big tomatoes ripening in the kitchen window. Finally.
Last Friday we hiked up the hill beyond Concord Bridge. Always scenic. The beech trees were splendid.
The slough rose during the night, and we still have red leaves on the bushes within and color across the slough.
Yesterday was the first Boston Book Festival, and we took the Green Line into town to partake of the festivities. What a huge crowd. Gave me hope that there are a lot of writers and readers and bibliphiles out there. Not the usual geriatric crowd but lots of young folks. We particularly enjoyed Grub Street's Writer Idol, Orhan Pamuk's reading and talk and Boston Noir, a reading and after hours party with fine folk, food and bevs, a congenial crowd and what more do you want?
A fine day, and we got home just as the rains came in a major way.
Yesterday, driving up Route 128, hooray, finally, glorious color. Last night: monsoons. Many of the leaves fell, but good color today in the village of Mansfield. This is the weirdest fall ever, following the weirdest non-summer of the tomato blight.
We have three big tomatoes ripening in the kitchen window. Finally.
Last Friday we hiked up the hill beyond Concord Bridge. Always scenic. The beech trees were splendid.
The slough rose during the night, and we still have red leaves on the bushes within and color across the slough.
Yesterday was the first Boston Book Festival, and we took the Green Line into town to partake of the festivities. What a huge crowd. Gave me hope that there are a lot of writers and readers and bibliphiles out there. Not the usual geriatric crowd but lots of young folks. We particularly enjoyed Grub Street's Writer Idol, Orhan Pamuk's reading and talk and Boston Noir, a reading and after hours party with fine folk, food and bevs, a congenial crowd and what more do you want?
A fine day, and we got home just as the rains came in a major way.
Monday, October 19, 2009
No Time to Post
Hunkered down in the icky New England weather. No time to post. Eating hearty helpings of tortilla soup and pot roast.
Stood on the bridge and watched the sculls go thru the Charles at the Head of the Charles. Walked up the hill beyond Concord bridge.
In spite of the forecast of super-duper fall colors, it aint' great this year. Whatchagonnado?
Didn't come back from Bouchercon, because we never went. Heard a good speaker who had been in law enforcement all her life at MWA New England.
House invaded by wasps, but only 3-4 a day and either dead or drowsy. Did they come in in the planter? Who knows?
I planted 24 plants of garlic and got the tomatoes in before the frost and also my rosemary. Begonias drooping, impatiens froze, a few petunias hanging in there, parsley still magnifico. If fresh parsley is healthful, we are golden.
Coleus gone. I am reminded of the last book of Proust where the names are called with the exclamation, "dead" after each one. Coleus: dead! Impatiens: dead! Begonias: dead!
Off to heat up breakfast, a special strata with weird ingredients that all come together. We also drove by the Stata center, stopped and climbed the stairs. Gaped like tourists. Architecture on steriods.
Yowza!
Stood on the bridge and watched the sculls go thru the Charles at the Head of the Charles. Walked up the hill beyond Concord bridge.
In spite of the forecast of super-duper fall colors, it aint' great this year. Whatchagonnado?
Didn't come back from Bouchercon, because we never went. Heard a good speaker who had been in law enforcement all her life at MWA New England.
House invaded by wasps, but only 3-4 a day and either dead or drowsy. Did they come in in the planter? Who knows?
I planted 24 plants of garlic and got the tomatoes in before the frost and also my rosemary. Begonias drooping, impatiens froze, a few petunias hanging in there, parsley still magnifico. If fresh parsley is healthful, we are golden.
Coleus gone. I am reminded of the last book of Proust where the names are called with the exclamation, "dead" after each one. Coleus: dead! Impatiens: dead! Begonias: dead!
Off to heat up breakfast, a special strata with weird ingredients that all come together. We also drove by the Stata center, stopped and climbed the stairs. Gaped like tourists. Architecture on steriods.
Yowza!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Bad Trip
Years ago, I clipped a short article from the Boston Globe (?) or maybe AOL's news about an airline that put it's passengers up for the night in a crack house. Like most writers, I have an "idea" file.
Comes the time to write the short story. I found the clipping, and promptly lost it. Googled around and the story was gone, baby, gone.
I noodled around for a while and combined the airline's faux pas with a motel we stayed at in Oakland a few years back en route to Burning Man. Very scary place.
Characters? I thought about an old couple in this predicament, and settled instead on a young couple, just returning from his grandpa's funeral in Kansas. I always go back to Kansas, like some homing pigeon.
Writing the story I found another character, a pimp, since I already had his whore. And the crack house.
Do you have any idea how little a suburban housewife knows about these things? I mean, our idea of living dangerously is to go into Boston without dinner reservations.
Amazing what you can find on the Internet. Pimp walk, pimp culture, pimp clothes. I worked at a place once that had a relationship to a clothing outfit that catered to hip hop, so I thought maybe the pimp would wear something from them. He did. I started to like him. I liked everyone in the story. The young man is a help desk technician because I can never get very far away from technology. Or Kansas. In the blood is in the blood.
The story is coming out in a few weeks in the Level Best Anthology, Quarry. The name of the story is "Bad Trip." That was a no brainer, and of course it operates on a couple levels. I hope some of my readers will seek out a copy, because I'm in terrific company. Hank Philippi Ryan, Mike Wiecek, Vinnie O'Neil, Kate Flora and others. The Level Best anthologies are the best. And here's a little hint.
Short stories make wonderful treadmill reading. You get so caught up you don't even realize you're exercising. And one or two will get you through a whole routine. I get bored out of my mind of the treadmill, and reading short stories is a great solution.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Adieu, Gourmet, and Thanksgiving from Scratch
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My home-made cookbook has, typed on a portable Royal, my first Gourmet recipe, for Gazpacho.
Combine in the container of a blender, 5 very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, 1 cucumber peeled and chopped, 1 green papper, seeded and chopped, 1 onion, chopped, 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley, and 1 garlic clove, crushed.
Cover the container and blend untl the mixture is almost smooth. Stir in 1 1/4 cups tomato juice, 3 T. olive oil, 2 T. vinegar, 1/4 t. paprika, sale and pepper to taste, and chill the soup thoroughly.
Serve the gaspacho individual, chilled soup bowls. With the soup one may serve several dishes of tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber, and red onion, all peeled, seeded if necessary and appropriately diced.
July Gourmet, 1964 . I have a note: "try adding a bit of chopped raw spinach." I'm sure we served the soup in those elegant little glass bowls that fit into a bed of chopped ice, originally intended for shrimp cocktail, but also great for vichysoisse. See photo, from EBAY. I had to key "vintage" to find them. Obviously passe along with Gourmet and the coat and tie. Adieu gracious living. Adieu Gourmet.
I still use this recipe, although to this day I've never served little bowls of chopped anything with it Maybe a few croutons.
Some years later, my friend Karin and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner from Gourmet. Part of the dinner involved roasting chestnuts in a very hot oven and peeled them while they were still hot. My hands looked like holy shit afterward, and that was my first, last, and I guarantee, only time my hands will EVER touch a raw chestnut.
Below is an account of the event from my Toastmaster's speech recording the festivities.
Thanksgiving from Scratch ©
I have cooked over 35 Thanksgiving dinners, including one in Germany. The first one sat on an overflowing card table a month after our wedding. This year, alone again, we’ll have a turkey breast, with sides. The traditional Thanksgiving meal holds no trauma or terrors. It wasn’t always so.
I was five months pregnant and we drove to Houston to be with old friends Jim and Karin for Thanksgiving. When we arrived, Karin announced that we were going to cook the GOURMET MAGAZINE THANKSGIVING DINNER. From scratch.
Cooking From scratch? What does that mean? My grandma didn’t know of any other way. From scratch? From the very beginning. Using raw materials.
Our menu began with pumpkin soup and ended with a grand finale of crème brulèe. In between came turkey with chestnut stuffing. Mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies and an extra special cranberry sauce. It sounded a little intimidating, but we were sure two cooks could carry it off.
We got going early, around 8:00 a.m., planning a 5:00 o’clock dinner. That seemed a bit optimistic.
Husbands and kids were shooed out of the kitchen. This was woman’s work. Since this was Houston, we had to shoo the cockroaches, too.
Fortunately, Karin had already done the shopping. The raw materials were awesome.
A pumpkin
A skid load of rock hard chestnuts
Oceans of thick heavy cream
Tons of butter
A stupendous turkey
Five pounds of potatoes
Cranberries
We had one oven, one sink, and a four burner stove. Because this was Houston, there was a second refrigerator in the garage. No Cuisinart back then, but we had a blender and a mixer. By today’s standards, the kitchen would be a relic for Pioneer Village. As old fashioned as cooking from scratch.
We tackled the soup first, and in no time we had orange bits of pumpkin on every surface. Never mind. We cooked the pumpkin that wasn’t stuck to something, added broth and cream and the spices and pureed the soup in the blender. Fantastic! Smooth as silk. Onward.
Dinner will be served at 6:00.
I fixed chestnuts twice that day. For the first time and the last time.
This is the advice on how to roast chestnuts:
Roast in-shell chestnuts in the oven, but you MUST pierce the shell with a small cut or cut them in half beforehand with a knife to prevent them from exploding when they cook!
Pierce the shell with a small cut. About as easy as piercing a diamond with a small cut. Many of the cuts were on my hands. From scratch took on a new and more sinister meaning.
Next, place the chestnuts in a heavy cast iron pan. Put the pan in a 400 degree oven for a while.
Remove from oven and peel off the shells with a small knife. Do it while they are still hot, if they cool, they will be harder to peel.
This means you pick up a chestnut that has been in a 400 degree oven with your bare hands. Painful burns topped the cuts and the chestnuts dyed my injured fingers the brown color of old boots.
Dinner will be served at 7:00.
Somehow we got through the chestnuts. Husbands chased over to the quick mark to buy even more butter. Good thing I was eating for two.
The turkey had gone into the oven, late of course, and it became obvious that we would serve dinner about 8:00 p.m. If all went well. Meanwhile, the guests were arriving. The host opened the wine. Probably a bad idea.
Cranberries and veggies were not so complicated, but the crème brulèe was one for the books! We had to make a custard from scratch. Into the pot went the rest of the heavy cream. Cook, stir, “coat the spoon.” We poured the custard into the serving dish. Karin sifted heaps of brown sugar over the top and we tucked the dessert into the fridge which now had a “feeding the multitudes” look.
More friends arrived. The kids were starving and we had to offer nibbles and snacks.
We served our scrumptious meal at 9:00.
It was the best tasting thanksgiving dinner ever! Mostly I was giving thanks that the cooking was over. We had survived the ordeal. We were full, sated, as stuffed as the turkey.
Time for the dessert. At 10:00 p.m., we took the crème brulèe out of the fridge and popped it under the broiler to caramelize the sugar. This is a say a prayer and have another glass of wine moment. The cook is hoping she won’t take a melted soggy mess to the table.
Voila! Just like the photo! A spectacular finale. Somehow, the guests made room for our masterpiece. The dinner was a huge success.
I’ve cooked many Gourmet recipes since then, but I never made another Gourmet Thanksgiving Menu. No more pumpkins, certainly no more chestnuts, ever.
Bon appetite! Adieu Gourmet.
Combine in the container of a blender, 5 very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, 1 cucumber peeled and chopped, 1 green papper, seeded and chopped, 1 onion, chopped, 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley, and 1 garlic clove, crushed.
Cover the container and blend untl the mixture is almost smooth. Stir in 1 1/4 cups tomato juice, 3 T. olive oil, 2 T. vinegar, 1/4 t. paprika, sale and pepper to taste, and chill the soup thoroughly.
Serve the gaspacho individual, chilled soup bowls. With the soup one may serve several dishes of tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber, and red onion, all peeled, seeded if necessary and appropriately diced.
July Gourmet, 1964 . I have a note: "try adding a bit of chopped raw spinach." I'm sure we served the soup in those elegant little glass bowls that fit into a bed of chopped ice, originally intended for shrimp cocktail, but also great for vichysoisse. See photo, from EBAY. I had to key "vintage" to find them. Obviously passe along with Gourmet and the coat and tie. Adieu gracious living. Adieu Gourmet.
I still use this recipe, although to this day I've never served little bowls of chopped anything with it Maybe a few croutons.
Some years later, my friend Karin and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner from Gourmet. Part of the dinner involved roasting chestnuts in a very hot oven and peeled them while they were still hot. My hands looked like holy shit afterward, and that was my first, last, and I guarantee, only time my hands will EVER touch a raw chestnut.
Below is an account of the event from my Toastmaster's speech recording the festivities.
Thanksgiving from Scratch ©
I have cooked over 35 Thanksgiving dinners, including one in Germany. The first one sat on an overflowing card table a month after our wedding. This year, alone again, we’ll have a turkey breast, with sides. The traditional Thanksgiving meal holds no trauma or terrors. It wasn’t always so.
I was five months pregnant and we drove to Houston to be with old friends Jim and Karin for Thanksgiving. When we arrived, Karin announced that we were going to cook the GOURMET MAGAZINE THANKSGIVING DINNER. From scratch.
Cooking From scratch? What does that mean? My grandma didn’t know of any other way. From scratch? From the very beginning. Using raw materials.
Our menu began with pumpkin soup and ended with a grand finale of crème brulèe. In between came turkey with chestnut stuffing. Mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies and an extra special cranberry sauce. It sounded a little intimidating, but we were sure two cooks could carry it off.
We got going early, around 8:00 a.m., planning a 5:00 o’clock dinner. That seemed a bit optimistic.
Husbands and kids were shooed out of the kitchen. This was woman’s work. Since this was Houston, we had to shoo the cockroaches, too.
Fortunately, Karin had already done the shopping. The raw materials were awesome.
A pumpkin
A skid load of rock hard chestnuts
Oceans of thick heavy cream
Tons of butter
A stupendous turkey
Five pounds of potatoes
Cranberries
We had one oven, one sink, and a four burner stove. Because this was Houston, there was a second refrigerator in the garage. No Cuisinart back then, but we had a blender and a mixer. By today’s standards, the kitchen would be a relic for Pioneer Village. As old fashioned as cooking from scratch.
We tackled the soup first, and in no time we had orange bits of pumpkin on every surface. Never mind. We cooked the pumpkin that wasn’t stuck to something, added broth and cream and the spices and pureed the soup in the blender. Fantastic! Smooth as silk. Onward.
Dinner will be served at 6:00.
I fixed chestnuts twice that day. For the first time and the last time.
This is the advice on how to roast chestnuts:
Roast in-shell chestnuts in the oven, but you MUST pierce the shell with a small cut or cut them in half beforehand with a knife to prevent them from exploding when they cook!
Pierce the shell with a small cut. About as easy as piercing a diamond with a small cut. Many of the cuts were on my hands. From scratch took on a new and more sinister meaning.
Next, place the chestnuts in a heavy cast iron pan. Put the pan in a 400 degree oven for a while.
Remove from oven and peel off the shells with a small knife. Do it while they are still hot, if they cool, they will be harder to peel.
This means you pick up a chestnut that has been in a 400 degree oven with your bare hands. Painful burns topped the cuts and the chestnuts dyed my injured fingers the brown color of old boots.
Dinner will be served at 7:00.
Somehow we got through the chestnuts. Husbands chased over to the quick mark to buy even more butter. Good thing I was eating for two.
The turkey had gone into the oven, late of course, and it became obvious that we would serve dinner about 8:00 p.m. If all went well. Meanwhile, the guests were arriving. The host opened the wine. Probably a bad idea.
Cranberries and veggies were not so complicated, but the crème brulèe was one for the books! We had to make a custard from scratch. Into the pot went the rest of the heavy cream. Cook, stir, “coat the spoon.” We poured the custard into the serving dish. Karin sifted heaps of brown sugar over the top and we tucked the dessert into the fridge which now had a “feeding the multitudes” look.
More friends arrived. The kids were starving and we had to offer nibbles and snacks.
We served our scrumptious meal at 9:00.
It was the best tasting thanksgiving dinner ever! Mostly I was giving thanks that the cooking was over. We had survived the ordeal. We were full, sated, as stuffed as the turkey.
Time for the dessert. At 10:00 p.m., we took the crème brulèe out of the fridge and popped it under the broiler to caramelize the sugar. This is a say a prayer and have another glass of wine moment. The cook is hoping she won’t take a melted soggy mess to the table.
Voila! Just like the photo! A spectacular finale. Somehow, the guests made room for our masterpiece. The dinner was a huge success.
I’ve cooked many Gourmet recipes since then, but I never made another Gourmet Thanksgiving Menu. No more pumpkins, certainly no more chestnuts, ever.
Bon appetite! Adieu Gourmet.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
A cool, damp picnic!
Must be New England! PEN is having its year end picnic and they are honoring Kate Mattes, owner of the late, lamented Kate's Mystery Bookstore on Mass Ave in Cambridge.
I have a fleece pullover which will keep fall breezes at bay. Last night the folks at the ball game were bundled up. Fall, even late fall is here. I swore I wouldn't wear corduroys before Oct. 15th, but yesterday I broke my promise to myself. Ah well, no matter.
I'm making chicken/walnut/dried cherry sandwiches on wheat bread to take to the picnic. I think the recipe is from an old Gourmet. I used to save my food mags, and then all of a sudden (well, not really, it just seemed that way) I had twenty (20!) years of Gourmets. Now I save the Thanksgiving, Holiday and Barbecue issues and clip recipes I might try from the rest. Sometimes I'll keep a recipe for 10 or more years before the occasion arises, (like today) to make the dish.
Of course my clippings have become huge, and I've got them organized, but everything should really go into a binder. Ugh! More work, even more organization.
Right now, I have to don my bright yellow clogs and trek into the garden for fresh parsley and also empty the water out of the saucers, etc. We had a monsoon yesterday.
This week we will celebrate a wedding anniversary and will dine at Cilantro in Sharon, a wonderful jewel of a restaurant that always has creative fare and a warm welcome.
Warm is good. Think spring.
Grapeshot
I have a fleece pullover which will keep fall breezes at bay. Last night the folks at the ball game were bundled up. Fall, even late fall is here. I swore I wouldn't wear corduroys before Oct. 15th, but yesterday I broke my promise to myself. Ah well, no matter.
I'm making chicken/walnut/dried cherry sandwiches on wheat bread to take to the picnic. I think the recipe is from an old Gourmet. I used to save my food mags, and then all of a sudden (well, not really, it just seemed that way) I had twenty (20!) years of Gourmets. Now I save the Thanksgiving, Holiday and Barbecue issues and clip recipes I might try from the rest. Sometimes I'll keep a recipe for 10 or more years before the occasion arises, (like today) to make the dish.
Of course my clippings have become huge, and I've got them organized, but everything should really go into a binder. Ugh! More work, even more organization.
Right now, I have to don my bright yellow clogs and trek into the garden for fresh parsley and also empty the water out of the saucers, etc. We had a monsoon yesterday.
This week we will celebrate a wedding anniversary and will dine at Cilantro in Sharon, a wonderful jewel of a restaurant that always has creative fare and a warm welcome.
Warm is good. Think spring.
Grapeshot
Saturday, October 03, 2009
NEIBA
Yesterday we trekked from Boston to Hartford to help set up the Sisters in Crime/ Mystery Writer's of America booth for the New England Chapters at NEIBA.
Leaving Boston on the NYC route on a Friday afternoon is always frenzied, and once we turned off onto I-84 South, there were the truckers from hell and the lane darters from hell, making for a stressful ride. Instructions to the convention center were so-so, and we made one wrong turn.
NEIBA stands for New England Independent Booksellers Association, and they have a trade show in the fall every year. This must be m 8th or 9th year in attendance.
It's hard to beat a room full of books. Although the show looked small this year, and small wonder with the beating publishing and esp. independent bookstores are taking, many big publishers were on site with huge displays of books.
One starts to drool.
So we set up our booth and made it look nice, chatted up a few folks who stopped by early, and left for a dinner at Rein's Deli in Vernon. Well, you just can't go to Hartford from here without a stop at Rein's Deli.
Except there was a booksigning outside the main exhibition room, and hors d-oeuvres to die for, and we had to use extreme discretion so as not to trash appetites. Avoided the wine, but not the book signings and arrived home with three new books.
Rein's was the same as always. Lots of old folks eating there at 6:30 on a Friday. Lots of fat old folks. Everyone with a bit of heft doesn't die young. We had matzo ball/kreplach soup and potato pancakes, not exactly a pig out, but let me tell you the hot turkey sandwiches looked like they hung over both sides of a PLATTER. For some reason, served with fries not mashed, and everyone knows a hot sandwich with gravy screams for mashed potatoes.
Successfully avoided the bread pudding for dessert. Bought a loaf of rye bread for six dollars. Must weigh a pound and a half. I froze 2/3. It will be good with the saurkraut/sparerib soup later this week. We're still on our soup/salad routine and it's working well. Made a taco salad Thursday that was really yummy, with plenty of lettuce, tomato, onion, navy beans and avocado. Lean ground beef, but not too much. A mixture of two cheeses left over.
Dressing of green peppers, (canned Mexican), sour cream and mayo. Well, ya gotta go easy on the dressing.
I made cranberry squares for an "event" this week. I'll put the recipe in the blog when I get a chance. It's the easiest thing you'll ever make and mucho delicious. I had to find something with ingredients on hand. Challenge yourself.
Off to plan the weekly menus and make a shopping list. It's good to be semi-organized.
Grapeshot
Leaving Boston on the NYC route on a Friday afternoon is always frenzied, and once we turned off onto I-84 South, there were the truckers from hell and the lane darters from hell, making for a stressful ride. Instructions to the convention center were so-so, and we made one wrong turn.
NEIBA stands for New England Independent Booksellers Association, and they have a trade show in the fall every year. This must be m 8th or 9th year in attendance.
It's hard to beat a room full of books. Although the show looked small this year, and small wonder with the beating publishing and esp. independent bookstores are taking, many big publishers were on site with huge displays of books.
One starts to drool.
So we set up our booth and made it look nice, chatted up a few folks who stopped by early, and left for a dinner at Rein's Deli in Vernon. Well, you just can't go to Hartford from here without a stop at Rein's Deli.
Except there was a booksigning outside the main exhibition room, and hors d-oeuvres to die for, and we had to use extreme discretion so as not to trash appetites. Avoided the wine, but not the book signings and arrived home with three new books.
Rein's was the same as always. Lots of old folks eating there at 6:30 on a Friday. Lots of fat old folks. Everyone with a bit of heft doesn't die young. We had matzo ball/kreplach soup and potato pancakes, not exactly a pig out, but let me tell you the hot turkey sandwiches looked like they hung over both sides of a PLATTER. For some reason, served with fries not mashed, and everyone knows a hot sandwich with gravy screams for mashed potatoes.
Successfully avoided the bread pudding for dessert. Bought a loaf of rye bread for six dollars. Must weigh a pound and a half. I froze 2/3. It will be good with the saurkraut/sparerib soup later this week. We're still on our soup/salad routine and it's working well. Made a taco salad Thursday that was really yummy, with plenty of lettuce, tomato, onion, navy beans and avocado. Lean ground beef, but not too much. A mixture of two cheeses left over.
Dressing of green peppers, (canned Mexican), sour cream and mayo. Well, ya gotta go easy on the dressing.
I made cranberry squares for an "event" this week. I'll put the recipe in the blog when I get a chance. It's the easiest thing you'll ever make and mucho delicious. I had to find something with ingredients on hand. Challenge yourself.
Off to plan the weekly menus and make a shopping list. It's good to be semi-organized.
Grapeshot
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