Vegetarian Treat

We're still eating Mediterranean this week, and last night we had these delicious  stuffed escarole .

We also devoured the dessert leftovers from the party.  Steak au poivre tonight a la South Beach Diet to get a little zinc and iron into us along with big whack of protein.

I made the Barefoot Contessa's oatmeal raisin cookies, but alas, they were a bit too sweet for us, and I'll cut down the sugar if I make them again.

Have to get back to my writing.  I have procrastinated mightily this week, with an obsessive to do list, cooking, and watching the Food Network and  the Red Sox.   A few naps round out the wasted time.

Onward,

Grapeshot                                   

Dinner Chez Grapeshot

Photos of the food from last night's dinner party.  We had a delicious lunch of the leftovers from the Mezze platter.  Tonight we're doing vegetarian--stuffed escarole.  Can't remember if I already made it.  Ye gods, the gray cells are dying off in droves.

We have photos of the Mezze platter, shrimp scampi, an easy ratatouille, and the orange mascarpone tart with hazelnuts.  This was actually a very simple dinner.  The appetizers were accompanied by pita bread and that hard-to-spell yogurt and cucumber dish.  I used full fat Greek yogurt and it was to-die-for. 

Bon Appetit!

Grapeshot

Computer Nightmares

So, I have the ancient (2002) version of MS Money (alas no more) on my dying Dell which has unaccountably lost its internet connection, and I also have a 2010 version of Quicken on my new Mac Mini, and from the looks of things, never the twain shall meet.  I won't bore you with my efforts to figure out how to port the old Money files to the new Quicken, but suffice it so say it's been ugly. 

Unfortunately, my life is on Money.  Two small (very small) businesses, all the accounts, and even my Paypal accounts are tracked on Money.  I've always really liked it.  Easy to use, good reporting, etc.  Never did use the brokerage stuff, so that isn't the issue.  And I can't start fresh--have to bring the 2010 files, and preferably the 2009.  To repeat, ugly. 

The dying Dell  (6-7 years old) constantly runs out of virtual memory, although I took everything I could off of it when I went to the new MAC.  No matter.  I was in IT for 25+ years and I always loved computers:  big blue mainframes, HP 3000 midrange, PC's, and everything in between.  Software?  Yup?  I even wrote a few apparently unsaleable novels about the life and loves of a computer crime sleuth.  She loved technology, too. No more.  

Computers are difficult.  Not very intuitive.  Not very nice.  They sure as hell don't play well with others.  And I have no fancy phones or apps, just a vanilla cell.  Falling behind the technology eight ball.  Oh crud! 

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Mascarpone and Strawberry Tart

So, this is yummy strawberry concoction I found on the web when I googled "mascarpone and dessert."  It was really luscious and easy to make.  I cheated with a dairy case pie crust.    You can find the recipe using this link.

Spring is when the strawberries come in, and they've been good this year.  I used the rest of the berries to make a fruit compote:

early rhubarb from a friend's garden, strawberries, frozen blueberries, a handful of cranberries, some sugar, and a splash of orange liquor.  Oh yeah, half a small orange, chopped up.   The whole is vastly greater than the sum of the parts.

I'll have photos tomorrow of the shrimp scampi, the mezze platter, and the orange tart.  Yummo!  Now I'm off to devour part of the gargantuan Cuban sandwiches.  I like to eat them in Key West.

The Mediterranean Diet

An impromptu dinner party tomorrow night coming in the middle of a hugely busy week.  And also in mid-diet week which has been sabotaged by an unexpected trip out of town and the size of the Cuban sandwich at the Met Bar in Legacy place.  Think gargantuan.

So what am I serving tomorrow night?  I pulled out a recipe we recently tried and loved:  shrimp scampi. It was so tasty I asked myself why don't we have this once a month?   I'm serving it with a crusty Italian loaf from Whole Foods instead of pasta.  The guests  can eat the bread or not.    I made a ratatouille to accompany the shrimp, a dish that benefits from sitting in the fridge overnight.  It contains a  goodly number  of colorful veggies and only a little olive oil.   For an appetizer, we're having a mezze platter with Greek specialties including cucumbers in yogurt, olives, feta, vegetarian grape leaves, caper berries, etc.  Good stuff.  Dessert is an orange tart with a base of mascarpone , and the  whole affair is sprinkled with pistachios.  And wine, of course, always wine.  

No writing lately, due to life interfering.  Back to Maxine and her many troubles in a few days.   Have some plants to set out in the garden.  Whither winter and those long (or short) days?  Ye gods.

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Love in Bloom on Glue Factory Pond

Glue Factory Pond!   Now, isn't that a name to conjure with?  It's in Foxborough, and quite scenic, surrounded by grass and bushes and bisected by a local road.  There is indeed an old glue factory which has been turned into small businesses.  People fish in the pond, and there's always a contingent of Canadian geese about.  There were white geese, a threesome for the longest time.  Babies would come in the spring, and usually disappear.  Last year ALL the white geese disappeared.  Gone!  A fox?  A coyote?  Man?

Of course, this is a question that will never be answered, which does not stop me from brooding and wondering.  This year a swan appeared, but there was no way to tell him/her to fly to the Audubon preserve in Norfolk, where an equally lone swan swam.  A week ago, a second swan appeared.  Big excitement, and then I only saw one again.  Today, they were both there and seem to have bonded.  Hanging out, eating swan food from the bottom of the pond (with white butt in air) and there were some ducks and some Canada geese, so life was good on Glue Factory Pond.  In the winter there are seagulls.

In spite of the most unpoetic name, Glue Factory Pond is a pretty cool place.

We saw the ducks in the slough again, and the frog chorus is loud and insistent, singing in the evening hours.  I've seen a few birds after the terror of the hawk.  Even heard the dove, whom I was sure would be a goner.  Hope the hawk is gone.  I love my little flock of birdies.

Everything broke into bloom at once, and the world is beautiful.  The swans would agree.

Cheers!

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A six percent chance and the definition of insanity

My entry to a contest for a spot in an anthology has a six percent (6 %) chance of winning.  That is actually better than the odds of being published as a novelist.

At the end of the month, I travel to the Big Apple from Beantown for Edgar's Week.  This year I'll be pushing my suspense novel (hopefully finished by then), the last of my crime fiction writing.  It's been an interesting eighteen (18) years.  This last book wasn't supposed to be, as I had intended to write my Southern California in the late twenties novel, but the damn character came to me, sat on my shoulder and started telling her story.  Of course, she didn't tell all of it, and I had to fill in a lot of blanks.  I have no feeling for how good it is.  My writing group has gone from enthusiasm to neutrality, shall we say.  Significant Other like my earlier novels, but is not all that enthusiastic about this one.  Actually, he liked Promiscuous Mode and the Shadow Warriors.  

I don't know why I stuck with crime fiction for so long. Some time ago I realized that the parts of my novels I enjoyed writing most were not the cop scenes, the action scenes or the crime scenes, but more the stuff of everyday life.  By then I had so much energy tied up in Mystery and Suspense that I kept at it. 

"They" say the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same act, expecting different results.  That's me and my so-called writing career.  So onward, to finish In Flight and then to Such Stuff As Dreams.  


I have some short stories to write, and a decision to make about the last crime fiction story I had to truncate to keep the word count down to the contest level.  I spent 3 weeks cutting words. Should I write the story to its "proper" length?  Dunno.   Looking forward to penning the short stories, some of which are about animals.

Speaking of which, we have a huge red-shouldered hawk in the woods by the slough, stalking the birds.  I shudder for my poor little terrorized gold-finches, titmice and chickadees, to say nothing of the doves, the robins and the sparrows!  And all the other feathered friends.   I know.  I know.  Hawks gotta eat, but they can go to another yard, and  not treat ours as a smorgasbord table.

Loved watching the Masters this week and am still so happy that Phil Mickelson won.  And how about them Red Sox?  Now if Big Papi could just hit a few out of the park. One can waste so much time watching sports.  Still, the drama and conflict and effort remind me of writing fiction.


Wish me luck in my new non-crime writing career.  I can go where my whimsy takes me, and have learned good rules about suspense and conflict and plotting which will serve me  in other genres.  

Sucking it up, as per usual.  Yup. Yup.

Grapeshot

The Buzzard on the Roof

Ye Gods!  Yesterday we took the family to the Fanieul Hall Marketplace in Boston and ate at the venerable Durgin Park.  Hadn't been there in donkey's years.  It was basically unchanged.  I had a lobster roll which came with lots of sides.  I must say the baked beans were way too sweet, and the corn bread kind of dry.  Cole slaw good.  Lobster excellent but a little scanty for the price tag.  Mussels in garlic broth yummy as was the creamed spinach.  Salad that came with the pasta was excellent.  Wine delightful.  So, altogether a good feed.

The most amazing thing about the meal was the buzzard (I am not making this up) on the roof of the old building across the street.  Yup!  Sitting right on top of Fanieul Hall Marketplace.  At first I thought it was a wild turkey, which would have been weird enough, but a buzzard.  He was definitely enjoying the sunshine, and I wasn't sure if this was a nest he/she sat on or not.  Way up high on the roof.  Of course neither the waitress or anyone else had noticed.  Sometimes you just open your eyes and see the damnest things that no one else does.  And no, I wasn't smoking those funny cigarettes.

On the writing front, no Derringer award for "Bad Trip," but a couple friends were nominated.  Querying Promiscuous Mode like crazy with a new kickass query.    Finally have my character in Reno for the denouement of In Flight.  Have to rewrite Festival Madness starting the book in Reno.  All roads lead to Reno.  Going to self-pub the East German book, because after 20 years, the premise has gone a bit stale.  I can wrap a story within a story for a bigger word count.  It's too good to lie fallow forever. Need to get going on a couple more short stories.

Writer's like to bad mouth James Patterson, but he's doing a lot of things right.  For one blogger's viewpoint, visit this link.
 http://1stturningpoint.com/?p=3638

Have to go cook some eggs to dye.  We're having a great vegetarian Easter with a dish of asparagus, farfalle, mascarpone and hazelnuts.  It rocks.   Tacos tonight, homemade of course with all the accoutrements.   

Bags and bags of nice veggie food scraps for the cows, whose pasture was flooded this week.  Nice day.  Lots to do.  Onward