Writers and their Cats

Tortoise Cat Thisbe  - a 'fraidy cat

Orange Cat Rulon, a power napper

Friday is traditionally cat blog day, but I wanted to offer a link an alert reader sent about writers and cats.  Above are my two.  Rulon thinks a friendly act it to give chase with maybe a few swipes of his paw.  Thisbe thinks otherwise.  Mostly they ignore each other.  He always horns in when I try to groom Thisbe.  "Horns in."  A great expression which has been reinforced by observing the feeding antics of the Highland Scottish cows.  But I digress.

The Masterpiece Mystery last night (Hercule Poirot) showed a flat with a crazy cat lady.    I haven't reached that stage yet.  In my dotage, perhaps.

In the meantime, here is the link to writers and their cats. Writers and Kitties.  
We enjoyed touring the Hemingway House in Key West and seeing all the cats with an extra toe. 

The Suet Wars

Naughty Raccoon Raiding Suet Feeder

 

 

 

 

Baby Squirrel on the Suet Feeder

This is getting to be expensive.  Every night the raccoon takes $1.75 worth of suet from the feeder.  Every day, the blackbirds eat a whole cake, amid much chasing by moi.  Another $1.25.  That's three dollars a day times 30--eek!  This is becoming expensive. 

We will try the suet cakes with hot pepper to determine if the mammals don't like it.  For the blackbirds, we may stop using the suet cakes with seed and just use plain old suet.  Last night something took down two suet feeders.  One with suet , one empty.  The poor baby woodpeckers are having a hard time.  A bluejay tried to chase the baby red squirrel, whom I do not really begrudge his portion.  I begrudge the big squirrels, raccoons and blackbirds big time.

Why doesn't one of those damn bigs hawks carry off a squirrel of a jay?  Every year it's a battle.  In the meantime, the American Goldfinches are draining the thistle seed.  That's O.K.  There are territorial battles and the males don't get along at all.  As usual, the women and children do. 

The garden is water-logged from all the rain and the thyme looks sad.  Too much agua. 

I prepared a fine dinner tonight--broccoli quiche, homemade herb bread, grapefruit and avocado salad, and now the guests blew a tire and will be late, late, late.  Yeast bread waits for no man.  Oh yes, there's also fresh blueberry bread and berries for dessert.  We'll eat it whenever.  And enjoy it.  Just like those #*!!*% raccoons. 

Empire, Nevada R.I.P.

Empire Nevada is now officially a ghost town.

Shopped at the little store (no allergy meds, eek!) and drove thru the  village streets.  Someone was having a big birthday bash.  Looked like fun with people, balloons, children and normalcy.  The town seemed to be two towns, having  well-to-do and not-so sections, like all towns.  Management and worker-bees. During Burning Man, cars, trucks and campers were lined up on both sides of the highway.

I am so sad about this, and now poor Gerlach, next door will just have a one room school, probably like the one I attended in first grade in a little Colorado mining village.

The Empire store had lots of Burning Man books for sale, and I always hoped that Festival Madness would join the collection, but alas, it's not to be, because Festival Madness is still in search of a publisher, and the store may close after this year's "Man."
Read all about Empire's closing on this link.  The death of Empire

Someone should erect one of those sad little gravestone crosses that mark someone's misfortune in the desert.

The road to Empire, Nevada
Sad, sad, sad! 

About Blogging--the new united nations

Blogger has stats, now.  I used to have to put html code into  the blogs for stats, and now Blogger provides them.  The most interesting stats are the ones that show which countries your readers are from.  I now have four blogs, and these are the countries with readers this week, in no particular order : 

U.S.
Germany
Hungary
Macau
Poland
Russia
Thailand
Ukraine
Canada
France
Austrailia
Turkey
Iran
Spain
South Korea
U.K.
Netherlands
Brazil
Belgium

Why do I find this so amazing?  I noticed that Google Images has picked up a few photos from the blog, and this obviously helps.  I have never had Afghanistan or North Korea or few countries from Africa except Egypt, but maybe there will soon be those, too. 
Welcome everyone, I wish I knew how to say welcome in all these languages.  I have always been interested in other countries and cultures, since our 4th grade teacher brought her niece from Puerto Rico into our class.  In college there were some interesting foreign students, and something I liked very much about working in IT was that we were a united nations of cultures.  I made friends from Russia, India and Israel.  How cool was that?   
My Toastmaster's Club is also very diverse, and that, too, is fun and rewarding.  Some people who have never travelled or ventured beyond their neighborhoods seem uncomfortable around those of different backgrounds, but others are interested and open to strangers.  
So welcome, blog readers.  I wish I knew you and could talk to you.   I'm sure we would find much in common and also some interesting differences. 

We all know the world is becoming connected thru Facebook, Twitter and blogs.  That is, as Martha Stewart, our cooking and household guru, would say, "A Good Thing." 

New England Painted Turtle

The tomatoes look like they're getting blight again.  Big disappointment.  When we moved one of the pots. this guy was hiding behind it. 

New England Painted Box turtle

He didn't hang around, and must have taken off at a pretty good clip.  This is a New England painted box turtle, by the way.

Ten Minute Dessert

Happy Father's Day!  Don't overfeed Dad, but make something he likes.  Last night we had the strawberry tart for th 2nd day because it was so delicious the first.

Free form strawberry tart 

I buy Pillsbury pie crusts in the dairy department.  Almost  as good as homemade and no mess.  I put some baker's paper (parchment paper)  on the cookie sheet so as to avoid the "runny fruit" mess.

Unroll the room temp. crust onto the parchment paper.   In a bowl put strawberries (I eyeball them.  1 1/2 - 2 cups. If you make too many, just eat them), a little grated lemon or orange rind, a squeeze of lemon or orange juice, some sugar to taste and a sprinkle of instant tapioca (to thicken the juices).  Mix well and dump into the center of the pastry.  Crimp edges around the berry mixture.  If you like, brush the pastry with a little cream or egg wash.  Nice but not necessary.  Put into a 425 degree oven until the pastry is cooked and golden.  Let cool, cut into 4 services and eat, preferably topped with whipped cream (canned is all right, just don't buy "topping.") or vanilla ice cream.  I cut up the berries a bit if they are large.
This goes together in a flash and the bang for the buck is huge.

My character Emma would cook this up for one of her many lovers.  Even her husband.  When The Shadow Warriors first came out in 2001 (ye gods!) some book web site had it slotted under "spicy romance."   La di dah!

Girl Geek

Recently I attended the District 31 Toastmaster's Conference in Dedham, and one of the speakers, Rory Vaden, gave a dynamite talk on procrastination.  Now I am sort of an average procrastinator,  the kind who will diddle away the day doing stuff low on the priority end of the list to avoid tackling Big Projects.  I recognized myself right away and vowed to do better.

One of the big items on my to do list was the updating of my website.  In the fall of 2007, I  did a brand new site, all by myself, including some pretty sophisticated stuff.  I vowed to keep it up to date, but guess what?  Holy Schmoley three and a half  years passed, and I was still vowing to update.  I really needed to promote the kindle version of The Shadow Warriors, and here I was, a first class slacker.  

The problem was, this could be a formidable task because I had changed computers, from PC to MAC and I needed new FTP software.  Went onto the web and bought Filezilla.  What a nom!  Read the instructions and it seemed like pretty vanilla FTP, except that none of the ids, passwords, etc., that I plugged in were working.

I looked at the web site, and made a list of updates, long but not overwhelming, and some of them quite simple, fixing broken links, updating some photos, yada. yada.  Now being a once and forever geek, I do my site in HTML, which of course I had forgotten, and a cloud of gloom settled above my head.  Seemed like a hard task.

Got out the nice red leather box with the web site stuff, and looked at the old HTML pages.  O.K., some of it I remembered.
Brainstorm!  Yes!  I downloaded the Taco HTML editor and pulled up a simple page.  Looked like duck soup.  And so easy to check if (make that when) mistakes made the page all weird.

With my list of updates, my new editor and Filezilla, there were no further reasons to hesitate.  The whole thing only took two days, make that 1 1/2 days and that was with some serious debugging.  I have to confess that I entered the home office early Sunday morning, and stayed until 6:30 at night when everything was working.  At that time, I went upstairs, showered, brushed my teeth and got dressed.  I think we must have eaten leftovers from Saturday.  Maybe I cooked a simple meal.  It's all a blur.


The thing is--it was fun.  Bugs and problems and all, I was having a wonderful time.  How weird is that?  I like (some) technical stuff, and after 25 years in IT, experience still counts in problem solving.   The site looked great.  Now to tackle Filezilla.

I called the hosting company this morning and got some crucial information, and learned what to plug in where.  Can you believe Filezilla worked the very first time and I had a connection?  Whooeee!

Moved everything over and went out and looked at the site.  Same old.  Same old.  Wha????
Yes!  Refresh!  New stuff all over the place.  One image and one page missing, so the old one came up.  Went back onto Filezilla.  Duck Soup!  Tested out the whole site.   Totally amazed that "hey!  it worked "and I didn't have to bug Filezilla and my web host with a bunch of stupid questions.

Feeling totally smug.  So, take a look.  The coolest thing is the table on the home page where you click and it brings up the pages. It's an image map.  So cool!  My finest hour with graphic help from Significant Other. 

I have promised myself to do a recipe every month, add a few links and  continue on with 25 years in Information Systems, the story of how a suburban housewife learned to program mainframe computers and had a real career.

Yowsa!    My Updated Website

For the non-technical, FTP is the process that gets the data from my computer to the server that hosts the website.  File Transfer Protocol. 

So good we nearly fainted

Chocolate Ice Cream To Die For

Last week, I wrote a post about the ice cream maker crapping out at a bad moment and the emergency trip to Williams-Sonoma for a new one.
After a proper time to chill the bowl (much less than the previous bowl, by the way), I poured the custard into the frozen bowl and pressed the "on" switch.  This ice cream maker is about 100 times easier to use the the old one. You pop in the bowl, pop in the top (no weird fitting and twisting and turning and having pieces pop back off again). Pour in the mixture (a nice wide opening, too!) . Let 'er rip.
It's easy to see how the ice cream is doing, i.e., is it ice cream yet?
It was, and quicker than the previous one, too.  Things just got better and better.  I did have to find a container to put it in.  You can't store it in the bowl, and as a veteran saver of "containers," I had an old plastic  half gallon container with a lid from days of yore  that fit the bill.
Froze for 30 hours.  It was so dark and rich looking that well, it screamed for the delicate Orrefors  Illusion crystal dishes. Hand washable, and so fragile that if you look at them cross-eyed, they break.
OMG!  Never tasted anything like this.  Dark and rich and creamy and died-and-gone-to-heaven ice cream.  Worth the custard and the caramel and the hassle of five steps in a half-hour and sweating not to screw up. 
The whole table almost swooned. It was that good.
Tonight, there are two piddly helpings left, and I must remember to photograph.  Gauche to whip out the camera in the middle of a dinner party.  I will definitely be making this again.  Remember, it's in the June issue of Bon Appetit. 
Chocolate Ice Cream
Yowza!

Rote Grütze: An American Take on a Favorite German Dessert

One of the best things about being a tourist in Germany in the summer is eating the dessert Rote Grütze, literally translated as "Red Groats."  The best is found at Leysieffer in Osnabrück, Sylt and Berlin.  You can even buy a container to take home.  
Now this delicacy is made with red currants, and maybe some currant juice as well as raspberries, strawberries and even blackberries.  I don't know if you have a currant bush, but we do not and the little red buggers are $4.99 for a piddling small box if you can find them at all.  Sooooo. What to do? 
I have solved the problem by devising my own Americanische Rote Grütze.   This is not authentic but it's very good.
Take a cup or more of frozen cranberries, 2 cups of rhubarb cut in 1 inch pieces and cook together in a few tablespoons of hot water with a squeeze of lemon juice and maybe 1/3 cup sugar.  Cook until the berries have popped and the rhubarb is soft but still in recognizable shapes.  Add a cup of so of red cherries and a 1 1/2 cups of fresh strawberries or a mix of strawberries, red raspberries, etc.  Add sugar to taste and cook until the berries are soft.  Cool, chill and serve with whipped cream.   
This is a dessert called compote, which is high in all those good-for-us red fruits, hell, it's all red fruit except for the necessary sugar.  Don't over-sweeten.  A bit of tartness is good. 
This time of year with cherries and strawberries on sale is a good time to make Rote Grütze.  I keep cranberries frozen from year to year.  Raspberries, if  reasonable, are a tasty addition.  Antioxidants up the yingyang.  Soooo healthy.  

Rote Grütze: a summer dessert on a seasonal tablecloth- the good life

Seven Suspenseful Sunday - June 5

When the drug runner runs:

A spasm of anxiety grabbed Lotto. Why would the Coast Guard fly in this miserable weather, harassing innocent sailors? Alberto’s tan face looked calm, but the waves were worse now, and Lotto wanted him to concentrate on the goddamn navigation.  They almost took a hit broadside.  Lotto felt like he rode in his son Christian’s bathtub boat, except now the devil laughed and splashed and created havoc in the water. Fear dwelt in the back of his mind like a bear in a cave. More danger--more betrayals--he would never set eyes on Cuba.

Visit all the Seven Suspenseful Sunday Blogs at  7 Suspenseful Sentence Sunday   

Looking for a cool Kindle read?   The Shadow Warriors, a novel of international intrigue with technology run amok.  Here is the link: The Shadow Warriors on Amazon, Kindle and Trade Paperback
 

We all scream for Ice Cream

Bon Appetit's Recipe  for Chocolate Ice Cream.  OMG!

Adventures in ice cream. 

The June Bon Appetit mag arrives about the same time I decide to have a small dinner party.  Menu finalized, and I have chosen a somewhat complicated but decadent chocolate ice cream for dessert.  Buy dark organic chocolate!  Whole milk?  I mean, who has whole milk?  The process involves about 5 fairly complicated steps executed right after each other.  Pretty much destroys the kitchen.  The chocolate custard is supposed to cool for 2 days.  So. . . . today we get home from a long arduous shopping trip, the shop and eat lunch and drink wine till you drop kind of trip, and it's time to make the ice cream which needs to "age" for two days.

A few years ago we bought an ice cream maker which was always VERY hard to assemble.  The brand shall be nameless (it has been discontinued for some time) and every time I made ice cream, not very often, it was hell on wheels to get the stupid machine put together.  Click this piece into that piece into the knee bone connected to the shoulder bone.

The ice cream was always first rate.

Today the paddle did not want to snap in, no way no how.  It had issues.  Significant Other gave it a goodly whack and the paddle snapped in except it also broke a little bit.  We got out the super glue and fixed that sucker, but when it was time to complete the assembly, well, the paddle had somehow snapped out again and did not want to go in.

So I've got seven dollars worth of chocolate custard on the counter.  To the web!  With two days to go,  I can't buy it online.   I call Williams Sonoma at Legacy Place and they have a Cuisinart there.  We race over through rush hour traffic. Time is of the essence, because I know from experience that the bowl has to chill for, like, days.

Mission accomplished.  The ice cream maker is even on sale for Father's Day.  We do some shopping at Whole Foods and get into a huge traffic mess going home.  Plus every gas station advertising cheap gas means "for cash."  We pull in and out of half the stations on Route 1.  Stop at Stop 'n Shop for the on-sale cherries and a few more items.  The sun has set.  Race home and I pop the bowl into the freezer and put the getting long in  the tooth chocolate custard in the far corner of the fridge.  The bowl should be cold in 24 hours.  The party is in forty-eight. 

I'll let  you know how the ice cream turns out.  The chocolate custard tastes remarkable.  Deep and rich and not too sweet.

My favorite flavor is rum raisin, although once I ate some Grand Marnier ice cream that almost made me change my mind.  We whipped up some Port Wine ice cream in house that was also pretty remarkable. 

Well, time to chill, in more ways than one.  Never a dull moment here chez Grapeshot.  And thank you, friendly helpful folks at Williams Sonoma.   By the way, the best pot roast recipe ever was devised by Chuck Williams.  Just thought you might want to know.

Onward.