Luscious Apricot Bars

We love the Apricot King, and buy his dried apricots, apricot pepper jelly (yum!)  apricot jam, and especially his apricot syrup which is scrumptious on pancakes and waffles.  Apricot King

Of course dried apricots are tasty for munching, but I'm always on the lookout for recipes that call for dried apricots.  Below is one of the best.  This recipe was requested in either Gourmet or Bon Appetit.  Don't use a non-stick pan, because the bottom crust may overbrown in it, and besides, you don't want to scratch th pan when you're cutting the bars.  The recipe says "Makes 12 bars" but I am finding nowadays that folks prefer small helpings of treats, so I cut 16 bars and halve a few of those for dainty appetites.

The recipe came originally from the Putah Creek Cafe  

Apricot Bars 12 - 20 bars depending on size

2/3 cup California dried apricots
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
confectioners (powdered) sugar for dusting.


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Simmer apricots in water to cover in a small saucepan, covered, 15 minutes.  Drain, them cool to room temperature and finely chop.
Beat together butter, granulated sugar, and 1 cup of the flour with an electric mixer on medium speed until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. 
Press evenly over the bottom of a greased 8 inch square pan (not nonstick) and bake in the middle of oven until golden, about 25 minutes.
While crust is baking:
Beat together, in same bowl, chopped apricots, brown sugar, eggs, walnuts, baking powder, vanilla, salt and remaining 1/3 cup flour  on medium speed until combined well. 
Pour topping over cooked hot crust, and bake in middle of oven until topping is set and golden, 25 - 30 minutes more.
Cool in pan on  rack and cut into 12 - 18 bars, then dust with confectioners sugar. 
Bars keep in an airtight container at room temperature 2 days.  They are better the second day after baking.  

Nice to dirty only one saucepan and one bowl, yes?  These are winners.  Not overly sweet, but sweet enough.  Nuts can be omitted if nut allergies are present.

Thursday for my Toastmasters Holiday Party, I'm making the Apricot Bars, from Coffee-Spice Shortbread with Crystallized Ginger, tea sandwiches (rolled) and a spinach quiche.  We have a truly international group, and I hope there will be something to appeal to everyone. I promise to photograph the apricot bars, because we know a pictures is always at least 1000 words. 

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"Lite" chicken pot pie

What toothsome fare is that? Ye gods, it's a Gourmet Magazine "on the light side" Chicken Pot Pie. Those are mashed potatoes for topping, by the way, potatoes mashed with 2% Greek yogurt, water, and chives. The pie itself has chicken breast, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, peas, spices and broth. I went the long route and made my own chicken broth from the water I cooked the chicken in. I added a few green beans from the garden. Some wine in the sauce and a tablespoon of sherry made for some very good "light' sauce.

The only problem was that the recipe called for 19 (nineteen, count 'em) ingredients and the green beans made twenty. I made the potatoes from scratch (we frequently used the boxed around our house) and altogther this was fairly high on the labor side, but we ate for two nights and it did not seem like diet fare

Chives from the garden in the potatoes. The dish was colorful and had plenty of eye appeal. I cooked up the rest of the cranberries from 2008 today and also served a side dish of fresh broccoli. Can't ever get enough of those healthful veggies, don't cha know?

Tonight, at seventh inning stretch, we'll break out the apricot bars I made for my Toastmasters meeting today. Pretty good, with apricots from the 'cot king, grown in the flavor zone in California's central valley. http://www.apricotking/. The apricot syrup is incredible on pancakes and waffles. Don't apricots have vitamin A? Ya gotta keep eating them.

Tomorrow, we're back to salad, with a main dish of tuna, artichoke hearts, red onion and white beans. What's not to like?

Then more soup.

That's all.

What A Writer Does Besides Write

Sometimes a writer cooks or even bakes.

Otherwise?

Oh yes! Lots of "stuff." Yesterday, I tailored my robot fish story for a submission to Esquire. Then I submitted another story to a journal I found in Poets & Writers. Yet another poem went to a Poets & Writers poetry journal. Sent an email to another journal asking about how they want a submission. I could turn a Toastmaster's Speech into a humorous essay. Might be fun.

Spent a lot of time looking at my "finished" poetry and trying to decide if there's enough to enter for a Chapbook. Yeah, but. Maybe a couple more poems would flesh it out a little. Forgot my Sonora desert poems were so good. For a while, I wrote poetry regularly.

Made a list of the details I noted coming into New Haven for one line I need for the new novel.

Now I am sorting through the huge Thrillerfest listing of literary agents looking for agents to query. I have to make sure I haven't queried them before, as least not for the book I'm pitching now. Trying to read between the lines. Looking at their web sites to see what kind of work they publish. This is a time suck of the first order. I could be getting mosquito bites in the garden. Could be fixing lunch. Now there's an idea.

Need to get back to my novel. Need to do a lot of things, like my neck exercises because I sit at the g.d. computer all day and my neck gets to stiff I can't turn my head. Makes backing up

the car a little dicey.

We seem to have a pet mosquito here in the office. He didn't bite last night when he had a chance, so I won't swat him. Live and let live.

I'll send out 5 more queries for various novels using the agents identified so far. Querying three novels at this point. When I finish In Flight, that will make four. This is a full time job. One hundred twenty queries per book before I throw in the towel. That makes three hundred sixty in all. Oh god, can I see it through?

Discovered how to make my twitters show up on Face book. Not technically dead yet after my retirement from IT.

The photo is the last of the blueberry tart. Make your pie dough in the food processor. It only takes the time to measure the ingredients. I mix a little sugar and seasoning and instant tapioca into the fruit. Any kind of fruit. Almost an instant dessert, as the tart is free form.

Some cooking is really easy. Experience counts. Too bad that doesn't seem to hold in submitting work to agents. Ah me!

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Blogging Along

Cripes, I haven't posted to this blog in a long time. I've been on Twitter (Judyinboston) and my other two blogs. Life's bits and pieces: cleaning, cooking, gardening, and oh yes, writing. Washing, ironing, shopping, stuff. I gave a speech at my Toastmaster's Club about my adventures on a big corporate re-engineering committee in the mid-90's. Ah, the memories. I was associated with the "old legacy system." Might as well have been the dung heap.

Announcement: could be the economy is looking up. We trekked to the Wrentham (Discount) Mall on Sunday for chocolate and moisturizer, and there was a huge crowd. Big line to get into the mall. Parking lot crammed. Lots of people with shopping bags. The stores looked busy, as opposed to Nordstrom's a week earlier and the mattress store on Saturday. Big sale and the store was empty.

So we did our bit, spending the tax refund and the dribs and drabs of money which have come ouf way. I bought a used Apple. A backup drive for said Apple. A keyboard and a mouse. Remember a song from college:

My father makes book on the corner
My mother sells second hand gin
My sister makes love for a dollar
My god, how the money rolls in.

In this case, it rolled out. So . . . .

I'm appearing at the hair dresser's this week for the first time in six months. Long, two-toned hair. The occasion is Edgar's Week next week in NYC. I even have something to wear because I didn't go last year and can therefore wear what I would have worn last year, had I went. Yanno.

Cringing at the idea of the agents and editors cocktail party. How many years? May flog Significant Other's memoir. How would that be? On the other hand, I haven't pushed Festival Madness at this event. F.M. hasn't set the world on fire. In fact, no one has asked for the full ms. And I was so sure. Idea for rewrite, but it will be a lot of work. New beginning. We all need new beginnings. Apropos sucking it up and all that humiliating stuff, there was an interesting post on "when do you know when to quit?" today. I guess you don't. Because around the corner may lurk the agent or editor who believes in you. http://www.murderati.com/blog/2009/4/19/how-do-you-know-when-to-quit.html

Today is Patriot's Day in Boston and a holiday. They ran the Marathon today. We used to live in Wellesley and walk down to the center of town to cheer the runner's on. Wellesley College woman always scream their lungs out. The Red Sox won big time.

I have to confess a total addiction to In Treatment. What a great show. HBO rocks. Worth every dime. And The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency is growing on me every week. It's so nice so see a show about Africa with people going about normal everyday lives, eating out, with schools and homes and occupations. This is a new glimpse into the Dark Continent with no war, rebellion, refugee camps, 13 year old soldiers--well, you know. No Somali pirates.

My robot fish story with the Somali pirates is soooo topical. Now, will it be published?

The kitchen counter is full of seedlings. They are so cute! We have daffodils and forsythia blooming, finally. (not in the kitchen!) Itsy-bitsy leaves on bushes. Very heartening. Something blooming in the slough. Haven't seen the ducks lately.

I'm reading a hilarious book by David Lodge, Therapy. Kind of oppostite In Treatment.

So it goes. A friend sent some fab tango music and we've been listening to that. Rented Frieda from Netflix and liked it.

That's all.

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Chocolate Panna Cotta + Port Wine Ice Cream

I don't normally make fancy desserts. Cookies and fruit salad are the norm in our household if there even is dessert. But the intense chocolate whatever-it-was with the port wine ice cream that we ate at Poste in DC inspired me. And S.O.'s birthday needed a proper dessert. Usually I make a marble cake if there's time, but one huge cake and three people equals over-indulgence. So we have instead eight helping of panna cotta instead of 20 helpings of cake. And the ice cream will keep and I hope we don't go whole hog (in this case an apt description) and gobble it all down. I'll do photos when the dessert is served. Tonight.

We also have rib eye steaks, baked potatoes with ALL the trimmings, broccoli, and mesclun salad with cherry tomatoes and avocado on the menu. I did this in lieu of all three of us going to a fancy place or a steak house for dinner. These days, that would have been the better part of $200, and instead we are doing it for under $50, and that includes a decent bottle of port which we can savor into the future for a long time. So . . .

Now back to my speech about how I wrote The Shadow Warriors. I hope it is of some interest to the group of administrative assistant professionals who will be the audience. It's always hard to know how interested people are in writing. You wonder. Do they read? What do they read? Do they give two whoops and a holler? I'm redoing a speech I gave years ago and now I realize that speech wasn't very good. Of course hardly anyone heard it because the venue was a downscale suburb and nobody showed up except the librarian and some of my friends. One of those evenings a writer would just as soon forget. Whatever.

Toastmasters is a wonderful organization and has improved my speaking skills greatly, but I still have a ways to go. Goals are good. Self-improvement is good. Promoting one's book is good.

Time to get out of my jammy's. Seems like Saturday.

This morning we had a flicker on the main suet feeder for the first time. Man, that bird is big. Lots of bird business today, and I think I saw a goldfinch, but on the suet not the thistle seed. Is that possible? We have five feeders and it's a job to keep them all full, especially suet in the winter which is soooo popular. I got two big containers from the Audubon society.

The "To Do" list

Home again, and a desk piled high with "stuff" that has to be dealt with. Soon. I update my weekly, sometimes daily "to do" list, and immediately add three more tasks after I have just printed the list. Grrrr. Of course, some of the things on the list have been there for months, such as reformating World of Mirrors for a specific publisher. Also getting rid of some stuff on EBAY. I heard that EBAY prices have tanked since the economy dived into the toilet, but one should not heed rumors. It's easy enough to see for yourself if items have a) sold and b) sold at or near former prices.

Important fact about the stock market. You haven't lost money until you sell. Of course if you sold right when things started to slide, then you have to pay capital gains taxes, or in the case of 401K, etc., ordinary income taxes, and then there's the sales charge, and when you buy it (or something) back, the buying charge, so my theory is that it's better to sit tight and go for what is looking awfully like a Nantucket Sleigh ride (a whaling boat attached to a mad whale) with your investments. I mean, hell, it's only money, right? What would you do with it? Eat? Fill the oil tank?

Hey, oil is down, which means our heating bills won't be quite as high as everyone feared. Everything to do with money is a Nantucket Sleigh Ride. Housing, price of gas, investments. The old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times has struck again.

I have some really cheap-to-make recipes that taste great, so email me if you would like to have a few.

So after being gone I had to catch up on Obama, and writing, and Suck It Up, along with my to to list. An unblogged blog don't get no hits. Meanwhile, there's daffodils to plant, my Toastmaster's speech to write.

I have chosen the topic, "My culinary disasters." Every cook has a few. My first one was vichysoisse, then boiled potatoes ("an insult to the German tongue"), then soup with bugs, some really vile Jambalaya that even the possum snubbed, and finally, a leg of venison that you probably don't want to hear about. Maybe you do. My recipe for Venison Ragout is sublime, but there were rocky shoals en route to the harbor, so keep the sailing motif.

See prior post.

I'm gearing up to write my big "Why I Am For Obama" post, and that better be soon. Driving back up to New Hampshire this weekend to beat the bushes and knock on a few doors.

So onward, and remember I'll send those recipes if only you will ask.

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Politics But Not As Usual

I have been transfixed by listening to the speeches of Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama. What a pair of speakers!

Two years ago I joined Toastmasters to hone my speaking skills. Why? I wanted to be able to talk about writing in an engaging, humorous, knowledgable way. As a shy only-child, this is not as easy task. I was brought up to think promoting oneself was "forward," and an unattractive trait in a young lady.

Toastmasters has helped me a lot, and now I even look forward to giving short talks. Toastmasters also taught me to critique a speech and I've got to tell you, Hilary and Barak do a bang-up job.

The pauses, the eye contact, the sincerity, the stories, the lack of um, ah, er, and 'you know.' They both produced great inspirational speeches. Obama just blew me away last night, and as the camera panned to the faces in the crowd, well, the faces looked like, how can I say this? They looked like they had seen the second coming of Christ, meaning no disrespect, but Obama Barak has obviously inspired them beyond belief.

Folks, this is politics. How often does it happen? And he's not a demagogue either. And Hilary, so gracious, yet trenchant. "Did you think this was all about me?"

Wasn't the venue terrific? Obama with his good looks and charm and rangy, American build does seem a little like a rock star, and what's wrong with that? God knows our standing in the world will skyrocket if he is elected.

One won't have to aplogize for this country and declare that "not everyone believe that or thinks that or agrees with that," THAT being the current administrations shennigans.

But this blog is not about politics, except today it is. Loved that speech. So perfect, ah the rhetoric. Wish I could talk about anything a fraction that well.

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Beginnings

I'm just finishing Mary Buckham's online class on beginnings. This is the third online class that I've done--the other two were "Writing a Synopsis" and "The Hero's Journey," which was about using classical archetypes to make your writing stronger.

All of these classes just emphasize how much I have to learn about writing, and even why the agents and publishers haven't been knocking down my door. It will be instructive to apply the beginnings and archetype advice to the California book. Prepare to hear a lot of kvetching about Such Stuff As Dreams.

I've been going back through Festival Madness, checking the chapter endings and beginnings for "hooks." A few changes are in order. Trying, as always to decrease the word count. It's 102,000, not too bad, but I would like more in the way of 100,000.

Donald Maass says that a "breakout novel" can be long, but so far tmine do not seem to be breakout novels, no matter how much I would like them to be. I am working on craft and thinking about craft--all to the good.

Yesterday (?) the NYTimes really trashed a novel, brutally, a well-known writer whose name has flown right out of my head. Russell Bank's The Reserve. Totally trashed. Yikes.

I made Soup from A Nail yesterday--a few bits of beef, pork and duck, onion, garlic, carrots, herbs, peas and tomatoes and some barley and I had vegetable barley soup. Originally, I thought I had more beef, but when I defrosted the "beef" it turned out to be chicken giblets, yuck, which I put down the disposal since the trash truck had come and gone. Do you remember the soup from a nail story? I don't know if our kids are being taught that "olde" stuff. Someone I spoke with this week said that none of the schools are teaching Dickens anymore. That means teenagers aren't reading A Tale of Two Cities. Such an exciting book. Too bad.

Off to get ready for Toastmasters and to take sustenance to the cows. Two plastic bags of fruit and vegetable scraps. Just what a Highland cow hankers for.

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