Swedish Meatballs and other delights

Sometimes "retro" food tastes so good.  The last time I cooked up a batch of Swedish Meatballs is lost to history, but certainly not within recent memory, like the six years we've been in this house.  With the cooler weather, this dish just seemed right.  I got a good quality ground beef from the butcher shop and ground up 1.5 pork chops in the food processor, because I didn't like the look of the ground pork at the meat counter.  I had the rest of the ingredients except for white bread and heavy cream, but a trip to Shaw's solved that.  Then I forgot to add the cream, but we didn't miss it.  Making a huge tray of one ounce meatballs was tedious, as was the browning of same, and they were so lean that they rendered no fat, and when it came time to make the gravy I had to had butter to the pan.  Still not enough fat, and I fought the lumps battle (successfully), but then the low-salt low-fat beef broth did not thicken and I had to sneak some cornstarch in.  No problemo.

The end result was toothsome and for once I made enough mashed potatoes such that we could ladle on spoons of the savory gravy.  (Diet freaks stop reading now.) Confession:  last night and this morning when I walked by the fridge I reached under the foil and sneaked a meatball.  Plenty left for tonight's dinner, which will be noodles instead of mashed and carrots instead of peas.  Variety, etc.

I am finishing my novel, maybe even this week.  The following will happen:  a huge sense of accomplishment and then a big letdown.  I'll let the manuscript lie fallow for a while, with the distasteful task of cutting a huge number of words to look forward to.  Good words, all.  Well, maybe not all.

Grapeshot will try to do NaNoWriMo  this year, as I don't have involvement in a writer's conference which has sucked up the last eight Novembers.  I want to get an uncensored leg up on my 1928 California novel, Such Stuff as Dreams.  It's going to be hard to write.  I already know that, so maybe a vault into the story without too much thinking about it.  I do have an outline of sorts, which I must get out and add to.  Then I am at least following a story line. 

Very excited about going to Bouchercon in San Francisco next month.  Bouchercon by the Bay.  What a city!  And then a side trip to Reno to find the very final details for In Flight, stuff I may not be able to add or will have to cut!  Grrrr.

Onward.

The Milk of Human Kindness Has Curdled

The milk of human kindness has curdled. The party of TEA is the party of ME.

In the mid-fifties, the population of the U.S. was 55 million.  Now it is over 308 million. More than five times as many people. This is the main reason government has gotten bigger.  It had to.   

The Tea Party, the party of NO taxes, no government, unfettered unregulated business, the party of selfishness, the party of stampeding bull elephants that will trash the environment, health care, and trample everything in their path, has tunnel vision.  The Tea Partiers can only see the country as it was “back when,” and they want to return to those days.  The fifties and all the decades since are gone.  We can only go forward.  Change threatens everyone, and the white Christian element cannot tolerate the idea that they will soon be a minority. That's what taking back "values" means.

 Get used to it, folks. 

Thomas Wolfe said it best.  You can’t go home again.  Heraclitus said, “you cannot step into the same river twice,” but of course the know-nothings who "no" everything wouldn’t dig Thomas Wolfe or Heraclitus.  Bet you anything that Sharon, Christine and Sarah, those weird sisters, wouldn’t know Heraclitus from Zorba the Greek, and are proud of it!      

In spite of their professed religious pieties, the Tea Party is morally bankrupt and lacking in social conscience as well as charity.  Maybe they should read their New Testaments.  The eye of the needle and all that. 

The mainstream press is afraid to tell it like it is.  It’s like we are all living on a horrible no-exit reality show and the bimbos and really dumb blonds are in the driver’s seat.  And NOT at Harvard. 

I hope some of the 308 millions of voting age wise up before it’s too late.  Drinking the tea may be drinking the hemlock.

The Orange Cat and the Tortoise Cat

The male orange cat cannot fathom why the female tortoise is forever on his case.  She spits. She runs away.  She freaks out when he tries to rub noses or (horrors!) sniff her butt.  Why can't we be friends.  When the mistress combs Thisbe, he butts in and wants to be combed, too,  interrupting precious Mommy-Kitty time. 
Revenge is sweet, or perhaps revenge is really savory, because Thisbe eats his food.  She scarfs down her moist food and then ambles across the kitchen to HIS dish.  
Sometimes she even eats his Meow Mix.  Thisbe is fat and diabetic and has her own special food that she likes just fine.  We call it "Atkins for kitties."  She is catholic in her cat food tastes.  But not people food.  Won't touch it.  Ick.
Now the orange cat sleeps on the bed at night with her people.  He inserts himself into the living room TV watching.  He has JOINED RED SOX NATION. 
Thisbe doesn't hide her outrage.  She may forgive and forget.  In a span of years.  But right now, it's still all out war. 

She's showing him her middle paw.  And the claws are NOT retracted. 

Net Neutrality -- Not!

For two hours, I've  been on the Internet, trying to get my character from Havana to Caracas.  Not me!  My character, as is Lotto Lopaz, one jump ahead of the DEA.

Dumb me!  I thought he could just catch a flight from Jose Marti airport to Caracas.  Maybe he could.  Our government doesn't let you see the flights out of Havana.  My god, I could sneak out of Guantanamo easier than flying out of Havana on a regularly scheduled airline.
This is crazy.  Why is so much flight information blocked? I mean, it's just information.  It's really very annoying, particularly since I am trying to get a literary character out of the city  A figment of my imagination.  I think I'm going to have to imagine an airline and a flight schedule.

The Cuban airlines web site isn't very friendly either.  Is Havana like the former East Berlin, where all can enter but no one can leave?        So what is happening, is that he's flying from Havana to Panama City, and from Panama City to Caracas.  It costs over $1000.00.  He'll have to cough up 2 500 Euro notes, of which he has many.  This guy may be in a very bad mood.  He deserves to be.

The Cuba restrictions are asinine.  I'm tempted to drive to Toronto and then fly to Havana just for spite.  I mean. really.

Grapeshot who is mad as hell that she wasted 2 valuable hours on the computer trying to find airline schedules that were blocked.  Let's her it for true Net Neutrality.  And not a minute too soon.

Bah.  Humbug.

Two happy and Eleven Sad

I've been querying Festival Madness like crazy over the Burning Man Season.  30 queries, and so far 12 rejections.  Man, they are coming back at me like kamikazees.  Form letters, all.  The agents try to create a kind rejection letter, but that is obviously even harder than crafting a good query letter.

In the general gloom of wondering if anyone is ever going to rep this book, I receive a different kind of rejection from a small press publisher.  Yes, it was a form, but it had my name and my book's title  in tiny neat script, very tiny, very neat script and at the bottom was one word.  Sorry!  It was so sweet, because it let me know if came from a real person who maybe understood on a level that a lot of agents do not. It wasn't from the intern or assistant who is the agent's gatekeeper and whose job it is to parse the queries.

So that was a Good Thing, as Martha would say,  to have a small human interaction in this wrenching process.  The other happy thing, a very happy thing, is that when I returned home from a book party tonight (someone else's party, of course), I had a voice mail from a casual friend saying how much he liked The Shadow Warriors.  Totally unexpected.  This is actually someone whose opinion I value.  I don't even know how he got a copy of the book, but I'm so pleased to get a real compliment on my writing.  I've been down about the very snarky, anonymous review someone posted.  You know it's someone you crossed being a bitch, but still. . . it pulls down the average. 

I figure I've logged about a million words by now, and the years go by and writer's come and writer's go and the whole business is pretty crazy. 

In a pensive moment

The suspense novel is almost finished.  The drug lord is on the run to Cuba (and what fun it's been to research that scenario!)  The heroine and the two kids she is watching are menaced by a very bad guy, and her sister is in big trouble down in Panama (more fun research).  Ask me about traveling to Cuba.  Ask me about Panama banking.  Ask me about the Florida current and Hemingway Marina.  I have learned a lot just sitting here with my butt in the chair and  Googling away.  Google some, write some, send out a few more queries.  This is a weird and probably a stupid way to spend one's life. 

Bad Blood

So,  off I went today to donate blood. I'm O-negative and a fondness for red meat or spinach or whatever gives me iron rich blood.  The only time I was ever turned down for a donation was when I didn't quite tip the scales at 110.  Those day are gone, long gone forever.

I answered all the questions and had good answers I thought, except perhaps for one question:  have you had any needle pricks?  Truth be told I've had a bunch.  Our sweet, fat tortoise cat Thisbe is diabetic and gets insulin twice a day.  Bear in mind this is the same expensive insulin that humans take, except of course, Thisbe gets very small doses.  With small thin sharp needles.

This post is written by a person, me, with poor small muscle coordination.  It's always been that way.  Don't ask.  I don't stuff dates.  I sure as hell don't stuff cherry tomatoes.  Knitting?  Nope.  Crocheting?  Surely you just.  A bit of embroidery was my height of needlework?  No jewelry repair.  I can sew on a button, O.K.?  I am challenged if the fingers need to be agile or dexterous. 

The upshot of this is that I stick myself from time to time with Thisbe's needles.  Usually putting the cap back on to dispose of in the needle jar.  Since I've been skewering myself for as long as I've been skewering the cat, with no ill effects, I thought I would be home free with the blood people.  Not. 

Banned for a year.  Now the chances of my not sticking myself for a whole year are remote.  Banned for life.  All that good rich blood.  Alas, Thisbe. 

The Bee and the Waterlily

Waterlily at Stonybrook Audubon Preserve

When we noticed the bees going berserk inside the waterlilies, I thought I was the first person to notice this.  Well, a Google search proved me wrong.  There were  any number of photos of bees inside waterlilies.  It must be a common phenomenon,   Who knew?  In the photo above, you can just see the bees legs.  He/she is upside down, lolling in the yellow center, doing weird drunken capers, totally UNBUSY, acting like no bee I have ever seen before.  

In the beginning, I thought the flower was exerting some malevolent force over the bee, trapping it.   Hey, this is a waterlily, not a Venus Bee Trap.   But the bee acted so enchanted, so powerless, drugged,  even corrupted by this delicous yellow pollen.  Drugged.  Like a hopeless   addict.  Not the busy little bee we see on the oregano blossoms.

Now I am wondering if there is such a thing as  Water Lily Honey.  Because I sure would like to get myself some.  It must be wondrous and potent and maybe even life changing.   Do you think a Google search will find it?  

Again:  who knew?

Grapeshot

The Prune Plums are In!

When I finally found Italian prune plums (they are small) at Roche Brothers yesterday, I just had to buy some.  The photograph tells you why.  The recipe is something my husband ate as a child in Germany.  Konditoreis still serve pflaumen tarte.  So good.  Baked with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar and dappled with sliced almonds.  The crust is actually golden, which doesn't show in the photo.  My mother-in-law always made this (my father-in-law's fave) with a yeast dough, but my recipe calls for a dough very similair to a pie crust, but without water, just one egg. 

Our dinner was a Mexican soup from the Yucutan.  Hey!  It must have been International Night.

Close Encounters of the Avian Kind

Rubythroat at the feeder

Today I took a beaker of thistle seed into the woods to refill the feeder, frequented mostly by goldfinches and chickadees.  While I was in the woods, I spied the little Garden Gnome in his red cap.  Might as well take him in, too, I thought, since Earl convinced us to take all the extraneous candles, etc. into the house for the winter.  The dwarf was filthy, so I put him down while I stood on the highest step of the deck to water a plant and the plum tomatoes.  This accomplished I started hosing off the dwarf.  Down by the tomatoes a large butterfly.

No, a hummingbird, who came closer and closer until I could have touched him.  "Hi there!" I said.  He stayed right by me and then I realized it was the dwarf's red cap that interested her.  It was a she.  We stayed like that for a moment and she flew off and filled with  awe, I carried the dripping red-capped dwarf (gnome) into the house.

I wonder if other "hummers" have buzzed him in the tree crevasse this summer.   They buzz me when I am by the feeder, but this was special.  Resolved:  we will plant red nicotania next year.  I love my tiny birdies.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.flowers.vg/1024x768/nicotiana-red.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flowers.vg/flowers/nicotiana-red.htm&usg=__F4pWlMrL_NEEn970nmw_wiBMVBs=&h=768&w=1024&sz=119&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=XUPGj6itBFg2OM:&tbnh=149&tbnw=201&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dred%2Bnicotiana%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENUS287%26biw%3D933%26bih%3D592%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=496&vpy=99&dur=1859&hovh=167&hovw=223&tx=117&ty=78

A stroll through Stonybrook

Stonybrook Audubon Preserve in Norfolk, MA

Fall is in the air!  This morning we finished a walk through the Stonybrook Wildlife preserve.  I say "finished," because the last walk was interrupted by swan grooming.  Yup!  The two adult swans and their three (big) cygnets had taken over the main path and were grooming their feathers like crazy.  Out of consideration for the family activity, we retraced our steps.  This morning we went the other way and I promptly fell down on some not-so-steep stone stairs and decided to take the "stroller/wheelchair" path instead.

I wish to report about the bees in the waterlilies.  The waterlilies were all nicely abloom, white flowers open, and nearly every flower had a drunken bee, cavorting, luxuriating, acting totally unBeelike in the bowels of the flower.  I have never seen bees behave like that.  At first I thought the bees could not extract themselves from the flowers, but they did.  It was like strong drug, but for bees.  Very strange.

We passed where the swan grooming took place last week.  It must happen at that spot all the time, because the ground was so littered with white feathers I thought maybe a fox or coyote had got one of them.  Not so, just grooming dross.  We spied the swans eating that green algae like stuff in the water.  Still two parents and three sibs.  No fox meal there.

 Turtle sunning himself.  Geese in flight.  Chipmunk scampering. 

I saw a fuzzy caterpiller and was reminded of my childhood when I collected them into a shoebox in the fall, and provided some grass, etc., in hope that they would spin a coccoon and emerge in the spring, but in the spring the shoebox was gone, no doubt a victim of my mother's (to me) obsessive cleanliness.  I did like fuzzy caterpillars.

 The vegetable garden at the preserve, I am sorry to say, was totally ungroomed.  Animals eating the tomatoes, basil not deadheaded, weeds riotous.  I could have stayed all day bringing order to the beds. 

Tonight we're grilling bratwurst and I'll make some fried potatoes (lots of onions) and my special sauerkraut that my mother-in-law taught me how to make.  It has no resemblance to sauerkraut that comes out of a can.  I really gussy it up until it becomes like the Platonic Form of Sauerkraut.  Yup.  It's good.

The MAN burned last night and I need to find a web video to watch.  Always such a thrill. 

Onward,

Grapeshot

The Man Burns Tonight

The boat carried us out of Black Rock City and moved across the playa always avoiding the people, bicycles, and mutant vehicles that converged on the fixed point of the statue.  In a perfect state of inebriation, I had ridden a horse with no name to a strange but friendly planet of flat alkali desert surrounded by dark mountains.
The desert dwellers came to this place and formed an immense circle around the god of fire, who had assumed the mythic shape of a blue neon man, glowing over the desert. Dancers twirling hypnotic flames spun around the statue while ships and dragons and animals belched propane-fueled fire.
Weird and wonderful shapes descended from the sky, lit by a yellow moon that crept above the mountains.  The fire dancers swirled like dervishes, and drums throbbed in the eerie light where glow sticks burned like neon candles.  I was eerily conscious of each detail of this carnival night with its colors, sounds, tastes, smells and the absolute anticipation.   The dancers spun in their circles of fire, and the drums pounded to a crescendo.
Alone, the neon man loomed over the desert, canopied by thousands of twinkling stars. 

The ritual began with a massive barrage of shooting rockets and fireworks illuminating the man, then a blaze of fire and a magic conflagration roared to life in a frenzy of heat and flames. The inferno raced up one of the man’s legs and consumed him bit by bit even as his triumphant arms remained raised, as in defiance.  Everyone was yelling and shouting and the air pulsed with music.  In an eruption of galactic grandeur, the Man was burning bright.  The Man was burning.  

My description of "The Burn" from the manuscript, Festival Madness.

We are blessed that Earl was a bust

Inland, not much going on in the way of a hurricane or even lashing rain and wind.  Just gentle rain last night.  A few already brown leaves on the lawn this a.m.  I did all the laundry yesterday and made sure to run the dishwasher, so if we lost power I would be THAT much ahead.  Now, I've got to carry all the plants back outside.  At least the scented geranium is repotted.

Yesterday when we fed the Highland Scottish cows they were very frisky.  I wonder if they felt the storm coming.  This morning the birds are gone.  Where did THEY hunker down?  Cats did not appear to notice anything.  They mostly notice food, grooming, catnip and each other (jealously).  The orange cat insisted on being brushed when I was trying to get the lumps of fur off Thisbe's lower back.  I think she is too fat to bathe back there.  Life's little dramas.

Beautiful fresh morning.  Ah, they should all be like this.  So thanks, Earl, for bringing a welcome rain and not much else.  Down the road, the golf tourney proceeds apace and the Red Sox play twice today.

Spicy fried rice for dinner.  Another great recipe where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.
Try this recipe

Cooking  never ceases to amaze me.  Open-faced plum tart for dessert.  We can't find any prune plums this year.  WTF?  I know they're in season, but the stores don't have them.  Lots of Italians in Boston, too.   WHERE ARE THE ITALIAN PRUNE PLUMS?   Inquiring minds want to know.  How can I make my beautiful tart?

Onward to more writing.   This is the most difficult ending yet.

The MAN burns tonight. www.burningman.com  Ah, to be there, on the Playa in the shadow of the Black Rock, with the drums, fire dancers, craziness.  Zowie!

Grapeshot                                       

Hunkering down for Earl

After twenty-seven years in New England, we know the hurricane drill.  It wasn't always that way.  In 1985, when Gloria roared through, I drove to work the morning of the storm to find the office closed.  Ooops!  We watched the barometer fall, and the winds came and of course the power went out.  When the storm was over, neighbors came outside to inspect the damage.  One little boy (and I am not making this up) kicked the hornet's nest that had fallen during the storm.  Bad idea.  So when The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, came out, I had a visceral image of the consequences.  The power stayed out for four days.  We found our son's old Boy Scout camp stove and fired up the grill and cooked all the food as it defrosted in the fridge.  Some weird meals, but a) we were well fed and b) nothing spoiled. 

My neighbor went nuts because she had just made a HUGE mass of hors d'oeuvres and frozen them and they were all ruined.  In that house, we had a name brand electric stove that was crap personified, and now we have a nice gas stove that you light with a match if the power is out, and we can cook and cook. 


Nonetheless, we have plenty of water, batteries, candles, lanterns, etc. handy if the situation deteriorates.  And cat food.  Always cat food.  The tortoise cat and the orange cat are still not friends, despite the fact that the orange cat would like to be.  Thisbe (the tortoise) comes around very slowly.  It takes years.  She is innately suspicious.

 The Garden Before the Storm.  Earl, be kind!

I cleaned off the deck and the front porch.  Need to repot my scented geranium.  Have to remember to take down the hummingbird feeder.  Hope my birdies will be safe.  They are so dear to me.  Maybe some fresh nectar to get them through the day.  I have my nectar making down to a science. 

Wondering about the local golf tournament, the Red Sox game and all that stuff.  It's beyond boring at night when the electricity is off.  Best to find a cinema with power.  It's dark at 7:30 and no one wants to go to bed THAT early.  Haven't tried to read my Kindle by lantern light.  Why am I so sure the power will go off?


BECAUSE IT ALWAYS DOES!  

Friends in Florida are emailing "better you than us."  I don't know about that.  Seems a bit schadenfreude-ish. 

Onward, to nectar cooking and scented geranium repotting.  There are worse tasks.   Wish us well.

Grapeshot