Food for Thought or Thought about Food

Rain driving down in buckets. Blew off my 8:00 a.m. workout. Couldn't go out in that cold wet dark horrible downpour. I'll workout later, I tell myself. Yeah. Sure.

Came down to read e-mail and found a link to the Murderati blog. Just the thing calculated to make me feel even guiltier.

If I don't eat, I become nauseated. Don't remember a single anorexic soul in high school or college. Of course, Marilyn Monroe was the ideal figure and I was always trying to gain weight. Hard to believe. I don't believe it myself anymore. Skinny was unattractive. Boys liked curves. Ah yes.

The photo is me as a skinny young mom with a mocking child hamming it up. La di dah.

Read on:
http://murderati.typepad.com/murderati/2008/11/the-antifood-post.html

Happy Thanksgiving, I think.

Grapeshot

Confidence

Image is from: edutechgeek.files.wordpress.com

Lately, I've spread my writing wings a bit beyond genre fiction and blogging. I've got one and one-half short stories written, a food memoir, a report on an event and even a deposition for a court case. I'm also looking forward to writing and delivering a humorous Toastmaster's speech.

What is remarkable is this: these days when I sit down to write anything, I have the confidence that I can do the writing, both first and subsequent drafts and that it will be at least acceptable. How did it get from my cybercrime sleuth to Jill of all trades?

Plant butt in chair is the big advice for writers. In other words, sit down and write. And yanno, if you do it often enough (5+ novels,umpteen blog entries, this 'n that) eventually you get the hang of it, and you know you can do it. You can produce whatever is needed without blood and tears. Sweat may still be involved, but one out of three isn't bad.

I'm feeling pretty good about this, because it's been a long time coming. When I first started writing, "they" said you had to write half a million words (500,000 for the math dumbos) before you were any good. I did that and more in 5 novels. Probably wrote close to 750,000 with rewrites and so on. In the beginning, that many words sounded impossible, when I had written maybe 75,000. Yikes! And another beginning writing teacher hushed me when I tried to bring this up in class. I believe he thought that it would discourage the "beginners." Dammit ! Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Maybe I should thank my blog readers, whoever they are, for reading the blog and keeping me blogging, because "Suck It Up" counts for a words written, too, over the years. And writing with brevity helps the cause.

So thanks. Comments, as always are welcome.

Grapesbot

The Literary Life

After all the food blogs and the politics blogs, the cat blogs, cow blogs and what have you blogs, you may be wondering if I'm still writing, as in novels.

I am, and now almost 100 pages into the new novel, In Flight, which is coming along all right, and just needs to be written down. I think it's going to be good. Whether it will sell or not is another question. Anyway, it's fun to be in the head of a Columbian drug lord, at least some of the time.

Finally, finally, an agent asked to see some pages of Festival Madness. In the meantime, I have discovered one or two novels about Burning Man are in the works or looking for editors, or what have you. None like mine, of course. What I have to say in defense of my novels is that they are a "fun read," with all sorts of cool stuff. Obviously fun does not make it publishable.

I'm taking a Food Writing course at Brown University. After all the food blogging it seemed a sage thing to do. And there's this short story about a robot fish. Can't tell you anymore, because the fish worked for the CIA. I am not making this up.

Totally 100% afraid to look at the end of the quarter financial statements wending their way to the mailbox. Looked at two, eeeek, and that was two too many. In the meantime, of course, the market has really sh__the bed, and one begins to think of how to scale down expenses rather drastically.

Get thru the winter on the same old clothes. Don't we all have way too many clothes. Maybe it's time to wear some of them out. Yup. Do I dare buy some new pajama bottoms from the Job Lot?

Eat lots of rice and beans and chili. Hey, that doesn't sound so bad. Oatmeal cookies? Yay! Netflix instead of concerts, plays and movies. Yup. Nip out to the 99 instead of the la-di-dah places. I can do that for a while, esp. after a memorable meal at Al Forno.

Shop the sales, yada, yada. I think our TV which is NOT cable ready but we do have cable--anyway the TV appears headed for the great tube tomb. Appliances never crap out at a good time, do they? Usually it's at 5:00 p.m. on the Friday of a three day weekend.

I would not want to give up cable, since that's where the good shows are. Otherwise, one might as well not replace the TV.

Enough gloom and doom. Tomorrow is cat blog day. Will the kitties do something memorable? Bloggable? Or is it the same-old, same-old? Stay tuned.

Grapeshot

The Californication of Mexican Food

You are reading a one-woman crusade against flour tortillas, effete, tasteless, showing-up-everywhere flour torillas. I expect that one of these days our New England supermarket will not even stock corn torillas but you will be able to buy seventy-seven varieties of flour torillas in white, yellow, orange and green, bland, white bread offerings. May I say just one word? Yuck!

I will be the one throwing a screaming fit in the International Foods aisle or at the dairy case. The red-faced, profanity shouting woman flinging the big, ungainly packages of flour tortillas at the hapless clerk.

At the Border Cafe in Harvard Square I have to ask for the fish tacos to be served in corn tortillas. The staff is very obliging and the fish tacos are mega-tasty.

There are new chains like Qdoba that only have corn tortillas in the hard crust out-of-the package variety. Everything else is wrapped in, well, you know what.

Today I was heartened to read in the Dining Out section of the NY Times about a place in East Hampton (did I say effete?) that has true south of the border food. And most of the locals like the unspiced inspidid variety. But not everyone.

I applied my eagle flour-tortilla spotting eye to the photos and guess what? Not a flour tortilla in sight. Thank you, God, thank you. Recipes look delicious. Spicy, too.

Did you know the heat (capisicum) in hot peppers in a POWERFUL Anti-oxidant. So put the kleenex on the table, have some sour cream and cold cerveza ready, and pile on the hot peppers. Wrap everything in corn.

Note: corn torillas have fiber and not too many carbs. Ha! Ha! Take that you mealy-mouthed flour eaters.

The only place a corn tortilla belongs is in a burrito. End of story. I mean, can you imagine a tortilla casserole made with flour tortillas. It would taste like unseasoned gravy made with water.

Viva corn tortillas, the true taste of Mexico. Down with wimpy flour tortillas! Down with tasteless wraps. Why don't you just use a few layers of paper towel? Tastes about the same.

My mom was a Kansas farm girl and I like bread and the amber waves as much as anyone, but not in my Mexican food. Give me corn, lots of corn.

Grapeshot, whose guerilla name today is Pilar.

The next rant will be about sugar in corn bread. Ye gods, even a good Southerner like Paula on the Food Network is spooning sugar into corn bread, flour too. No. No. Omigod, what are things coming to? Where is purity? Where is authenticity?

Whither?