R. Harrison's Blog, page 35
January 12, 2016
Quick Satay Chicken
a simple way to make Satay chicken
Cut a chicken breast (or two) in thin strips. Dry rub with:
1 tablespoon peanut butter powder
1 teaspoon hot Madras curry powder
Meanwhile heat up the griddle. THIS IS IMPORTANT – even with a well-seasoned griddle, if it’s too cold the meat will stick. I will typically oil the griddle with some corn oil on a paper towel.
Add.
2 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Place on the griddle:
Four or five minutes latter, the meat is half done, so flip it. This is where pre-heating the griddle will repay you.
After another few minutes it’s done. Enjoy.
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 – 1822
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
January 11, 2016
A Gift
Leonora Speyer
I Woke: —
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song,
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.
Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird’s-notes.
January 9, 2016
Dartmoor story VII #amwriting #WIP
The start of the story can be found here.
Following from the last installment: Dr Standfast has just committed a poor unfortunate to Princeton Gaol. Something else is up.
Saying, “I should have known,” he dashed to the fire and tossed it in. There was a greenish flash and it vanished in a puff of acrid smoke.
“Uncle! I liked that. It was pretty.”
“Let me get you another. Much nicer, and it’s been in the family for a while. Time you should have it.” Moving quickly, for an ostensibly tired old man, he ran upstairs and a moment later returned. “This one’s solid gold, not paste.”
Elizabeth took it from him and examined it closely. It was, if anything, more ornate than her old one. More interestingly, it was covered in writing. Writing in a script she couldn’t recognize.
“Uncle,” she said, “Do you know what it says?”
“Some of it, but my Aldebaran isn’t as good as it used to be.”
“Aldebaran?”
“A dialect of Arabic, from Timbuktu. Or somewhere like that. It’s mostly for good luck. A verse from the Koran, intended to ward off the evil eye. Superstitious twaddle of course, but I’d feel happier if you’d wear it. Wear it all the time.”
“If you insist.” Elizabeth put it on and felt a warm glow come over her. “Thank you.”
“Excellent, now shall we see what the industrious Mrs Trent has prepared for dinner?”
“You know Uncle, there might be something to that superstition. I’m feeling stronger already.” A thought struck her, and she paused, “Uncle, what did that man do?”
“Which man?”
“The one you committed.”
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but not before dinner. Spoil your appetite. Funny thing, he claimed he was from another planet. Stuff and nonsense.”
“So it wasn’t hard then, to prove he was insane.”
“Not at all, he was decidedly not a normal person. Tried to bite Sergeant Hopwell and snarled at us in an incomprehensible language.”
Elizabeth started walking into the back parlour, and the asked, “Was it safe to keep him here if he were so dangerous?”
“Being an alienist, I have the facilities to restrain, um, difficult patients. George kept watch, so yes, I’d say it was safe.”
“If you say so, Uncle.”
“I do. By the way, George will be in your room this afternoon. Replacing that broken window pane and fixing the lock. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, what happened to it?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I did.”
“Someone must have thrown a pebble from the street. The pane was broken, and the lock, well, it needed replacing in any case.”
That’s the end of this chapter. We’ll pick up at the beginning of the next with the next installment.
It’s Alive !!!
Finally, my booktrope book is online. The Curious Profession of Dr. Craven
What is a poor anatomist to do? Twenty pounds, wasted, up in smoke when a beautiful young woman wakes up on the dissection table. Someone has made a ghastly error. Dr Richard Craven, an ethical doctor, has but one choice, to nurse the girl back to health and restore her to her family. That’s when his troubles start. She can’t remember anything, only her first name, and she isn’t even sure about that. As his household helps her to recover her strength and her memories trickle, then flood back, their mutual attraction buds into a flowing passion.
Unfortunately one of the things she’s conveniently forgotten was her arranged engagement to a vulgar, but wealthy son of a Northern industrialist. Not only that, but there is some deep dark secret about Dr Craven that her father believes makes him completely ineligible.
Resolving the resulting tangle in this sweet historical romance takes the combined efforts of the doctor’s once profligate brother, the Earl of Craven, a displaced French Royal, le Duc de Bourbon, and the visit of a mysterious French Baron to the sacred floor or Almack’s.
FrankenKitty 13 #wewriwar #amwriting
(Some assembly required)
Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors. This is a sample from my work in progress, “Frankenkitty”, and I hope you enjoy it. It started out as a young-adult superhero book, and well, you’ll see. In last week’s snippet, Amber gave Mrs Jones a sample of the pink solution. This week starts with the girls in study hall, wondering what to do next.
“What did the book say?”
“It didn’t; he had to wait for the next thunderstorm.”
Mary cocked her head, trying to remember something she’d read, “Lightening; there was something odd about it; not just a big electric spark.”
A boy, one who was not very handsome, a rather gangly, spotty, and very shy fifteen year old, who had been sitting on the table near them, spoke up, “Anti-matter; there’s anti-matter in lightening.”
“Jimmy?” Jennifer recognized the boy from her neighborhood. He’d been quietly sitting next to them, almost every study hall for the whole term; hoping for a chance to exchange a word or two.
Jimmy turned away and looked at the book he was reading. Jennifer persisted, “Jimmy, what did you say?”
Jimmy’s right, by the way, there are positrons produced by lightening.
This is a work in progress. In other news, I’ve become a booktrope author, but more on that latter. It has meant a change in pen-name.
I’m also looking for reviewers for my nearly ready book “The Curious Profession of Dr. Craven” It’s moved out of layout to final assembly, and is now waiting only on the final cover. There was a bit of a hiccough in production, but that’s sorted out.
Get Free Stuff and try out my landing page. There are two free complete short stories available after you’ve gone through the hoops.
January 8, 2016
It’s all I have to bring today (26)
Emily Dickinson
It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
January 7, 2016
The ThemeShaper WordPress Theme Tutorial: 2nd Edition
Watch the webpage.At some stage I’ll be moving from wordpress.com to another host (google analytics and sumo plugs, please, for free, maybe). That also gives me the ability to host unlinked pages and multiple websites. The free templates tend to be wonky, so I’ll probably roll my own.
Preface
Many of you have written or commented to tell us how much you liked Ian Stewart’s original tutorial, “How To Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial”. You’ll be happy to learn that that we’ve created a second edition of the tutorial! Just like last time, you can expect one new lesson each day. What’s changed in the second edition? Keep reading to find out!
What’s new in the Second Edition:
Updated code samples that draw from the Underscores (_s) starter theme.February 2012 marked the release of the Underscores (_s) starter theme, and since then, it has gathered plenty of momentum. The code samples and file structure for the theme we’re going to create in this tutorial will draw from _s as a source of modern code that reflects current best practices.
New Lessons.Developing Your Theme Sense is worth reading if you’re…
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A Day
Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886
I’ll tell you how the sun rose, —
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while
Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
January 6, 2016
The Vantage Point
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.
And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sunburned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.
