M.K. Stelmack's Blog, page 2

Apple Pie: No-Fail Method

Isn’t that the most awesome apple pie you’ve ever seen? I made it. Yes, thank you. I’m super-excited about it, too. It is 67% percent gone because people ate it. I mean, you’ve probably seen tons of pics of delicious-looking apple pie but who’s to say that anyone ate it? It could’ve been fashioned from cardboard and playdo and glitter. With mine, it’s the real deal.Oh, sure, I’m willing to tell you how I made it. Gladly. Here’s the pie filling: I took a bunch of apples given to me from a co-worker’s tree and after peeling and coring them, I cooked them in the crock pot for a while with a bit of water and quite a bit of cinnamon. I didn’t use nutmeg this time because last time we winced with every bite. After cooking it until the apples seemed soft but not mush, which is tricky to do when you’ve left the kitchen for the evening, I cooled it and then a couple of days later when I remembered it was still in the crock pot, I transferred the apple filling to the fridge. Actually, I wasn’t even thinking in terms of a pie at this point, so we just had cooked cinnamon apples for a few days until I decided that I might as well as make a pie.I found a recipe for gluten-free pie dough that wasn’t the one I used at Thanksgiving. That recipe had called for salt and I think I only put in the stated amount but it tasted like I might’ve got teaspoons confused with cups. For the record, we did eat that pie, too, because the filling was ah-mazing. The secret ingredient was apple juice. I forgot to use it in the above pie. But I did remember to put a tablespoon and then a bit more cornstarch with enough melted non-dairy butter and then add it to the apple filling. I think I put in some brown sugar but not much, whatever I scooped up loosely in my hand.Back to dough preparations. I went with a recipe that was just coconut oil, gluten-free flour and water. I used pancake mix and then when I ran out of that, I topped it with GF flour I didn’t even know I had and it had xanthum gum in it which was a bonus because the recipe had called for that and I thought I’d have to skip it because the only xanthum gum I had expired in 2014. It didn’t look bad but I thought it might not be effective anymore. I also put in water but I couldn’t tell you how much because it said ice water and I don’t know how fast my ice cubes melt at room temperature. The recipe said I should put in enough so the dough isn’t too wet or too dry, and I was okay with that guideline. It also didn’t mention chilling the dough, so I didn’t but then it didn’t roll right, so I did chill it for as long as it took me to chill about how it wouldn’t roll right. The second go-around was better but I pretty much had to pinch the dough together in a hundred places.This time when I baked it, I remembered to take it out, which produces much more satisfying results. It is delicious with cream or something called Coco-whip and ice cream (I’m only assuming that because I don’t have any ice cream in the house right now). And just so you know, I am glad to share my recipe, but feel free to adjust to suit your tastes.

We Are All Welcome Here: Book Review

I picked up this book of endurance and joy nearly a decade ago, and now in a half-dozen sittings finished it. Am I the only one who waits that long to read a book? Actually, I had read the opening pages several times and stopped because I experienced that chest-expanding flutter of panic and wonder that comes with the certainty that my whole understanding of the world will be irrevocably changed. It’s the same feeling I get with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... of these days I’ll get the courage.Maybe one-millionth of the courage that Paige Dunn shows. Berg based her on the actual case of a woman who gave birth to a daughter while in an iron lung. She clung to life and her daughter, raising her into adulthood. Berg shifts the focus of the story to the thirteen-year-old daughter, Diana, who struggles with matters of conscience and freedom among town folk who daily judge her mother and their black housekeeper. Remember this is 1964 in Tupelo, Mississippi.I was struck by  how everything meaningful happens within the walls of the plain, subsidized Dunn house. Oh, sure, there is the odd scene at the magazine racks of the drugstore and down the aisle of the hardware store and once at the black housekeeper’s front door, but the story was laid bare in the small acts of home life. In the smoothing of sheets, the forbidden peeks through windows, the squabble about where to spend a windfall, the finger bitten in punishment, the proper cutting of onions, the long night-time conversations, the good-byes, the good news.And there is good news. It does have a happy ending, despite all odds. I don’t think I’m spoiling it to say so because the opening chapter ends with: …Tupelo, Mississippi. You know the town. Elvis’s birth place. He had a kind of great luck and then terrible tragedy. For us, it was the opposite.And yes, Elvis does make an appearance. He is alive, if only in the pages of an exceptional novel. Long live the King.

What are you thankful for?

It’s Thanksgiving Monday here in Canada. We celebrate it a full six weeks earlier than the United States. The days are shorter, the air is nippier but usually there’s no snow. No such luck this year. Most of the province was blanketed with anywhere from a few inches to a foot of the stuff. A lot of farmers still have their crops lying in the field. Who knows when they’ll get to it. Maybe at Christmas time, maybe the spring. If their machinery can even get if off. Most farmers are insured, so they’ll get their money back but they won’t make money. Next province over, in Saskatchewan, bumper crops of wheat at one hundred bushels per acre are laying there.It’s not called next-year country for nothing.Alberta itself is in an economic slump, the worst in all of Canada. Our house hasn’t escaped the downturn, either. And there have been other challenges, too. I won’t go into them because my point isn’t too garner sympathy. My point is to be thankful for the one quality that has served me well. Yep, you got it–grit.Maybe I picked up my bushel of grit during my childhood on the farm when you did what had to be done because there was no one else to do it or because everyone else was taking care of their own chores, where bad weather came. All. The. Time. A hailstorm, a drought, early snow, too much rain.I learned to bear down, gather resources, bide my time, watch for opportunities, think twice, think ahead, double-check,  do without, make do, do what you can, enjoy the small stuff and above all, dream. Because people with grit dream. All. The. Time. Not of the past. But of what their God-given grit will reward them when the storms pass and the crop is finally reaped.

Partial Eclipse of My World

Like most people, I live in a few different worlds. There is my work world (a school), my writing world ( a desk jammed in the corner of my bedroom), my home (the rest of my house), my church, my family and on it goes. I like to keep them compartmentalized because I seriously don’t want any of them comparing notes and discovering that really I’m just a little old person behind a curtain. That was me inserting a literary allusion. Aren’t I clever?The real reason is that I don’t think any of them have anything in common with the other, especially my writing and work world. I spend my time with kids whose parents might be a little mortified that I write books about people finding love together. I mean, it’s okay to go to a movie with romance and it’s okay to go to a wedding, the ultimate fulfillment of the romance arc, and it’s okay to play matchmaker and make it the topic of gossip but once it’s written–well, then it’s trashy and worthy only of our derision.I digress.This past Thursday, the two worlds collided–no, that’s a little over-the-top–my life as an author entered into a partial eclipse with my working world when I announced on Facebook that the 12-book series I’m involved in launched its first book. The next day, the principal extended his congratulations and then proceeded to ask me questions about my novel. Relevant, respectful questions like whether or not it would interest him (“Not unless you like a man with PTSD. You do?”), and would it be appropriate to tell his high school class about it (“Uh, I think so. It’s all fade-to-black and no swear words and it’s about commitment and it’s funny.”) I was later asked by one of his students–the school is exceptionally small–what the title of my book was. I drew a blank, finally coughing it up as I beat a hasty retreat to anywhere.I need to face the fact that I live what I write about. I work in a small school in a smallish town. There are no secrets, not if you’re going to fully experience small town life. So, yes, my cat is out of the bag. The practical, multi-tasking educational aide writes stories of love and hope.I’d better get used to the fact because apparently everybody I know already has.

What is your favorite book?

Ain’t that the truth? It’s a line from the latest addition to my keeper shelf:  The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry.  Though I can’t say what my favorite book is which is, in itself, a comment about me. I suppose I look for a book to answer some pressing need I have at the moment and if it does that, then it’s my new favorite. Now, push come to shove, if I were given the deserted island scenario, then I guess I would choose the Bible. Mostly because it’s really thick and would take a while to get through, and because it would remind me of so many other books I’ve read and because it would inspire me to write a few of my own and because it’s really a lifelong study on character motivation.That all aside, there is another line  from The Storied Life  I want to share: “It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us, but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable.” The quote practically defines my core value in my own stories. My people move from being alone to finding home. Home is, in the life of my stories, in a small town.A. J. Fikry, under the tender care of his creator, Ms. Zevin, is taken through the same realization. The curmudgeonly bookseller of Alice Island, A. J. Fikry is gifted a baby on his doorstep and through his connection to her again finds family, love and community. It is an age-old trope, its use a curtsy on the part of Ms. Zevin to Story Herself, a recognition that every life is a story, and that a life well-lived is a story well-told. (For a storyteller, it is the other way around.)Anyway, read it. It works better for those who love books more than people. You’ll understand why.

Home! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Last week’s post was a little heavy, don’t you think? It needed a gospel choir, swaying and humming in the background. This week, I’ve got something different. Short and sweet and all about home, too.It’s a short YouTube video of a dog who discovers he has a home, that someone wants him. A primal need in one of the world’s best social animal is brought to life here. A great, joyous outpouring of love.Let it roll:

Home, Sweet? Home

Think of a small town, and our instincts race to home, family, simplicity. The good things in life. Roots, salt of the earth, a strong foundation. It’s the place we come from, the place we come back to.No matter how big our world is, we look to live inthe small. Commuters want the short drive to work, parents want the small class size for their children, shoppers want that small boutique feel as they select their boots, cars or radishes. The closeness, the interconnectedness that comes from living in a small or smallish community brings us to a greater sense of wholeness with the world itself. You can go anywhere if you know where you come from.There is a dark side to it all. A dark, sludge-filled river that runs through every town, dripping its poisons into home after home. It is all the lies and hurts and worries that grow and fester within our walls—and yes, I speak both in metaphor and literal terms—that never find release and so rot under a heavy tarp of shame. Why are they never released? Because everybody knows everybody in a small town, and therefore nobody can be trusted.A woman had her daughter’s criminal escapades reported in the local newspaper. I’m confident only the facts were given but this mother knew another story of her daughter, a tiny part of which she shared with me. The rest is hers to keep. But that other story will never reach the public eye, and a good thing, too. There was another news story this week about a family and a fire. I knew a member of that family, and I can tell you there’s more to the story.There’s always more to the story. And it is this story that I search for when I write. I wish I could say that I get it right. I don’t think I do, because here is a space in every story that is meant for the reader to fill. I once wanted to tell a story about a person who was not yet beautiful, and then I had to stop. I had to think that if I were to describe what it is to be not yet beautiful I was describing most everybody in the world. And that was the primal journey that we are all one—to find our way to that state of being beautiful, however we choose to define it. So that is not for me to do as a writer. That is for the reader to do. My job—if telling a story is ever a job—is to remind the reader of the journey they are on by taking them to a place where that happens all the time. Yes, a small town. Yes, a home in a small town. Yes, a grieving mother, a wounded daughter, a lost man and then invite you, dear reader, to see if together we can make it right for these people in their world and so perhaps repair our own broken, beautiful lives.

Why do I care?

Have any of you seen this show? It’s Canadian. Screams Canadian, as a matter of fact. The brainchild of Eugene Levy, Canadian career comedian. My teenage daughter and I watch it on Netflix, and it’s excruuuuciating. We snuggle into my bed, prop the iPad on my lap, hit the ‘Play’ icon and proceed to devolve into squeaking, blushing, flopping idiots. We toss the iPad back and forth between us like a hot potato, flip blankets over our head, peep over pillows, scare the cats off the bed.It’s supposed to be a comedy but our laughter is more like a long, high-pitched embarrassed squeal as the story switches from scene to scene between the four Rose family members. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the story in a nutshell straight from the show’s own tagline: Suddenly broke, the formerly filthy-rich Rose family is reduced to living in a ramshackle motel in a town they once bought as a joke: Schitt’s Creek.To varying degrees, the four family members are shallow, selfish, narcissistic, vain, unskilled, lazy, dependent, lying, immature, judgmental…you get the picture. Every episode shows the uppity family stripped in one way or another of their former wealth, their foibles exposed, their lies backfiring, the people of the small town getting yet another one over them. My daughter and I should be crowing with delight, not quite literally burrowing under the quilt because we cannot stand to see Alexis, David, Moira or Johnny humiliated yet one more time.Why do we react that way? The British comedy, Uncle, elicited the same reaction from us. Why do we feel bad when not particularly likeable characters are revealed for who they are?The question is rhetorical, so I’ll answer it. I think it’s because they are placed in situations mostly of their own making where they must reveal their vulnerabilities. Moira warbles through her audition. Alexis has to take bicycle lessons from her boyfriend. David has his fashion tastes over-ruled by a man who wears plaid, and Johnny has to accept office space at the back of a garage. This all sounds pretty easy stuff to do but the steps they go through to avoid exposing their weaknesses is where it gets cringe-worthy and so, so, so personal.Which one of us has not experienced the painful humiliation of having a mistake, an imperfection, a thoughtless second scrutinized and judged? Two words: junior high. So, too, the mild mortification of living in a small town where if the police pull you over, somebody you know is sure to drive by. (Not me, of course.) Or the grocery clerk who is the one your six-year-old told to ‘Move it’ when coming through with the cart. (Not me, of course.) Or–no, I’m not even going there about that time because anyway, it definitely wasn’t me.Schitt’s Creek has renewed for a third season. I don’t know if it’s because CBC had nothing better, but I tend to think it’s because there are a few others who like to watch their comedies from under the covers.